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  ‘No, no, I didn’t. I was appointed to replace her. But I know the circumstances. You were there, weren’t you, when she was shot? She was very highly thought of. Very sad.’

  Katie started the engine and backed out of the car park. ‘This victim that you’re going to be examining, he’s African, but we don’t have any clues yet as to his identity. It doesn’t help that most of his head has been blown away with a shotgun blast and both of his hands have been severed.’

  Dr O’Brien was rummaging inside his jacket pocket. ‘Sorry – I could have sworn I put my train ticket in my wallet. I hope I haven’t lost it.’

  Katie said, ‘We have one witness who says that she actually saw the victim being shot. She’s a young African girl, only about thirteen years old. She spoke to the two people who first found the victim, and she told them that he was shot by a woman, but she hasn’t said anything else. So far, nobody else has come forward to give us even a clue to his identity.’

  ‘I read a bit about it in the paper,’ said Dr O’Brien. ‘Obviously, I can take samples of the victim’s DNA, but even DNA won’t help us if there’s nothing to match it with. And if we don’t have any fingerprints, well—’

  ‘It’s early days yet,’ said Katie. ‘It’s just that I’m always uncomfortable until I know who murdered somebody, and why. But I’m even more uncomfortable if I don’t even know who it is who’s been murdered.’

  Dr O’Brien was still hunting for his ticket. ‘It would seem that your murderer has gone to some considerable lengths to stop you from finding out. I’d say that she’s a highly controlling personality. You may discover who your victim is, but only when she decides to tell you, not before.’

  Katie glanced at him as she drove along Penrose Quay and then turned left to cross the river on Brian Boru Street. The surface of the river was a faultless mirror, with upside-down red-brick buildings in it, and an empty sky.

  Dr O’Brien caught the way she had looked at him and said, ‘Oh … I studied psychiatry at Trinity College as well as histopathology at St Patrick Dun.’

  ‘Oh yes? So why didn’t you become a psychiatrist? It’s not nearly so gruesome.’

  ‘I could have been. In the end, though, I decided I preferred the certainties of death to the vagaries of life.’

  ‘All right, then,’ said Katie. ‘So why do you think our murderer doesn’t want us to know who our victim is?’

  ‘Why do you think?’ asked Dr O’Brien. ‘You’re the expert, after all. I bow to your greater practical experience.’

  She turned left down St Patrick’s Street, the main shopping street, past Marks & Spencer’s and Brown Thomas. Unexpectedly, she was beginning to warm to Dr O’Brien. He may have been chubby and clumsy, but he was making her think clearly. She had so many cases to deal with simultaneously that she sometimes became mentally entangled, but he was insisting that she considered this murder very analytically and in isolation. Stop worrying about Michael Gerrety’s legal shenanigans and Mânios Dumitrescu and his child abduction and pimping, not to mention all those thousands of euros’ worth of stolen farm machinery and that home invasion in Ballyvolane and those two rape cases in Ballintemple. Stop worrying about John, too, and your guilt at not eating his pie.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘she doesn’t want us to know who the victim is because that would enable us to work out what her motive was for murdering him, and if we knew why she murdered him it would probably be easy to work out who she is, too.’

  ‘So what do you think her possible motives might be?’ asked Dr O’Brien.

  ‘Revenge, more than likely. I doubt if you would blow anybody’s head off simply for the pleasure of it, even if you’re a sadist. It could have been to punish him for stealing something. That’s what they do in sharia law, isn’t cut, cut a thief’s hands off?’

  ‘Yes, that’s called hudud,’ said Dr O’Brien. ‘But even your hard-line Islamists usually amputate only one hand, for the first offence anyway. And it’s unlikely that a woman would carry out a sharia punishment. In some Islamic courts, women aren’t even allowed to give evidence in cases of theft, let alone carry out the sentence.’

  ‘Perhaps he was muscling in on somebody else’s territory,’ Katie suggested. ‘We had some of that last year when some crack pushers from Limerick tried to undercut one of our local dealers. Three of them were found in the river with their noses cut off – the implication being, don’t come sniffing around in places where you’re not welcome. We’re pretty certain who did it, but we could never prove it for sure.’

  Dr O’Brien nodded vigorously. ‘I don’t think there’s any question that the victim’s hands being amputated is symbolic. Exactly what it’s symbolic of, I couldn’t tell you for certain, though I expect I’ll be able to tell you more when I’ve had a chance to examine him. For instance, how the hands were amputated could be important. But if we can find out what the amputation meant, I think we’ll be very close to finding our killer.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have been a detective, instead of a pathologist,’ said Katie.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Dr O’Brien. ‘As I told you, I much prefer certainties, and there’s nothing as certain as somebody who’s dead. The dead don’t argue. They don’t tell lies. They’re never unfaithful.’

  Katie was turning into the car park of Cork University Hospital. She didn’t ask him why he had made that last remark, but she could guess.

  ‘I’ll see you later so,’ she said. ‘You have a room booked at Jury’s on Western Road – just give them your name at the desk. Give me a call when you’ve finished your autopsy. I’m very impatient to know what you come up with.’

  Katie found the African girl in a private room on the third floor of the hospital, with an armed garda sitting outside reading the racing pages in the Irish Sun. The officer stood up when he saw her approaching, but she said, ‘You’re grand,’ and he sat down again.

  The girl already looked much better. She was sitting up in bed in a fresh pink nightdress watching television. The cornrows had been taken out of her hair and it had been washed and brushed into a black fluffy bush. She looked even prettier than she had when Katie had first seen her in the ambulance, but also much younger. She was really no more than a child.

  Katie lifted a chair over and sat beside her bed. ‘Well then,’ she said, ‘how are you feeling today?’

  The girl said nothing, but simply stared at her, twisting the sleeve of her nightdress.

  ‘Do you remember me from yesterday? I spoke to you in the ambulance. My name’s Katie. Look, I brought you some sweeties.’

  She held out the bag of Haribo jellies that she had bought at the hospital shop downstairs. The girl made no attempt to take them and so she laid them down on top of the blanket, on her lap.

  ‘Can you tell me your name?’ Katie asked her.

  The girl remained silent, but continued to stare.

  ‘I’ve come here to help you get better, and to find your family, if I can. Your mother and your father. Do you know where they are?’

  Still no response.

  ‘Do you know which country you came from? Was it somewhere in Africa? Somalia? Sierra Leone? Nigeria? The Congo?’

  The girl opened her mouth as if she were about to say something, but then she closed it again.

  Katie took hold of her hand and squeezed it and smiled at her. ‘Fair play to you, sweetheart, if you’re not ready to talk to me yet then that’s up to you. But it would be nice to know your name, so I know what to call you. Maybe I should give you a name for now. Maybe I should call you Isabelle. Do you like the name Isabelle? I first met you under the bells of Shandon, after all.’

  As Katie sat there, holding the girl’s hand, two large tears welled up in the girl’s eyes and slid down her cheeks. Katie reached over to the bedside table and tugged out a tissue for her and gently dabbed them away.

  ‘You’re going to be all right now, Isabelle. Nothing bad is going to happen to you ever again. You’re going to be taken ca
re if. If we can’t find your parents, then we’ll find somebody kind to look after you, I promise.’

  At that moment a doctor came in through the door, holding a clipboard under his arm. He was small and neat and Indian, with a shiny bald head and a trim black beard.

  ‘Ah, detective superintendent! I’m sorry I’m a few minutes late! Anaphylactic shocks wait for no man, I’m afraid!’

  He held out his hand and said, ‘Dr Surupa. How are you? I believe we have met before. People are always being brought to me in a terrible condition, and you are always having to find out who did it to them.’

  He gave Isabelle a brief smile and then said to Katie, ‘Perhaps it is better if I speak to you outside.’

  They left the room and walked together along the corridor until they reached the window at the end, overlooking the car park.

  ‘She is under the supervision of Dr Corcoran, who is one of our six psychiatric consultants, and also a key nurse for her physical welfare. Dr Corcoran is a specialist in treating the trauma associated with cases of human-trafficking or sexual slavery. Unfortunately, in recent years these cases have become increasingly common. I suppose this is the price we pay for opening borders and giving people more freedom to move between one country and another.’

  ‘So how is she?’ asked Katie. ‘Has she spoken to anybody? She won’t say anything to me. She won’t even tell me her name, or where she came from.’

  Dr Surupa shook his head. ‘She is very deeply disturbed, and in Dr Corcoran’s opinion it may take weeks or even months for her to recover.’

  ‘According to the two men who found her, she said she was only thirteen years old.’

  ‘Well, having examined her, that seems likely, although we have no way of telling exactly because girls vary in the age of their sexual maturity. Her breasts have started to develop, but typically African girls show signs of breast development a year earlier than Caucasian girls, although nobody knows why. However, she has been desperately undernourished and because of that her menarche has not yet started.’

  ‘How about her general physical condition?’

  ‘She has some patterned scarring on her back and arms, which looks like lizards or scorpions and appears to be tribal decoration of some kind. If you can find somebody who is an expert on such scarring you might be able to identify where she has come from. But she also has severe diagonal scarring, which is almost certainly the result of having been whipped or beaten with a stick.’

  ‘I see. Any genital mutilation?’

  Dr Surupa turned over the page of his clipboard. ‘No, no FGM, although that surprises me a little in the light of all the rest of the tribal scarring. However, she has been sexually abused, and very violently. She has both vaginal tears and anal fissures, both comparatively recent. I don’t like to imagine what objects must have been forced up inside her.’

  Katie stood looking out of the window at two young nurses running and laughing across the car park. Then she said, ‘Thank you, doctor. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep me up to date with any changes in her condition – especially if she starts to talk. I’ll come back to see her as often as I can.’

  She walked back to Isabelle’s room. To her surprise, Branna MacSuibhne, the new young reporter from the Echo, was standing next to Isabelle’s bed, taking pictures with her iPhone.

  ‘What in the name of Jesus are you doing in here?’ she demanded. Then she turned around to the armed garda and said, ‘Why did you let her in? She’s a reporter, for God’s sake! I thought you were supposed to be taking care of this young woman’s security?’

  The garda stood up, dropping his newspaper on the floor. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am!’ he protested. ‘She told me she was one of the medical team.’

  ‘I did not so!’ said Branna.

  ‘Well, she didn’t tell me she wasn’t.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Katie. ‘So long as somebody doesn’t actually introduce themselves as a reporter, or a criminal, or a homicidal maniac, they’re all right to come waltzing in, are they? Does she look like one of the medical team, with her handbag and all?’

  ‘I only wanted to get the human side of this story,’ said Branna.

  ‘You’ll get the human side of my hand if you don’t get away out of here. And give me that phone.’

  Branna reluctantly handed over her iPhone and Katie ushered her out of the room, looking back at Isabelle as she did so. Isabelle was staring at the television, seemingly oblivious to all this disturbance.

  Out in the corridor, Katie methodically deleted all Branna’s pictures of Isabelle from her camera. Before she handed her iPhone back, though, she said, ‘What about recording?’

  Branna’s cheeks were flushed with frustration. ‘There was nothing to record.’

  ‘She didn’t say anything to you?’

  ‘Not a word.’

  ‘Then push on, girl, and don’t think of coming back uninvited.’

  ‘You can’t stop me getting my story,’ Branna challenged her.

  ‘I’m not going to try to, Branna. But I can stop you from making a holy show of this young girl. In the whole of your lifetime, you will never have to suffer what she’s already been through, so don’t you forget it!’

  ‘We’ll have to see about that, won’t we?’ said Branna, and stalked off along the corridor with her water-buffalo hairstyle bouncing.

  Nine

  As soon as he saw Mânios Dumitrescu appear out of number thirty-seven, lighting a cigarette as he came, Niamh’s son, Brendan, said, ‘Right, that’s it!’ and went for the front door. Niamh, however, caught hold of his sleeve to hold him back.

  ‘Don’t, Brendan! They’re not worth it, those people! They’ll bring you nothing but grief!’

  ‘Name of Jesus, mam, you’ve torn me shirt!’

  He struggled to free himself, but she pushed past him and stood in front of the door so that he couldn’t get out unless he lifted her bodily out of the way.

  ‘I said no, Brendan! I’m not having you hurt for the likes of them!’

  ‘Oh, I see! So your man thinks he can threaten me mam and then leave his scabby Range Rover blocking up our front gate so that I can hardly get in for me dinner and that’s all right, like?’

  Niamh said nothing but stayed where she was with her arms pressed against the side of the door frame, breathing deeply and staring steadily at Brendan as if she were challenging him to risk everything she had ever put into his upbringing – every cup of milk, every kiss, every song, every day by the sea.

  They heard Mânios Dumitrescu’s Range Rover start up with a roar and a rattle of a loose exhaust, and then he was gone.

  Brendan went back into the living room, shaking his head. Niamh lifted up his torn shirtsleeve and said, ‘If you take that off, I’ll sew it for you now. It’s a small price to pay, you know that. Those people will cut the tripe out of you as soon as wink at you. I’d sooner be sewing the shirt of a boy who swallowed his pride than standing over the grave of a boy who wouldn’t.’

  ‘Mam, you can’t let these people treat you this way. I don’t care what fecking country they come from, they’re tinkers, and I’ll not be having no fecking tinkers putting my own mother in fear of her life.’

  ‘Wash your mouth out and give me your shirt.’

  Mânios Dumitrescu drove down to Pope’s Quay and then along by the river. He was slapping his fingers so that his heavy silver rings clattered on the steering wheel and singing ‘Dragostea din tei’, which had done so well for Romania all those years ago in the Eurovision Song Contest, although he interrupted himself now and again to cough and sniff noisily up his left nostril.

  He was feeling much more pleased with himself now. He had just received a phone call from his solicitor’s telling him that the circuit court hearing about his custodianship of little Corina had been brought forward until next Tuesday afternoon, and that one of the key witnesses to her alleged mistreatment had unreservedly withdrawn her evidence. Unless there were any dramatic developments, C
orina should be back at home at number thirty-seven with him and his mother by Wednesday.

  He sucked at the last of his cigarette and threw the stub out of the Range Rover’s window. He knew that he had only two or three left in the packet, so he stopped outside the Spar grocery halfway along McCurtain Street to buy himself some more, and some chocolate, too. For some reason, he had a craving for chocolate.

  He was no longer than three or four minutes in the shop, but when he came out a garda was carefully tucking a ticket under his windscreen wiper.

  ‘Hey! Hey! What are you doing?’ he demanded. ‘Anybody can park anywhere in this street!’

  The garda was large and placid, with blond eyelashes and a face like a pink boiled ham. He pointed to the Range Rover’s windscreen with his pen and said, ‘Nothing to do with parking, sir, although this street is a clearway between 4 and 6 p.m. Your insurance is three months out of date and you don’t have your NCT certificate on display.’

  ‘What? NCT? What is that? I am foreign visitor, I don’t need such a thing!’

  ‘You need to have valid insurance, sir, wherever you come from, and since this vehicle is over four years old and registered in Ireland, it needs to be tested. On this occasion, sir, I’m going to allow you to drive it away, mostly because it would be a fecking nuisance to have to call for a truck to tow it. But you must immediately insure it and test it as soon as possible and produce evidence of both at your nearest Garda station.’

  Mânios Dumitrescu was so angry that his narrow nostrils flared and he squeezed the Kit Kat he was holding in his hand so hard that he crushed it. He had enough self-control, though, not to argue with a garda. He had done it before, once, in The Idle Hour, when he was very drunk. He had agreed then to pay an on-the-spot fine of 140 euros, so he hadn’t been given a criminal record – but after two gardaí had explained his legal rights to him behind one of the dockside cranes across the road, he had also come away with two black eyes, a perforated eardrum and a fractured thumb.

  He said nothing more but snatched the ticket from under his windscreen wiper, climbed back into the driver’s seat, and headed along McCurtain Street to the traffic lights at the junction with Summerhill. When he got there, he tore open the Kit Kat wrapper with his teeth and a shower of chocolaty crumbs dropped into his lap.