She cursed herself for having agreed to meet him in the forest. Even if here was where it had all started, properly started, that is – fumbling about in the inky black of night, the sudden jolt as he pulled on the seat lever, the way the seat shot back, and how he’d been above her, his hot peppermint breath blowing all over her face.
She tugged on the collar of her pink polo-neck jumper, bringing it up over her mouth, creating a warm cocoon of air inside.
He had a nice car, with big leather seats, but he preferred it in amongst the trees, always worried that someone might come along and catch them. She didn’t care. Not any more. She just wanted him. She wanted him more than ever.
She pulled her mobile phone from her back pocket, yanking on it a couple of times because her jeans were so tight. She checked the time: 10.17 p.m.
He was late. He was always late now. In the beginning it had been different. In the beginning, he had been the keen one. But lately that had started to change. He was becoming bored.
Maybe she should teach him a lesson this time? Walk away, head into town, now, before it got too late, before it got completely dark. That would teach him.
But she knew she would not do that. She would stay. She would wait. Because he did something for her. He made her feel special. Like a woman. Not a girl. Everyone treated her like a girl. But not him.
The light had dwindled before her very eyes as if someone had turned down a dimmer switch on the world. With it came sounds she had not noticed before – the yelping of a dog way off in the distance, the call of a bird high up in the trees – and although she liked to think that maybe her mind was playing tricks, she heard the breaking of branches and the snapping of twigs a little behind her. She looked over her shoulder, could see nothing but the dark caverns between the trees.
And ahead, when she looked again, through the treeline along the edge of the forest, the lights from across the river backlit the world like a movie theatre. In the distance, white orbs floated – headlights she knew – moving on the road over there.
But then, when she looked back, there was no sound but the whispering of the branches in the breeze: swish, swish, swish.
And then, it came again, unmistakable now, the sounds of twigs and branches snapping, coursing a slow, steady path in her direction. Her eyes, straining through the darkness, were just about able to discern the abstract shapes, the outline of trees and finally, the familiar profile…
‘You scared the shit out of me. Why didn’t you bring the fucking car? Just this bloody once. It’s late, you know. D’ya know how late it is?’
There was no reply, just the steady snapping of twigs and branches as they broke underfoot and he crossed the final few feet to her.
Beck’s eyes snapped open. He was lying on his bed, the sheets crumpled around him, the duvet a pile on the floor. He looked about, confused… then remembered. His dream. An image of a figure in a black soutane flittered from his mind and was gone. And with it his confusion returned.
There was a sound. He turned his head and saw it then, his mobile phone on the bedside locker, the screen illuminating each time it rang, as if angry at the delay in getting his attention. He swallowed twice, his throat dry, reached out and picked it up, brought it to his ear.
‘Hello,’ he said, his voice hoarse. He listened, and as he did, he knew that while he had slept a nightmare had come true. For a girl. A girl who would never wake again.
Beck looked down at the body, noted the clean, healthy sheen of the hair, the full cheeks, the clean clothes, the boots –Timberland. His niece had a pair just like those.
The victim was about the same age too, fifteen or sixteen, maybe seventeen tops.
He noted the ruffled top of the pink polo-neck sweater. There was nothing to indicate how she had died, or indeed, why. Her clothes had not been disturbed, her pockets not turned out. Beck discounted robbery as a motive, especially here. Robbers didn’t usually lurk amongst trees in isolated woodlands waiting for a victim to just wander by. But he couldn’t be certain, not yet. From a distance, it seemed as if she was resting, sleeping maybe. But up close, it was apparent she was dead, the skin a greenish-blue hue, eyes starting to sink into their sockets like pebbles into mud, the face stiff and angular in its death mask.
Had she somehow, by freak of nature, succumbed to something? Sudden cardiac arrest, perhaps? It happened. Because there was nothing – no blood, no bruising – to indicate how she might have died.
Still, there was no doubt. Beck knew in his bones that she had been murdered.
His eyes were drawn to the pink polo-neck again. He had read an article in the FBI International Bulletin on the garda portal recently, titled ‘The Importance of Crime Scene Integrity’. He knew what he was about to do was bad practice. But he went ahead and did it anyway, squatted down onto his knees, took out a pen from the inside pocket of his parka jacket, nudged the tip into the collar of the jumper, pulled it down. And immediately saw the dark purple and yellow ring of bruising about the neck. He put the pen back into his pocket and stood again.
He turned, walked along the track through the trees and down the embankment to the pathway. Two ruddy-cheeked young guards in high-visibility jackets were standing at the bottom, part of the recent batch of graduates from the Garda College in Templemore, Beck knew. He could tell, by their wide-eyed, slightly confused expressions, that this was most certainly their first murder scene.
He nodded as he passed by.
Superintendent Andrew Wilde and Inspector Gerald O’Reilly stood a little further down the pathway. There was no cordon tape. Wilde didn’t think one necessary, the location being so isolated. Beck disagreed. A rambler – anyone – could literally stumble across the body, although granted that wasn’t likely. But still. And no one had been posted on watch. Hadn’t anyone heard of foxes?
‘We’re waiting on forensics,’ Wilde said, stating the obvious, and, as an afterthought: ‘I hope you didn’t go poking around up there, Beck.’
‘No, boss.’
‘Because,’ Inspector O’Reilly added, ‘you do as you are directed now. Nothing more. Nothing less. This is not your case.’
The superintendent looked at his watch. ‘Yes, yes, Gerry, he knows all that.’
‘They have to come from Dublin,’ Beck said. ‘Forensics. In a van.’
‘Really, Beck?’ O’Reilly said, arching his eyebrows. ‘Do they now?’
‘Just saying.’
‘At least it’s not raining.’ It was Wilde. He looked at the ground, as if debating something. Looked up again, said to Beck, ‘Now, we all know you’ve investigated your fair share of murders, Beck. Let’s say it like it is. You’re only here because of, well, no one really knows the reason for that, do they? The less said about that the better. So, what’s your reading on all this?’
There was the sound of something moving in the gravel. Beck looked and saw the heel of O’Reilly’s right foot grinding into the path.
‘A bit early to tell, isn’t it?’ He caught O’Reilly’s look, his eyebrows still arched as he stared at him.
‘She’s young,’ Wilde said. ‘Attractive, well dressed…’
‘A boyfriend,’ O’Reilly added, a little too quickly. ‘A jilted boyfriend. Something along those lines, maybe.’
‘Hmm,’ said Wilde, and looked at Beck.
Now it was Beck’s turn to raise his eyebrows.
‘Maybe she killed herself,’ he said, although he knew that wasn’t true.
O’Reilly’s boot heel ground into the gravel of the path again.
Beck glanced at the watery blue sky. The weather forecast was for high winds, possibly rain later. The trees should offer some protection. As crime scenes went, it was a good location for a body, if there was such a thing. He wanted to tell Wilde to at least set up a proper perimeter, have everybody signed in and out. But he didn’t. Because that was no longer his place.
He wondered how long it took a van to get here from Dublin.
The big-panel van turned into the gravel car park, which had been newly laid – a sign the state forestry service, Coillte, would soon be coming to chop the wood. The lettering on the side was in Gaelic, ‘An Biúró Teicniúil’, and beneath it, the English translation: ‘Garda Technical Bureau’. Following it was a black Volvo S70, and sitting in the back, the state pathologist Dr Derek Gumbell. Beck took a last pull on his cigarette and stubbed it out under his shoe. He had wandered down here, frustrated with Wilde and O’Reilly’s endless quotations from murder crime scene manuals. As a result, they weren’t actually getting anything done. Beck had spent some time studying the newly laid surface, looking for fresh tyre marks, or footprints – anything – but finding nothing. The cigarette was his first of the day. He was pleased with that.
Beck and Gumbell went back a long way. Although the state pathologist liked fast cars and garish shirts, he was a balding, foul-mouthed, grumpy middle-aged man best suited to a profession dealing with the remains of the dead. Like Beck, he was unmarried, but had a daughter somewhere that no one knew anything about except that she lived with her mother.
Gumbell got out of the Volvo and stretched, glancing around. He did a double take when he spotted Beck.
‘My God. Beck. Is that you? Well, fuck me. I heard you’d been sent somewhere or other. So here you are. Fucked up big time, didn’t you?’
Subtle as ever, Beck thought. He walked across to join him.
‘Superintendent Wilde,’ Beck said, ‘is the senior investigating officer, not me. I’ve no interest in investigating anything. My sole ambition is to get out of the backwater that is Cross Beg. Any interest in this case is purely one of curiosity.’
‘That’s quite a sermon, Beck. I know, you’ve been demoted. Sergeant now, isn’t it? You’d need a parachute for a drop like that, ha ha.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Been demoted myself, in a sense. Dr Price, my deputy… you know her, don’t you?’
‘We’ve never actually met.’
‘Well, anyway, urgent case of – she mightn’t want me to say it, so I’d better not. Anyway, here I am instead. Wouldn’t mind, but I had a round of bloody golf at four.’
‘Yes, Beck, I’ll look after this.’ O’Reilly’s voice from behind. ‘The body is this way, doctor. When you’re ready.’
Beck turned.
‘Someone’s been reported missing, at the station,’ O’Reilly said. ‘Go and check it out, will you? Let me know if there’s anything in it… please.’
Beck felt the ‘please’ was added only because of the presence of the pathologist.
Gumbell called after him as he walked away. ‘Your number still the same, Beck? I’m staying over. We must meet for lemonade and a chat later.’
Beck stopped, half turning. ‘My number is still the same,’ he answered.
‘One hell of an investigator. You’ve heard of him, haven’t you? I mean, he’s one of the best,’ Gumbell said.
O’Reilly forced a half-smile. ‘I’ve heard of him,’ he grunted.
She was pacing the floor when he got back to the station. The duty sergeant had told him her name over the radio: Theresa Frazzali. Beck thought it rang a bell. Then it came to him. Frazzali’s restaurant and takeaway in the centre of town.
She was a small woman, with shoulder-length blonde hair parted in the middle, black roots visible like a line had been drawn in marker pen down the centre of her head. She had large green eyes, and small tight lips that drooped in the corners, running into deep furrows on either side of her chin. She had a tissue in her hands, twisted into a hard knot.
He didn’t know that she knew him, but once she saw him, she stepped in front so he would have to stop. ‘Sergeant Beck.’ It was a statement, not a query.
‘Yes.’
‘My name is Theresa Frazzali. Tanya, my daughter, didn’t come home last night. I told the officer, over there…’ She nodded her head in the direction of the public counter. ‘This morning, that is, she didn’t come home. I mean last night. God, I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since last night is what I’m trying to say. The officer told me to wait for you. Why would he do that? Is something wrong?’
She was on the verge of tears now, but holding back, waiting for reassurance, waiting for him to say, ‘No, Mrs Frazzali, nothing is wrong. The officer asked me to see you because he wanted me to tell you not to worry – that’s all, you know. This kind of thing, unfortunately, happens all the time. Your daughter will be home shortly, you’ll see’.
But that was not what he said. What he said was: ‘Your daughter. Can you describe her?’
Mrs Frazzali stared at him, her eyes widening. ‘Why? What’s wrong? Have you found someone?’
‘Mrs Frazzali,’ Beck said, ‘if your daughter was missing, like you think she might be, then I’d need to know what she looks like, and also what she was wearing, wouldn’t I? But that doesn’t mean anything has happened to her.’
Mrs Frazzali relaxed. ‘Of course. Yes, of course. You would. Wouldn’t you? Let me see, Tanya’s about five six, my height… Actually, she looks a lot like me, but a much younger version.’
‘Do you remember what she was wearing, Mrs Frazzali?’
‘What she was wearing? I didn’t see her before she went out. I don’t know what Tanya was wearing. I can’t be sure.’
Beck said nothing for a moment, considering, then asked, ‘Does she have, by any chance, a pink polo-neck jumper, and Timberland boots?’
Mrs Frazzali stared at Beck. He could see the confusion on her face.
‘Why do you ask?’
He placed his hand gently on her elbow, guided her to the bench. They sat down.
She tried to twist the tissue in her hands, pressing her fingers into it, the tips white, but the tissue was so tightly knotted it couldn’t move any further. She looked at him and lifted the corners of her lips into a faint, desperate smile, then reached into her handbag, took out her mobile phone, pressed a button, scrolled through it and offered it to him.
‘It was taken two weeks ago. At her cousin’s birthday. It’s Tanya.’
Beck took the phone. The photograph of three girls, laughing, arms intertwined across each other’s shoulders, was taken at close range, so Beck could clearly see their faces. He thought of the body in the forest, peeled away the death mask, gave colour to the flesh, reset the eyes, buffed up the hair. And saw her. The girl in the middle. Tanya.
He handed the phone back to Mrs Frazzali.
‘Mrs Frazzali,’ he began, but already she was holding her face in her hands, palms squeezing her cheeks as she stared at him, like she was trying to stop herself from falling apart.
The first forty-eight hours, Beck knew. The Window, they called it. Which came after The Golden Hour. Which came after the crime. Forty-eight hours. Then the window started to close, the investigation slowed, momentum was lost.
Forty-eight hours.
Beck sat at a desk in the deserted Ops Room. The weak October sunlight filtered through the high, narrow windows, and the old wrought iron radiators made a clicking noise as the water circulated inside them. The door to the public office was open. He could hear the desk officer out there, answering a phone that never seemed to stop ringing. As he listened, the clicking from the radiators appeared to grow louder and louder, and Beck remembered the sounds of the revolver chamber turning. Click, click, click…
The telephone rang in the public office again, a loud, shrill noise. It sounded twice before being answered: ‘Hello, Cross Beg Garda Station...’
The Ops Room was filling, uniform and plainclothes officers arriving from outlying stations and districts. Beck sat listening to the jumbled sounds of their conversations.
A whiteboard was wheeled in at the top of the room, Superintendent Wilde and Inspector O’Reilly following, standing on either side of it. Wilde had a marker in his hand, holding it in the air like a conductor’s baton. O’Reilly’s hands were clasped in front of him, head bowed, as if deep in prayer.
‘Quiet, people,’ Superintendent Wilde said, waving the marker about as the room fell silent. He allowed the silence to percolate, then continued. ‘First things first. For the duration of the investigation, briefings take place at 9 a.m. daily in this room. Understood? Good. Now, at 3.07 a.m. this morning, a 999 call was received in the Comms Room here at Cross Beg. The caller, male, reported finding a body in Cool Wood just outside the town, that of a young female. The call was made from a phone box in the square. The caller wouldn’t give his name or any details, but he had a pronounced stutter. The officer who took it thinks it’s Ned Donohue, or Neddy, as most people know him. And most of us here know him. When Neddy gets nervous, the stammer comes out. I’ve listened back to the tape myself, and I agree that it’s likely him. A unit’s been round to his house twice already, but he’s not home. Now, yesterday was Monday, dole day here in Cross Beg, and Neddy likes to drink cider and get out of his head. He’s known to wander about the place when he’s like that, including Cool Wood. We need to find him as soon as possible. Anyone who doesn’t know Ned, check the system – there’s a photograph of him on there. Ned doesn’t like the gardai, and can get very anxious when he has to deal with us. Due care and attention when dealing with him, please.’
Wilde turned to the whiteboard and wrote ‘Ned Donohue’ on it in a heavy scrawl. He went on: ‘The victim is believed to be a local girl, Tanya Frazzali, fifteen years old. The body has not been formally identified, but we’re confident that’s who it is. Her family own the Frazzali restaurant on Main Street – been there over fifty years, very popular place, originally Italian, as the name suggests. The victim was a student at St Malachi’s College… Sergeant Beck, you spoke with her mother. She reported her missing, correct?’
Beck cleared his throat and stood. ‘Yes boss, that’s correct. Mrs Theresa Frazzali came to the station earlier today. She was upset her daughter, Tanya, had not come home last night. From her description and a photograph of Tanya she showed me on her mobile phone, I’m satisfied the body is that of Tanya Frazzali.’
‘Did anyone else agree with this opinion?’ It was Inspector O’Reilly, raising his head now and staring at Beck. ‘Did you ask?’
Beck said nothing.
‘Well, did they?’ O’Reilly pressed.
‘I have no doubt,’ Beck said. ‘It’s Tanya Frazzali.’ Beck wanted to smile, because getting up someone’s nose the way he seemed to be getting up O’Reilly’s was a compliment of sorts.
O’Reilly gestured with his hand, as if brushing Beck away.
‘Scene of Crime are still processing the scene,’ Wilde went on. ‘Likely to be there for the rest of the day, and tomorrow too. They haven’t found a mobile phone, by the way. Whether the victim had one with her, of course, we don’t know, not as yet. The cause of death, the state pathologist believes at this stage, is asphyxiation. The victim was strangled. This will not be officially confirmed until after the autopsy, which takes place tomorrow morning at the County Hospital.’
Wilde looked about the room.
‘Suggestions, people,’ he said. ‘Who could have done this? I want to see some hands in the air… yes, you.’
‘A boyfriend? It’s usually the way, isn’t it?’
‘Anyone else?’
‘I agree. In the woods and all – has to be a boyfriend, a lover.’
‘And you?’ Wilde pointed towards the back of the room.
‘Maybe she wasn’t killed in the woods at all. Maybe her body was dumped there.’
Wilde wrote ‘family and friends’ on the whiteboard, circled it twice. ‘It appears she was murdered in the wood, by the way,’ he said, and continued, ‘Anyone’s radar showing possibilities? I want names.’
‘Anyone’s capable of it. Especially the clients we deal with.’ The same voice from the back of the room.
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ Wilde said. ‘But specifically, does anyone come to mind? Come on now.’
The room fell silent again.
‘How wide do you want to throw this net?’ a female voice asked.
Wilde pursed his lips, thinking about that. ‘For now, I’m talking about Cross Beg and the station’s district.’
‘That narrows things down considerably. You’d be the best judge of that yourself.’
Wilde looked a little uncomfortable now. His conversation was coming full circle. . . .
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