I had a sudden mental image of one evening, back in Templemore, when Scorch got smashed off his face and challenged me to see who could piss the highest up a wall on our way home. I wondered when he had turned into a pompous middle-aged twat, or whether he had always been one at heart and the adolescent testosterone rush had just masked it for a while. “You’re right,” I said, all penitent. “It just goes against the grain to have that big lump Yeates thinking he’s got one up on me, you know what I mean?”
“Mmm,” Scorcher said. “You know, Frank, the impulse to win is a valuable thing, right up until you let it make you into a loser.”
I was pretty sure this meant nothing at all, but his tone said he was sharing a profound insight. “A little over my head, mate,” I said, “but I’ll be sure and have a think about it. See you around.” I hung up.
I had another smoke and watched the Sunday-shopping brigade jostling up and down the quays. I love immigration; the range of babehood on display these days is several continents wider than it was twenty years ago, and while Irish women are busy turning themselves into scary orange lollipops, the lovely ladies from the rest of the world are busy making up for it. There were one or two who made me want to marry them on the spot and give Holly a dozen siblings who my mother would call half-castes.
The Bureau tech was no good to me: he wouldn’t give me the steam off his piss, after the way I’d ruined his lovely afternoon of cyberporn. Cooper, on the other hand, likes me, he works weekends, and unless he had a massive backlog he would have done the post-mortem by now. There was a good chance that those bones had told him at least some of what I needed to know.
Another hour wasn’t going to get Holly and Olivia any more pissed off than they already were. I threw my smoke away and got moving.
Cooper hates most people, and most people think he hates them at random. What they haven’t figured out is this: Cooper doesn’t like being bored, and he has a low threshold. Bore him once-and Scorch had obviously managed to do that, somewhere along the way-and you’re out forever. Keep him interested, and he’s all yours. I’ve been called many things, but I’ve never been called boring.
The City Morgue is a quick walk down the quays from my apartment, round the back of the bus station, in a beautiful piece of redbrick more than a hundred years old. I don’t often have occasion to go in there, but usually the thought of the place makes me happy, the same way it makes me happy that Murder works out of Dublin Castle: what we all do runs through the heart of this city like the river, we deserve the good parts of its history and its architecture. That day, though, not so much. Somewhere in there, with Cooper weighing and measuring and examining every remaining bit of her, was a girl who might be Rosie.
Cooper came to the reception desk when I asked for him, but, like most people that weekend, he wasn’t over the moon to see me. “Detective Kennedy,” he informed me, pronouncing the name delicately as if it tasted bad, “specifically informed me that you were not a part of his investigative team, and had no need for any information about the case.”
And after I’d bought him a pint, too. The ungrateful little bollix. “Detective Kennedy needs to take himself a tad less seriously,” I said. “I don’t have to be on his little team to be interested. It’s an interesting case. And… well, I’d rather this didn’t get around, but if the victim’s who we think it is, I grew up with her.”
That put a sparkle in Cooper’s beady little eye, just like I’d known it would. “Indeed?”
I looked down and played reluctant, to tickle his curiosity. “Actually,” I said, examining my thumbnail, “for a while, when we were teenagers, I went out with her.”
That hooked him: his eyebrows hit his hairline, and the sparkle got brighter. If he hadn’t so obviously found himself the perfect job, I’d have been worried about what this guy got up to in his spare time. “So,” I said, “you can see how I’d really like to know what happened to her-that’s if you’re not too busy to talk me through it. What Kennedy doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
The corners of Cooper’s mouth tucked in, which is as close as he gets to a smile. He said, “Do come in.”
Long corridors, elegant stairwells, not-bad old watercolors on the walls-someone had draped fake-pine-needle garlands between them, for that discreet balance of festive and somber. Even the actual morgue, a long room with ceiling moldings and high windows, would be beautiful if it weren’t for the little details: the thick chilly air, the smell, the stark tiles on the floor, the rows of steel drawers lining one wall. A plaque between drawers said, in neat engraved letters, FEET FIRST. NAME TAG ON HEAD.
Cooper pursed his lips thoughtfully at the drawers and ran a finger along the line, one eye half closed. “Our new Jane Doe,” he said. “Ah, yes,” and he stepped forward and pulled a drawer open in one long flourish.
