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‘It’s been such a terrible shock, like,’ said Gerry O’Farrell, wringing his hands. ‘I don’t know what effect it’s going to have on my business.’

‘You came back early from your holiday,’ said Katie. ‘Any particular reason for that?’

‘We were out in Gran Canaria, first holiday we’ve had in five years, but for some reason I had a really bad feeling that something wasn’t right here at home. Apart from that, the food was very substandard, and it was far too hot there, and there were quite a lot of guests who made me and Maeve feel uncomfortable.’

‘I’m sorry?’

Gerry O’Farrell glanced left and right, and then he quietly mouthed the word, ‘Gays.’ He paused, and then he added, ‘In very small …’ He paused again, and then he said, ‘You know, like,
Speedos
.’

‘I see,’ said Katie. ‘Come on, Patrick, let’s pay our respects to the victim.’

She tugged up her scarf so that it covered her nose and mouth, and Detective O’Donovan pulled up his mask, too. They stepped inside the workshop, which was so brightly lit with four arrays of halogen lights that all the furniture looked two-dimensional, as if it were cut out of cardboard.

Katie and Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán weaved their way through the maze of half-upholstered sofas and occasional tables and skeletal armchairs. The chief technician came over to meet them, enthusiastically rubbing his hands together as if he were delighted to have a really fascinating crime scene to work on.

‘Hallo, Bill,’ said Katie. ‘What’s the story?’

‘Very similar to your man up at Ballyhooly Road. Both hands severed, face obliterated with at least two shotgun blasts, possibly three, because there’s not too much of his cranium left. He was also shot in the knee for some reason. Interesting upgrade on the MO, though. This time the hands were severed with a circular saw.’

He led Katie over to the couch where the body was lying. The victim was African, although he was quite pale-skinned. He was seriously obese, with a huge belly and breasts almost as large as a woman’s. He had been suffering from eczema, with dry patches of skin on his elbows which he had obviously been scratching. His arms were crossed, in the same way that the white victim’s arms had been crossed up at Ballyhooly Road, with no hands to cover his genitals. His penis was very small, and circumcised.

‘I wonder why he was shot in the leg,’ said Katie. ‘Maybe he tried to get away.’

She examined his knee, which was a blown-open mess of red flesh, as if somebody had emptied a can of chopped tomatoes over it. The technician said, ‘There? See? The tibial artery’s been tied up with string. Presumably the perpetrator shot him in the knee to stop him hopping off but didn’t want him to bleed to death or lose consciousness before she had amputated his hands. I say “she” advisedly, of course.’

‘I’d go along with that,’ Katie told him. ‘There’s a very strong element of punishment in all of these killings, and there’s no point in punishing your victim unless he
knows
that he’s being punished, and what for.’

‘You’re flogging a dead horse, else,’ said Bill, sagely, as if he had thought of that analogy himself.

Katie examined the rest of the victim’s body. It was rippled with cellulite and covered in tiny red bruises, which made her think that he had been suffering from liver disease. Then she took a look at what remained of his head. She was inclined to agree that he had been shot three times, because his skull had exploded in all directions and his bones and brains and sinuses were all mixed up in the black horsehair stuffing of the couch. There were two or three gold teeth shining amongst the debris.

Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán was examining the blood-spattered table saw. ‘I’m thinking that the perpetrator deliberately chose this workshop because she knew this saw was here. I mean, why else would she have chosen to bring her victim to a place like this, right in the middle of the city?’

‘I agree with you,’ said Katie. ‘There can’t be any question that she planned this in advance. For starters, she must have known that Mr O’Farrell would be away on his holliers and the workshop would be empty. Another thing: the first two killings took place on the victims’ home turf, so to speak, if we’re correct about their identities – locations where they would have been anyway. But this workshop … she would have had to lure this victim here, or force him. She’s armed, so it’s possible she made him come here at gunpoint. That would indicate that she already had copies of the keys, rather than picking the lock when she got here. You couldn’t pick a lock and hold a gun on somebody at the same time.’

‘She might have had an accomplice,’ Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán pointed out.

‘Well, that’s always a possibility, but we know that she didn’t have anybody with her when she killed Mawakiya. I’ll ask Bill to check the lock levers to see if there’s any sign that they’ve been tampered with, just to make sure. Patrick – if you can find out who the letting agents are for this workshop. They would be holding keys for it, and maybe she somehow got access to those.

‘Before you do that, though, give Ryan a call, would you? Have him start looking through the CCTV recordings for this section of Patrick Street for the past – what? – how long do you reckon this feller’s been dead, Bill?’

The technician looked at the body thoughtfully, and then he said, ‘Not as long as he smells like. No more than thirty-six hours, I’d say. I don’t know what he’s been eating, but it’s his decomposing stomach contents and faeces, that’s what’s making him so rank.’

‘Well, say thirty-six hours to start with,’ said Katie. ‘Get in touch with Stalwart Security, too, and ask them if they’ll do the same for the English Market. They could just as easily have come in that way.’

She stood by the body for a while, and then she looked around the workshop. She was trying to imagine what must have happened here – what words must have been spoken between the perpetrator and her victim.
If only chairs and tables could talk
.

Detective O’Donovan returned, mopping his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand. It was uncomfortably warm inside the workshop, nearly thirty degrees, as well as smelling so foul. He told Katie that he had called Detective Ryan and also the private security company that monitored the eleven CCTV cameras covering the English Market. ‘And I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know that the jackals are outside, panting for a statement.’

‘Oh, grand,’ said Katie. ‘I suppose I’d better go and throw them a bone.’ She turned to Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán. ‘You’re going to stay around here for a while, aren’t you? Have a chat with the staff in the pub, and whoever you can find in the market. You know what witnesses are like. They might well have seen something important but they have no idea what it was they were looking at.’

As she was about to leave, however, a young technician suddenly gave a muffled shout from the other side of the workshop, ‘Mobile phone!’ he called out. ‘Mobile phone!’

He made his way over, holding it up. Bill, the chief technician, said, ‘Go and ask Mr O’Farrell if this is his, or if he knows anybody who might have lost it in here.’

The young technician came back a few seconds later, shaking his head. ‘He says he never saw it before in his life.’

He passed the mobile phone to Bill and Bill passed it to Katie. It was a black iPhone 4. Its screen was badly cracked, but it was still working.

Katie said, ‘Well – if this belongs to either the perpetrator or the victim, the angels could be smiling on us.’ She returned it to Bill and he dropped it into a plastic evidence bag.

‘Give us a couple of hours and we’ll have this decoded for you,’ he told her. ‘Maybe even sooner. Are you heading off back to the station?’

Katie nodded. ‘I’ll be there till late now.’ She had no choice. She would have to report this homicide to Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll and Superintendent Molloy, and then she would have to talk to the press office about how they were going to present it to the media. By that time, too, the Technical Bureau would probably have accessed the mobile phone. If it turned out to be the perpetrator’s or the victim’s, she and her team would be spending the following few hours assessing whatever information it contained – addresses, telephone numbers, emails, messages, apps.

As she came out of the end of Mutton Lane she was met by Fionnuala Sweeney from RTÉ, as well as Dan Keane from the
Examiner
and Branna MacSuibhne from the
Echo
.

‘Afternoon, detective superintendent!’ said Dan Keane, cheerily. ‘Another “hands off” murder, is it?’

‘Who told you that, Dan?’

Dan tapped the side of his nose. ‘The usual little chirruping bird.’

‘I’ll be holding a preliminary media conference later today at Anglesea Street. I should be able to give you more of the details then. Meanwhile, all I can tell you is that the body of a male has been discovered in his upholstery workshop by Mr Gerry O’Farrell. The body has been mutilated in much the same way as the murder victims discovered this week at addresses in Lower Shandon Street and Ballyhooly Road.’

‘You’ve put out CCTV pictures of a young African woman,’ said Fionnuala. ‘Have you been able to identify her yet?’

‘Not yet, no. But she’s still our principal suspect.’

‘Do you think she could have been responsible for
this
killing, too?’

‘It’s too early for me to say, I’m afraid. The technical team still have a lot of work to do and we’ll have to hold a post mortem.’

‘But are you looking for anybody else in connection with these murders?’

‘No, Fionnuala, we’re not. But we’re keeping an open mind. We still have no clear idea of the motive, or why the victims have all been mutilated like this.’

‘Do you still believe the murders are connected to the sex trade?’ asked Branna.

‘I don’t remember saying that I
did
believe that.’

‘But both of the first two victims were pimps, and the girl who was found with the body at Lower Shandon Street was a prostitute, and the house on Ballyhooly Road was being used by two prostitutes, too.’

‘Branna – I’m not denying the possibility that the perpetrator’s motive is in some way connected to the sex trade. Like I say, though, we’re keeping an open mind. In spite of first impressions, the killings could just as easily have been motivated by drugs or money or plain old revenge for some perceived insult.’

‘Do you think that they’re ritualistic in any way?’ asked Dan. ‘I’ve been doing some background research, like, and there are several West African tribes who punish people by lopping bits off of them. Same with some Islamic countries.’

‘I don’t want to say any more until we’ve gathered more evidence,’ said Katie. ‘The press office will be in touch with you as soon as they can.’

Branna followed Katie to her car, her water-buffalo hairstyle bobbing as she walked. ‘I really do need to talk to you,’ she said.

‘Later, Branna. Honest to God, I’m up to my neck at the moment.’

‘But I’ve thought of a fantastic way of breaking open the city’s sex trade.’

‘Branna, I’m sorry, but it’ll have to wait. I
am
concerned about prostitution in Cork, you know that. In fact, it’s almost at the top of my list. Right now, though, I have three extremely high-profile murders to solve and more cases of thieving and drug-dealing and human-trafficking and fraud than you can shake a stick at.’

‘When you hear what I have in mind, you’ll regret so much that you didn’t listen to me earlier,’ said Branna, as Katie climbed into the driving seat.

‘Well, if I do, I’ll apologize. Meanwhile, I really have to go.’

She shut her car door, but as she started up the engine, she saw Branna mouthing something. She put down her window and said, ‘What?’

‘I said, if you don’t want to listen to me, I’ll go ahead anyway.’

Katie had no idea what she was talking about, and at this particular moment she wasn’t very interested. She had dealt with keen young reporters before and she had learned that they always wildly exaggerated their stories, and most of the time they got all their facts muddled up. In spite of her sensitive nose for what Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll called ‘cat’s malogian’, Katie liked to keep her investigations very low-key, and her evidence meticulously accurate. That was why her conviction rate was so high.

Back at her desk at the station, she rang John. He didn’t answer, so she left a message.

‘I’m so sorry, John! Sorry and sorry and sorry! There’s been another murder and I have to stay. I don’t know what time I’ll be home. I may even have to spend the night here. Sorry.’

She pressed
End
and stared at the screen for a while. Ever since she had received John’s message about dinner at the The Rising Tide, she had been imagining the two of them sitting in its upstairs dining room, looking out over the river as the sun went down. Now, she had a depressing feeling that maybe this was one ‘sorry’ too far. As John had said to her only two nights ago, ‘You can only call a relationship a relationship, Katie, if the people who are supposed to be
in
the relationship are actually there to have it.’

She went to Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll’s office to find him emptying out the drawers of his desk.

‘Where’s Bryan?’ she asked him.

‘Bryan’s still making himself known to the support staff. As if a forty-five minute introductory speech all about himself wasn’t enough. You’d think that he reduced the crime rate in Limerick single-handed.’

‘Fair play to him, Dermot. He did a lot to crack down on knife crime.’

‘I suppose,’ said Dermot. ‘I just wish he wasn’t so fecking full of himself.’ He raked around in one of the drawers and eventually came up with a bottle-opener with an enamelled Garda badge on one end of it. ‘This was my leaving present from Phoenix Park. Do you know what they told me? “We’re giving you this because you’ll have absolutely feck all to do in Cork, except eat crubeens and drink Murphy’s and chase after runaway cows.” They gave me this and a pair of green rushers, too. Jesus, if only I’d known.’

‘We’ve got handless murder number three now,’ said Katie. She told him all about the murder victim in the upholstery workshop, and he listened solemnly, although he continued clearing his desk and stowing all of his belongings into a cardboard box. A hairbrush, an electric razor, a roll of masking tape, some AA batteries and a box of staples.