Page 8 of 56 Days
A relatively new phenomenon: members of the Gardaí ending up named and shamed on social media. The last one that got the attention of thehigher-upswas a video clip from a house party hosted by a known drug dealer, at which a Garda currently stationed in the district was a seemingly enthusiastic and friendly guest.
“I didn’t tell her I was aguard,” Karl says, as if such a thing was preposterous even though he’d managed to get locked in two sets of handcuffs during a sex game with a stranger whose visit to his house also constituted a breach of the country’s currentCOVID-19restrictions.
“Where did you tell her you got the handcuffs from, then?”
“I didn’t. We weren’t doing muchtalking, Lee, if you know what I—”
“Do even less of it now.”
Lee looks down at the second set of cuffs, which she’s still holding, and sees a mark in blue paint near the lock and two initials scratched into the metal by the hinge:E.M.
She shakes her head. “Seriously, Karl?”
“What?”
He looks up at her, at the cuffs in her hand, back at her face. He’s managed to bring his arms into his lap but is rigid in that position, like his entire upper body is encased in an invisible plaster cast.
“Don’t you ‘What?’ me. Youknowwhat. These are Eddie’s. Blue paint, initials. That’s what it said on the report the poor guy had to file because he thought he’d lost them.”
“He did lose them. He forgot to take them off thatcoked-upeejit we hauled out of the house party in Trinity Hall a few weeks back.”
“Youknowhe’s already on thin ice,” Lee says.
“Andyouknow why: he’s shit.”
“It wouldn’t occur to you to help the guy out a little bit?”
“Iamhelping him out,” Karl says. “Out of the force, because he doesn’t belong in it.”
Lee’s phone starts to ring.
The number on the screen belongs to the station on Sundrive Road, which instantly piques her interest.
Why would someone at the station be calling, when her and Karl aren’t due on shift for another half an hour?
And why not just hail them on the radio?
“Lee,” a male voice says when she answers. “We’ve got a problem.” She recognizes it as belonging to Stephen, one of the lads on the unit. “Can you talk?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Go on.”
“A call came in at the crack of dawn from our friend over at the Crossings, theone-womanresidents’ association. We assumed it was just going to be another waste of everyone’s time, so we, ah...” He clears his throat. “Well, we sent Ant and Dec.”
“You didwhat?”
Since the unit’s two newest members look like Confirmation boys and one of them is called Declan, they’d instantly earned a nickname inspired by the eternally youthful duo of TV presenters.
“We didn’t think it was going to be anything,” Stephen says. “Same one has been calling every other day to tell us her neighbors have friends over.”
“And what was it this time?”
“There’s a body in one of theground-floorapartments. And not apajamas-in-their-own-bed kind.”
“Fuck,” Lee says.
“Lucky for us, she called an ambulance too and Paul Philips was driving it. As soon as he arrivedon-scene, he realized what it was and told Ant and Dec that they’d better call Mummy and Daddy.”
Two green bananas, alone together at a crime scene, with no senior officer to tell them which is their ass and which is their elbow. The first memberson-scenein a potential murder investigation. Lee knows nothing more than this, but she can already see any hope of a successful prosecution getting further away with each passing, inexperienced second.
