56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard
Today
The street outside the main entrance to the Crossings has begun to buzz with activity. Lee’s reinforcements have arrived, along with the Technical Bureau—she can see a scenes-of-crime officer unloading equipment from the back of the van, and Tom Searson, one of the deputy state pathologists, suiting up nearby. She waves at him; he waves back. Strips of blue-and-white Garda tape flap in the breeze, the ends knotted around railings and lampposts and traffic cones. Uniforms mill about in shirtsleeves, despite the fresh chill of this early morning sun. There are a couple of rubberneckers standing with their arms folded across the road, but no press yet. Although with all this out here and nothing else going on anywhere in the country except for the nightly roll call of death from the Department of Health, it’s surely just a matter of time before they arrive.
She’s surprised to find that Garda Michael Creedon has been appointed chief clipboard-wielder of the outer cordon—a nice, clean gig with a mirage of authority—and she feels a warm ripple of pride at the idea that Karl might have done something nice and that it happened because he’d actually listened to her.
Or, her prayer worked.
Michael is talking to another uniform; when Lee gets close, she recognizes him. It’s Declan, mask hanging around his neck now, looking considerably less gray than the last time they met. She nods at him as she ducks under the tape and then, just as she turns her head away, catches the two of them exchanging looks. Blink and you’d miss it—literally—but its content may as well be written on their faces.
Michael: Tell her.
Declan: Fuck that, shut up.
She stops a few feet away and beckons Declan with a jerk of her head. There’s another silent conversation before he obeys.
Oh great. Thanks for landing me in it.
Don’t make things even worse.
“How did you get on in there?” she asks him.
A shrug, no eye contact. “Fine.”
“Did you touch anything?”
“I had gloves on.”
There it is.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Lee says. “Gloves leave marks too. And they can smudge prints or even destroy other forensically valuable evidence. But look, we all make mistakes. And you might be lucky here because if I had to call this right now, my guess would be that this guy drugged himself for shits and giggles and then fell through his shower door and hit his head. So maybe it won’t even matter. But you don’t get to decide what matters. That’s my job. So, tell me: What did you touch?”
A beat passes before whatever bravado was there falls clean away.
“I think maybe I made a mistake.” Declan clears his throat. “I know I did.”
“Well, don’t make another one now.” Lee looks at him expectantly, waiting.
“The showerhead was dripping,” he says. “I didn’t think, it was like a reflex action—”
“You turned it off.”
“Yes,” he says miserably.
She tries to picture the shower controls: a flat, silver lever that you’d push down to stop the flow of water.
“Show me how.”
He makes a fist and bumps it lightly against an invisible surface. In all likelihood, it was just the side of his hand that made contact.
“I’m sorry, Inspector.”
“Don’t worry about it for now. I could have done the same thing myself.” She wouldn’t have, but she might have done back when she was as green as him. “If things weren’t as ripe in there, you could have had paramedics going in, turning him over and whatnot, so we’d have a lot more disturbance to deal with than that. It’s the kind of thing you won’t do twice, so next time, when it really matters, you won’t make the same mistake.” She hopes it won’t really matter this time, for both their sakes. “Just be more careful in future. And well done for not upchucking your guts. Things were pretty grim in there.”
Over his shoulder, she sees Karl approaching. She dismisses Declan and steps away so she and Karl can talk without being overheard.
“What was all that about?” is Karl’s opening line.
“Nothing important. Where were you?”
“Car park. Basement level.”
“Anything interesting?”
“You need a fob to get in but the sensors let you out. Each space is assigned and there’s no vehicle in number one. But it’s not empty—the local Lidl is missing a trolley and that trolley is missing a wheel. Which makes me think—”
“It’s been empty a while,” Lee finishes.
“So either someone else took the car or there wasn’t one to begin with. We’ll have to wait for the CCTV to confirm. Any word from the management company?”
“Not yet. And if I don’t hear from them in the next five minutes I’m going to send a bloody car to the office. Emergency number my arse.”
“Are they”—Karl makes air quotes—“essential workers? Because if they’re not, there won’t be anyone there.”
“You know, I don’t think apartment one is a permanent residence. There’s hardly anything in there, no personal items, place barely decorated . . . I’m thinking it’s like an Airbnb. Which would tie with there being no vehicle, right? And no one noticing that this guy has been missing for the last two weeks. Maybe he wasn’t even supposed to be here. Maybe he got caught out when the lockdown came in.”
“Two weeks?” Karl makes a face. “Did you vom?”
“Looks about that long. Smells it, too. And your concern is touching, but no. You definitely would have, though.”
“This hungover, yeah. Probably. So what have we got?”
“Body of a male,” Lee says. “I think. Lying facedown in the shower. Kneeling, really. Glass door completely shattered—safety glass, so pebbles of it are all over the show. Head wound, currently a maggot buffet breakfast. Consistent with him falling through the shower door and hitting his head on the bathroom wall.”
“So an accident?”
“Maybe.”
“Was the shower on?”
“No,” Lee says after a beat. Technically true. The drip-drip-drip of a not-quite-turned-off shower does not a shower make. “And guess what he has in his medicine cabinet? You’ll love this: Rohypnol.”
Karl raises his eyebrows. “What the hell is he doing with that?”
“Falling through shower doors is my guess.”
“But why would you roofie yourself?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Lockdown boredom? Maybe he doesn’t like banana bread. What’s bothering me is that the door to the apartment was unlocked, open an inch or so.”
“So?” Karl shrugs. “He could’ve just let the door close behind him whenever he last entered the apartment and didn’t realize it wasn’t locked.”
“And he was dressed. In the shower.”
“The shower he fell into, probably.”
“Maybe.”
“There’s always something that doesn’t fit,” Karl says.
“Either way, we have an officially declared crime scene. I’ve already called the Super. He’s at the station. I think he’s thinking accident too, but also that it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
“Did you tell him about Tweedledum and Tweedledee?”
Lee shakes her head, no. “It didn’t come up.”
“It will. Shite always floats to the surface eventually.”
“That doesn’t mean I need to reach in and pick it up with my bare hand in the meantime, does it? What about the door-to-doors?”
“Just started,” Karl says. “Everyone’s home, so they’ll be a while.”
“What are we asking?”
“Do they know who occupies apartment one, when did they last see them if so, anything suspicious or out of the ordinary in the last few weeks, yada, yada, yada. Your standard fare. I think it’s five questions, total.”
“How many have we got on it?”
“Three pairs. One per floor.”
“Did you remind them to stay outside? To talk to them from the corridor? To wear their masks?”
“What am I, their mammy?” Karl’s gaze fixes on something over Lee’s shoulder. “Hold up. Who’s this Instagram account come to life?”
Lee has no idea what that means, but when she turns she sees a man approaching Michael at the cordon. Late twenties, suit and tie. Chunky silver watch. A glimpse of novelty socks. Everything he’s wearing is fit so snugly that she fears she could be committing a sex crime just by looking at him. How does he sit down without ripping the seams? How does he get into them in the first place?
“If that’s not an estate agent,” Karl says, “then I’m a teetotaler. Why do they always dress like they’ve a much better job?”
“To promote feelings of wealth and trust. Property is the most expensive purchase you’ll ever make. And I just had to go into a closed space during a pandemic to look at a putrefying corpse that’s been cooking for a couple of weeks, so maybe leave the estate agents alone, eh?”
Michael is pointing at her and Karl, sending the too-tight-suited man hurrying over to them.
“Kevin O’Sullivan,” he says. “Viva Property Management.” He goes to extend his hand, then catches himself and aborts the move, then takes a step back again for good measure. “Sorry, I keep doing that.” He looks around. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”
“You’ve got a decomposing body in there,” Karl says flatly.
“Mr. O’Sullivan.” Lee takes a half-step forward, planting herself firmly between the two men before Karl can say any more. “I’m Detective Inspector Leah Riordan and this is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Karl Connolly. We received a call this morning about an odor coming from apartment number one, whose front door was also unlocked. When we arrived, I’m sorry to say that we discovered a deceased individual inside. They appear to have been there for some time.”
Kevin manages to look both horrified and transfixed.
“Shit,” he says, putting a hand to his mouth. Stop touching your face, Lee thinks. “What happened?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“But is it, like, a crime?”
“We’ll soon find out. Can you tell us who lives there? ID-ing the deceased and notifying their family is our top priority at this point.”
“Ah, yeah . . .” Kevin roots inside his suit jacket, pulls out some folded pages: a spreadsheet of names. He scans them. “Ah. Actually, no, I can’t tell you—I don’t have an individual name for that one. It’s a corporate let, rented by KB Studios on Baggot Street. I think they’re architects . . . ? They’d know who’s in there. Who, um, was in there.”
Lee looks at Karl, who nods and steps away.
“Meaning what?” she says to Kevin. “They just rented it for a few weeks, a month?”
“No, they’ve had it ages. From the start, I’d say. That’s almost two years ago now. They have two. It’s a twelve-month lease but they use them themselves for shorter stays.” As he talks to her, his eyes keep straying over her shoulder, to where she knows the Tech Bureau van is parked. “Just to have at their disposal, you know? Relocations, visiting clients, that sort of thing. Someone could stay three months or they could stay a night.”
“What about cleaning? In between stays?”
“Yeah, they’d have that,” Kevin says. “Organized through us. But not at the moment. Not since lockdown began.”
“Talk to me about CCTV.”
“We have it, yeah.”
Lee resists the urge to point out that she knows that, that she can see with her own eyes the fish-eye cameras mounted around the complex.
“I’ll need to see it,” she clarifies. “The footage.”
He hesitates. “Am I, like, supposed to show it to you? Don’t you need, like, a warrant or—”
“That’s just on TV, Kevin.”
“Oh.” He blushes. “Right. I’d, uh, have to go get the footage for you. It’s monitored off-site.”
“And how long would that take?”
“They’re out by the airport so maybe an hour for me to get there and back? But I don’t know how long it’ll take to download. How much do you need?”
“How far back does it go?”
Kevin frowns, thinking. “Seven days, maybe?”
“I’ll take as far back as you’ve got, all cameras. If anyone stops you, tell them the truth and give them my name, okay? Here.” She fishes a somewhat battered, standard-issue business card from inside her blazer and hands it over. “Show them that. Is there an on-site maintenance person, someone who’d have access to any locked doors, know how to disable the fire alarm, that kind of thing?”
“We have a guy,” Kevin says. “He’d be on call.”
“Can he come here right now? We’ll need his assistance.”
“I’ll tell him to.”
“As quick as he can, okay?”
Kevin nods firmly like he’s just been tasked with a life-saving mission, and turns sharply on his heel.
When he’s gone, Karl rejoins her, sticking his phone back into his pocket.
“So KB Studios is indeed a firm of architects,” he says. “The office number is redirecting to the mobile phone of a receptionist who’s at home. She doesn’t know anything and she says that kind of info is with the office manager. She’s going to get him to ring me back.”
“We’ve got a problem.”
Karl snorts. “Just the one?”
“The CCTV only goes back seven days.”
“Well, if it’s an accident, we won’t need it. And that’s still, what? Nearly a hundred and seventy hours of video we’ll have to watch? I can hardly wait.”
Lee sighs. “And here I was thinking I might treat myself to a curry and veg out on the couch tonight . . .”
“Why? Because you’re overdue a break from your hectic social life? You know, I was thinking this morning, Lee—have you even noticed we’re in lockdown? Like, how has your life changed, actually?”
“When were you thinking this? Was it before or after I had to get your naked arse out of two sets of handcuffs?”
“We’d both be a lot more emotionally scarred if they’d been anywhere near my arse.”
“Thank God for small mercies.”
“So, wait, we have no ID? Was there no wallet or—”
“There’s an envelope in the letterbox,” Lee says, remembering. “But if it’s not a permanent residence, it’s probably not even for him. Could just be junk.” She nods toward the building. “Let’s go check.”
Karl motions toward the cordon. “After you, boss.”