Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)(34)
“That’s the way I like it,” I said, shunting him away from the bogmonster, who was earwigging with his mouth open. “I’ve got a possible ID for you. My information says it could be a girl called Rose Daly who went missing from Number Three, a while back.”
Scorcher whistled, eyebrows going up. “Sweet. Got a description?”
“Nineteen years old, five foot seven, curvy build—maybe ten stone—long curly red hair, green eyes. I can’t tell you for sure what she was last seen wearing, but it probably included a denim jacket and fourteen-hole ox-blood Doc boots.” Rosie lived in those boots. “Does that match what you found?”
Scorch said, carefully, “It doesn’t exclude what we found.”
“Come on, Scorch. You can do better than that.”
Scorcher sighed, ran a hand through his hair and then patted it back into place. “According to Cooper, it’s a young adult female, been there somewhere between five years and fifty. That’s all he’ll say till he gets her on the table. Techs found a bunch of unidentified crap, a jeans button and a handful of metal rings that could be the eyelets from those Docs. The hair might’ve been red; it’s hard to tell.”
That dark mess soaked with God knew what. I said, “Any idea what killed her?”
“If only. Bloody Cooper—do you know him? He’s a prick if he doesn’t like you, and for some reason he’s never liked me. He won’t confirm anything except that, no shit Sherlock, she’s dead. To me it looks a lot like someone whacked her in the head a few times with a brick—the skull’s smashed open—but what do I know, I’m only a detective. Cooper was droning on about post-mortem damage and pressure fractures . . .” Suddenly Scorcher stopped glancing around the road and looked hard at me. “Why all the interest? This isn’t some informant who got herself in the shit for you, is it?”
It always amazes me that Scorcher doesn’t get punched more often. I said, “My informants don’t get whacked in the head with bricks, Scorcher. Ever. They lead long, happy, fulfilling lives and die of old age.”
“Whoa,” Scorch said, putting his hands up. “Excuse me for living. If she’s not one of yours, then why do you care what happened to her—and, not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but how did you happen to wander in on this one?”
I gave him everything that he would have got somewhere else anyway: young love, midnight rendezvous, jilted hero galloping off into the cold cruel world, suitcase, trail of brilliant deductions. When I finished, he was giving me a wide-eyed look, awe tinged with something like pity, that I didn’t like at all.
“Holy shit,” he said, which did in fact sum things up fairly well.
“Breathe, Scorch. It’s been twenty-two years. That torch burned out a long time back. I’m only here because my favorite sister sounded like she was about to have a heart attack, and that could have ruined my whole weekend.”
“Still. Sooner you than me, mate.”
“I’ll call you if I need a shoulder to cry on.”
He shrugged. “I’m just saying. I don’t know how things work round your way, but I wouldn’t enjoy explaining this one to my super.”
“My super’s a very understanding guy. Be nice to me, Scorch. I’ve got Christmas pressies for you.”
I handed over the suitcase and my Fingerprint Fifi envelopes—he would get the job done faster than I could and with less hassle, and anyway Mr. Daly no longer felt like quite so much of a personal priority. Scorcher examined them like they had cooties. “What were you planning on doing with these?” he inquired. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Running them past a few friends in low places. Just to get an idea what we might be dealing with.”
Scorcher raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t comment. He flipped through the envelopes, reading the labels: Matthew Daly, Theresa Daly, Nora Daly. “You’re thinking the family?”
I shrugged. “Nearest and dearest. As good a starting place as any.”
Scorcher glanced up at the sky. The air had turned dark as evening, and the first big drops of rain were splattering down like they meant it; the crowd was starting to dissolve, people filtering back to whatever they were supposed to be doing, only the hard core of hoodies and head scarves sticking it out. He said, “I’ve got a couple of things to finish up here, and I’ll want a quick preliminary chat with this girl’s family. Then we should go for a pint, you and me, yeah? Do some catching up. The kid can keep an eye on the scene for a while; the practice’ll do him good.”
The sounds behind him changed, deep down in the house: a long grinding scrape, a grunt, boots thudding on hollow boards. Vague white shapes moved, mixed in with the thick layers of shadows and the hellfire glow coming up from the basement. The morgue boys were bringing out their catch.
The old ones gasped and blessed themselves, licking up every second. The morgue boys passed by me and Scorcher with their heads down against the building rain, one of them already bitching over his shoulder about traffic. They came close enough that I could have reached out and touched the body bag. It was just a shapeless crumple on their stretcher, so near flat that it could have been empty, so light that they carried it like it was nothing at all.
Scorch watched them sliding it into the back of the van. “I’ll only be a few minutes,” he said. “Stick around.”