Death in the Black Wood, Oliver Davies [short story to read TXT] 📗

strike gold with your NAS searches, then it might be a good idea to have more data amassed ready for earlier checks too. You’ll be sending the whole thing to Anderson if that happens, right?”

“I will, yes. If we’re right, and at least some of these sprees are being run by the same organisation, it’s too big a case for one area, or even one district to handle. Anderson can request some research assistance and get more searches run in a fraction of the time it’s taking me.” I approved of their initiative wholeheartedly and told them so. “Just don’t spend more than a couple of hours on it for now. We still don’t know if we’re all wasting our time on a dead end or not yet.”

They both just smiled at me knowingly, as if they thought I knew something they didn’t.

“Seriously,” I added firmly. “It’s just a hunch and we all know how many times those fail to pan out.”

“Ours, or yours?” Caitlin asked innocently. “Because those seem to be two entirely different sets of odds from where I’m sitting, Conall.” I just shook my head at her and went to fill up my water bottle before heading back to settle in at my desk until lunchtime.

Our preliminary pathology report on Dominic Chuol came in just before three. A thorough examination of tissue samples from internal organs had given the pathologist a total body decomposition score that pointed to the victim being killed, most probably, at some point during Monday night. It had not been possible to corroborate this finding by other methods as there was no evidence of insect activity, and the other available means of estimating time of death were of no use by the time the body was discovered.

Carbon monoxide levels in the blood and the percentage of serum carboxyhaemoglobin both indicated that death had occurred prior to burning. The lack of digestive material in the stomach and intestines indicated that the victim had been starved for at least a week prior to death. He was also severely dehydrated. Preliminary drug tests had been inconclusive but further samples of plasma and bone tissue were undergoing analysis. That didn’t surprise me. Opiate based prescription painkillers, such as hydrocodone, were no longer detectable in urine after two to four days and left the blood even more quickly than that.

Death had been due to exsanguination although deep damage to the brain tissue caused by the piercing of both orbital sockets had probably happened simultaneously during Dominic’s last moments alive. There were no identifying prosthetics within the body, which had been dressed in only a pair of track suit trousers made of a common polyester/cotton blend. The remaining pieces of material from the weapons inserted through the eyes had been identified as Diospyros crassiflora, West African ebony.

The report went on to state that the victim had suffered several injuries during their childhood years, and the pathologist concluded, from old bone damage, that he had been severely beaten on more than one occasion. Dominic had also had a couple of close calls between the ages of twelve and fourteen. Damage to the skull area beneath the scar on his forehead was consistent with a grazing hit from a bullet, as was the more serious damage to the upper left femur and surrounding muscle tissue, which might explain the limp. Those two injuries may have occurred almost simultaneously, eight or nine years ago. He’d also received a deep, slashing cut to his left humerus, about halfway between the shoulder and elbow about a year before that. There was no indication of any recent sexual assault. Deep abrasions into the tissues of the wrists and ankles indicated that he had been restrained for at least several days and material fragments from in and around the mouth area were most likely from internal and external gagging. Cloth and duct tape, respectively.

Christ! Our victim had not had an easy time of it growing up or, given what we knew of his time in the UK, since then either. No wonder the poor devil had needed painkillers. I looked through the x-rays and PMCT scans attached to the report. Old, repeated fractures to the ribs were highlighted with close ups of the damaged areas of bone. The scarring of the old bullet wound to the femur was circular, indicating a direct impact, whereas the skull wound appeared to have been more of a keyhole fracture, not as deep. As the report had said, a glancing blow. A few inches difference and that shot would certainly have killed the boy.

The minimum intensity PMCT projection of the chest area that Davie had promised to ask for was startlingly clear. The cuts that had been made had been deep enough for the tissue beneath the burned skin to yield a clear, recognisable pattern to them. The cuts ran in three vertical columns, each one with a clear top-to-bottom cut intersected by shorter horizontal and diagonal lines, some branching out only to the left or right from the central cuts and others transecting them.

I’d seen enough Ogham inscriptions on old stones in Ireland to make those markings look very familiar. Was this actual Ogham script or just a random approximation of it? Well, Shay could answer that question for me quickly enough. He’d known that alphabet since Uncle Diarmuid had first shown it to him when he was seven. I sent him two emails, the first with only the image of the cuts attached and the second with the full report. He called me almost immediately.

“This first email,” he said, “you’re right, it is Ogham script.”

“What does it say?”

“Bottom to top, our three columns read ‘first moon, black heart, black wood,’ in Irish.”

“So our killer knows Irish and knows the Ogham alphabet?” That was good to know. It should certainly cut our suspect list down considerably, but my premature hopefulness was very short lived.

“Not necessarily, Con. There are all sorts of free online translators that can do that kind