Buried Read online

  Katie tipped her coffee into the sink and went into the bedroom to fetch her purple linen jacket out of the wardrobe. Barney followed her, hopefully expecting another walk, but when she went into the room that had been Seamus’s nursery and took her revolver out of the chest of drawers he realized that she was off to work and simply stood in the living-room doorway patiently waiting for her to leave.

  ‘It’s all right, Barns,’ she told him, tugging at his ears. ‘I won’t be back too late, with any luck, and I’ll bring you something special for your supper.’

  When she walked in through the swing doors at the mortuary, Detective ‘Horse’ Ó Doibhilin was already waiting for her. ‘Morning, ma’am,’ he greeted her. His voice was oddly watery, and he kept on swallowing, as if his mouth was flooded with saliva. ‘They’re all here now, the bodies, and Dr Kelley’s started work on them already.’

  When she saw the man’s body lying on the stainless-steel autopsy table, Katie could understand why Horse might be feeling nauseous. All of his clothes had been removed and sent to the Technical Bureau laboratory for testing. Dr Kelley was leaning over him, wearing a lab coat and clear plastic goggles, cutting his breastbone apart with a battery-powered sternal saw. The saw was making a high-pitched screaming sound that set Katie’s teeth on edge.

  As she made her way across the morgue, Dr Kelley switched off the saw, lowered her surgical mask and gave her a smile. ‘Ah, Detective Superintendent! I thought I’d make an early start. Fascinating, wouldn’t you say? I haven’t come across a cadaver in this condition for years. Totally dried out, like bresaola. It must have been the constant draft under the floorboards and the house being constantly warm.’

  The man’s skin was so stretched that it looked as if his skeleton had been shrink-wrapped in translucent yellow vinyl, and some of his ribs and finger bones had pierced through it in places. Dr Kelley had combed most of the dust out of his curly brown hair, but his face was grotesque. On the left side it had become flattened, with his eye half-closed, but on the right side his forehead bulged out and his lips were turned down in what looked like a sneer.

  ‘He was shot in the back of the head, about seven centimetres behind his left ear, and slightly upwards,’ said Dr Kelley. ‘It wasn’t a high-velocity bullet. It ricocheted around inside his skull and there isn’t an exit wound, so I’ll be able to retrieve it once I’ve opened his cranium. It also appears that he was badly beaten, because his collarbone and several ribs are broken. Of course it isn’t possible to say whether this was done before or after he was shot, but logically there wouldn’t have been much point in giving him a thrashing once he was dead.’

  The bodies of the woman and the two children were lying on trolleys beside the wall, with green sheets draped over them. Katie went over and lifted the sheet that was covering the woman. She had probably been quite pretty when she was alive, but the shot to the back of her head had distorted her face, too. It looked as if she might have been kneeling when she was shot, because the bullet had entered the top of her skull and penetrated her sinus cavity, lodging in the upper side of her hard palate. Her nostrils were tilted upward like a pig’s snout and her lips were curled, as if she were singing a very lewd song, or trying to show that she was thoroughly disgusted by what had happened to her.

  After she had looked at the girl and the baby boy, Katie was sure that she was going to have bad dreams tonight. Both of their faces had been blown apart by the bullets that had been fired into the back of their heads, so that they looked more like huge dried white chrysanthemums than faces. Only the tiny jawbones among the petals gave away the fact that they were human children.

  Dr Kelley came up to Katie and stood beside her as she was staring down at the baby boy.

  ‘Makes you wonder what kind of a person could do that to a defenceless child, doesn’t it? Poor mite. He didn’t even get to live for a single year.’

  Katie lowered the sheet and crossed herself. She couldn’t help thinking of her own little Seamus, dead in his cot, although Seamus had simply stopped breathing. ‘I almost wish they hadn’t been killed such a long time ago,’ she told Dr Kelley. ‘I would dearly love to find out who did this and make sure they were punished for it.’

  ‘Time stops for nothing at all, I’m afraid, not even us,’ said Dr Kelley. ‘So you’ll excuse me if I get back to my dissection. I have an autopsy scheduled at the Mid-West in Limerick the day after tomorrow and I’d like to get all of these completed.’

  ‘You’ll be able to give me some idea of how long they’ve been dead?’ Katie asked her.

  ‘Within a few years either way. Of course I’ll be able to tell you if they were born before nuclear testing started in 1945 because of the carbon-fourteen level in their teeth – that’s if there is any. I expect the stomach contents will help me a fair bit, too. But their complete desiccation isn’t going to help. If anything, I think your best indicators are going to come from their clothing – the style and the fibres and dyes. And any records or photographs that you can find.’

  ‘Well, as you know, we’ve been given plenty of documentary evidence of who they might have been, but it’s very contradictory. What you’re doing here should at least tell us if these are the Langtrys or not.’

  Dr Kelley pulled up her mask and returned to her high-pitched sternum sawing. Katie watched her for a moment and then checked the time. She wondered if Kyna had managed to make contact with Bobby Quilty’s cigarette-seller at the Savoy Centre. ‘Come on, Michael,’ she said to Detective Ó Doibhilin. ‘I think we could both use some fresh air, don’t you?’

  *

  Before she returned to her office, Katie paid a visit to the Technical Bureau laboratory. There had been a major traffic accident on the N20 to Mallow, so she found that Eithne and Bill Phinner’s new assistant were the only ones there. The white cotton blinds were pulled down because the sunlight outside was so bright, and there was a strong smell of hydrochloric acid in the air. Eithne was sitting at her bench under the window, filling an array of test tubes with pale green liquid out of a beaker, while the new assistant was frowning at a tangle of chemical formulae on her computer screen.

  Katie went up to Eithne and stood watching her for a moment.

  ‘I thought you were going to call in sick,’ she said.

  Eithne shook her head and took out a tissue to wipe her nose. ‘I’m not too bad today, thanks, ma’am. I’ve too much to do, any road. I was going to come up and see you after.’

  ‘What are you doing there?’ Katie asked her, nodding at the test tubes.

  ‘This is one of the things I was going to come and see you about.’

  She reached across and picked up a glass retort that was half-filled with liquid. There were several saturated wool fibres floating in it, like weeds.

  ‘This is a sample from the man’s trousers. They were dyed with a water-soluble anionic dye, which was used for almost all garments before 1920. After that, though, there was much wider use of dispersal dyes. That was because more and more manufacturers were using acetates to make clothing and acetates, of course, are hydrophobic.’

  ‘So what does that tell us?’

  ‘In terms of precise dating, not very much. People keep their clothes for years, if not decades, especially if they’re less well off. But it does indicate that these trousers were probably made before 1921, and if that’s the case, it’s likely that your man could either be Stephen Langtry himself or some other fellow who was killed in the Langtrys’ house before the Langtrys disappeared. Of course I’m testing the woman’s dress and the children’s clothing, too. In any case, we’re expecting the results of the DNA tests sometime this afternoon, so that should pretty much confirm their identity one way or the other.’

  ‘Did you get anywhere with the cap badge and the letter?’ Katie asked her.

  Eithne slid off her stool and went across to the opposite side of the laboratory. She came back with the Manchester cap badge that Nora O’Neill had given to Katie, and a clear pl
astic folder containing the note from Gerald.

  ‘I checked this coat-of-arms cap badge against my records. It was worn by soldiers of the Manchester Regiment until 1922, when their commanding officer made an application to the Army Council to change it to a fleur-de-lys.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘The troops didn’t feel that this badge was very military, especially the ones who came from Manchester. What they didn’t like was that the exact same badge was worn by every worker for the City of Manchester Corporation. Like, you know, dustmen and rent collectors and road-menders.’

  ‘So at least we know when it dates from.’

  ‘That’s right. And in 1921, C Company of the Manchester Regiment were based at barracks in Ballincollig, only ten kilometres away from Blarney. Even in those days, it would have taken less than fifteen minutes to drive from one to the other. Maybe half an hour by horse and buggy.’

  Katie was beginning to feel uneasy again about the political implications of this investigation. She had known ever since she was at school that C Company of the Manchester Regiment was a black name in the history of Cork’s struggle for independence in the 1920s. During the war against the British, the IRA had planned to ambush an army patrol as it passed through Dripsey. However, the army had been warned of the intended ambush by a wealthy local woman, Mrs Mary Lindsay, of Leemount House, who had strong loyalist views.

  In the late afternoon of Friday, 28 January 1921, seventy men of C Company of the Manchester Regiment outflanked the IRA ambush party and captured eight of them. At the subsequent trial, five were found guilty and sentenced to death.

  In retaliation, the IRA abducted Mrs Lindsay and her chauffeur, James Clark, and threatened that if the death sentences were carried out, they would die, too. The authorities ignored their threat and the five IRA men were executed by firing squad and their bodies interred at Cork Gaol. Twelve days later, Mrs Lindsay and her chauffeur were shot, their bodies burned and buried deep in the mountains. The day after, Leemount House was burned down.

  Katie’s history teacher at school, Mr O’Sullivan, had been passionate about Irish independence. He had even taken the class to see the memorial that had been erected for the IRA men at Godfrey’s Cross. She remembered that day clearly, although less for the story of the ambush and more for the fact that it had been raining hard and her mother had made her cheese sandwiches which she had dropped in a puddle.

  ‘What about the letter?’ she asked Eithne.

  ‘Genuine, no question at all. I’ve tested the paper and the ink and it’s authentic. And there’s indentations in the paper which indicate that the cap badge was wrapped in the letter for a very long time.’

  ‘Okay, Eithne. Thanks for that. All we have to do now is find out who Gerald was. The Manchester Regiment should have records. I’ll have Ó Diobhilin get in touch with them.’

  Eithne wiped her nose again and then she said, ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, ma’am, this seems to be bothering you more than a bit, this inquiry.’

  ‘It is, yes,’ Katie admitted. ‘I’m sure we’ll find out what happened to that family eventually, but I’m worried that won’t be the end of it. I always have a bad feeling when we start poking around in the past – not because we shouldn’t poke around in the past, because I think we should. The trouble is, no matter what it is we discover, it’s going to upset somebody, even today. I guarantee it. It always does.’

  *

  Walking along the corridor back to her office, she checked her iPhone but there was still no word from Kyna. She told herself not to worry, Kyna was level-headed and highly professional and wouldn’t make any careless mistakes that would give her away. In spite of that, though, John’s life depended on her. Katie couldn’t imagine how she would feel if John were blinded, or maimed, or murdered.

  She couldn’t imagine how she would deal with her emotions if anything happened to Kyna, either. She felt guilty enough already about asking her to do this, but she hadn’t been able to think of any other way of finding out where John was being held. It was far too dangerous to start raiding Bobby Quilty’s houses and flats and business premises in the slim hope that they might find John in one of them. They suspected that he owned or rented numerous properties that they didn’t know about. After the Dripsey ambush, the British army had set up a huge search in the Inniscarra area for Mrs Lindsay and her chauffeur, but they never discovered where they were because the IRA kept moving them from house to house.

  Almost as soon as she had sat down at her desk, Detective Sergeant Begley knocked on her door. He looked flustered. His tight blue shirt had semicircular sweat stains under the armpits and his scarlet braces had slipped off his shoulders and were hanging down behind him like a toddler’s reins.

  ‘What’s the story, Sean?’ Katie asked him, popping open the can of Diet Coke she had brought up with her.

  ‘Look at the state of me,’ said Detective Sergeant Begley. ‘I saw you out of my window in the car park and I went running down after you but by the time I caught up with you, you’d gone. Jesus and Mary, I’m sweating like a priest in a playground.’

  He paused to catch his breath and then he said, ‘You saw the One o’Clock News, did you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I was down in the lab to see how what progress Eithne’s been making with all the evidence we took from Blarney. That British army cap badge, that definitely dates from the early 1920s, and the love letter that went with it. The dead man’s clothing was probably 1920s, too.’

  ‘Listen, it seems like your friend Fionnuala Sweeney from RTÉ News knows just as much about those bodies as we do, if not considerably more. She’s sure that they belong to the Langtry family, that’s what she said, no question about it, and she even gave out their first names – Stephen, Rahda, and the wains’ names, too.’

  ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ said Katie. ‘It was that Nora O’Neill woman told her all of that, it must have been. It’s highly probable that they are the Langtry family, though we don’t have any idea how Stephen Langtry managed to send postcards from America after he was supposed to be dead, and of course we’re still waiting on the DNA results.’

  ‘Oh, there’s more,’ said Detective Sergeant Begley. ‘You’re going to love this, I tell you.’

  ‘Go on,’ Katie told him.

  ‘According to local legend, Mrs Langtry had been having an affair with a British army officer.’

  ‘Well... that’s conceivable, considering the cap badge and the letter, and what the letter said. But it’s only speculation at the moment. We don’t even know for certain that they were hers.’

  ‘Ah, no, but this local legend has it that Stephen Langtry belonged to the IRA and that he actively encouraged his wife to have an affair with a British army officer so that she could tap him for secret information, especially about the movements of army patrols. But the officer found out that she was what you might call a honeytrap, and British soldiers came around one night and shot the whole family.’

  Katie sat down, shaking her head in exasperation. ‘I don’t suppose Fionnuala said who told her this so-called local legend? And if she’d checked to find out if there was any truth in it?’

  ‘No, that’s about all she said. After that there was a clip of you looking more than a little fried and saying “no comment”, and Mathew McElvey from the press office trotting out his usual excuse that “our investigation is still ongoing and so I can’t say anything conclusive”. After that they went on to a report about Irish Water warning folks with the lead pipes still in their houses that they could be poisoned.’

  ‘Jesus, I hope that Nora O’Neill has lead pipes in her house. Do you realize what trouble this is going to stir up?’

  ‘I can’t say that I do,’ said Detective Sergeant Begley. ‘But my old grandpa always used to say that there’s no treachery worse than the one that you never knew was being done to you.’

  Fifteen

  It was pay day, so St Patrick’s Street was already cro
wded with shoppers. Kyna had parked her car on the north side of St Patrick’s Bridge and walked across the river. Because it was such a warm morning the river smelled even stronger than usual and under the surface she could see a shoal of grey mullet greedily feeding around the effluent pipe. She couldn’t help thinking of the song ‘The Boys of Fair Hill’ – ‘the smell on Patrick’s Bridge is wicked, how does Father Mathew stick it?’

  Kyna was whistled at three times as she made her way past the statue of Father Mathew down to the Savoy Centre. She had gelled up her short blonde hair and she was wearing a low-cut pink T-shirt with TROUBLE printed across her breasts, skintight black jeans and wedge-heeled black patent shoes. She had completed the look with red make-up around her eyes, huge hoop earrings and at least six bangles on each wrist, and she had sprayed herself with too much Obsession.

  The Savoy Centre had once been a cinema, but after it had closed in 1975 it had been turned into an indoor shopping mall with stores like Champion Sports and Hickey’s Fabrics and a coffee shop. Standing in the entrance was a podgy tousle-haired boy of about nine years old who should have been in school. He kept looking up and down the street as if he were waiting for somebody and Kyna guessed that he was keeping sketch for the law.

  She had no difficulty in finding Bobby Quilty’s cigarette-dealer. He was sitting in the doorway of a shop called Erin Linens which had sheets of last week’s Echo stuck all over the windows and a large sign saying Closing Down Sale.

  Detective O’Mara had told Katie that he was young, and in spite of a wispy black moustache on his upper lip he looked as if he hadn’t even taken his Junior Cert yet. He had short black hair with two parallel lines shaved into the side of it, and a milky-white, pimple-spattered face. He was wearing a coral-pink T-shirt from Penney’s, a pair of super-skinny blue jeans and Nike runners.