Erin Hart - The Book of Killowen

Claire Finnerty offered a grudging glance. “I suppose I ought to just tell you now, because you’ll find out sooner or later. There was a digger here, for installing the geothermal system. The workmen had to excavate a portion of the hillside behind the house to bury the coils.” She gestured toward the courtyard, and Stella noted how the ground sloped away beyond the garden wall. “We had a company down from Boyle to do the work,” Claire continued. “GeoSys, they’re called. They brought in a JCB and a bulldozer.”

“And this gang from GeoSys, they’d just leave their equipment unattended when they’d knock off? Weren’t they afraid someone might pinch it?”

“They never said as much.”

“Did the workers stay here?”

“No, they preferred staying nearer the pubs in town.”

“Do you remember hearing anyone using the equipment after hours?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Do you know if anyone here has experience in heavy construction?”

“I don’t interrogate the people who come to work here, Detective. You’ll have to ask them yourself.”

“I will,” Stella said. “I assume everyone returns here to the main house at some point during the day?”

“They’ll be here for lunch in about an hour, when they’ve finished their chores, and then everyone’s free in the afternoon.”

“I’ll come back then.”

Claire Finnerty didn’t look up from her work but raised no objection.

Stella headed for the door but turned back just before crossing the threshold. “There was one more thing I wanted to ask. How much do you know about Vincent Claffey and his… activities?”

“As little as possible,” came the terse reply. “We’re not on great terms, if you want the truth.”

“But he is your closest neighbor. Which means you’d have more opportunity than anyone else to observe what goes on at his place. Any idea why he would be digging in a protected bog?”

“None whatsoever.”

Stella thought for a moment. “How deeply would you say his daughter is involved in any of his schemes?”

A flicker of anger seemed to travel through Claire Finnerty. “Deirdre Claffey is a child, Detective. She doesn’t know anything.”

Outside, Stella took the long way back to her car, skirting the perimeter of the haggard between the outbuildings to see what she could see. She darted between the goat barn and the cheese storehouse, keeping an eye out for that nasty gander. The whitewashed wall of the storehouse had scorch marks from the ground and hastily sprayed graffiti—a couple of rudely drawn human figures with exaggerated private parts. Rain had made streak marks in the soot. The fire must have been fairly recent. Why hadn’t Claire Finnerty bothered to report this, or tell her about it just now? Stella reached out to touch the scorch marks. This fire had been put out before any great damage was done, so perhaps they figured it wasn’t worth reporting. Or was there some other explanation?

Nora pulled on a new pair of nitrile gloves for the second forensic exam of the day, on Killowen Man. Catherine Friel was the primary point person, given her experience with bog remains and suspicious deaths. After Nora had removed as much peat as she could, Dr. Friel began the external exam, first noting the appearance of the body into her minirecorder.

“The deceased appears to be male, approximately sixty to sixty-five years of age. The body has been dismembered, more likely the result of disinterment by machines than by homicidal violence or postmortem mutilation.” Dr. Friel’s voice was calm; she was focused on her subject, as if she had long ago learned to concentrate not on the horror but on the physical form before her and what that physical form had to contribute to the story that was about to unfold. “The deceased appears to be wearing a woolen cloak, which will have to be removed eventually, but I want to make a note first of cuts in the outer garment that seem to align quite precisely with sharp-force wounds on the body.” She pointed to the gashes in the woolen fabric where it was wrapped around the truncated torso and then lifted the cloak to show the corresponding cuts in the dead man’s flesh. “If we measure the length of these wounds”—she nodded to Nora, who reached for the measuring tools—“it looks as if these cuts were made right through the cloak.” She pressed the dead man’s skin with a fingertip to flatten the surface. “See how the wound narrows at both ends? That shows the shape of the weapon. It looks as if he was stabbed with a double-edged blade, something like a dagger. And not just once but at least a half dozen times.”

Dr. Friel stepped back again and began to scan the rest of the body, and Nora observed the differences in the way they each approached the corpse: she immediately took in details that told of the man’s life; Catherine Friel seemed to zero in on what the body revealed about his death. A slight but fascinating divergence in perspective.

“Look here,” Dr. Friel said. She was examining the other side of the torso and pointed to a similar set of cuts in the cloth on the victim’s left side, underlaid once more with sharp-force wounds. “What do you think—two assailants, or one person with two knives?” She stepped back and mimed an attack with a short blade in each hand, thrusting up toward Nora’s rib cage. “Could have happened either way, but I’m betting on two assailants—see how there are many more cuts here, on the left side? Points to one attacker being a bit more… enthusiastic than the other. A symmetrical pattern is more likely if it’s only one person.”

Dr. Friel stepped back again, taking in the whole body once more. “Really quite amazing,” she said. “He’s so well preserved that we’ve got enough evidence for a real case. Suspicious death is suspicious death, even centuries later. Pity whoever did it is long gone.”

She pointed to several locations on the body with a gloved finger. “There are two distinct areas where the wounds appear to be clustered: there’s one grouping in the infraumbilical region, just below the navel; another in the epigastric region, which probably punctured the stomach. The different characteristics of the wounds in each area suggest that there was more than one assailant. That, plus the upward thrust of the blade, which is more usual for attacks than self-inflicted wounds, plus the holes through his garments that correspond with the wounds, all of that together suggests cause of death was exsanguination brought on by homicidal violence. That’s what I’d put in my autopsy report.”

“So he was stabbed, possibly by two assailants, and bled to death?”

“That’s certainly what it looks like. And from the lack of any decomposition, particularly around the wounds, I would also say that he must have gone straight into the bog after he was killed. What else can we tell about him, given the physical evidence?” Dr. Friel pointed to one of the bog man’s hands. “There’s a pronounced callus on the middle finger of his right hand. Also, the thumb and first two fingers of the right hand are stained darker than the rest of the body. Mishap with a leaky quill, perhaps?” Dr. Friel held up her own right hand, showing off her own discolored fingers. “Unfortunate incident over the crossword last night.”

“If it is ink, we should be able to tell from trace analysis.” Nora studied the bog man’s face, the open eyes and lightly stubbled cheeks, the gaping mouth. She wondered what, if anything, you could tell about a person from his expression at the moment of death. What were the words on his lips at the instant the knives plunged into his gut? And what did he believe would happen to his spirit when his life was so rudely extinguished? The expression was perhaps a function of death itself, the muscles relaxing into primary flaccidity. She thought of the words of the requiem: Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.