‘Not a chance,’ I say. ‘If even someone thick enough to shag Crowley didn’t fall for it – no offence to your cousin, Meehan—’
‘Nah, you’re grand. She is thick. She lent the little bollix three grand so he could self-publish his autobiography.’ That sets everyone off again. ‘Never got a penny of it back.’
‘What’d he call it?’ Kellegher asks. ‘Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye?’
‘Free Willy,’ I say. That gets a laugh with a startled edge, like half the floaters didn’t think I was able for it.
‘Here we go,’ Steve says, swiping at his phone. ‘Truth’s Martyr, by Louis Crowley— No, listen; there’s a review. Five stars. “A searing, towering dissection of one man’s odyssey to reveal the hidden shadows of Irish justice. If you care at all about truth . . .” Jaysus, it’s longer than the book.’
‘Anyone want to put money on who wrote that?’ Stanton says.
‘How do you reveal a hidden shadow?’ Kellegher wants to know.
‘You lot are just part of the conspiracy,’ Meehan tells us all. ‘I bet you go around trying to put johnnies on poor unsuspecting fellas on the street.’
Reilly beckons to him. ‘C’mere till I stick one on you.’
‘It’d take three of yours.’
‘Here,’ Stanton says, throwing a greasy paper napkin at Meehan. ‘Suppress your masculine energy with that.’ Meehan slaps the napkin away and it goes into Kellegher’s coffee, and all of them start telling me that I need to write up the rest for harassment and creating a hostile workplace environment and wearing crap ties and farting in the unmarked cars. For that minute, the incident room feels like a good place.
‘I’m sure many Guards are fine people,’ Crowley tells us, from Stanton’s phone. ‘But when one of them practically assaults me, simply because I want to keep you informed on what they’re doing about this beautiful young woman’s death, then I think we all have to ask ourselves why she – or he, of course – is so desperate to control what we’re allowed to hear. After all—’
Underneath the solemn voice, he’s obviously creaming his chinos with delight: his story is taking on a life of its own, parallel to reality and getting a lot more traction. Reilly is grinning. ‘That’ll do,’ I say. The laugh has worn off; Crowley is giving me the sick. ‘Yous aren’t a shower of schoolkids. Get some work done.’ Stanton switches off the radio and they all turn back to their computers, throwing each other sideways glances and eyebrow-lifts about what a bitch I am, and the incident room goes back to normal.
The only bit of actual something that comes in is the pathologist’s report. Cooper hates most people, but he likes me – probably out of pure contrariness, but you take what you can get – so he rings me when he finishes writing up the post-mortem, instead of making me wait for his report.
‘Detective Conway,’ he says. ‘I was sorry to miss you at the crime scene yesterday.’
Which is my cue to apologise for not making it in time. ‘We were sorry to miss you,’ I say, snapping my fingers at Steve to get his attention. ‘We got caught up in roadworks. I appreciate you ringing me, Dr Cooper.’
‘The pleasure is mine. I trust the investigation is progressing well?’
‘Not too bad. We’ve got a good suspect. I could do with a bit more hard evidence and a bit less if-then-maybe.’ Steve makes a face at me. ‘Any chance you can help me out there?’
‘I think I can promise you a minimum of if-then-maybe,’ Cooper says, with delicate disdain, like I used bad language. ‘It is hardly my stock in trade.’
‘That’ll be a nice change,’ I say, making a face right back at Steve. Cooper makes a small crunchy noise that could be a laugh.
‘As far as hard evidence goes, the vast majority of the post-mortem examination provided no unexpected information. The victim was in good health, showed no signs of injuries received prior to Saturday night, had not had recent sexual intercourse, was not pregnant and had never borne a child.’ Cooper takes a pause and clears his throat: with that out of the way, we’re getting to the good stuff. ‘As I suggested at the scene, she suffered two sets of injuries: one to the face, and one to the back of the skull. The pattern of the facial injuries is consistent with a punch. The salient fact about this punch is the degree of damage it inflicted: the victim’s jawbone was fractured, and two of her lower left incisors were broken almost out of their sockets. Considerable force was required. I think we can safely say that the blow was inflicted by a man of above average strength and fitness.’
I mouth Strong guy at Steve. He raises his eyebrows at me: That sound like Rory to you?
‘Those injuries, however,’ Cooper says, ‘would not have been life-threatening. The fatal injury was to the right rear of the skull. This injury is linear, approximately two and a half inches long, and made by an object with a sharp right-angled edge, consistent with the fireplace surround on which the victim was found. The blow caused a severe skull fracture leading to an extradural haematoma. In the absence of immediate medical attention, the increasing pressure on the brain resulted in death.’
‘The victim took the punch, went over backwards and hit her head on the fireplace surround,’ I say. ‘How long would it have taken her to die?’
‘Impossible to say. An extradural haematoma can cause death within minutes, or within hours. Given the severity of the injury, I would have expected this one to progress fairly rapidly; precisely how rapidly, however, there is no way to know. One possible indicator, however, may lie in the second injury to the right rear of the skull.’
‘Whoa,’ I say. ‘Second injury?’ Steve’s eyebrows go up. I kick my chair closer to him, switch on speakerphone and put a finger to my lips. Cooper hasn’t made up his mind about Steve yet; one wrong word out of him could end the conversation right there. I feel a weird, idiotic twitch of triumph, like the bad kid seeing her golden little brother in the doghouse while she gets the pats on the head for once. I slap it down.
‘Restrain your excitement, Detective,’ Cooper says. ‘This second injury is minor – a slight contusion. Apart from that, it is practically identical to the first: linear, two inches long, made by an object with a right-angled edge. The two injuries are parallel, lying approximately a quarter of an inch apart, which explains why the second was not immediately obvious at the scene.’ He sounds miffed at the thing for hiding out on him.
I say, ‘So after the victim went down, either she lifted her head and then dropped it again, or else the killer did.’