‘Maybe three or four days. However, she has been deceased longer than that. How long, I don’t know.’
‘Jane will be able to make the call on time of death,’ Lottie said.
‘Someone taking my name in vain?’ Jane Dore appeared in her protective suit. What she lacked in height, all of five foot nothing, she made up for with her professional and no-nonsense behaviour. ‘Good morning, all. Make way.’
Lottie watched with admiration as the pathologist immediately got to work, visually assessing the body, then asking McGlynn to turn it slightly before holding up her hand to halt him.
‘Did you move the body?’
‘Waiting for you,’ he said.
‘Turn it so.’
As McGlynn and a technician began to move the body, Jane said, ‘Carefully.’
‘Of course,’ he said.
Lottie smiled wryly. He didn’t talk to Jane the way he talked to her. Pecking order sprang to mind.
‘No visible sign of wounds,’ the pathologist said.
‘How did she die, then?’ Lottie said.
‘I don’t make assumptions, as you know. But I’d say foul play is highly likely in some form, given that the body seems to have been washed in bleach.’
‘That looks like the remnants of a refuse sack,’ Lottie said pointing to two strips of black plastic on the ground.
‘Bag it all,’ Jane instructed McGlynn. ‘She may have been wrapped in it. You might get trace evidence.’
‘Good,’ Lottie said. ‘You’ll prioritise this, Jane?’
‘I will.’
‘What age group are we looking at?’
‘Early to mid thirties, I’d say.’
‘Thanks.’
Lottie left the tent with Boyd.
‘You were fairly quiet in there,’ she said.
‘You were putting enough feet in it for both of us,’ he said, and made off down the trail.
What the hell was eating him? she wondered.
At the outer cordon, they tore off the protective clothing and bagged it.
‘Mulligan next on your list?’ Boyd said.
‘Yes.’
She decided to let him stew in whatever mood he was in. She had enough worries without Boyd. And then she wondered how Katie was doing on her flight. ‘Dear God, keep them safe,’ she muttered.
Fifty-Four
The bones. Tiny chips of them lying on the narrow table. And the smallest skull. She should have asked him. Were they real? Had they been left there to frighten her into submission? She didn’t know, but she supposed she didn’t want to find out either. Best to pretend they were made of plastic. A toy. Yes. No. They were real. Very real.
Sitting on the side of the bed, she took a sip of water from the plastic bottle he’d left her. And still she stared. Why would there be the bones of a child down here? Unburied. Or had they been buried and then excavated? Fear trawled her skin, pricking away like bites from hungry ants. And the odour. The room was filled with it. Like ammonia, or bleach. What had he been cleaning before he’d brought her here? Whatever it was, he hadn’t done a very good job. She could smell the underlying scent. Like rotting meat. Like the dead mouse she’d found behind a skirting board once. Much as she feared and detested vermin, she hoped that was what she was now smelling, masked beneath the acidic fumes.
She was weak and tired but knew she wouldn’t sleep. Not with those bones over there. On display. Taunting her.
Was she to suffer a similar fate?
No way. She was stronger than this. She wouldn’t meet the same fate as … Her throat snagged and she gulped. Were the child’s bones challenging her?
* * *
A picket fence surrounded Bob Mulligan’s home. The prefab house sat in a dip half a mile from the lake shore and about the same from where the body had been found. It was obvious to Lottie that it had been constructed long before more stringent planning laws had been introduced. Then again, maybe Bob Mulligan operated outside the law.
A wire run housed a few hens devoid of most of their feathers, and the dog was tied up with a gnawed rope on a concrete square.
Mulligan brought them into the house and they sat at a table cluttered with the remains of breakfast. No tea was offered, which pleased Lottie. She didn’t fancy drinking out of the brown-rimmed mugs.
‘How long have you lived here, Mr Mulligan?’ she began.
‘Thirty years or thereabouts. Inherited from my granny.’
‘What do you work at?’
‘Retired. I just fish the lake now.’
‘It seems very isolated.’
‘It’s what I like. Me and the animals are happy. Wasn’t always so. There was a time, must be fifteen, if not twenty years back, when the travellers threatened to take over with their caravans. But the council moved them to a site in town.’
‘Really? Why were they out here?’
‘There’s that caravan park down the other side of the lake. For holidaymakers, you know. I think the travellers thought they could set up their own park over this side. I didn’t have an issue with them, but they had no running water or toilets.’
‘That was a long time ago,’ Lottie said. ‘Has anything other than that ever disturbed you out here?’
‘Boy racers from time to time. Lovers in cars with steamed-up windows at night. Other than that, it’s nice and quiet.’
‘How often do you walk through that particular area where you found the body?’ Lottie said, folding her arms.
‘I’m not a suspect, am I? I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Can you answer the question?’ Boyd said.
‘I usually walk on the road along the lake, but last night there were those youngsters mucking about. They found the body first. It was the young girl’s scream that alerted Mutt. He got the scent and took off. So I followed him.’
‘When were you there before last night?’ Boyd asked.
‘Like I told you already, it was more than a week ago. You can ring my friend in Galway. I went over there Friday last, the fifth.’
‘And before that, you were here all the time?’
Lottie watched as Mulligan shuffled on his chair.
‘Yes. Doesn’t mean I killed anyone.’
‘We’re just exploring everything until we get the time of death.’
‘Was she murdered, do you think?’
‘Why would you say that?’
He pointed to the newspaper on the table. The front page carried a report on the murder of Elizabeth Byrne.’
‘“Buried in someone else’s grave”,’ Lottie read. ‘We’ll check with your friend. And I need details of your movements for the last couple of weeks.’
‘I’ll write it out for you.’
‘You can make a formal statement at the station, and give a DNA sample. Sometime today suit you?’
‘That’s grand.’
‘Here’s my card. Let me know if you think of anything else that might help us. I’m leaving a uniformed officer at your gate while the forensic examination of the scene is ongoing.’
‘So I’m under house arrest?’
‘It’s for your own safety,’ Lottie lied.
* * *
Before they got to interview the teenagers, McGlynn sent word for them to come back on site.
‘We found this.’ He pointed downwards while one of his team stood to one side.
Lottie peered at a piece of upturned earth. ‘Someone was digging?’
‘Attempting to.’
‘The intention may have been to bury the body, but with all the frost, the ground was too hard.’
‘So they stripped off the plastic wrapping and left her to the wildlife and the elements.’ McGlynn placed a marker beside the hole. ‘Hoping that if she was ever found, it would be just a bundle of bones.’
‘No sign of a shovel?’
‘No.’
‘Tyre tracks?’
‘None of those either. He probably parked on the road and carried the body over his shoulder. He came in as far as he could before the forest closed over entirely.’
‘Has to be a local.’
‘Why?’
‘To know the area, the lie of the land.’
Boyd said, ‘Or he could be from out of town and uses the caravan park.’
‘The manager needs to be interviewed.’
‘We’re trying to make contact with him.’
‘And get a list of everyone who has used the park in recent months.’
‘You’d have to be mad to live there in this weather,’ Boyd said with a shrug.