Hidden ( CSI Reilly Steel #3) Page 8

  ‘Tea or coffee?’ A slight smile escaped as they both requested coffee. ‘Right you are. So on a scale of one to ten how strong do you like it? My little beauty here makes americanos and espressos like you’ve never tasted.’ MacDonald indicated a machine that wouldn’t look out of place in the GFU lab.

  So this is what retirement looks like, Chris thought with a gulp. Raised flower beds and fancy coffee machines.

  He was now able to control the aches and spasms that had become a hallmark of hemochromatosis, his condition, but they were a stark reminder that his life could easily take a turn towards such drudgery. Chris was glad he’d got to the root of his medical problems when he did, before things got out of control. His only regret was that he’d taken Reilly into his confidence about it all, and her subsequent insistence that it was something of which their superiors should be aware. Chris violently disagreed. He knew he’d end up stuck behind a desk for the rest of his career – if not off the job altogether. He should have gone to a private clinic under an assumed name, then he could have rested in the knowledge that nobody else at work would ever find out It had left him in a difficult position – he would do whatever it took to continue to do what he loved best, even if it risked his friendship, or whatever it was he had, with Reilly Steel.

  ‘I’m sure whatever you have will be a massive improvement on the machine at the station anyway,’ Kennedy said light-heartedly, rousing Chris from his daydream.

  ‘Very good, two cups of Dulsao do Brasil then.’ The older cop smiled as if serving coffee was the highlight of his day. And perhaps it was, Chris thought morosely. ‘I must warn you though, you’ll never drink the ordinary stuff again.’ MacDonald pressed buttons and pulled levers on the coffee machine which gave out a groan and a whine as the intense smell of coffee began to waft around the room. While the magic machine did its thing, MacDonald turned to them and got down to business. ‘So I believe you have a few questions for me about an old case of mine?’

  ‘That’s right, sir,’ Chris said, opening the file. ‘A Jane Doe, found down in Wicklow about nine years ago, died of exposure?’

  ‘Yes. I remember it. “Sleeping Beauty” we used to call her.’ MacDonald served them each a cup of his famed brew and looked eagerly at them for their reaction. ‘Have you had a new break?’

  ‘Mmm, smashing,’ said Chris. ‘Not exactly. We suspect it might be linked to a recent case.’

  ‘The hit and run up in Roundwood?’

  Chris was surprised. ‘You’re familiar with that case?’

  ‘I may be retired from the force, Detective, but one can’t help picking up a paper or watching the news and have the old instincts kick in. I read about that hit and run, but it was the call from the chief about my “Sleeping Beauty” that had me wondering if there might well be something.’ MacDonald lifted his cup and breathed in the smell of the coffee with one long inhalation. Thank goodness they hadn’t asked him for tea, Chris thought, he’d probably be out picking it fresh from the raised beds.

  ‘Unfortunately we’ve been unable to identify the hit-and-run victim thus far, but stumbled upon some similar body markings that led to the older case.’

  ‘Ah yes, the tattoo, quite a piece of art as I recall,’ MacDonald mused.

  Chris pulled a couple of sheets he had marked from the file. ‘In your report you seem to have had a strong interest in a group of New Age Travelers.’

  ‘Well yes, if you want to be all politically correct about it,’ MacDonald scoffed. ‘There was a group living in the woods near Greystones at the time; tree huggers.’

  Chris remembered something about a stand-off between local authorities and these ‘eco-warriors’ as they’d been described by national media.

  ‘You suspected she may have been one of them?’

  ‘It seemed a good bet at the time, we turned over a lot of rocks trying to identify her, we knew she wasn’t local.’

  ‘You asked around at the campsite?’ Kennedy asked.

  ‘Yes, a few times. But they weren’t very…how shall I put it…very cooperative with law enforcement. We were the enemy as far as they were concerned.’

  ‘So nothing ever came of it?’

  MacDonald shrugged. ‘We thought she might have been a runaway, although at the time nothing corresponded with any missing person reports. Of course, there were many different accents amongst that group; if she was one of them, she could have come from anywhere.’

  ‘Autopsy reports “exposure” as cause of death, yet in your own report you mention she was found very close to a residential area.’

  He nodded. ‘That’s just it; the whole “death by natural exposure” thing never sat well with us, we always suspected there was something else at work—’

  ‘Foul play?’ Kennedy asked before MacDonald had time to finish his sentence which seemed to annoy him. Clearly he was a man who preferred others to listen while he spoke.

  ‘Well, Detective, you tell me? How likely is it that a seemingly healthy young girl goes to sleep out in the elements and never wakes up? Surely the cold would have driven her for cover?’

  ‘So how do you think she came to be there, sir?’ Chris asked, trying to play up again to his sense of authority.

  ‘Again, that is why I was almost certain she’d come from the hippy camp. We had several run-ins with them over the years, many reports of wild parties at the campsite. I recall picking up a couple of them walking down the center line of the main road once – bollock-naked and high as kites …’

  ‘But the tox screen for Sleeping Beauty came back clean.’

  ‘Depends on what they were screening for. We had no fancy GFU back then, remember, and of course the drink and drug culture amongst that crowd seemed very DIY, if you understand.’

  Chris thought about it. MacDonald’s theory that the girl could have wandered off from the encampment high on some homemade concoction, got lost and kept wandering the hills chasing fairies until she lay down to rest, eventually succumbing to the cold in her sleep made some sort of sense. It wasn’t a bad theory – and actually gave them a new angle for the hit-and-run case. Perhaps this girl had also originated from such a group – hence the absence of a family member coming forward to identify her following the media release? He recalled too what Reilly had said about both girls being slightly at odds with the modern world.

  ‘But even back then surely if she’s been on the mushrooms or something psilocybin would have shown up in the tox report?’ Kennedy continued, playing devil’s advocate as he so relished doing.

  MacDonald smiled; this was obviously something he’d considered too. ‘That may well be, but the truth is there are plenty of potions or concoctions she could have taken that would have cleared the system by the time she died.’

  He gazed down at the file picture of the girl and sighed. ‘You’ve seen everything in the file. We chased every avenue we possibly could, the eco-warrior angle was the most likely one at the time, still is to my mind. The only problem being we couldn’t prove it – I mean, why else has her body remained unclaimed and her absence unreported? She must have been some sort of drop out or runaway, one of those poor misfortunates who fall through the cracks every now and then.’

  Chris nodded. ‘I’m inclined to agree with you.’

  But despite the parallels, their discussion with MacDonald didn’t give them anything more to work with on identifying either victim.

  And as such, Chris thought as they left minutes later, MacDonald’s case remained as cold as the dregs of the fancy coffee lining the bottom of his cup.

  Chapter 12

  In the following days, and in an effort to move forwards in identifying either of the tattooed girls, the investigative team widened the net by searching through the database for all redheaded females, tattooed or otherwise, who had been found dead in mysterious circumstances.

  And even more painstakingly, by trawling through every female missing person report from the last ten years.

  There were dozens
of potential matches from the outset, but the finer details had to be checked. While the system worked within certain parameters, the information on older cases was often incomplete or inconsistent. They therefore had not only to check all reported missing children with red hair, but also those in which hair color wasn’t specified or was vague.

  Apart from the angel-wings tattoo – which they had to assume had been done after the girls went missing – the only other distinguishing feature on either of the deceased was scar tissue on the radius and ulna of the hit-and-run victim, which Karen Thompson had reported as being indicative of a childhood broken bone.

  Going through the files was chilling. Hundreds of children had gone missing in Ireland over the past two decades, and while many were runaways, plenty of other cases still remained unsolved, leaving thousands of parents and families wondering for the rest of their lives what had happened to their loved ones.

  Kennedy parked the car beside the aquarium that sat halfway along Bray promenade. Typically, given the recent brief flirtation with spring weather, it had been raining on and off all morning, a persistent drizzle that made it seem as though the very air itself had turned to water.

  He groaned as he got out and tried to regain a fully upright position. Zipping up his windbreaker he raised his arms above his head in an attempt to further straighten himself up. He looked over at Chris who was getting out the other side.

  ‘Do you not have a raincoat?’

  Chris shrugged. ‘It’s barely spitting. I’ll be grand.’

  The beach along the seafront was stony and stretched from the imposing Bray Head at the southern end to a small pier at the north. The promenade was Victorian in design, Bray having been a bustling seaside getaway from Dublin in the times before two-euro Ryanair seat sales to more exotic destinations.

  The wind blew ferociously from the north making Kennedy wrap his windbreaker even more tightly around himself. He and Chris hurried across the road to a pub called Molloy’s, eager to be out of the damp air.

  Kennedy brushed the rain off his coat, shook out his thinning hair, and looked around. The pub was quiet on this weekday lunchtime, just a few locals having a drink and eating sandwiches. The barman looked as though he’d been there when the pub was built. He was red faced, with long silver sideburns and a matching, luxurious moustache.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Kennedy gave him his best smile, which was more than enough to demolish most men. ‘We’re looking for a guy called Rasher. Told you might know where to find him.’

  The barman gave them a long look. ‘He in some kind of trouble?’

  Chris stepped forward and shook his head. ‘No. We just need to ask him a few questions.’

  ‘Only you don’t look the types to be getting a tattoo, if you don’t mind me saying.’ He turned and shouted over his shoulder. ‘Ralph? Come here a minute.’

  Footsteps sounded from behind the bar, someone running down a flight of stairs. A fresh-faced boy of around nineteen appeared and looked at the older man.

  ‘These people want to talk with Rasher. Can you show them where he lives?’

  Ralph looked at the two detectives. ‘No problem.’ Outside, he led the way along the narrow street that went away from the seafront and turned into a cobbled alleyway.

  ‘Just through here,’ he said, pointing towards a courtyard that seemed to act as a service yard for several business premises that ran along the opposite side of the buildings. A rickety set of stairs ran up the side of a three-storey Victorian building. ‘That’s Rasher’s place up there,’ Ralph announced. ‘But you’ll have to shout to get his attention – the old hearing isn’t the best these days.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Ralph trotted off as Kennedy and Chris carefully climbed. The wind howled around the fragile steps, blowing a squall of rain in their faces and causing the stairs to sway a little.

  At the top was a wooden door, one glass panel replaced with cardboard and duct tape. The yellow glow of a light shone through the remaining panes.

  Kennedy looked around for a bell, but, finding none, he wound up rapping hard on the door with his knuckles. For a moment, all they could hear was the wind whipping against their ears. Kennedy rapped again, and almost instantly there was a response.

  ‘Keep your hair on, I’m coming!’

  The sound of heavy footsteps creaked towards them and the door opened. A man looked out at Kennedy and Chris, a curious look in his eyes. ‘Whatever you’re selling I’m not interested.’

  Kennedy shook his head, sending a spray of raindrops cascading down his coat. ‘No sir, we’re detectives from Harcourt Street, and we’re looking to talk to Rasher.’

  The man turned his back before shuffling back inside. ‘Well, you found him. Close the door behind you and keep the bloody rain out.’

  He headed back across the room and Kennedy and Chris stepped inside. They were both caught off guard having expected a younger, trendy type. He was a big man, with a head of grizzled curls, the black long ago faded to white. His age was hard to guess – he could be almost anywhere from sixty to eighty – but judging by his movements, it was likely closer to the latter.

  The room was small, cozy even, just a sagging couch in front of an old TV, a green recliner, and a table and chairs over by a sink.

  ‘So who sent you, the bloody tax man I suppose?’

  ‘Not at all. We’re trying to get some artwork identified and we’ve heard you’re the man to talk to.’

  Kennedy was shaking the rain from his coat, looking around for somewhere to hang it. Even though he had his back to him, Rasher seemed to read his mind. ‘There’s a hook on the back of the door.’ He found the hook, and duly hung up his coat. When he turned around, Rasher was gazing at them.

  ‘So then, what’s this artwork you mentioned?’ he said as he lowered himself carefully into one of the wooden chairs, and waved them over. Kennedy sat in the chair next to him, Chris across the table. Kennedy took an envelope from inside his jacket and removed photos of the angel-wing tattoos. As he slid the pictures across the table, Rasher pulled a pair of glasses from the pocket of his cardigan, and perched them on the end of his nose.

  The hand that reached out for the photographs was huge, with big swollen knuckles, and tattoos snaked down his arms to appear at his wrists when his sleeves slid up. He said nothing, simply studied them, one after the other, back and forth. Finally he set them down, then sipped at an open bottle of Lucozade that sat on the table in front of them He peered over the top of his glasses at Chris and Kennedy.

  ‘Amateur,’ he said eventually. ‘But a bloody good one.’

  The detectives leaned forward, waiting for him to continue.

  ‘What type of ink did he use?’

  ‘Pig’s blood and soot,’ Chris informed him, recalling the information on the GFU report, ‘and some kind of alcohol.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what gives it that lovely warm color – the wings almost seem to glow through the skin, don’t they?’

  ‘How does someone learn to do that?’ Chris asked him. ‘Or go about making his own ink?’

  ‘Could have apprenticed at a tattoo parlour for a while, but just as likely to have learned it in the navy, or as a merchant sailor, maybe. As for the ink, well, that’s easy enough; you can buy it at any stationer. As long as it’s sterile, it’s as good as any other.’

  ‘Have you ever seen this particular work or design before?’

  Rasher shook his head. ‘No, definitely not. I’d recognize it if I had – it’s very distinctive, not to mention he’s a lefty, like myself, and in this game, we’re like hen’s teeth.’ He took his glasses off and slipped them back into his pocket. ‘Sorry I can’t tell you more.’

  Chris looked at the photo for a moment. ‘One more question.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Any idea why someone would get a tattoo like that?’ He paused. ‘Especially a woman. It’s so big…’

  Rasher slurped as he finished his drin
k, setting the bottle down. ‘I get what you’re saying. Nowadays getting a tattoo is just a fashion, but it used to mean something.’ He flexed his swollen knuckles. ‘They originated as a way of signifying your tribe, your clan. Around these parts there are only two reasons to get an elaborate tattoo – other than those crappy Oriental things that the kids go for. I mean a proper, symbolic, tattoo.’

  ‘Like what?’ Kennedy asked.

  ‘Well, one is a celebration – the birth of a child, getting married, winning a competition, stuff like that.’

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘To show you belong, that you’re part of something.’ The big man tapped a stubby finger at the photos still lying on the table. ‘Those tattoos, those wings? A tattoo like that is all about being a part of something.’

  Chapter 13

  ANGEL CULT IN WICKLOW HILLS

  Gardai are currently investigating a bizarre case involving redheaded tattooed young women. The so-far unidentified women were each found with mysterious angel wings tattooed on their backs.

  The discovery of a recent hit-and-run victim found with such a tattoo has been linked to another unsolved death of nine years. In both cases the dead woman had the same design tattooed onto her back.

  Authorities are now trying to figure out the girls’ identities and are working on the theory that they may both have been part of a cult which brands its members, and is potentially located in the Wicklow/Dublin mountains close to where the bodies were found.

  Anyone who recognizes the angel-wing tattoo (pictured above) should contact the newspaper directly at this email address …

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  Reilly felt herself slump upon reading the article. Whenever the press got involved in a case like this it added complications and caused untold headaches. Not only did they have to spend time answering questions and run the gauntlet of photographers when they were out in the field but, there was the added pressure from Chief Inspector O’Brien, who was demanding a fast resolution.