Time of Death (Detective Jack Brody Book 2), page 1
TIME OF DEATH
A DETECTIVE JACK BRODY NOVEL
J.M. O’ROURKE
Published by Inkubator Books
www.inkubatorbooks.com
Copyright © 2023 by J.M. O’Rourke
J.M. O’Rourke has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-83756-073-8
ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-83756-074-5
ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-83756-075-2
TIME OF DEATH is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
CONTENTS
Inkubator Books
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
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PROLOGUE
Tamara always looked better as a woman than she ever did as a man. She was exotic, sexy, irrepressible and enigmatic. An illusion, a sensual powder keg, the star of her very own rollicking, X-rated extravaganza, and every man’s wet dream. She was a comet across the sky, or in this case along the city streets, a ball of sparking effervescence, completely impossible to ignore. She loved it all, loved the eyes of every man that burned into her, making her come alive. And Tamara liked that, especially when the straight men hit on her.
But all this attention did have its drawbacks. Like now. Tamara was convinced that someone was following her. It happened occasionally. After all, even the most exotic of flowers drew maggots. But it was little more than a feeling, like a soft breath on the back of her neck. She stopped more than once, feigning looking in a shop window, her eyes scanning the reflections of those behind her. And when she thought she saw the person loitering there, a tall man in a belted raincoat and flat cap, she quickly turned. But he was nowhere to be seen. Where are you hiding, my little chickadee? Afraid to show yourself to Tamara? That, she could understand. Of course, perhaps he hadn’t been there at all.
She smiled, banishing it from her mind. It was early. The night was still young. She had options. Then again, Tamara always had options. She thought of those options, of what Dublin had to offer when darkness fell: the secret places, the hidden places, the dangerous places.
But still, she couldn’t quite shake it, that feeling, looking over her shoulder now and then but seeing nothing there except the bobbing dark outlines of pedestrians, nondescript and featureless, like extras in a movie.
She continued, her knee-length red boots making a clicking noise on the pavement, like tinkling glass, and her short sequinned dress clinging to her like a coating of sparkly paint, her hair an explosion of blonde curls falling about her face and halfway down her back.
No, the night was not over yet.
She crossed the junction of South Great Georges and Dame Street, went into the warren of back streets that was Temple Bar. At this hour, being the middle of the week, Dublin’s party quarter did not heave as it did on weekends. Still, they were always there, and a couple of wolf whistles followed her as she moved, radiating white heat into the cold, night-time air. She stepped off the pavement and crossed the cobblestone roadway, concentrating on maintaining her balance on those nail-thin stiletto heels. She entered a side street, the lights from along the river spilling through at the other end. A little way in she heard heavy footsteps coming from behind, echoing in the narrow space between the walls.
She glanced over her shoulder: so, the tall figure in the belted raincoat with the flat cap was real. Because he was standing there. And with a clear view now she recognised who it was.
Him.
Him!
Tamara stopped.
‘What? You? What’re you doing here? And why are you following me?’
He stepped closer… and laughed.
She saw something in his right hand catch the light and glint.
He laughed again, his face half in shadow.
‘W-what?’ Tamara suddenly felt afraid, very afraid. ‘What’ve you got there?’
The laugh shrivelled into a twisted, malevolent smile. ‘Can’t you tell?’ He held it up. ‘This is what I have here.’
The knife was long and wide, with a serrated blade tapering to a fine point.
‘Pleeease.’ Tamara hated the pathetic pleading to her voice. ‘W-why?’
‘Why?’
His expression was one dredged from a pool of pure evil.
‘Can’t you guess?’ Taking a final step towards her. ‘Can’t you fucking guess?’
1
Blue and white crime scene tape was strung high across the entrance to the alley, tucked in behind anchor plates in the old wall, pulled down and crossed to form an X, each end tied to a traffic cone at the bottom on either side. A uniformed sergeant with a clipboard in one hand stood on the pavement outside, while the other nudged aside the fragile tapestry to allow Detective Sergeant Jack Brody, Detective Garda Steven Voyle and Nicola Considine of the Major Crimes Investigation Unit to pass through. Brody recognised the sergeant, Con Murphy was his name, and if he remembered correctly, he played guitar in a rockabilly band at weekends. Which explained the ’70s sideburns. Murphy checked his watch and wrote the time down on his crime scene log sheet fixed to the clipboard.
‘Well, if it isn’t. You know how long we’ve been waiting for you lads to show up?’
‘What’s the hurry?’ Voyle said, nodding into the lane. ‘It’s not like he’s going anywhere now, is it?’
Considine bristled. She was chalk; Voyle was cheese. ‘Gobshite,’ she muttered under her breath.
‘What’ve we got?’ Brody asked.
The sergeant used his pen as a pointer. ‘Body of a deceased male, naked, appears to have a single deep laceration to the neck. The scene’s relatively clean. Not as much blood as you’d expect. My guess is he was killed elsewhere… or maybe not, could have bled out into the drain, there is one. Who am I to say? Dr Mc Bain and the Technical Bureau are en route. Reported by an anonymous 999 call to Pearse Street. We kept our distance, didn’t get too close… that’s it, short and sweet, for now.’
‘Good,’ Brody said, and to Voyle, ‘Stay here, and see what else the good sergeant has to say.’
He indicated for Considine to come with him, and they started into the alley. Sugar Lane it was called, and well known to every officer in the city’s South Central Division. A row of four-wheeled green and blue bins were along one side against a wall, the favoured depositories for empty handbags, wallets and purses stolen in street muggings. Suspects also partially discarded their clothing in these too, usually T-shirts and hoodies, in an attempt to alter their appearance before re-emerging onto the street again. The bins often proved to be a treasure trove of DNA.
There was no breeze, and the air stank of stale grease and meat from the air ducts at the rear of the fast-food restaurants backing onto the alley. Brody could feel the stench wrap itself around him like cling film. He resisted the urge to pinch his nose. A vile, milky brown liquid leeched from one of the bins nearest the corpse, trickling its way between the cobblestones and mixing with congealing blood like a sandbank on a crimson tide. They stopped, leaving a good distance between themselves and the cadaver. Until the doc and the Technical Bureau got here and finished their work, this was not his crime scene. It was theirs.
Brody opened his suit jacket and clamped his hands on his waist, thumbs to the front, a rigid, studious posture rather than one of comfort. The body looked like it could have been dropped out of a clear blue sky – except for the gaping wound to its neck, that is. The sergeant was right, a relatively clean scene. Brody swung his eyes up and al
‘I can’t help but think…’ Considine said, but her voice trailed off, and she didn’t finish the sentence.
‘Yes, you can’t help but think what?’
‘The victim. The skin, boss… look how smooth it is. I mean, it’s smooth, isn’t it?’
Brody peered at the body and thought the skin was nothing but grey and stiff and dead, with the exception of a couple of dark patches along the bottom where it touched the ground and where the blood had pooled. He did note something, however. The body was hairless. Completely Brazilian.
‘See, smooth,’ Considine said. ‘See?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Well, I do. I think it’s really smooth.’
‘Maybe. But I see something else.’
Considine craned her neck.
‘It’s got no hair,’ Brody said.
‘Oh, shite, so it doesn’t. Not a smidgen anywhere, be God. He shaved it off?’
‘Or someone else did.’
They turned at the sound of a commotion from behind. Brody saw Voyle gesture to a man beyond the crime scene tape, then shout at him, ‘Stop. Don’t come any further.’ But the man paid him no heed and began to pass one long, spindly leg through the crime scene tape, attempting to follow with his head but becoming tangled up like a fly in a spider’s web instead. Voyle pushed him back roughly. A little too roughly. But how was Voyle to know the man weighed less than a paper bag? That he would stumble back and fall onto his arse? All of which he did. Two pedestrians on the opposite pavement stopped for a gawk, one taking out her iPhone, ready to capture this unfolding scene of police brutality. Brody and Considine hurried over.
‘Whaddya think you’re up to?’ Voyle shouted.
‘A very good question if I say so myself, officer, oh yes.’ The man had a surprisingly soft, cultured voice, containing a certain gravitas that stopped Voyle in his tracks. As the man struggled back to his feet, Voyle extended a hand over the tape that somehow had stayed in place, and helped him up. The man brushed himself down. Voyle could smell the alcohol fumes from him, pungent and hot like a desert wind.
‘Yes, a very good question indeed,’ the man said, without any hint of hurt or rancour. ‘As Oscar Wilde once said–’
Voyle had already ceased to be impressed by this character’s gravitas or anything else. ‘I’m not interested in what Oscar Wilde had to, or had not to, say.’
‘–he said,’ the man continued, ignoring Voyle, ‘we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Oh yes, some of us are looking at the stars. That’d be me.’
The man narrowed his eyes as he looked to Brody and Considine.
‘Hm, the firing squad, is it? I’d like to speak with the head bottle washer if I could. Or the head chef, whatever you want to call him, or her.’
‘Why, have you something to tell him?’ Voyle snapped. ‘Because we’re busy.’
‘My good man, despite appearances and perceived misconceptions on your part, I’m a busy man too, yes indeed I am, and can assure you that if I didn’t have something of great importance to say, then I certainly wouldn’t be bringing myself to the attention of the forces of law and order in the first place, now would I? No, sir, I would not.’
‘What’s your name, fella?’ Voyle asked.
The man’s rheumy eyes looked from Voyle to Brody, as if sensing who the chief bottle washer was. His appearance wasn’t as slovenly as first appeared, Brody thought. He wore chuffed but smart brown moccasins and green corduroy pants, a plaid beige and brown shirt with three buttons open at the neck, inside it a burgundy woollen scarf. Everything fitted together, even if in a jumbled way, but it did fit together when you looked closely, a matching mismatch ensemble. Stringy grey hair hung down from his head like cords on a damp mop, hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a while. His cheeks and nose were red.
‘My name?’
‘Your name,’ Voyle confirmed.
‘Ernest Clarke, but my friends call me Ernie. You can call me Ernie, oh yes.’
‘OK, Ernie,’ Brody said, stepping through the crime scene tape with an economy of movement and physical deftness that befitted his prowess as a world-class boxer. The gawkers on the other side appeared bored now and had started to move off. ‘What have you got for me?’
‘What have I got for you? Well, I haven’t got anything specifically for you. I mean, I have nothing to declare in this great big world of woe but my genius, to use another Oscar quote, sort of, or in practical terms, to use my own, only what I am standing up in. But in that is a great freedom, yes there is.’
‘Tell him to piss off, boss,’ Voyle advised.
The man looked at Voyle.
‘Ignore him, Ernie,’ Brody said. ‘You were saying?’
‘What I was going to say is that I saw a car. The car from which the body, which is now lying down there at the bottom of this lane, was removed from, dumped, whatever. Yes indeed, I did. And then I went to a public phone box, oh yes, one of those still exist, beside the taxi rank, and I rang the emergency services.’
That got everybody’s attention.
‘Wait,’ Voyle said. ‘That was you? You rang it in?’
‘Certainly I did, oh yes.’
‘Why don’t you come with myself and my colleague,’ Brody said. ‘We can talk about this in the comfort of our car.’
The man’s mouth turned down at the corners.
‘I could insist,’ Brody added.
Ernie Clarke was an alcoholic. That much was obvious. And Brody realised his name was vaguely familiar to him, but he didn’t know why. And Ernie was a skipper, a term not denoting a person who is a commander on the high seas, oh no, but in this case a denizen of the great outdoor spaces of the city, a poor unfortunate who lived on the streets. Not literally on the streets, usually he secured a bed at one of the city’s homeless shelters. All he had to do was show up by a certain time each night and he was more or less guaranteed a bed. Except for when he didn’t show up, that is, those times when he still had money for booze and didn’t have to worry about a little inconvenience like where he was going to sleep for the night. Because alcohol was the great, if temporary, remover.
‘I was in the lane,’ Ernie said.
‘What time?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t own a watch, don’t see the point in watches myself; watches are–’
‘Where’d you sleep?’ Voyle was sitting in the driver’s seat and anxious to move things along.
‘Why, in the lane. I just told you, oh yes.’
‘I mean where exactly in the lane. Don’t be a smart arse.’
Brody shot Voyle a look, easy.
‘He doesn’t have a very good attitude,’ Ernie said, ‘your colleague there. Does he?’
Brody ignored that particular, if accurate, observation.
‘If you could answer, Ernie, please,’ Brody said.
‘In a bin, of course, where else, Detective? I would have thought that was obvious.’
