Death to Pay Read Free

Garden Party. The back bedroom measured nine feet by seven and contained an old wooden single bed that had been slept in recently and not made up. Perhaps this was Billy’s room after an evening on the cans. It was nothing out of the ordinary for the average working class Belfast family. It was apparent that all the action had happened downstairs.
    As Wilson descended the stairs, Moira was talking to a young woman clad in a white plastic over suit in the hallway. The woman was carrying the obligatory black doctor’s bag.
    ‘Boss, this is the pathologist, Professor Reid,’ Moira stood aside.
    ‘Detective Superintendent Ian Wilson,’ he proffered his hand. ‘Where’s old Carmody?’
    ‘Somewhere up the Zambezi,’ Professor Reid took his hand. ‘Gone for a year at least to help our African colleagues discern the cause of death of their stricken citizens.’
    Wilson sized up the new pathologist. She was about thirty-five, had a good figure, and she was certainly attractive. She wore her curly blond hair short. Her skin was either naturally sallow, or she had recently acquired a tan. Either way her skin colour contrasted very well with her blond hair.  ‘You look too young for this game. Most of our pathologists have been old codgers.’
    ‘Your reputation precedes you, Superintendent.’
    ‘All good I hope,’ Wilson said.
    ‘Probably deserved,’ she lifted up her bag. ‘Now that we’ve observed the preliminaries, perhaps we had better get to work.’
    ‘ I thought you were spoken for,’ Moira said as soon as Reid was out of earshot.
    ‘What?’
    ‘There was more than a bit of flirting going on there. I don’t think your very pregnant partner would appreciate it.’
    ‘That American psychologist boy friend of yours is having a negative effect on you.  I suppose it could simply be the Catholic upbringing that sees sin everywhere you go. Get Peter on the phone and have him organise the house-to-house. Harry can set up the murder book as usual. I was thinking of making you SIO on the next murder case, but this one is too big.’
    ‘What’s with the crowd outside? And he’s not my boy friend.’
    ‘If you want to continue to work in West Belfast, you’re going to have to get up to date on your Loyalist iconography. That dead woman was once one of the most powerful women in this community. She headed the Shankill branch of the women’s UVF, and she was at the front of every demonstration that took place in the 1970’s and ‘80’s. Her husband, Billy, who is currently in the Royal Victoria Hospital where we are going next, was also a major character in the UVF but even more importantly her son, Sammy, is the current bull goose in this area.’
    ‘That’s why the crowd?’
    ‘That’s why the impending evening demonstrations just around the corner will make the fracas about what flag is flying over City Hall look like a church picnic. Get on with the phone calls.’
    Moira moved to the front door while Wilson returned to the living room. A forensic technician was photographing the body and the room in general. Professor Reid was standing by the door.
    ‘No problem with cause of death,’ she said as Wilson joined her.
    ‘But I want to know what particular blunt object caused it and I want to have a decent idea of what time it happened. Her husband will be no good on time of death. Whoever killed her sent him bye byes. How soon will you have her out of here? I’m a bit nervous about the crowd. The sooner we have these people back in their houses the better.’
    She nodded at the photographer. ‘As soon as he’s finished we can bag her and tag her.’
    ‘And I want those photos on my computer first thing tomorrow morning,’ Wilson saw the photographer toss his eyes towards heaven but decided to ignore him. He turned to Reid. ‘You’ve covered a lot of these cases.’
    ‘You mean why didn’t I throw up like half the people who’ve seen her?’
    Wilson thought of Moira’s reaction. ‘Sort