Page 18 of The Dead Come to Stay

“It might be worth looking into the club, anyway. It’s called Lime Tree Greens. Wagner’s son works there, too.”

“Are they suspects?” Gridley asked.

“Not yet. But add them to the list of people surrounding Foley. Where are we on next of kin for Foley?”

Andrews waved a hand. He was nosing over his tablet and chewing his bottom lip. “Nothing. I mean, nobody. No mother, no father, no siblings. Actually, no Ronan Foley earlier than 1998.”

MacAdams picked a stale doughnut, then put it down again.

“Explain.”

“Well, his ID card tells us he was born in Belfast in 1962. I put in a call to Ireland’s General Registry Office, but they

don’t have a birth record for a Ronan Foley in Belfast.”

“Have you checked the driver registration?” Gridley asked before stealing the doughnut MacAdams had his eye on. She took a

chalky bite before continuing. “To get a driving ID, you have to have a public services card and verified government ID. And

if you don’t have those, the list is long—he’d need his personal public services number, at least. Someone’s got to have his

details.”

“Tommy, chase it. Also, one of you poke around more in Burnhope’s past. Let’s see if we have any more like the Eton near-miss.”

MacAdams had been trying to capture the important pieces on the incident board. Sophie, Ava, Stanley and Fresh Start. Foley

as a dark horse, friendly to single mum Trisha, had a mystery lady leaving things in his flat, but was otherwise a bully who

couldn’t get on with authority. Burnhope had said “work-life balance”—an odd thing to remark about a now-deceased employee—and

it stuck in MacAdams’s mind. Was the murder in question business or pleasure related?

“Phone, boss,” Gridley said, “Struthers. He wants you to come down—says he’s got something you need to see.”

Please be useful evidence , MacAdams thought.

“Green? Prepare the interview rooms and get Arianna and Evans in here.”

“On it,” she said, and MacAdams slipped out the door. It was better to go it alone, anyway. He needed to call Annie.

“It’s me,” he said when she’d given the flower shop’s singsong greeting.

“Oh! James—is everything all right?”

“It is. I need a favor.”

“Goodness, certainly. But you never ring me; gives me a heart attack. I always think someone must have died.”

“Listen, I need some insight into architecture and commercial real estate for a case. I thought maybe Ashok—”

“Oh my God, James! You’re calling and you want to speak with Ashok?”

“Sorry—”

“Are you kidding? It’s wonderful. Hold on...” In the distance he heard her shout “Ashok! It’s James.” MacAdams pressed

his phone to his forehead as if that would recall the situation. “Okay, I’m back. He’s just coming down.”

“Annie, please, I’m about to walk into the morgue,” he said.

“Ah. So someone has died. But you want to speak to him?”

“I do. I would like to, when—”

“Wonderful. We’ll have you to dinner. How’s Thursday?” Her voice was fainter as she asked, “Ashok, Thursday—that works for

you, doesn’t it?” MacAdams had reached the elevator and, if he were very lucky, the end of wireless service.

“Tuesday,” he said, as the doors closed. Thursday might almost be too long to wait. The call dropped, the doors opened and,

for once, MacAdams was almost happy to see the hallway leading to Struthers’s lab.

“Hello, James! Sorry to bother you at luncheon,” he said, waving a home-packed sandwich on the side table. MacAdams wondered,

not for the first time, what sort of childhood trauma made for a good coroner.

“Is this about the murder weapon?” he asked.

“Partly, yes. And something else. Right this way—I’ve been experimenting.

” Arranged on a steel tray was a curious menagerie: a hammer, a long lead pipe.

.. and what appeared to be a fancy ashtray.

“I’ve been trying to find a match for our wounds using an assortment of random objects, comparing their weight and force to what we saw in the damage to Foley’s head. ”

“Not the hammer,” MacAdams hazarded.

“Very good! Serviceable, yes, especially from a long-armed assailant. I thought it might make sense of the downward-glancing

blow. Alas, as you note, the wound is much too broad.” Struthers picked up the lead pipe. “This was no better; whatever struck

him wasn’t a uniform shape like this. Not the way to crack a coconut.”

“A what?” MacAdams asked.

“Coconuts! Cantaloupe are better for shape and weight, but I needed something closer to five on the Mohs’ scale of hardness.”

MacAdams had a fleeting curiosity whether Jo would know what the Mohs’ scale was. Probably she would, he decided.

“I needed something heavy enough to do the deed in a single blow, but still do more damage at one corner,” Struthers said.

“I used to golf, you know. Had a whack with a heavy iron. It does damage, but still not the right kind.”

“So not a golf club?” MacAdams asked, halfway to calling in a search of Lime Tree Greens. Struthers wagged a finger.

“Cracks the shell, but the wound is all wrong. Weird as it may seem, this came closest.” He handed the glass ashtray to MacAdams.

“It’s heavy enough,” he agreed. “But—”

“But ashtrays don’t make good murder weapons, eh? I agree.” Struthers sighed.

MacAdams looked at the object in his hand. Ungainly. Yes, he could probably wield it, but it would be better as a missile.

“Do you think someone threw it at him?”

“I do not. You lose a lot of force that way. But—” He took it back and swung it downward, for effect. “Say your opponent is already down. On his knees, maybe. Or you are on higher ground. That would do it.”

“You’re saying this is my murder weapon?”

“I am not ,” Struthers said, taking it back. “But heavy glass would do the trick, and might explain the complete lack of residue, fiber

or filings in the wound. People have been killed with all sorts of strange objects. I once presided over a man done in by

a tennis trophy.”

MacAdams wasn’t sure coconut smashing counted as forensics, but it proved one thing at least—

“No one plans to kill someone with a thing like this, do they? Planners use practical, surefire weapons.”

“Unpremeditated, you mean?” Struthers asked.

MacAdams nodded. “If the murderer used something like this, they chose whatever was to hand.” He looked at the chunk of glass,

thinking of the modern glass sculptures populating Ava’s music room. Defensive, wasn’t she? Ready to deny all knowledge of

her husband’s business—and his partner. He’d found it hard to believe then. Now that suspicion took a slightly darker hue.

“You said you had something else to show me?” he asked.

“Two somethings. We’ll start with the curious and graduate to the strange. Come have a look.” He led MacAdams to the table

with his sandwich, a small cardboard box—and a microscope. “First, your golden earring. I’m shocked it wasn’t pummeled to

bits by our boots. Lucky anyone noticed it.”

He lifted the tiny object from the box and placed it on a piece of black foam. MacAdams judged it to be about the size of

a pound coin, maybe smaller. Sort of a half-moon shape, it had been adorned with filigree work.

“Very pure, maybe twenty-four or twenty-six karat. That’s called box construction, according to our jeweler friend. More specifically , ‘open-work S-curve crescent with an arabesque design.’” Struthers turned it sideways, to show the “box”; the earring was hollow,

like a basket.

“Does that help us identify it?” MacAdams asked.

“That’s the curious bit. The design, I’m told, was popular in Egypt and North Africa, Spain, India and Turkey... in the

eleventh century.”

MacAdams’s attention to the objet d’art had wandered, but this news recalled it. He stared again at the exotic-looking disk.

“You’re telling me that’s a thousand years old?” he asked.

“Well, the design is. There’s no hallmark stamp, and you can’t carbon-date gold . It might have been made last week to mimic the design. In any case, it’s a pricey piece, handmade and not mass-produced.

If you know an antiques dealer, they might be able to say with more certainty.”

In fact, MacAdams did know one. He made a mental note to see if jewelry was one of Gwilym’s many specialties.

“I don’t suppose this jeweler friend had any guesses as to who might have made it?” MacAdams asked.

Struthers shook his head. “None he knew of—he reiterated how rare it was, then actually suggested we seek out a museum professional.”

MacAdams sighed. Curious , yes, but not especially helpful. “All right, show me the strange .”

“Ah. You know those white patches noted by DS Green? Not vitiligo. I’ve performed a few tests, and it’s true, the skin has

been damaged. But it’s not an abrasion, disease or fungus.”

Struthers indicated the microscope, and MacAdams peered through the lens at tissue on a slide. At high magnification, he saw

mainly ridges. When he came up for air, Struthers was smiling giddily.

“The tissue has been severely dehydrated after death,” Struthers said. “And punctured by crystals. Does that help?”

MacAdams looked back to the sample. “It doesn’t.”

“Freezer burn,” Struthers said, and MacAdams blinked hard. It had just called up the brown-white of beef left too long in

the back of the icebox.

“You’re telling me the body was frozen?”

“No, the damage would have been everywhere. I’d say it was packed in ice—and not dry ice, either. That freezes too hard and fast for crystal formation. Shame, actually, since dry ice is harder to get hold of and easier to track.”

MacAdams pushed his hands out in front of him, as if that would make it easier to catch the stray thought that kept buzzing

around inside him.

“This doesn’t make sense. Someone killed him after midnight, then packed him in ice, then dumped him in a ditch before 3:00a.m.?

Why bother? It wouldn’t be long enough to disguise the time of death, would it?”

“Not really,” Struthers agreed. “Rigor mortis sets in a few hours after death and lasts at least twenty-four.”

MacAdams made a four-cornered circuit of the lab. It clarified nothing. The midnight-to-three window remained.

“Is there anything else to determine exact time of death?”

“Stomach contents.”

“Fine.” MacAdams tapped his fingers against the steel table. “See what you can do to narrow this down.”

“Will do,” Struthers said, peeling his gloves off and making advances on his sandwich.

MacAdams left the long hall feeling far less buoyant than he had on arrival. Shoving a bunch of ice bags on a corpse (in a

rainstorm), maybe dealing a blow with glass sculpture; it made no real sense.