Lake of Sorrows

“Yes; look at the pattern on the wall. Very definitely arterial bleeding.” Ward looked where Dr. Friel’s eyes pointed, at the deep rust-red plumes on the wall. He counted: one, two, three, four, five. How long had her heart carried on beating before she died? Whoever had done this hadn’t gotten away clean, he thought. He looked down at Ursula’s wrists and ankles, still resting on the bathtub’s gracefully rounded lip. “Any other visible injuries?”

“Just a gash inside the left hand here.” She pointed to an incised wound between the thumb and forefinger. “It’s a very recent cut, and the strange thing about it is that there are traces of cotton thread in the wound, as if it had been bound, but the bandage was removed. There may also be some skin and blood under the nails of her left hand. I won’t be able to tell for certain until we get to the PM. She may have been unconscious, just this side of asphyxiation, when her throat was cut.”

“And the knife found on the floor?”

“They’ll have to test it, of course, but I’d bet it’s not the murder weapon.”

“Why’s that?”

“The blade is serrated. According to everything I see, her throat was cut with a nonserrated blade.”

Ward took this in. “Anything else, anything—I don’t know—unusual?”

“Well, you’re looking for a dull blade. Not new—maybe an antique; a kind of metal that doesn’t hold a sharp edge for long.” Ward raised his eyebrows in query. “Not that difficult to determine. Dull knives make for rough wounds.”

“And how long has she been dead, would you say?”

“Based on general rigor and lividity in the limbs, I’d say roughly eight to twelve hours. But the fact that she’s been mostly submerged in cold water gives us a larger margin of error. I should have the PM finished by early evening, if you want to check back with me then. You have my mobile number?”

As he left the scene behind, Ward reflected that sometimes the only witness they had to a horrific crime like this was the victim herself. It was fortunate for him, he thought, how well a body remembers. He removed his gloves before leaving the house and placed them carefully in his raincoat pocket. Stepping out the back door, he heard a noise, like pouring water, and saw a crimson pool spreading out from the peat-clogged drain. He shouted to the officers standing beside the thing, but it was too late; their shoes had been surrounded.

“Detective Ward!” a voice rang out from a few yards away. “We’ve got something over here.” The uniformed Garda hoisted the stick he’d been using to probe at the thick grass and held aloft a pair of green binoculars. Ward strode over to take a closer look, putting his gloves back on and pulling an evidence bag out of his pocket.

The binoculars were compact and waterproof, with a cloth strap—the sort you might imagine hunters would use, he thought. Had someone been watching Ursula Downes last night, waiting for his chance to strike? “Good work, Moran.” Ward held up the polythene bag, and Moran let the binoculars slide into it. “Make sure you mark the spot and let the crime-scene boys document this area.” He was nearly back at the house when another voice called from about fifty yards away. “Detective? I’ve something else here, sir.” Ward turned on his heel and charged up the slope toward the sound of the officer’s voice, through a gap in the hedge that defined the boundary of the pasture.

“I was just putting my stick down at the base of the hedge when I saw the yellow color, sir. There was this huge stone on top, so I shifted it and found this.” Ward folded himself into a crouch to look at the spot where the Garda officer was pointing. Beside the large stone was a flattened waterproof jacket of heavy rubberized yellow canvas, like those worn by fishermen and by some of the archaeologists on the bog excavation. The jacket’s right sleeve was spattered with blood. Ward pulled out a pen and flipped over the tag just inside the neck to see the owner’s name written in block capitals: MAGUIRE.

He hadn’t even had time to formulate any ideas about this strange turn of events when the mobile in his pocket began to ring. The duty officer reported that a Dr. Maguire had just rung, and would be coming in at three to give a statement on the Ursula Downes case. Not before time, Ward thought, looking down again at the blood-spattered jacket. He quickly returned to the house and finished up with the crime-scene team. As he climbed into his car, he found himself running through the questions they’d ask Maguire in the interview room. It was an elaborate form of negotiation—not unlike diplomacy or even courtship, he’d often thought—with each side trying to find out how much the other knew, how much had already been given away. His fingers thrummed a steady rhythm on the steering wheel as he drove the short distance to the excavation site. He hoped questioning the archaeology team wouldn’t take too long. He couldn’t wait to hear what Maguire had to say.

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