A June of Ordinary Murders by Conor Brady Page A

wouldn’t we?’ His voice trailed off as he realised that he was building on thin air.
    Lafeyre beckoned to the detectives from the door of the examination room. He led the way to where the two bodies lay on steel tables, draped in white sheets.
    Four steel examination tables stood against the wall under a battery of electrically powered lights.
    The medical examiner had wrung the cost out of the Under-Secretary’s office in Dublin Castle. ‘What one smells may be as important as what one sees in a post mortem,’ he had argued with the senior accounting clerk who had challenged the cost. ‘The fumes from the old gas-burning lights negate the olfactory senses – you can smell nothing.’
    The clerk, who saw himself as a moderniser, accepted the argument and approved the outlay.
    Two bundles of clothing sat on a side table. Swallow recognised the man’s jacket and trousers from the park. All the items had been labelled and tagged by Lafeyre’s assistant. The child’s trousers and jacket and the light shoes he had been wearing made up the smaller bundle.
    Lafeyre tied a rubber apron at the neck and waist and began the examination of the woman’s body. Under the strong electric light Swallow saw that she had been well nourished and healthily formed. The pallor of death seemed to add years to the face, but the smooth limbs and torso were those of a young woman in her physical prime.
    Lafeyre or Scollan had cleaned the bloodied face so that in spite of the knife wounds Swallow could begin to imagine her as she might have been in life. The features would have been handsome and regular, the skin smooth. The lips were firm and well-formed. Swallow could imagine a lively young woman smiling or laughing with her son. He felt his anger stir at the destruction, the waste of beautiful life.
    Pat Mossop opened the murder book and started to write as Lafeyre began his commentary.
    â€˜The time of death, judging by the degree of rigor mortis when I examined the body, I’d say was around 10 to 12 hours previously. That’s roughly between, say, 10 p.m. on Thursday night and early on Friday morning. But I can’t be any more certain. The warm night could perhaps slow the process.
    â€˜Cause of death was the wound to the temple. This one … it certainly looks like a bullet entry, but it’s an unusual bullet…’
    â€˜What’s that supposed to mean?’ Swallow asked.
    â€˜I’ll try to tell you in a moment. First, let’s see the damage.’
    He indicated to his assistant who stepped forward with a heavy steel saw to section the skull. After a few minutes of noisy work he put away the implement and removed the forward section. Almost like quartering an apple, Swallow thought.
    Lafeyre took his magnifying glass and a steel spatula with which he probed the now-open skull.
    After a moment he put down the probe and took up long, surgical tweezers which he inserted into the open cavity. A few seconds later he withdrew the instrument and deposited a flat-headed lead slug into a small, steel kidney dish.
    He resumed his narrative for Mossop.
    â€˜The diameter of the wound on the right frontal lobe is six tenths of an inch. The wound penetrated three and a half inches into the brain so death would have been instantaneous.
    â€˜At the extreme site of the wound I have located and withdrawn a bullet. It is a little distorted but not flattened. It appears to be of a medium calibre with a flat point. I would estimate it to be a .38 or .32 calibre.’
    He reached for a small glass bottle on a shelf behind him and held it by thumb and index finger in front of Swallow and Mossop. It was filled with a clear, pinkish liquid. Then he swabbed the wound and the eye sockets with small pieces of linen and placed them on a series of glass slides on the table. He watched and waited for perhaps a minute. He turned to Mossop as if to ensure the book man was getting all