Second Burial for a Black Prince

Chapter One Click! On, the front porch security light. Click! Open, the distrustful eye of Mary Murtagh upstairs in her bed. "Jack, wake up, Jack, will you? There is somebody down at the door." The doorbell rang, making an honest woman of her. "Jack!" "Sweet Jesus, Mary, what time is it?" "Ten after two." Another hawk of the bell, like a whiskey cough in the night. "Get up, Jack, in the name of God!" "I'll do anything within reason, ma'am, but I won't get up out of this bed." She dumped herself heavily onto the floor. Flat-foot patter over to the window, screwing her face into focus. Clunk of a skull on the window pane. Rales of labored breathing. "Merciful hour, Jack, it's a black man!" "Sure, the King of the Congo. You're dreaming, woman!" "Black as yer boot, Jack, I swear to God. Oh Jesus, he's blood all over, Jack, and he's falling down. Get up, Jack!" Sergeant Molly Power belonged to the Murder Squad of the Garda Siochana, the Irish Police Force: in literal translation, the Guardians of the Peace. It was March and peace was doing fine: business was not brisk. Perhaps, the Irish being very religious, the assassins had given up murder for Lent. So Molly, all out of murders, was being usefully redeployed in patrol cars. It was four o'clock in the morning. She had been useful since midnight, being driven around the South Dublin seabord by Garda Tommy O'Brien, instead of being at home asleep in the arms of Jan-Hein Van Zeebroeck, her darling young Dutch art-expert husband of nearly nine months whom she still loved frantically and forever. The shift was midnight to 6:00 a.m. Midweek in March, not much had been happening. A break-in at an off-licence in Dun Laoghaire. A maternity false alarm at Glenageary---wind probably, Molly thought. Then a handful of raucous teenagers to be dispersed from under somebody's window. These were young and not drunk. Mere sight of the police car was enough to send them scuttling home to their mummies. Most trouble had been an alleged suicide off the east pier, who turned out to be a bona fide midnight nippy-dipper with attitude, lots of attitude. They had stood on the windswept pier for forty minutes discussing the American Constitution and FDR's Four Freedoms, one of which, apparently, covered nude bathing in the dark. The radio crackled. "One-sixty, where are you?" "One-sixty here. Killiney Hill," O'Brien answered. "Good. Make for Loughlinstown Hospital, okay? Something about an African guy attacked. Bad scene. Sawed his leg off, or something." "Jesus, tonight!" He looked at Molly. She nodded. "Peel right, Tommy. We're on it, Control. Okay. Out." She was with him when he died, vaguely hoping to get a statement. A nice-looking boy, about her own age, gentle, brave, so very lonely, full of faith. It affected her deeply. Mid-morning. "Cut the leg off him, Inspector, and dumped him on the Dublin Mountains. I don't know how he got as far as that house." "Was he conscious, Doctor?" "When he got here, hardly. Said his name, Chat or Chad or something. That's all. He was dead in a few hours. Loss of blood. Irreversible shock. I'd say the shock was as much moral as physical. Just the horror of what had happened to him. I let your girl go into him. I doubt if she got anything." Inspector Jim QuilNugent, Andrew is the author of 'Second Burial for a Black Prince' with ISBN 9780312327613 and ISBN 0312327617.