E-Book, Englisch, 496 Seiten
Blake Three Little Birds
Main
ISBN: 978-1-80546-013-8
Verlag: Corvus
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
'The modern-day Agatha Christie' Steve Cavanagh
E-Book, Englisch, 496 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80546-013-8
Verlag: Corvus
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Sam Blake has been writing fiction since her husband set sail across the Atlantic for eight weeks and she had an idea for a book. Sam has had a string of No. 1 bestsellers with her runaway bestselling debut, Little Bones, the first in the Cat Connolly trilogy, shortlisted for Irish Crime Novel of the Year. Switching to psychological thrillers, Keep Your Eyes on Me was a No. 1 bestseller, and her next book, The Dark Room was shortlisted for Irish Crime Novel of the Year. Her last thriller, Remember My Name, went straight to No. 1 in January 2022 and was shortlisted for Irish Crime Novel of the Year. Sam is one of the best-connected people in crime writing, the founder of Europe's biggest online writer's magazine, Writing.ie, she relaunched National Crime Reading Month for the CWA in 2022. Originally from St. Albans in Hertfordshire, Sam now lives at the foot of the Wicklow Mountains, near Dublin in Ireland. Follow her on social @samblakebooks. Visit www.samblakebooks.com for news and events and get a bonus free thriller when you subscribe to her newsletter.
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Chapter 3
THE CORRIDORS OF Forensic Science Ireland were beginning to get busy as Carla led Jack Maguire to the lab. Techs in white coats, manila files in their hands, passed one another, their heads down, their brows furrowed. The exhibits were checked in downstairs: queues of Gardaí from all over the country brought in bags of forensic evidence, which were carefully catalogued and then sent for analysis. There was never a lull; crime was a growth industry.
Carla pushed open the door of the FACE lab, a series of interconnected rooms and offices, all painted regulation cream, computer terminals blinking along the counter on the far wall. In the middle of the room, two broad benches ran parallel to each other, at right angles to the door. Stainless steel sinks were sunk into them at intervals.
‘Morning, guys. How’s the head, Raph?’ Carla grinned to a tall black man in a white lab coat, his top pocket packed with biros, who was examining a thick file. He turned, looked up at her over his glasses and winced. His close-cropped hair was beginning to grey at the temples, his face creased into laughter lines. Beside him, a woman in her twenties, her face pitted by acne, had one of the pages they had obviously been discussing in her hand. Her wavy straw-coloured hair was pulled up in a practical ponytail. Acknowledging Carla with a grin, she put her finger to her lips.
‘Don’t mention the war.’
Carla turned to Jack.
‘It was Raphael’s daughter’s birthday party last night. She’s an engineer with a star-filled future. This is Tina – soon to be Dr Antonia Marsh.’
The box under her arm, Carla ushered Jack into the lab.
‘This is DS Jack Maguire from Coyne’s Cross.’
Raph put his hand out, his mid-Atlantic accent strong.
‘Raphael Montgomery. Nice to meet you. I read about your find in the paper.’
Jack shook Raph’s hand.
‘He’s hoping we can help.’ Carla glanced at the paperwork on the counter top. ‘How are you getting on with the others?’
Tina put down the page she’d been looking at. ‘The 3-D renders are all done, they’re ready to get out to the media. I’ve notified the detectives in charge.’
Carla smiled appreciatively. ‘Let’s hope they land some sort of response. Your timing is good, DS Maguire, we can get started straight away.’
‘How long will it take?’ Jack came to stand beside her as she put the box down on the bench. Its white melamine top was spotless, reflecting the harsh overhead lights. ‘To build the face, I mean?’
Carla pulled up the top flap of the box. ‘Usually it takes a day to make the cast, and then about two days for us to build the face. Overall, about a week to do a single reconstruction in clay. We gather as much data as we can from the scene, from the rest of the body, to create several different renders. That’s the artistic bit. The work we do isn’t an identification, it’s a tool in the identification process, predicting the facial features from all the evidence we have.’
‘And if you don’t have anything else, any other information, like this, how do you do it then?’
Carla lifted out the skull as Tina bent down and, opening a cupboard below the bench, pulled out a piece of steel pipe welded to a flat plate.
‘What on earth’s that?’ Puzzled, Jack looked thoughtfully at what resembled an entry-level plumbing project, or a grotesque instrument of torture.
‘A stand.’
Tina screwed another curved plate onto the top of it – one which had grippers on either side. She pushed it towards Carla, who took a moment to settle the skull onto the top plate, resting the jaw on the slanted shelf that connected it to the upright. She glanced at Jack.
‘The stand ensures the model we build is at the right angle. It’ll need adjusting before we start, but this will work for now.’
Carla crossed her arms and took a long look at the skull. The fracture lines were clear. Whatever had happened to this victim had involved a perimortem blow to the head – there was no sign that the fractures had had time to heal.
She turned to Jack. ‘We can tell a lot about the victim from the bones themselves, if they can be found. You said you suspected this was a suicide?’
Jack shrugged, his blue eyes serious. ‘Nothing’s certain until we have an ID. The most recent disappearance was last October, but we’ve ruled him out from his dental records. Before him, there was one the previous February – a lad in his twenties, but he’d never been to the dentist, unfortunately.’
As he was speaking, Carla began shaking her head. Wrinkling her nose, she sighed.
‘It’s not him.’
‘How can you tell?’
Before she could answer, Raph leaned over to take a closer look, his voice practical as he replied.
‘First off, if your guy went in in February, this definitely isn’t him. The bottom of a lough is very cold, whatever the ambient temperature. It slows decomposition. If your guy’s in there, he’ll probably still be intact. This is likely to have been in the water for a number of years.’
Carla pursed her lips, looking hard at the skull. There was that feeling again: the black hole in her gut. Sometimes it felt as if she was poised at the mouth of a tunnel – at least, that’s how it manifested in her dreams. A tunnel where there was no light, and water dripped from the ceiling. She always felt as if it was pulling her in, but she never got more than a few steps before she woke up, sweating, a cry dying on her lips. That was the worst of it. She was sure the tunnel held the answers she needed, but it was terrifying, or something in it was terrifying. Sensing a movement in the corner of the lab, Carla glanced over her shoulder quickly, but of course there was nothing there. Again. And nobody else seemed to have noticed.
She cleared her throat. ‘I think the guys will agree with me – this is a teenager. And as Raph says, they didn’t go into the water recently. We’ll have a clearer idea of age when we do some tests. But I don’t think it’s a him, I’m pretty sure it’s a her.’
‘Christ …’ Jack trailed off, running his hand through his dark hair, more spikes springing up as if they’d been waiting for their moment. ‘I better let them know at the station. You definite? How can you tell?’
Carla glanced sideways at him, but he seemed genuinely surprised – it wasn’t as if he didn’t believe her. Despite four years of anatomical science, a year of life drawing and sculpture, a PhD in facial reconstruction an international reputation, Carla was regularly challenged on her findings. Not least in court.
‘Every individual is unique, but we work off aggregated data, and experience. You see here – the supraorbital ridge? Female skulls have a rounded forehead. This ridge along the brow is much more prominent in males. And the jawline is quite different. In females, as you can see here, the edge of the jaw slopes gently towards the ear.’ She pointed to show him. ‘And if you look, there are no wisdom teeth. So, my first thoughts are that this is a skull that hasn’t fully developed. And …’ She bit her lip. ‘Typically, male skulls are heavier than female, the bone is thicker, and the areas of muscle attachment are more defined.’ She picked up a biro and pointed. ‘Women tend to have round eye sockets with sharp edges to the upper borders, whereas a male has squarer orbits with blunter upper eye margins. See here.’ She pointed to the side of the skull, now at eye level on its stand. ‘This could be a young, feminine-looking male, but I’m thinking female.’
‘And you think it’s been in the water for years?’
‘Definitely. You’ll need to go through the files for disappearances much further back than February last year.’
Before Carla could continue, there was a sharp knock on the lab door. They all turned as a heavily built redhead in a smart black trouser suit put her head around it, her curly hair drawn into a neat twist.
‘I want a word with you, Steele. Nigel puked in my shoes.’
Carla winced. ‘Crap, sorry. Did he …? I’ll—’ She stopped herself, one eyebrow raised. She knew the answer before she said it. ‘The good ones?’
‘Of course, I don’t own cheap shoes.’ Her voice was clipped, her anger rolling off her in waves that Carla was sure they could all feel. Before Carla could say more, she continued, ‘Aren’t you going to introduce us? Who’s this?’
‘Oh, sorry – DS Jack Maguire from Coyne’s Cross. This is his.’ Carla pointed to the skull.
‘Grace Franciosi – Doctor … Coyne’s Cross?’ She stopped speaking for a moment as if she was thinking. ‘I’ve always wanted to go there. Glacial lough and monastic settlement? You’ve a round tower and—’
Jack cut in. ‘A Celtic cross. Yep, that’s us.’
‘Nice.’
Grace looked at Jack a moment too long, an approving smile on her face, all thoughts of Nigel and her shoes obviously forgotten.
Carla looked at the skull critically. ‘I’m going...
