Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)(62)

No Bureau van this time, no Cooper, but in between the uniforms’ marked car and the morgue van was Scorcher’s pretty silver Beemer. The crime-scene tape was back up around Number 16, and a big guy in plain clothes—one of Scorch’s boys, by the suit—was keeping an eye on it. Whatever had got Kevin, it wasn’t a heart attack.

The bogmonster ignored me, which was a good choice. On the steps of Number 8 were Jackie, my ma and my da. Ma and Jackie were holding each other up; they looked like if either of them moved an inch they would both crumple. Da was ferociously laying into a cigarette.

Slowly, as I got close, their eyes focused on me, but without a flicker of recognition. They looked like they’d never seen me before. I said, “Jackie. What happened?”

Da said, “You came back. That’s what happened.”

Jackie grabbed the front of my jacket in a vice grip and pressed her face, hard, against my arm. I fought down the urge to shove her off me. “Jackie, pet,” I said gently, “I need you to keep it together for me just a little longer. Talk to me.”

She had started to shake. “Oh, Francis,” she said, in a tiny amazed voice. “Oh, Francis. How . . . ?”

“I know, pet. Where is he?”

Ma said grimly, “He’s out the back of Number Sixteen. In the garden. Out in that rain, all morning.” She was leaning heavily on the railing and her voice sounded thick and pinched, like she had been sobbing for hours, but her eyes were sharp and dry.

“Do we have any idea what happened?”

Nobody said anything. Ma’s mouth worked.

“OK,” I said. “But we’re a hundred percent positive it’s Kevin?”

“Yeah, we are, you fecking simpleton,” Ma snapped. She looked like she was seconds from hitting me across the face. “D’you think I can’t recognize my own child that I carried? Are you gooky in the head, are you?”

I thought about pushing her down the steps. “Right,” I said. “Well done. Is Carmel on her way?”

“Carmel’s coming,” Jackie said. “And Shay’s coming. He just has to, he has to, he has to . . .”

Her words dried up. Da said, “He’s waiting for the boss to come mind the shop.” He dropped his cigarette butt over the railing and watched it fizzle out by the basement window.

“Good,” I said. There was no way I was leaving Jackie on her own with these two, but she and Carmel could look after each other. “There’s no reason for you to wait out here in the cold. Get inside, get something hot into you, and I’ll go see what I can find out.”

No one moved. I pried Jackie’s fingers off my jacket, as gently as I could, and left the three of them there. Dozens of unblinking pairs of eyes followed me back up the road to Number 16.

The big guy at the tape took one look at my ID and said, “Detective Kennedy’s out the back. Straight down the stairs and out the door.” He had been warned to expect me.

The back door was propped open, letting an eerie gray slant of light into the basement and up the stairs. The four men in the garden looked like a tableau out of a painting or a morphine dream. The heavyset morgue boys in their pristine whites, leaning patiently on their stretcher among the tall weeds and the broken bottles and the nettles as thick as cables; Scorcher, sharp-edged and hyperreal with his slick head bent and his black overcoat flapping against the worn brick of the wall, crouching to stretch out a gloved hand; and Kevin. He was on his back, with his head towards the house and his legs splayed out at the wrong angles. One arm was across his chest; the other was doubled underneath him, like someone had him in an armlock. His head was thrown back wildly and turned away from me, and there were big uneven clots of something black matted in the dirt around it. Scorcher’s white fingers were probing delicately in his jeans pocket. The wind whistled, a high crazy sound, over the wall.

Scorcher heard me first, or sensed me: he glanced up, whipped his hand away from Kevin and straightened. “Frank,” he said, coming towards me. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

He was peeling his glove off, ready to shake my hand. I said, “I want a look at him.”

Scorcher nodded and stepped back, out of my way. I knelt down in the dirt and the weeds, next to Kevin’s body.

Dying had caved his face in, under the cheekbones and around the mouth; he looked forty years older than he would ever be. The upturned side of his face was ice white; the lower side, where the blood had settled, was mottled purple. There was a crusty thread of blood coming from his nose, and where his jaw had dropped I could see that his front teeth were broken. His hair was limp and dark with rain. One eyelid drooped a little over a cloudy eye, like a sly stupid wink.

It was like I had been shoved under an enormous battering waterfall, like the force of it was ripping my breath away. I said, “Cooper. We need Cooper.”

“He’s been here.”

“And?”

A tiny silence. I saw the morgue boys glance at each other. Then Scorcher said, “According to him, your brother died either from a fractured skull or from a broken neck.”

“How?”

Scorcher said, gently, “Frank, the lads need to take him away now. Come inside; we’ll talk there. They’ll take good care of him.”

He reached out a hand towards my elbow, but he had better sense than to touch me. I took one last look at Kevin’s face, that vacant wink and the black trickle of blood, and the little twist to his eyebrow that used to be the first thing I saw every morning, next to me on the pillow, when I was six years old. Then I said, “Right.” As I turned to leave, I heard the heavy ripping noise of the boys unzipping their body bag.