A June of Ordinary Murders (12 page)

Swallow pushed back his chair, rose, and paced across the room.

‘I doubt that it was a robbery even though there was nothing of value left on them. They were left with just the clothes they were wearing. I don't think they were taken by force to the park because there were no signs of a struggle, or restraints or ropes or tearing of the clothing or anything like that. I think they were lured there, or they met somebody by arrangement there.'

‘That's plausible,' Lafeyre said. ‘There may have been some sort of rendezvous for sexual purposes? But does that make sense with the child present?'

Swallow crossed the room again.

‘I just don't know. God knows, anything is possible, even that. But there is no sign of any sexual assault or sexual activity. One thing is clear, though. The killer or killers came prepared. There was a gun and a knife. It wasn't that the victims' heads were battered with a rock or a stick that just happened to be around at the scene.'

‘So I put your own question back to you again,' Lafeyre said. ‘What motivates a person to do those things to a woman and to murder an innocent child?'

‘It could be an urge to take revenge for some reason,' Swallow said. ‘But if a killer simply wanted to inflict maximum destruction, perhaps for vengeance or in a demented rage, wouldn't he mutilate other parts of the body too? It's possible that the face may have been mutilated and the effects removed to prevent identification.'

Lafeyre nodded. ‘That's credible. It could also be consistent with the eyes being damaged. There's a myth you'll sometimes encounter among criminals that when a person dies violently the last sight he or she sees is somehow recorded in the pupils of the eyes. It's complete nonsense of course, ignorance. But cutting at the eyes might be a misguided precaution by a killer against identification.'

‘Not much to show after 24 hours' work, is it though?' Swallow said bleakly.

At that moment Pat Mossop called from across the room.

‘Boss, there's something here you'll want to see.'

He was holding two small pieces of buff-coloured paper. He placed them side by side in the palm of his outstretched hand.

‘We've got the return halves of two sailing tickets, an adult and a child. They're for the mail packet from Kingstown back to Holyhead.'

‘Where were they, Mossop?'

‘I found them in the sole of the woman's right boot, Boss; there's a sort of loose canvas lining.'

For the first time since he had seen the victims at the Chapelizod Gate, Swallow allowed himself to feel a small twinge of optimism. Whoever had cleared away the dead woman's personal effects had missed the tickets. They had almost certainly been concealed for safety. He could see that the stubs bore serial numbers.

He began to visualise a likely trail of important clues. The woman and child had crossed the Irish Sea from Wales and the return tickets indicated that they planned to return. The mail packets sailed up to three times a day, but the serial numbers should indicate when they had travelled and on which crossing. There would have to be eye-witnesses, descriptions, maybe a swift identification of a suspect.

‘Bloody well done, Mossop,' Lafeyre said.

Swallow nodded. ‘Get the details off. First get them to the detectives at the passenger pier in Kingstown. We need to establish on which date those tickets were issued. Then they should start questioning everyone on the cross-channel packets who might have seen a man and a child, or indeed maybe a woman and a child on that date. We don't know at what stage she disguised herself. The prominent eyes and the short hair that Dr Lafeyre mentioned could be significant. They'd have been apparent whether she was passing herself off as a man or a woman.'

Detectives attended every sailing at the mail-packet pier, watchful for suspicious travellers whose activities might be of interest to the authorities. They would be more than normally vigilant because of the imminence of the Jubilee celebrations and the pending royal visit. There was a good chance, Swallow knew, that the victims would have been spotted by policemen trained to remember detail and to note anything out of the ordinary.

‘So what do you do next?' Lafeyre queried Swallow.

‘I've got the crime conference shortly at the Castle. We'll see what the search teams came up with out around the murder site. We'll get to work on the clothing and the boots. We'll have a look at the plaster casts from the tracks in the park. The width of the carriage wheels should give us some sort of indication what kind of vehicle it was.'

He paused. ‘And I've to tell Chief Mallon that my dead man is really a dead woman.'

‘Is there anything more I can do? Or can I sign off that you're satisfied with the examinations?' Lafeyre inquired. ‘The Coroner needs to get on with an inquest and I need to arrange the burial.'

Swallow thought for a moment. ‘There isn't much point in keeping them above ground at this point is there?'

‘I don't think so. I can't retain the corpses for very much longer anyway. The hot weather has raised the numbers of sudden deaths and quite a few of them are coming my way. I'll get Scollan to make the arrangements.'

Swallow's mind briefly flashed to the paupers' sections of the Prospect Cemetery at Glasnevin, where the unknown woman and the child would be buried.

‘Yes, I'd be grateful if you would.' He turned to Mossop.

‘Prepare a note for Chief Superintendent Mallon. Inform him that there's been a misunderstanding about the gender of the deceased adult but that this has been clarified after examination by Dr Lafeyre. Also advise him about the tickets for the Holyhead crossing. Tell him that I'll be working late tonight at Exchange Court but if he needs me to brief him I'll attend at his house. Otherwise I'll have a full report for him on Monday morning at Exchange Court.'

Mossop scribbled Swallow's instructions. ‘Sure, Boss. And what's the second thing?'

‘Make sure that Swift and Feore and the rest of the search teams know that we're now looking for information about an adult of either gender and a child rather than a man and a child. Put the same information out on the ABC telegraph to all stations, but make sure Mr Mallon knows this before anyone else.'

Swallow knew that once the information went out on the ABC every journalist in Dublin would hear of it within minutes. The last thing he wanted was for John Mallon to learn the news from a Saturday evening newspaper.

Swallow stood up to leave.

Lafeyre stood too. ‘There's one other thing I could do that might just help in this case. It would be a bit of an experiment, but it can't do any harm I'll venture.'

He reached to the bookshelf behind his desk and drew down a cloth-bound volume.

He turned the book towards Swallow so that he could read the title on the spine.

Identification After Death.

By Professor Lazlo Hiss, MD, B.Ch, FCSV.

Lafeyre opened the book.

‘This Professor Hiss is the leading expert in his field. He's based at the University of Vienna. He's making some very challenging predictions about human identification both before and after death. He's arguing, for example, that one day we will be able to identify each human being individually from what he calls the “fingerprints.” Those are the distinctive marks on the surface of the skin at the fingertips.'

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Personally, I think that's probably a long way off, if it ever happens. It seems indeed that we all have different fingertip patterns, but how could we construct a system for the recognition of each individual one? What might be of some help in this case is the technique that Professor Hiss has devised for reconstructing a face from a human skull.

‘See here,' he flicked four pages of full-sized photographs. Each showed a grotesque but distinctively recognisable human face.

‘Hiss devised techniques based on cranial and facial measurements that enable him to build up a face in wax or plaster on a skull. He's successfully identified several people whose features were destroyed, the majority by fire. Obviously, the more of the original tissue, muscle and so on that survives, the more accurate will be the result.'

‘So what are you planning?' Swallow asked doubtfully.

‘I think I should have a try at rebuilding the woman's features. I'll take a plaster cast before I hand over the remains to the undertakers. Then I'll start building over the muscle and the facial frame with plaster of Paris. If I'm even partially happy with the results, we'll have a face we can photograph and circulate. What do you say?'

Swallow fingered the book. It brought back recollections of student days, when he dozed over his medical texts, waiting for the next postal order to arrive from home to enable him to resume his entertainments in the pub and music hall.

‘It isn't even as simple as that, Harry, is it? If you try this technique you're going to have to reconstruct the face of a woman who managed to pass herself off as a man.'

Lafeyre shrugged. ‘True enough. I can but try. There's sufficient of the skin and muscles still there to enable me to get a good likeness. And apart from the bullet wound the bone structure is intact.'

Swallow knew he needed something to extricate himself from the humiliation he would suffer when he would report to Mallon.

‘We've got a saying in my part of the country,' he told Lafeyre. ‘“When all fruit fails, welcome haws.” I say get on with it, as quickly as you can.'

EIGHT

The briefing of the Chapelizod Gate investigation team got under way in the Exchange Court parade room a few minutes after 11 o'clock.

Swallow and Mossop took their places at the top of the room just in time to forestall a rising murmur of complaint about the heat and the lack of air.

Detective Officers Tom Swift and Mick Feore sat on two cane chairs beside the window, hoping for a current of cooler air from the alley outside. Stephen Doolan stood beside them, running an index finger under the high collar of his uniform to achieve some relief from the perspiration.

A dozen constables were scattered around the room, some perched on desks with their helmets beside them. Others leaned against the wall, thumbs hooked in their belts. One overweight, bearded officer had a red pocket handkerchief clamped to his sweaty forehead.

Swallow scanned the room. He knew all the older men by name. The younger ones, he thought, all looked alike: fresh-cheeked country lads. Some of them, he reckoned, were probably not yet 20.

‘For those of you who don't know me, I'm Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow. First, I'd like to thank you all, starting with Sergeant Doolan, for your work to date. I know you put in a long day yesterday on house-to-house. It's hard bloody slog-work but it's essential. Now, let me tell you what we know in outline about this case, then I'm going to ask for reports.'

Notebooks were opened around the room. Pencils were poised.

‘First, there's been a development that nobody can be very pleased about, least of all me. There's been a mistake in the identification process. It turns out that what we believed to be a dead man is in fact a woman.'

Heads shot up all over the room. There were mutters of surprise and one or two low whistles.

‘I'd like to explain why we didn't know this until Doctor Lafeyre started his examination at Marlborough Street this morning.'

He paused.

‘The best procedure in an investigation is not to interfere with a scene or in particular with a body until the medical examination is over, the photographs are taken and so on. That's what we did. The woman was well disguised, wearing a man's suit and hat and with close-cut hair. It's unfortunate that the doctor wasn't able to do his examination any sooner. The electric lights failed at the morgue and he couldn't start until this morning. As soon as he realised the mistake he notified me.'

One or two young constables laughed nervously. Was it some sort of joke or a test? Swallow's expression told them otherwise. There were a few more exclamations and then the room fell silent.

‘The adult victim was a female, generally healthy, aged perhaps 25 to 30 years. She was 5 feet 6 inches in height. Dr Lafeyre found two cysts or tumours around the eyes. That might have caused some bulging of the eyes, making the sufferer look as if they are staring hard. That might be useful in identification if we can find any witnesses. The doctor says it would have been quite noticeable.

‘Dr Lafeyre weighed the corpse at 7 stone and 12 pounds. He found no other signs of illness or distinguishing scars or marks. She was dark haired, adequately built. The examination shows that she gave birth, at least once, maybe more than once, but it wasn't recently and was probably some years ago. It's possible but not certain that they were mother and son, according to the medical examiner.

‘The child was a male, also healthy. No distinguishing marks. He was perhaps 8 to 9 years old, dark haired also.

‘We do have one lead that may help us. Equally, it could throw the case open so wide that we'll never get to the bottom of it. We believe that the woman and child crossed from Holyhead on the mail packet some days ago. If they did they probably reached Holyhead on one of the railway routes from England.'

Swallow paused while pencils translated the information into notebooks.

‘We've got the men at the mail-packet pier checking with the crews and we're arranging to get the English and Welsh police and the Railway Police on the job as well.

‘Some of you saw the mutilation to the faces. The rest of you have heard about it, I'm sure. Pat Mossop will go through the medical details in a moment. Let me just say they weren't an attractive sight and that at this point we still have no identification.

‘Dr Lafeyre has put the time of death at perhaps 10 to 12 hours before he examined the bodies at the scene. So that would place death at, say, between 10 o'clock on Thursday and early on Friday morning. He confirms the cause of death in both cases as a severe wound to the skull and brain caused by gunshot.'