Blood Floral

BLOOD FLORAL

Chapter One

Dr Ríona Kane ran her thumb lightly back and forth over the blade of her steak knife. The serrations on the knife’s edge were subtly shallower than average, and she found herself idly speculating about the throw pattern it would produce in a stabbing. She grimaced. If she hadn’t already known that her date was going nowhere, distraction this early in the evening with thoughts of blood spatter would be the fatal – no pun intended - confirmation. Especially if the date happened to pick up on the distraction and asked her what she was thinking. Especially if she then happened to tell him. Which she likely would. She took a quick glance around the restaurant and wondered if she could get away with surreptitiously sliding the knife into the handbag at her feet, and asking for another, claiming it had been missing from her place setting all along. She’d really like to take a closer look at the shallow metallic notching in combination with the slight curvature... With any luck it might even result in an update to the blade database back at Forensics Science Ireland.

She pressed her lips together to suppress a smile, imagining what her boss Donald would say in his prim Oxford-educated accent if he found out she’d brought yet another sharp object into work for study and cataloguing. “I thought we agreed that keeping an array of dangerous weapons lying around the office is a generally bad idea. Is that not so, Dr Kane?” Ríona had only been at FSI for six months but sometimes she thought that the forensics lead was rather starting to regret luring her away from her position at Glasgow University.

A sudden swell in the general noise of the restaurant jerked her back from her wandering thoughts and she tuned back into her date’s conversation for a moment. Just in time. Iain, looks-wise a happy cross between Keanu and Emmanuel Macron - according to

her friend and co-worker, Susie – had paused and was smiling in what Ríona interpreted as an expectant manner. She chanced a short laugh, tilting her head to one side to demonstrate engagement, and was pleased when his face lit up and his smile broadened. She felt almost sorry at not giving him more of a chance, but she really didn’t have time in her life for a relationship, and he was just not giving her casual encounter vibes. For starters, the romantically lit restaurant on Wicklow Street in the city centre had been his choice, a significant escalation on the casual drinks Ríona considered most appropriate for a blind date. The hostess had shown them to their damask covered table set deeply into the pretty bay window. It was lightly raised up from the rest of the restaurant on a dais. No doubt the best position in the place, but Ríona just felt as though she were in a fishbowl. A fishbowl with a background soundtrack of cutlery clinking on plates and low murmuring hum of conversation with Iain’s voice rising and falling above it all. He’d been carrying the conversation, no doubt about it, telling her about his sessions as a psychologist in… Meath? Malahide? Maynooth? Definitely an ‘M’ place. She gradually became aware that there was another expectant silence from the other side of the table.

“Oh, I’m sorry?” she said, dragged back into the conversation. He was staring at her, his smile faltering a bit as he waited for a response. “I didn’t catch that?” she added hopefully.

“I said… how are you enjoying being back in Ireland?”

“Um, well I haven’t been back that long really. It’s been… fine” she said.

“Fine…?” he lifted one eyebrow quizzically, the word hanging in the air to encourage her to elaborate.

“Yep.” She raised her wineglass to her lips, an action he politely mirrored. Good grief. Perhaps between her lack of people skills and his ability to carry a one-sided conversation, they were a perfect match after all. Her other hand gripped the polished handle of the steak-knife tightly under the table. She was so bad at this.

“You seem distracted” Iain said carefully. “If you don’t mind me saying?” His earnest eyes watched her patiently from the other side of the table. Much like a predatory owl she thought irrelevantly, remembering the documentary she’d seen on RTE on ambush hunters. He cleared his throat.

Don’t ask. Don’t ask. She eyed him back with a resigned foreboding. Susie - the closest Ríona had ever come to having a female friend - had hung pointedly around her office that afternoon issuing well-meant pieces of advice. One of these had been, “And there’s simply no need for the conversation to drift towards blood as a topic, Rí, do you know what I’m saying?

If he asks you more about what you do for a living, you could just say you work in a lab, or you work with the Gardaí, or…”

“I’m not going to lie, Susie” Ríona had mumbled, barely looking away from the image of a bloodstain on clothing that she had enlarged to maximum magnification on her computer.

“No, no, not lie… Just distract. If he tries to delve deeper, just start talking about something light-hearted. Music! Or art…” Her voice had tailed off as she eyed the various prints of classic blood spatter patterns punctuating the walls of the forensics office. “Music!” Susie finished on a deliberate light-hearted note.

Ríona briefly considered bringing up the unoffensive muzak playing in the background as a topic but there didn’t really seem a lot to say.

Iain was twinkling at her now, attractive creases at the corner of his eyes, all resemblance to a watching barn owl gone. “I’m a great listener if you need to talk about what’s on your mind? I am a shrink, after all…” This last was said with a chuckle.

Ríona mentally shrugged. He’d asked so she was going to tell him. She lifted her chin slightly before she answered. She wasn’t remotely ashamed of who she was, or what she did for a living. She happened to think it was important enough to occupy most of her attention most of the time. “I’m actually thinking about this knife” she said defiantly, lifting it from her lap and holding it up in the air in illustration.

“Oh…” he said uncertainly, not edging back from the table yet but certainly visibly considering it as one of his options