A Carra King by John Brady Page A

until they’re outside. Say he’s been blathering away with the few jars on him. Money talk. Fellas go out with him. ‘Give us a lift there, will you…’”
    â€œEasy done, all right,” Minogue said.
    Malone eyed the body for several moments.
    â€œWell-to-do, you know,” he said. “Lots of stuff , like. The watch, the clothes. You know the Yanks, the way they are, the way they look. Maybe Shaughnessy’s pulling tenners out of his wallet all night. So it’s a local. I say we’re going to find two fellas, two drinking partners. They wait their chance, wallop him, follow through — maybe in a panic, or pissed — finish the job. Then they decide to hide the body back up in Dublin. Where it belongs, to their way of thinking?”
    Minogue thought of the American tourists he’d first seen as a kid. He’d been mesmerized by the diver’s watches, those expanding metal watchbands, the tanned, hairy forearms. Perfume, the jaws always going on them. And now? He’d seen video cameras the size of paperbacks, outdoor gear and packsacks with pockets and straps for everything. Still the big, capped teeth, the ready smiles, the ponderous way a lot of them walked. All overweight? Swaggering? How they seemed to occupy that part of the path or the space where they stopped to look around.
    Maybe Mr. Patrick Leyne Shaughnessy had seriously pissed off some unemployed, restless and angry young fellas, men very goddamned fed up of hearing about a booming economy, fed up of watching tourists pulling endless amounts of cash out of their wallets.
    Donavan was looking over. He pointed to Shaughnessy’s head.
    â€œThis abrasion up here by the right side of the temple,” he said. “That starts at the cheekbone in actual fact.”
    Minogue stepped back to the table. Malone, his face tight, followed.
    â€œFalling, you could guess,” Donavan added.
    Minogue couldn’t see any difference in colours where the skin was scuffed. Hanlon manoeuvred around him. Lots of blows say rage, drunken; panic: the basics here.
    â€œHow many times was he hit?” he asked Donavan.
    â€œWell, now. You have the base of the skull fractured, with bits of it up here. See those little bits on the x-ray there on the right?”
    Donavan picked up a scalpel and examined the blade.
    â€œWe have corresponding scrapes here on the right side of the head as he went down. I would hazard a guess that the first blow sent him to the ground. Defenceless, maybe even mortal. An iron bar?”
    Hanlon leaned over the side of the table and snapped three pictures. What hitchhiker would be walking around with an iron bar handy?
    â€œSo other blows landed after he went down. Here’s a pattern on the side of the face that backs that up.”
    Minogue followed Donavan’s finger. Kevin helped to turn the head.
    â€œBut, thing is, there’d be more to it — a collateral fracture even — if he was hit on cement now,” Donavan went on. “Or a roadway. I don’t see, I don’t recognize, gravel or tar here yet.”
    Minogue’s mind slipped away again. Shaughnessy opening the boot lid: he’d have heard someone step up behind him? A word, a shout? He hadn’t raised his arm to fend of the blow. Drunk? He looked at the board. Shaughnessy was a hundred eighty-three centimetres. That was just over six feet. Hit hard the first time, Shaughnessy would have gone forward and down at the same time. The spots of blood on the underside of the hatchback looked like the outer edge of a spray pattern, fair enough. It could also be from clumsy, strained efforts to shove Shaughnessy into the boot. Eighty-nine point something kilos, about two hundred pounds: over fourteen stone? Well that’d take lifting. For an instant Minogue saw a pack of teenagers flailing at Shaughnessy.
    He looked down at his notebook.
    â€œCan I take photocopies with me today,