The Nameless Dead by Brian McGilloway Read Free Book Online

the wounding was unusual. He wasn’t sure.’
    ‘Turn his head a little,’ Ryan said. He reached across for a thin throat probe, then used it to brush back Cleary’s hair from the wounding. From such close proximity, I could
understand the confusion. There seemed to be several small wounds, closely packed together, all quite deep, but encircled by a red ring on the skin, perhaps two inches wide.
    ‘There’s none of the burning one would associate with a gunshot wound at close range. But the relative tightness of the wounding pattern would suggest this was a close-range
shooting.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘So, I’d say your killer used a silencer. And not a particularly good one; either old or homemade.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘The baffles inside a silencer help to trap the expanding gas as a bullet is fired,’ Ryan explained, sitting back on his haunches. ‘That stops the sound, but also slows the
bullet. If the baffles aren’t aligned properly, the bullet can strike them inside the barrel and shatter. In that case, you get this kind of pattern; several tiny bullet wounds from each
particle, rather than a single bigger wound. Misaligned baffles suggest something old or homemade.’
    ‘The silencer would explain the lack of burning tattoos on the skin too,’ Hendry offered.
    ‘And the lack of reports of gunshots from last night,’ I added.
    Ryan nodded. ‘Silencers tend to leave erythematous wounding rather than abraded, at close range; the disproportionately wide red ring on the skin is typical of it.’
    ‘I was just thinking the same thing,’ Hendry said to me, earning a dirty look from Ryan.
    ‘You can put him down now,’ he said, grunting softly as he stood. ‘Of course, the redness also suggests vital reaction; his body trying to heal itself. It wouldn’t be so
pronounced in immediate death.’
    ‘Meaning?’
    ‘He didn’t die instantly. He was alive for sometime after he was shot. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Maybe more.’
    ‘How would a gunshot wound to the head not kill him instantly? Especially if the shooter is skilled enough to be using a silencer.’
    ‘Probably the bullet shattering before impact,’ he said, his hands at his side.
    ‘Wouldn’t people have heard him screaming, if he took that long to die? There are houses all around.’
    ‘The force of the shot may well have stunned him, then he died slowly over a period of time. But I suspect we’ll find he bled out as the heart kept pumping.’
    A SOCO who had been working to our left called Hendry across.
    ‘The wallet, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve pulled loads of fingerprints from it.’

Chapter Eleven
    Hendry and I stepped out of the playground while the SOCO team got to work, combing the site for evidence. We stood in front of the tarpaulin while I had a smoke.
    ‘So what’s the story on the dig for his old man?’ Hendry asked.
    ‘They got a tip-off a while back. They’ve walked the site and brought in a dog. They were planning on digging today but their diggers were burnt out last night in an arson
attack.’
    ‘On the same night Cleary himself was shot? No such thing as coincidence.’
    ‘Did you see his interview?’
    Hendry nodded. ‘Quality viewing.’
    ‘We thought the attack on the island might have been prompted by it.’
    ‘So might this. Maybe someone did get in contact with him. Someone who wasn’t too happy about the case being reopened.’
    ‘Yet the Commission were tipped off. So someone involved in the killing wanted to come clean.’
    ‘And someone else didn’t.’
    I reflected again on what Costello had said to me the previous evening.
    ‘Do you know Jimmy Callan?’ I asked. ‘His name was mentioned in connection with Declan Cleary’s killing in ’76.’
    Hendry shook his head. ‘He was a suspect, mind you, but he was a guest of Her Majesty’s at the time. Of course, that doesn’t mean he didn’t order it from the inside. He
was heavily involved back then; he’d have had any number of people