The Death of an Irish Tinker

Chapter One

Chains

Glencree, County Wicklow
August

Peter McGarr had not always been afraid of heights. In fact, he had not known that he was. But this was different.

He was perched 175 feet up -- Miss Eithne Carruthers had said -- in a giant sequoia that without a doubt had been taller before lightning had struck, shearing off its top and creating what amounted to a nest in the remaining bowers.

It was she who had noticed the crows circling the top, she whose dog had found a human hand by the trunk, she who had rung up the Murder Squad a few hours earlier.

McGarr looked down into the nest.

At first glance it looked as if some immense prehistoric carrion bird had dined upon a sizable repast. Many of the bones were bleached, the skin dried out, the flesh well past the first foul reek of decomposition.

But yet there lay what had been a human being.

Naked on its back with arms and legs stretched out, it had an iron -- could it be? -- cangue around its neck, like something from the ancient Or ... read full excerpt from Death of an Irish Tinker, The ebook