We present an extract from In Plain Sight, the new thriller by Joseph Birchall.
Darcy has always dreamed of joining the serious crime detectives of the NBCI. She finally gets her chance to prove herself on what should have been an open-and-shut case—but it quickly turns into a race against time to stop the multiple sadistic killings of women on the streets of Dublin...
Darcy had been to many crime scenes, but none like this. This was different. In the Domestic Violence unit, emotions were always high, and there was a wildness at every location. Now, there was nobody shouting or yelling. There were no raised voices or threats of escalating violence.
Reaching the top of the stairs was like stepping through the doors of the National Library. Even Mick spoke in a hushed tone as he stopped and looked around him.
'You don't have to say anything in here. Just watch and take in as much as you can,’ he told her, his voice almost a whisper.
He took a few steps forward and then stopped.
‘Look,’ he told her.
Darcy looked into a bedroom. It initially looked like a spare room, but there was an empty glass on the bedside locker and the bed was only half made. She nodded to Mick that she understood, and then they moved on.
"Most of the activity was focused through the last doorway on the right. People in white overalls went about their business with competence and care, ignoring the two detectives on the landing. A flash of light pulsed from the room into the corridor: the photographer recording every detail from every angle. Photos that would be later hung on a board in an incident room.
There were three people in the room when Darcy entered. All three were dressed in white coveralls. One man was taking photographs, another was dusting for fingerprints and the third, a black woman, was removing a hair from a pillow with tweezers. These things Darcy saw only in her peripheral vision. Her focus was on the body on the bed.
The forensics woman looked up. She was wearing a face mask, but her eyes squinted into a smile.
‘Well, if it isn’t Columbo Kelly himself!’ she said.
‘Nobody calls me that anymore, Fifi,’ Mick told her.
An image of the 1970’s American detective TV show popped into Darcy’s head, but she couldn’t see any similarities between Mick and the cigar-smoking Columbo.
‘I heard you were dead.’
‘Stolen Property Department,’ Mick lied.
"Really? Who’d steal you?’
Mick turned to Darcy. ‘Detective Darcy Doyle, let me introduce you to Dr Phoebe Pepple.’
‘Call me Fifi. You’ll forgive me if I don’t shake your hand.’
Darcy said nothing, but continued to stare at the naked, lifeless body lying face-up on the bed. This was the same woman in the photos on the stairs who had looked so … so … alive. It was a stupid thought, she knew, but she couldn’t think of a better word.
She gazed at the red line that ran along the circumference of the woman’s neck, the laceration open slightly like a small crevice in the snow. The woman’s face was paler than her short blonde hair, her blue eyes frozen in a stare as if caught in a photograph. They stared away and behind Darcy like those of a blind person. Darcy followed her gaze.
‘Does she talk?’ Phoebe asked Mick.
‘She’ll be alright in a minute,’ Mick said.
‘You were right,’ Darcy said. ‘Her hair has been cut off."
In Plain Sight is published by Poolbeg Press
