I Hear the Sirens in the Street

2: THE DYING EARTH

We stood there looking at north Belfast three miles away over the water. The sky a kind of septic brown, the buildings rain-smudged rectangles on the grim horizon. Belfast was not beautiful. It had been built on mudflats and without rock foundations nothing soared. Its architecture had been Victorian red-brick utilitarian and sixties brutalism before both of those tropes had crashed headlong into the Troubles. A thousand car bombs later and what was left was surrounded by concrete walls, barbed wire and a steel security fence to keep the bombers out.

Here in the north Belfast suburbs we only got sporadic terrorist attacks, but economic degradation and war had frozen the architecture in outmoded utilitarian schools whose chief purpose seemed to be the disheartening of the human soul. Optimistic colonial officials were always planting trees and sponsoring graffiti clearance schemes but the trees never lasted long and it was the brave man who dared clean paramilitary graffiti off his own house never mind in communal areas of the town.

I lit a second cigarette. I was thinking about architecture because I was trying not to think about Laura.

I hadn’t seen her in nearly a week.

“Should we go in?” Crabbie asked.

“Steady on, mate. I just lit me fag. Let me finish this first.”

“Your head. She won’t be happy to be kept waiting,” Crabbie prophesied.

Drizzle.

A stray dog.

A man called McCawley wearing his dead wife’s clothes pushing her empty wheelchair along the pavement. He saw us waiting by the Land Rover. “Bloody peelers, they should crucify the lot of you,” he said as he picked up our discarded cigarette butts.

“Sean, come on, this is serious. It’s an appointment with the patho,” Crabbie insisted.

He didn’t know that Laura and I had been avoiding one another.

I didn’t know that we had been avoiding one another.

A fortnight ago she’d gone to Edinburgh to do a presentation for a couple of days and after she’d returned she said that she was swamped with catch-up work.

That was the official party line. In fact I knew that something was up. Something that had been in the wind for months.

Maybe something that had been in the wind since we had met.

This was her third trip to Edinburgh this year. Had she met someone else? My instincts said no, but even a detective could be blindsided. Perhaps detectives in particular could be blind-sided.

For some time now I’d had the feeling that I had trapped her. By putting us in a life and death situation, by getting myself shot. How could she do anything but stay with me through the process of my recovery. She couldn’t possibly leave a man who had fallen into a coma and awoken to find that he had been awarded the Queen’s Police Medal.

She had protected herself to some extent. She had refused to move in with me on Coronation Road, because, she said, the Protestant women gave her dirty looks.

She had bought herself a house in Straid. There had been no talk of marriage. Neither of us had said ‘I love you’.

Before the recent absences we had seen each other two or three times a week.

What were we? Boyfriend and girlfriend? It hardly seemed so much.

But what then?

I had no idea.

Crabbie looked at me with those half closed, irritated brown eyes, and tapped his watch.

“It’s nine fifteen,” he said in that voice of moral authority which came less from being a copper and more from his status as a sixth generation elder in the Presbyterian Church of Ireland. “The message, Sean, was to come at nine. We’re late.”

“All right, all right, keep your wig on. Let’s go in,” I said.

Cut to the hospital: scrubbed surfaces. Lowered voices. A chemical odour of bleach and carpet cleaner. Django Reinhardt’s “Tears” seeping through an ancient Tannoy system.

The new nurse at reception looked at us sceptically. She was a classic specimen of the brisk, Irish, pretty, no nonsense nursey type.

“There’s no smoking in here, gentlemen,” she said.

I stubbed the fag in the ashtray. “We’re here to see Dr Cathcart,” I said.

“And who are you?”

“Detective Inspector Duffy, Carrick RUC, and this is my spiritual coach DC McCrabban.”

“You can go through.”

We stopped outside the swing doors of the Autopsy Room and knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“DI Duffy, DC McCrabban,” I said.

“Come in.”

Familiar smells. Bright overhead lights. Stainless steel bowls filled with intestines and internal organs. Glittering precision instruments laid out in neat rows. And the star of the show: our old friend from yesterday lying on a gurney.

Laura’s face was behind a mask, which I couldn’t help thinking was wonderfully metaphoric.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said.

“Good morning, Dr Cathcart,” Crabbie uttered automatically.

“Hi,” I replied cheerfully.

Our eyes met.

She held my look for a couple of seconds and then smiled under the mask.

It was hard to tell but it didn’t seem to be the look of a woman who was leaving you for another man.

“So, what can you tell us about our victim, Dr Cathcart?” I asked.

She picked up her clipboard. “He was a white male, about sixty, with grey, canescent hair. He was tall, six four or maybe six five. He had a healed scar on his left buttock consistent with a severe trauma, possibly a car accident, or given his age, a shrapnel wound. There was a tattoo on his back – ‘No Sacrifice Too Grea’ – which I take to be some kind of motto or Biblical verse. The ‘t’ was missing from ‘Great’ where his skin had adhered to the freezer compartment.”

“Freezer compartment?”

“The body was frozen for some unspecified period of time. When the body was removed and placed in the suitcase a piece of skin stuck to the freezer, hence the missing ‘t’ in great. I’ve taken photographs of this and they should be developed later today.”

“What did you say the tattoo said?” Crabbie asked, flipping open his notebook.

She shrugged. “A Biblical verse perhaps? ‘No Sacrifice Too Great’.”

I looked at Crabbie. He shook his head. He had no idea either.

“Go on, Doctor,” I said.

“The victim’s head, arms and legs were removed post mortem. He had also been circumcised, but this had been done at birth.”

She paused and stared at me again.

“Cause of death?” I asked.

“That, Detective Inspector, is where we get into the really interesting stuff.”

“It’s been interesting already,” Crabbie said.

“Please continue, Dr Cathcart.”

“It was a homicide or perhaps a suicide; either way, it was death by misadventure. The victim was poisoned.”

“Poisoned?” Crabbie and I said together.

“Indeed.”

“Are you sure?” Crabbie said.

“Quite sure. It was an extremely rare and deadly poison known as Abrin.”

“Never heard of it,” I said.

“Nevertheless, that’s what it was. I found Abrin particles in his larynx and oesophagus, and the haemorrhaging of his lungs leaves little doubt,” Laura continued.

“Is it a type of rat poison or something?” I asked.

“No, much rarer than that. Abrin is a natural toxin found in the rosary pea. Of course it would need to be refined and milled. The advantage over rat poison would be in its complete lack of taste. Like I say it is very unusual but I’m quite certain of my findings … I did the toxicology myself.”

“Sorry to be dense, but what’s a rosary pea?” I asked.

“The common name for the jequirity plant endemic to Trinidad and Tobago, but I think it’s originally from South-east Asia. Extremely rare in these parts, I had to look it up.”

“Poisoned … Jesus,” I said.

“Shall I continue?” she asked.

“Please.”

“The Abrin was taken orally. Possibly with water. Possibly mixed into food. There would have been no taste. Within minutes it would have dissolved in the victim’s stomach and passed into his blood. It would then have penetrated his cells and very quickly protein synthesis would have been inhibited. Without these proteins, cells cannot survive.”

“What would have happened next?”

“Haemorrhaging of the lungs, kidney failure, heart failure, death.”

“Grisly.”

“Yes, but at least it would have been fairly rapid.”

“How rapid? Seconds, minutes?”

“Minutes. This particular strain of Abrin was home cooked. It was crude. It was not manufactured by a government germ warfare lab.”

“Crude but effective.”

“Indeed.”

I nodded. “When was all this?”

“That’s another part of the puzzle.”

“Yes?”

“It’s impossible to say how long the body was frozen.”

I nodded.

“Are you sure about that freezing thing? There are plenty of ways a bit of skin can come off somebody’s back,” McCrabban said.

“I’m certain, Detective. The cell damage caused by freezing is consistent throughout what’s left of his body.”

“And so you have no idea when all this happened?” I asked.

She shook her head. “It is beyond my capabilities to state how long he was frozen for.”

“So you’re not able to determine a time of death?”

“I am afraid that I am not able to determine a time or date of death. Although I will continue to work on the problem.”

“Poisoned, frozen, chopped up, dumped,” McCrabban said sadly, writing it down in his notebook.

“Yes,” Laura said, yawning. I gave her a smile. Was she already bored by death? Is that what happened to all pathos in the end? Or was she just bored by us? By me?

“The rosary pea. That is interesting,” McCrabban said, still writing in his book.

“Our killer is not stupid,” Laura said. “He’s got a little bit of education.”

“Which more or less rules out the local paramilitaries,” McCrabban muttered.

“They’re not that bright?” Laura asked.

“Poison is far too elaborate for them. Too elaborate for everybody really around here. I mean what’s the point? You can get guns anywhere in Northern Ireland,” I said.

McCrabban nodded. “The last poisoning I remember was in 1977,” he said.

“What happened then?” Laura asked.

“Wife poisoned her husband with weedkiller in his tea. Open and shut case,” McCrabban said.

“So what do you think we’re looking at here, then? A loner, someone unaffiliated with the paramilitaries?” I asked him.

“Could be,” McCrabban agreed.

“Do us a favour, mate, call up a few garden centres and ask about rosary pea and get cracking on ‘No Sacrifice Too Great’, will ya?”

Crabbie wasn’t dense. He could read between the lines. He could see that I wanted to talk to Laura in private.

“You’ll walk back to the station, will you, Sean?” he asked.

“Aye, I’ll walk, I could do with the exercise.”

“Fair enough,” he said and turned to Laura. “Nice to see you again, Dr Cathcart.”

“You too, Detective McCrabban,” Laura said.

When he’d gone I walked to her and took off her mask.

“What?” Laura asked.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me what’s going on,” I said.

She shook her head. “Ugh, Sean, I don’t have time for this, today.”

“Time for what exactly?”

“The games. The drama,” she said.

“There’s no drama. I just want to know what’s going on.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What’s going on with us?”

“Nothing’s going on,” she said.

But her voice quavered.

Outside I could hear Crabbie start up the Land Rover.

I waited for a beat or two.

“All right, let’s go to my office,” she said.

“Okay.”

We walked the corridor and went into her office. It was the same dull beige with the same Irish watercolours on the wall. She sat in her leather chair and let down her reddish hair. She looked pale, fragile, beautiful.

The seconds crawled.

“It’s not a big deal,” she began.

I closed my eyes and leaned back in the patient chair. Oh shit, I thought, that means it’s going to be a really big deal.

“I’ve been offered a temporary teaching position at the University of Edinburgh,” she said, her voice sounding like it was coming from the bottom of a coal mine.

“Congratulations,” I replied automatically.

“Don’t be unpleasant, Sean.”

“I wasn’t.”

“It’s in the medical school. First year class on basic anatomy with a cadaver. To be honest, I need the break, from, from—”

“Me?”

“From all this …”

It didn’t have to be about me. Anybody with any brains was getting out. The destination wasn’t important. England, Scotland, Canada, America, Australia … the great thing was to go.

“Of course.”

She explained why it was an exciting challenge and why it didn’t necessarily mean the end of us.

I nodded, smiled and was happy for her.

I completely understood. She would leave Northern Ireland and she would never come back. I mean, who tries to get back on board the Titanic?

Furthermore her sisters were out of high school and her parents were in the process of moving abroad. The only thing keeping Laura here were her ties to this shitty job and to me and both of those were severable.

“When are thinking of heading?” I asked.

“Monday.”

“So soon?”

“I signed a lease on an apartment. I need to get furniture.”

“What about your house in Straid?”

“My mum will look after it.”

“What about the hospital? Who’s covering for you here?”

“The other doctors can pick up the slack in the clinic and I’ve asked one of my old teachers to do my autopsy work in the interim. Dr Hagan. He’s coming out of retirement to do me this favour. Very experienced. He worked for Scotland Yard for years and he taught at the Royal Free. He says he’ll be happy to cover me for a few months. He’ll be much better at this kind of work than me.”

“I doubt that.”

She smiled.

And then there was silence. I could hear a kid crying all the way back at Reception.

“Will you have dinner with me this weekend?”

“I’ll be very busy. Packing and all that.”

So that’s the way it was. Well, I wasn’t going to beg. “If you change your mind give me a call.”

“I will.”

I got up. I blinked and looked at her. Her gaze was steady. Resolved. Even relaxed. “Bye, Laura.”

“Bye, Sean. It’s only for a term. Ten weeks,” she said. She wanted to add something else, but her mouth trembled for a moment and then closed.

I nodded and to avoid a scene left it there. I gave her a little nod as I left the office and half slammed her door. “Heart of Glass” by Blondie was my exit music from the hospital reception.

I went out into the car park and said “Shite! Shite! Shite!” before lighting a fag. I tried to think of a curse but Irish articulacy had clearly declined since the days of Wilde and Yeats, Synge and Shaw. Three ‘shites’ and a ciggie, that was what we could come up with in these diminished times.

I walked over the railway bridge.

A stiff sea breeze was sending foam over the cars on the Belfast Road and there were white caps from here to Scotland. On the Scotch Quarter, outside the Gospel Hall, a wild-haired American evangelist with a walking stick was entertaining a crowd of pensioners with the promise that the end was nigh and the dying earth was in its final days. I listened for a while and found him pretty convincing. Before I could be “saved”, however, a freak wave drenched me and another late arrival and the old folks laughed at this perverse joke of Providence.

The Royal Oak was just opening for the day and was already full of sturdy alcoholics and peelers eager to make good on the police discount.

Alex, the barkeep, was dressed in a tie-dye shirt, furry boots and a full-length velvet cape. Clearly he had discovered a time portal to 1972 or he was off to see Elton John. Neither interested me that much.

I said hello and ordered a stiff Scotch.

“Women or work?” Alex asked.

“Is it always one or the other?” I asked.

“Aye, it is,” he said thoughtfully.

“Women then,” I said.

“In that case, mate, I’ll make it a double on the house,” he said compassionately.