If I Never See You Again (6 page)
Backed up in the traffic at the Griffith Avenue crossroads,
she rang Gerry in Justice but got straight through to his answering machine. She left a message reminding him of a case in which an accused man had got a suspended sentence from the courts after being found guilty of perpetrating an aggravated rape on a twelve-year-old schoolgirl. ‘The judge accepted the defence’s case – that the child’s school uniform constituted an act of provocation,’ Jo said, signing off. ‘Separate Legal Representation, Gerry. Call me.’
Jo steered to the back of the fire-brigade training grounds, past shells of buildings called ‘toy shop’ and ‘fireworks factory’ that were burned out regularly for the exercises, and pulled up beside three Portakabins ring-fenced at the back of the grounds, which looked more like a used-car sales lot than the city’s morgue. Two of the prefabs were used by the state pathologist for admin purposes; the third was where autopsies were carried out. Jo sighed as she parked the car. The use of the premises had been ‘temporary’ for the best part of a decade, but if the families of the victims whose lives had been cut short by violence could see just where they’d ended up, there’d be uproar. In Jo’s eyes, it was typical of the Justice department’s ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude to victims.
The team was waiting for Jo in a squad car outside. Mac and Sexton were tucking into full Irish breakfast rolls, but Foxy had declined all food offers, even a cup of tea. The morgue’s ‘canteen’, as it was jokingly referred to by staff, consisted of a toaster and a kettle on top of a photocopier in the crammed admin cabin. ‘On The Run’ logos on the wrappers on the food told Jo they’d picked up breakfast in a garage up the road.
‘How’d you get on? Was it our man?’ Mac asked, as she climbed into the passenger seat.
Sexton, behind the wheel, turned sideways, waiting for Jo to answer.
Jo was not amused. ‘A bloody wild-goose chase, as you already bloody well know, Mac,’ she said, twisting back to face him ‘And you can wipe that smile off your face while you’re at it. You’re off the case.’
Mac looked around for some support, realized none was coming, opened the door and banged it shut after him. He stormed off, firing his breakfast roll at some wheelie bins as he left.
Jo pulled the door shut. Foxy unplugged a coffee from the carton tray balancing between the front seats and leaned forwards to hand it over to her. ‘I need to talk to you about what happened when I called to Rita Nulty’s mother yesterday,’ he said.
‘Why? What happened?’ Jo asked intently.
Sexton pointed through the windscreen to a young man with a neat trimmed beard in a white coat who was waving them into the post-mortem Portakabin.
‘You can fill me in later,’ Jo said, taking the coffee from Foxy and holding it clear of her best clothes as she climbed out.
After gowning up in white Tyvek jump suits and skimming the area under their nostrils with scented Vaseline, they filed into the neutral grey cabin. The space measured thirty feet by forty-five, and contained five fridges, each of which could hold three bodies. A shore in the ground drained the sluices slicking in through a grid. Three stainless-steel slabs on wheels gave the business of death a conveyor-belt feel, though, in actuality, only one post mortem was carried out at a time.
Standing over Rita Nulty’s remains was Professor Michael
Hawthorne, the white-haired state pathologist who’d been the country’s foremost expert on murder and suspicious death for the last twenty years.
Jo had already briefed him on the circumstances of death over the phone. It was Hawthorne’s job to tell her the probable time that Rita died, the age of the injuries, whether they were inflicted ante or post mortem, and how she died. Jo was also hoping for a description of the weapon used, the interval between wounds received and death, and drug or alcohol content in the blood. She had lost count of the number of PMs she’d attended. They were never easy – the smell was the worst part – but skipping them was a cop-out. Questions always came up when you were there witnessing it for yourself that would never have sprung to mind otherwise.
After the PM, Rita’s face would be ‘naturalized’ to ease her family’s distress and in order to be able to obtain a more ‘lifelike’ photograph for the records. Her hair would be cleaned and combed, her face washed, the lips coloured with carmine in alcohol and a little rouge applied. The lividity stains would be powdered over with talc. Eyes were only fixed open when a body hadn’t been ID’d, so that posthumous photographs could be released to the public.
But, right now, Rita appeared to be the last thing on Professor Hawthorne’s mind. He was scrolling agitatedly on a mobile phone which, based on his comments, had just alerted him to the details of a hit and run he was expected to attend at the first opportunity. ‘Bloody waste of bloody time . . .’ he grumbled. ‘I mean, what do they think I’m going to do – rule out drowning, a knife in the back or bloody poison in a clear-cut road death? As if resources aren’t stretched to the limit as it is! You know what my main
function will be when I arrive there? To pat the hands of the gardaí and say, “There there, everything will be all right!” I’ve had the country’s biggest drug lord in a fridge over there since Monday, and it’ll be Thursday at the earliest before I can get to him.’
He flicked a switch on the wall and the
enfant terrible
of Irish radio, Gerry Ryan, started ranting in the background about how the only thing bullies understood was a smack of the fist.
‘This one doesn’t exactly require rocket science either,’ Foxy said, leaning back as he pointed to the laceration just right of Rita’s breastbone.
Jo nudged him in the ribs. Hawthorne was very easily wound up, and Foxy knew it.
‘Actually, the X-rays showed us that the knife fell short of the heart,’ Hawthorne replied, hooking his index finger into the wound and poking around, nodding to himself in satisfaction.
Jo raised an eyebrow. A similar wound had been referred to in Stuart Ball’s autopsy report. She stared at Hawthorne’s fingers as they probed.
‘Cause of death: a sudden catastrophic drop in blood pressure caused by this’ – he pointed to the stump of Rita’s arm – ‘not this, I’m afraid,’ he finished, indicating a stab wound under Rita’s right breast. ‘The good news is, she would have passed out before death, and the level of adrenaline produced by the shock – probably from the point in time when she realized what was going to happen – would also have minimized the pain.’
‘Sorry,’ Foxy muttered, and ran for the door.
Jo sighed, still watching Hawthorne. He turned to a tray of implements and reached for the scalpel then sliced
through Rita’s chest like butter, making a wide V shape that tailed down her torso into the leg of a Y. He peeled and clamped back the layers, like meat. The sound of the ribs separating was like a creaking door. With a slippery scoop, Hawthorne manoeuvred out the glossy stomach, sliding it into a kidney-shaped dish and snipping it free then opening it with scissors, squeezing the contents out into the tray.
The stink hit all of them at the same time – sickly-sweet, like a bag of rubbish left in the sun combined with raw sewage. ‘Looks like her last meal was sausages,’ Hawthorne declared.
Sexton made his excuses and, looking grey and sick, also left.
‘Any defensive wounds?’ Jo asked, conscious that she was the only one asking questions now that it was just her left in the room with Hawthorne and his bearded assistant, who was working quietly in the background.
‘Absolutely none,’ Hawthorne said, re-examining the wrists. ‘Not so much as a bruise.’
‘How did the killer keep her still?’ she asked.
‘This is the interesting bit,’ Hawthorne said. ‘I managed to fast-track the blood tests because of your concerns over links to previous killings – of course, if we had our own toxicology unit, that wouldn’t be an issue. Bloody disgrace that we have to send them to Beaumount for preliminary screening, then the lab in Celbridge. Bloody weeks it takes! Pointless . . .’
The assistant coughed, and handed Hawthorne a sheet of headed paper listing the blood-test results.
‘Yes, I was just getting to that . . . the bloods showed up the presence of myrrh and gall.’
He stared at Jo’s blank face. ‘You Catholics should be
ashamed of yourselves. Like bloody sheep, practising blind faith, with no interest in the actual history.’
‘Myrrh and gall,’ Jo prompted. ‘I don’t quite see –’
Hawthorne paused, then sighed in irritation. ‘A combination commonplace in the Roman empire, and specifically during crucifixions. Don’t you remember John Wayne as the Roman centurion at the foot of the crucifix: “Truly this was the son of God”?’
Jo clenched her fists. She did remember, and she understood exactly why it was important.
‘The sponge passed to your King of Kings,’ Hawthorne continued, ‘was believed to have been soaked in myrrh and gall, which was used as an early form of pain relief. That’s what your killer was using on the victim. I expect he didn’t want her to pass out on him. By deadening the pain, he made the whole experience last longer for her, I’m afraid.’
‘We’re here in a formal capacity . . .’ he began, speaking exaggeratedly slowly, pausing until Jeanie’s pen stopped darting ‘. . . to give Detective . . . Inspector . . . Jo Birmingham the opportunity to appeal my decision to replace her as head of the Rita Nulty murder.’
Jo felt her heart rate quicken.
He’s laying on the formalities a bit thick
, she thought.
‘Now, the original situation has changed somewhat in that we did have a witness . . . who was prepared to claim Detective Inspector Birmingham had removed a sum of money from the crime scene . . .’ He poured himself a glass of water from a decanter, looked up to see if Jo wanted one and, when she gave a stiff nod, swiped Brown Tongue’s empty glass, filled it for her and handed it over the table. ‘Am I going too fast, Jeanie?’
Jeanie put her pen down and poured herself a glass of water.
‘You can insert the date and location of the scene when you’re typing this up. But the witness has now withdrawn his statement and suggests he must have made an error in judgement.’
Jo swallowed hard and put down her drink.
Foxy, you beauty
, she thought. Now at last she was in with a chance.
‘Now, however, we have some concerns about Mrs Nulty’s whereabouts,’ Dan went on.
Jo sat forward.
Jo opened her mouth to speak, but Dan was still in full flow. ‘However, until what happened to the missing cash . . . can be explained, the charges against Detective Inspector Birmingham remain in place. Until that time, I am going to recommend that Detective Inspector Gavin Sexton should take over the investigation into the recent murder cases. I understand he agrees with Detective Inspector Birmingham’s assertion that the cases are linked.’
Jo stood up quickly. Foxy had just given her the perfect get-out clause, so why did Dan seem so dead set on persecuting her? So much for any prospect of reconciliation. ‘Write this down, Jeanie,’ she said. ‘My reputation has been grievously impugned by the spurious allegations made against me in this sham of a hearing. As these allegations can no longer be substantiated, the suggestion that there should be any onus on me to prove what happened afterwards is untenable. Rita Nulty’s mother’s whereabouts are unknown. She’s now the only one who can corroborate my version of events, which is, in any event, no longer necessary, as Detective Sergeant John Foxe has withdrawn his statement. If I am removed from heading up this inquiry as Chief Superintendent Mason suggests, every one of my colleagues out there is going to believe the accusations against me have been substantiated. That is not just tantamount to
constructive dismissal, it’s slander and, make no mistake, I will sue.’ She paused. ‘Have you got that?’
Dan looked at her, stony-faced, then tilted his head towards Brown Tongue, who nodded slowly.
She tucked her paperwork under her arm and walked towards the door.
‘I heard you threw Mac off the team,’ Dan called after her. ‘I’ve told Merrigan he’s the replacement.’
Jo kept going. She may have won herself the right to hold on to this case but, in her head, she was drawing yet another line under her marriage.
‘Is that because I got the grub in, or because I’m still your boss?’ Jo asked.
‘What do you think?’ Foxy asked, putting his arm across her shoulders to give her a reassuring squeeze as she sat down.
She smiled at him, then shrugged him off. She didn’t want any schmaltz in front of this lot.
‘The food of course,’ Merrigan joked.
Jo glanced at Sexton. The shade of his skin suggested that he still hadn’t recovered from watching the autopsy, and he seemed distracted, gazing out of the window at the wide, cobbled street. The area had had a multi-million-euro facelift in the days when there was money for such things, and now sported hotels with marble floors and Art Deco-style interiors. But the horse traders still considered it their first home and converged here with hundreds of horses every
month, despite the protests of local businesses and the council.
‘They’ll have told you that old Mrs Nulty is gone AWOL,’ Foxy said. ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you this morning before the PM.’
Jo bit the top off a chip and reached for the vinegar. ‘It’s irrelevant, anyway. I felt something was wrong the second I met her. My gut is now telling me she doesn’t want to be found full-stop.’
Foxy wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin. ‘That’s a big assumption to make, Jo.’
‘You didn’t see her. Hard as nails, she was, and dodging questions left, right and centre. Surely at a time like this, with your daughter murdered, you’d do anything you could to help catch her killer?’
‘We don’t exactly have a good record with solving working-girls’ murders,’ Foxy replied. ‘The last three are still open.’
‘What’s your point?’ Jo asked.
‘I’m just saying that you’ll have to forgive Mrs Nulty if she doesn’t take us at our word,’ Foxy said, dipping a chip in his yolk.
‘Well, I’m in charge now, and Rita’s death will be treated no differently than if she’d been the Irish Country Women’s Association knitting champion, let me assure you,’ Jo said. ‘Sexton, can you concentrate on the interviews with the victims’ families? We’ve linked the victims in death. I want to know how well they knew each other in life. We need to establish why our man’s choosing these particular individuals to display his talents on, as against anyone else. Got that?’
Sexton, who looked unsure about the food in his mouth, gave her a thumbs-up.
‘How’d you get on last night with the working girls?’ she asked him.
‘I got talking to one of them, and she said Rita was working for the Skids,’ Sexton replied.
‘Fantastic,’ Jo said. ‘Now we’ve got three of our four victims linked to the drugs gang. Well done, Sexton. I wonder if we can link Father Reg to them.’ She clicked her fingers as she thought through the implications of what Sexton had told her. ‘That also explains why the coke in the apartment where she was killed was uncut. They hadn’t even mixed it with anything to maximize the profits yet. They trusted her.’
‘Do you think Bible John is a Skid?’ Foxy asked.
‘Not necessarily,’ she said, taking a mouthful of coffee and wincing. It was that instant muck and would leave a bitter aftertaste for the afternoon. ‘Did you find out if Father Reg had any brothers?’ she asked Sexton.
‘No brothers, and no friends resembling a pikey . . .’
‘I’ve been thinking about Father Reg,’ Foxy said.
‘Kinky!’ Merrigan cut in, ripping some salt sachets open with his teeth and scattering salt liberally.
Jo sighed. ‘Go on,’ she said to Foxy.
‘Maybe I’m off the wall, but it sort of struck me as a possibility from the word go. Father Reg ministered in Sheriff Street, right? Maybe Rita came and gave him a confession. Priests swear a vow of silence, don’t they? What if the killer found out Father Reg knew something?’
Jo nodded. ‘It’s possible. The location’s been bothering me from the start. By the way, I contacted the hospital on the way here, and Father Reg’s condition is still touch and go, so I’ve organized protection out there, just in case. We need him to talk to us as soon as he regains consciousness.’
‘Nice,’ Merrigan said, watching a girl walking by in a tight dress.
‘Merrigan,’ Jo said, ‘I want you on the door-to-doors on Sheriff Street with the uniforms. See if you can back up Foxy’s theory and put Rita Nulty in the confessional. And don’t start giving me excuses. Plus, you could do with the exercise.
‘Sexton, I want you to interview Anto Crawley’s wife and see what you can get out of her. Foxy, can you hit the library after this and find out everything you can about the killer’s Bible fixation? This is a personal crusade. If we can find out who he thinks he is, it may help us work out who he thinks his enemies are.’ She stood up. ‘Let’s aim to meet up in the station afterwards to compare notes. We’ve got Anto Crawley’s post mortem first thing in the morning, so we need to be on top of things by then.’
‘Here, what are you going to do?’ Merrigan asked.
‘I’m going to work out why the killer doesn’t like the Skids,’ Jo said, pulling the collar of her jacket up and stepping on to the street outside.
He kept his head down. It would be just his luck to be spotted deviating from the job Jo had given to him by someone from the station.
He glanced at his watch anxiously. Ryan was late. Sexton rummaged in his pocket for his mobile. If Ryan didn’t come soon, he would never be able to talk to Anto Crawley’s wife and get back for the next briefing.
His friendship with Ryan went way back. They’d gone to
the same school and palled around together for a few years afterwards, but they’d lost touch until Maura’s funeral, a year and a half ago, when Ryan came to pay his last respects.
Then, when Katie was abducted, Ryan had asked Sexton to investigate what had happened on the QT, so it wouldn’t appear in the papers. Sexton knew Angie, but he’d never set eyes on the little girl. But as soon as he saw her, he knew he couldn’t walk away, not since he knew Maura had been expecting a little girl. Ryan believed Crawley was responsible for Katie’s kidnapping, and had asked Sexton to show him where he had died.
He clicked his tongue as he hit a wrong digit on the phone’s keypad trying to ring Ryan. He was all fingers and thumbs today. He looked up and down the street again for any sign, gripping the phone tighter as he cleared the number to start again. The rattle of lorries hurtling by wasn’t helping, and neither was the fact that his sinuses were giving him jip and he was in dire need of the hair of the dog. He’d overdone it on the vino again last night, and his stomach was in shit from a staple diet of TV dinners.
‘You’ve got acid reflux,’ a quack had told him on a recent visit, before launching into a lecture about how he needed a biopsy and to start looking after himself but, first and foremost, what he needed most urgently was grief counselling.
‘Just give me the pills,’ Sexton had answered. What he had really wanted to say to the quack was that remembering to eat five portions of veg didn’t register when there was only room in his head for regret. Last night’s flashback had been a particular doozy. It was the putdown he’d delivered to Maura in what would turn out to be their last Christmas together. He’d been moaning on for months about being the
only breadwinner and how it was all very well her being a free spirit, but couldn’t she do it after hours? Next thing, she appeared with freckles drawn on her rouged cheeks, wearing a silly costume, and announced she’d got the perfect job, as Santa’s elf in the local shopping centre. He’d flipped, said something like ‘grow up’. He’d gone to watch her at the shopping centre after, staying at a distance so she didn’t know he was there, and had seen the way she’d brought a smile to people’s faces. She’d always had a gift when it came to making people happy. So why was she so unhappy herself?
Sexton felt his windpipe start to burn and rubbed his chest painfully. Hunching his shoulders, he scanned up and down the street again – still no sign of Ryan. He crossed the street to the warehouse, winking at the uniform keeping the cordon as he approached. Together they worked the rusting bolt-lock sideways, clanking the rusting door along on its rollers.
Natural light flooded into the opening, making Sexton wince. Inside was a long, narrow hovel. The brick walls had turned a slimy black from rusty water dripping down the sides; the floor was covered in different-sized mattresses partly littered with broken slates, glass and empty cans. As he took a step inside, the stink hit the back of his throat. It was like a dog’s coat drying.
He groaned, taking a step back.
‘Wait till you see what’s on the back wall,’ the uniform said. ‘I’m going to have to close this door, mate – regulation.’
‘You got a torch?’ Sexton asked.
‘There’s a light on down the back. Keep an eye out for the hypodermics – they’re everywhere.’ The uniform laughed. ‘If the syringes don’t get you, Weil’s disease will.’
‘Jesus!’ Sexton stopped as he reached the darkest part of the warehouse. Four metal shackles were set in the wall, the word ‘bitch’ spraypainted in between them. Was this where they’d held Katie? His stomach lurched.
Sexton’s eyes moved to a series of rusting implements. Hooks and serrated edges – shapes that were frightening just to look at – were set in holders along the wall. He walked over for a closer inspection. What had they been used for here? Something brushed his shoulder, and he turned and saw a hand.
He spun, swinging his arm back, fist back.
‘Woah!’ a woman’s voice said.
Sexton’s hand stopped mid-air. It was Jo Birmingham, who was looking as pale and drawn as he felt.
‘You scared the life out of me,’ he said, bending down and putting his hands on his knees.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked him icily.
Sexton took a couple of deep breaths. He wasn’t sure what had shocked him more: the state of the warehouse, or Jo being there. ‘I just wanted to see for myself where Anto Crawley died.’
‘I told you I wanted you to interview Anto Crawley’s other half. You should have cleared it with me first.’
Sexton reached for his Benson and Hedges and offered her one, aware that his hands were still shaking.
Jo noticed too. Taking hold of his elbow, she guided him out of the warehouse and into the bright light outside.
Jo looked around her, aware that, beside her, Sexton had sunk his hands into his trouser pockets and was shifting from one foot to the other. He looked wretched – his shirt was creased and there were broken veins under his eyes. But if he thought she was going to let him use that as an excuse . . .
‘Well?’ she said, when she was good and ready. ‘Are you going to tell me what the bloody hell you were doing in there?’
‘Detective Inspector Birmingham, isn’t it?’ he said, giving Sexton a quick nod. ‘I’m Ryan Freeman, and I’ve learned from a source that you believe Anto Crawley was killed by the same person who murdered Rita Nulty and Stuart Ball.’
Sexton flicked the fag on to the road and stared after it.
Jo looked at Sexton, noting his blank expression, then turned back to Freeman. What possible advantage to the investigation had the motormouth who’d briefed him thought they’d achieve, apart from scaring the public witless and telling the killer it was time to change his modus operandi?
She offered Freeman a stick of gum, which he took.
‘Sick son-of-a-bitch,’ he remarked, staring at the warehouse, as he folded the gum into his mouth.
Jo didn’t know if he was talking about the killer or the victim. ‘You lose someone to crime?’ she asked.
Freeman turned to Jo and shook his head. ‘So, can you give me a comment on the Anto Crawley killing?’ he asked.
Jo sighed. ‘Here’s what I don’t understand. If you’ve got a story, why haven’t you used it yet? What do you need me for?’
Freeman said nothing.
‘I don’t. I just thought you’d like the opportunity. And don’t look at me like that. What you and I do is not so very different after all.’
‘You know, my mum used to have this friend, and when she’d call around for a cuppa’ – Jo made a talking mouth with her hand – ‘it was “Such and such has cancer”, “So and so is having their house repossessed”. You know why? Because it made her feel like there were worse things than having four cats for company. Don’t compare what we do. You sell misery to make your readers feel like they’re having a good day.’
‘Funny that,’ Freeman snapped back. ‘Only my auld one used to have a brother. It was back in the fifties, and my uncle, he got himself into trouble for robbing a loaf of bread because he was hungry. Seven years old he was. He got a warning, but he was still hungry and he kept robbing – never the luxury stuff like chocolate, just what he needed to stay upright. Got himself sent to an industrial school for his trouble in the end. He was sodomized by a priest on and off for five years. He developed a stammer and had a lot of problems with incontinence from the damage done to him. When he was got out, he was a headcase, but he went to the bishop and complained. Your lot arrived at his door and threw him
in a cell for a night, where he hanged himself. The priest continued to fiddle with little boys until a newspaper ran his name, his photograph and his address to warn parents.’
Jo hunched her shoulders. He’d trumped her, and he knew it.
‘How about I give you some new information?’ she asked. ‘With quotes.’
Freeman’s eyes widened.
Jo waited till he’d his pen and paper ready then said: ‘As head of this investigation, I want to tell the killer I know he thinks what he’s doing is honourable.’
‘What?’ Freeman asked, looking up from his pad.
Sexton took a packet of Rennies from his pocket and put one under his tongue.
‘We’re dealing with a
muti
killer,’ Jo answered.
‘
Muti?
’
‘You know,’ Jo said, waving her hand, ‘the African tribal ritual of harvesting body parts in order to assume the victim’s powers . . . penis for sexual prowess, that kind of thing. The screams of the victim make the
muti
more powerful.’ She checked to see he was buying it.
‘Penis?’ Freeman said, alarmed.
Sexton nudged the base of his breastbone forcefully.
‘Not yet,’ Jo answered. ‘But it wouldn’t surprise me.’
Freeman pulled out his notebook and wrote something down.
‘You remember the case of Adam – when the torso of a boy was found on the Thames,’ Jo went on, watching Sexton rubbing his chest. ‘Cuts on the body, candles at the scene . . . exactly the same scenario as with our victims, did you know that?’
Freeman shook his head.
Freeman nodded, waved goodbye to her and Sexton then crossed the street and climbed back into his car.
‘What did you tell him that bullshit for?’ Sexton asked, as they walked away from the warehouse.
Jo took a couple of seconds to react. She was still staring at the spot on Sexton’s chest that he’d been rubbing. It had just occurred to her – she knew exactly who the killer thought he was.
‘Oi,’ Foxy protested. ‘They’re my Sal’s books. She’s been collecting anything to do with saints.’
But Jo had already found what she was looking for. Curling her finger, she indicated to him to follow her, throwing a look of intense irritation at Merrigan, who was on the phone telling his wife what he wanted for dinner.
Book under her arm, she led Foxy down the fire escape stairs, where she could be spared the sound of Jeanie on the Tannoy paging her to Dan’s office. Satisfied the coast was clear after a quick recce up and down the corridor, she ducked into the cleaning lady’s store room.
‘That’s him,’ she told Foxy excitedly, holding the book open for him at eye level. The room was so small she couldn’t fully extend her arms.
Foxy looked around awkwardly.
Foxy cleared some space between some toilet rolls and sat down on a shelf. Removing his reading glasses, he let them dangle from a string around his neck and adjusted the book to the spot in his vision where the painting became clear.
The image was of a robed Christ holding his tunic to the side of his chest to accommodate three bearded spectators straining to see his open wound. The nearest one was crouched up at eye level, prodding the flesh with his finger. He was the figure Jo had been pointing out.
‘
The Incredulity of Saint Thomas
: aka Doubting Thomas . . .’ She paused. ‘A work by Caravaggio.’
Foxy put his glasses back on quickly. ‘Jesus is telling him, “Reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.”’ He peered at Jo over the tops of his specs.
‘The wounds on all of our victims,’ she explained.
Somebody rapped on the door outside, making them both jump. Sarah, a female officer with a round, rosy-cheeked face, stuck her head around the door. Jo knew her from indoor soccer, though she hadn’t played with the team since Harry had been born. She didn’t have the time any more.
‘’Allo, ’allo,’ the officer said, giving Jo a wink. ‘Thought I saw you two lovebirds coming in here. You know the chief’s looking for you?’
Jo nodded. The messenger grinned and ducked back out.
‘I need you to get me everything you can on Doubting Thomas,’ Jo told Foxy. ‘Who was he? What did he do? And what is his relevance to our killer? Got it?’
Jo opened the door then stopped. ‘So that’s why the killer told Rita Nulty’s mother he was a priest’s twin!’
‘But what about Caravaggio? Is the killer taking a lead from him?’ Foxy asked.
‘I don’t think so,’ Jo said. ‘Caravaggio just helped me piece it together.’ She looked at Foxy. ‘What time you get to bed at last night?’
Foxy opened his mouth but Jo silenced him with a prod of her elbow because, after a quick rap, Merrigan had poked his head around the door.
‘Ho, ho,’ he said. ‘So this is the bolthole you’ve locked yourselves up in.’
Jo could tell from the smug look on his face he was pleased about something.
‘Just letting you know the boys from NBCI have just arrived and they headed straight for Dan’s office.’
‘Who’s there?’ Foxy asked, pulling the door open and pushing past him into the corridor.
‘Frank Black’s there, and he does not look happy,’ Merrigan explained with relish.
‘Well, he can bloody well wait,’ Jo said crossly, running her fingers through her hair. The National Bureau of Criminal Investigation was the force’s equivalent of the UK’s Special Branch and had subsumed the old murder squad. She didn’t need him or Merrigan to tell her that the NBCI’s arrival meant that her days heading this investigation were very probably numbered.
‘Did I mention a tray of tea and sandwiches was delivered in to the chief? You know what it means if he’s organized catering: he must have known they were coming.’
Jo stepped closer to him. ‘Between you, me and the wall, I think the killer could be black.’ She watched his eyes light up, ignored Foxy clicking his tongue behind her and went on. ‘Can you start cold-calling some of the refugee centres, see if you can round me up any possible suspects?’
Merrigan nodded with an open mouth, then took off like a man possessed.
Foxy was shaking his head.
‘Somebody’s been feeding the press, and I just want to see whether it’s Merrigan.’ She filled him in on how she’d found Sexton in the warehouse where Anto Crawley had been killed, and how she’d fed Ryan Freeman the same line. If Freeman’s source was Merrigan, he’d double-check it with him and get it corroborated, meaning that her red herring would appear in the paper.
‘You’re the only one bar me who knows who the killer thinks he is,’ Jo concluded. ‘And that’s the way I want it kept for now. Right?’
‘Without a team behind you, you’re peeing in the wind,’ Foxy replied. ‘Two of us won’t solve this.’
‘We may have to,’ Jo said. ‘I’ve got a horrible feeling he’s closer than we think.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Don’t you think it’s more than coincidence that all our victims have turned up in our district? Rita Nulty was right on site, waiting for us to find her. Stuart Ball, Anto Crawley and Father Reg . . . all in our jurisdiction. That’s the only reason we’ve held on to the inquiry this
long. We will need to brainstorm these locations as soon as possible.’
‘Want me to set up a conference?’ he asked.
She nodded and checked her watch. ‘Once I’ve faced the music in Dan’s office.’
Foxy put his hand on her arm. ‘I’ve ordered the records from Customs showing any importations of myrrh. It’s an aromatic gum which grows in Arabia, India or Abyssinia, did you know that?’
She looked at him appreciatively. ‘You look exhausted. I’d be happier if you’d go home to Sal and get some kip. I don’t want you running yourself into the ground because of me.’
‘There isn’t time,’ Foxy said.
‘That’s an order,’ Jo said. ‘Merrigan could do with missing a dinner. I’ll get him on the records. And I’ll ask him to find out about who’s paying the ESB in the warehouse where Crawley was found. I don’t want you staying up all night any more. You won’t do anyone any favours if you get sick, least of all me and Sal.’
Jo was walking towards Dan’s office when her phone trilled to life with that ring-ding-a-ding Crazy Frog tone. ‘I’ll bloody well kill him,’ Jo muttered. Rory must have been fiddling with it.
‘Not quite sure how to put this,’ Hawthorne said when the call connected.
‘Not like you,’ Jo said, giving a thumbs-up to a colleague asking had she heard Dan’s page.
‘Before I go on, I want it understood that what I’m about to tell you is completely for your background information,’ the pathologist went on. ‘If you try and call me to court to
relay this conversation, not only will I completely deny this conversation ever happened, I’ll –’
‘Understood,’ Jo interrupted.
‘The thing is, I’ve got a PhD student from the university who’s tech-ing here when we need a dig out,’ Hawthorne said. ‘You may have seen him when we were doing the Rita Nulty autopsy. Decent fellow. Obliging. You don’t get that any more. They’re all too busy socializing . . . It’s just there’d be all kinds of ethical problems and permissions required if the student tried to do it by the book, you see . . .’
‘To do what?’ Jo asked.
Hawthorne coughed. ‘The technician – his name is Walter, by the way – has been studying the effect death has . . . ahem . . . on semen.’
Jo took a quick breath in. ‘You mean the killer didn’t use a condom?’
Hawthorne gave a short hum.
‘This changes everything.’
‘The bill for the DNA database was only published in January,’ Hawthorne reminded her. ‘The odds of us having his profile on record are nil.’
‘I’m talking about the way our man thinks. In the States they call it the CSI effect . . . You know, the way popular culture has schooled the ordinary criminal in the advances of forensic science. Burglars wear gloves; joyriders burn stolen cars; rapists wear condoms. Nobody leaves a DNA sample. Unless . . .’
‘He wants to be caught?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘Not wants,’ Jo said. ‘He knows exactly how far behind we are. We’re looking for someone who not only knows the law here, he’s also confident we’re not going to trace him.’
‘There’s something else . . .’
‘Walter’s convinced that, in Rita Nulty’s case, the degeneration which would have been caused to the semen upon the release of certain chemicals had she been alive was not present . . .’ He paused and coughed self-consciously again. ‘And that the said same semen, if you will, had aged less than the time which had passed since death.’
There was a pause as Jo worked this out. ‘You’re not saying our killer had sex with his victims after they died?’
‘I don’t know about the rest of them,’ he replied. ‘As you know, we are PM-ing Anto Crawley in the morning, but don’t start thinking about an exhumation order for Stuart Ball. It’s something I could never corroborate, even with this information in mind. It’s true that bruises can only appear if the blood is circulating. And certainly there was tearing in Rita’s perineal and genital area, but that in itself does not mean sex has not been consensual, especially given the victim’s profession – well, I don’t have to spell it out. It would never stand up in court. However, I thought it was something that might be of use to you.’
Jo was too shocked to say anything.
Hawthorne seemed to pick up on her reaction. ‘It’s a practice as old as civilization, by the way. It was widespread in Latin America and Ancient Greece,’ he said, trying to put her at ease. ‘Did you know that the Ancient Egyptians never entrusted the dead to embalmers before decomposition had set in? And in parts of India it was believed that a dead virgin would never rest in peace, so the men folk obliged, posthumously, of course. So you see, necrophilia is not
that
extraordinary.’
‘Yes, thank you, I appreciate it.’ Still reeling from the news, Jo made her way slowly towards Dan’s office. She was
just about to knock on his door when Foxy called her on her mobile. He’d been flicking through another of Sal’s books on his way to the car when he’d seen it. If she was right about who the killer thought he was, there was something she should know, he said. Tomorrow – July 3 – was Doubting Thomas’s feast day.
Entry is through a rusting iron grate set in the flagstones on the street. The location has been chosen because of what lies underneath the car park it overlooks – an ancient graveyard
.
Inside: dim, fragrant, bloody. A tabernacle in the centre of a makeshift altar, the burst of glinting brass spikes shooting from the point of intersection on the cross like an exploding meteorite
.
On the grimy wall behind, a life-sized crucifix, damaged in the places where the mutilated carving of Christ was once fixed but has since been chopped free. The carving now lies face down on the ground in front of the altar, head closest, feet furthest away, prostrate. Around it is an array of gleaming implements – an axe, knives, crowbar, hammer and chisel. Lined up on the altar, the wooden hand, claw-like, the foot complete with nail, the eye
.
A figure dressed in a hooded monk’s robe glides across the room. He chants as he prepares the noose, slung from an exposed beam in the ceiling. The words are not discernible, but the sound is hypnotic
.
The killer pushes his hood from his face, raises a meat cleaver and delivers it to the chipping torso with a whocking noise. The fifth ceremony has begun
.
He squinted through the smoke the wind was blowing back into his face, making his eyes water. Anto Crawley’s former home was a corporation flat in Oliver Bond, near Christchurch cathedral in the Liberties. In the old days, Crawley would have had his bird shacked up in a sprawling mansion in salubrious Foxrock on the Southside, or Malahide on the Northside, the kind of place that boasted a rhododendron border and an Italian cyprus driveway. The barristers’ and builders’ wives would have invited her to their fondue parties out of curiosity then shot each other horrified looks behind her back at the sound of her accent or the sight of her table manners. But with the successes of the Criminal Assets Bureau, the gangsters were now flaunting their lack of ill-gotten gains, staying in corporation flats and concealing all property acquisitions under other people’s names.
Sexton leaned sideways and shouted through the letterbox to open up. A bunch of kids who’d spotted him the second he’d entered the complex came for a gawk, all kitted out in their back-of-a-lorry designer trainers and hoodies.
‘Who are you?’ an obese youngster asked him.
Sexton put him at ten and, with a lip on him like that, he could see his future like it was mapped in his palm, leading straight to the ‘A’ wing in Portlaoise – where they kept the likes of John Gilligan, suspected of ordering the murder of Veronica Guerin.
‘You’re a copper, aren’t you?’
‘Piss off,’ Sexton told him.
‘I could have you up for that,’ the kid said.
Sexton looked at the boy’s burger-fed face. He had so many freckles they were joining. Sexton held his hand up in an Ali G salute. ‘Booyakasha,’ he said.
The kid forked his fingers back, said ‘Respek’ with a grin and slouched off.
Glenda George pulled the door open, rubbing sleep from her eyes and flattening her bed head. In the front room, Sexton could hear the TV on. She’d got up for Oprah, Dr Phil, then Richard and Judy, he reckoned.
‘Yeah?’ she asked.
Sexton eyed her up and down. She was early thirties, with
long, thin, jet-black hair and a body to die for, including tits too gravity-defying to be real. Dressed in a pink-velvet tracksuit top, denim mini and a pair of long black FMBs, she had enough make-up caked over her hard expression to convince him that he recognized her from a dodgy porno tape he and the lads had seized in some raid a couple of years back.
He put his foot on the step, inside the door.
Something caught Glenda’s eye on an adjoining balcony, and she let out a roar over his shoulder. ‘What the fuck are you gawking at?’
‘He’s a copper, Glenda,’ a kid shouted up from the forecourt.
‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ Glenda replied. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Can’t bear these nosey bastards knowing any of my business.’
She turned and led him down the marble-effect hallway, the word ‘juicy’ inscribed on the arse of her skirt rising and falling with each click of her heels.
They went into the front room, where a wall had been knocked through to give it an open-plan feel. It was untidy – clothes strewn about – but Sexton noticed the state-of-the-art fittings and fixtures: the Olsen and Bang & Olufsen stereo system; the gas fireplace set in the middle of the wall with its heap of pebbles; and the new windows. On paper, this place should have been worth a small fortune. In actuality, an address like this was worn like a badge of criminality.
Glenda lowered herself into a shiny red-leather armchair, zipped off her boots and transferred her perfectly French-manicured toes into a pair of fluffy pink open-toe sandals. ‘You’ve got a fucking nerve,’ she told him. ‘How can I organize a wake with no body? Cheeky bitch in the morgue
keeps hanging up on me. What are you holding on to Anto for?’
‘Leave it with me, I’ll sort it out,’ he said, offering Glenda his card.
She kept up the indignation routine for a bit, but the bite was gone out of her bark. Sexton sighed and settled back in the chair. He kept picking up this sexy little siren vibe she was giving off through it. His tart radar could recognize one through frumpy clothes, a plummy accent and hobbies like flower-arranging and singing in the choir.
‘Yeah, well, last night should have been his bloody send-off,’ she said, stretching over to take the card, giving him a flash of her sizeable rack. ‘Two hundred people I had calling, and no Anto. You pigs are all the same.’
By now Sexton had placed her accent in Dublin 1, where women were so at home that they shopped in their pyjamas and slippers and liked to remind people who worked how much free time they had.
‘Late night?’ he asked her, offering her a smoke.
She took it with a nod and another generous flash. This time it was not accidental, he knew.
He flicked his lighter and held it up for her to light up. She leaned in and took a succession of little puffs then a slow drag, playing with the zipper on her top, up an inch, down two, up again.
‘Got any theories as to who’s behind it?’ he asked.
‘Take your pick,’ she said, combing the ends of her hair with her fingers.
‘Heard he owed the Yardies money,’ Sexton said. ‘After a trip to Holyhead a few months back.’
She sniggered in an ‘as if’ way and announced, ‘I’m no rat.’
Startled by a noise behind him, Sexton turned around
quickly. A kid aged between two and three years had appeared at the door in a pair of dirty pyjamas and bare feet. His nostrils were caked in snot. ‘Mammy, I’m hungry,’ he whined.
‘Not now,’ she answered. ‘Now get back in there and close the door until I’m fucking ready.’
It took every cell in Sexton’s body not to grab her by the hair and force her into the kitchen to give something to the kid. Instead he pulled out a photograph of a woman with long fair hair from his inside blazer pocket. It was a snatch photo he’d taken himself – the woman hadn’t even been aware of the lens pointing at her as she climbed into her car. ‘How well did Anto know her?’ he asked.
Glenda barely glanced at it. ‘Not his type,’ she said.
Sexton moved closer to her and put the photo on her lap.
‘Why don’t you look again? Only I’ve just had a call from someone who’s been busy unscrambling the make of this lady’s car, which was caught on CCTV camera. In that particular film, Anto seems to know her very well.’ Two-beat pause. ‘Did I mention we’ve got someone who’s confessed to killing him?’
Glenda looked at him in astonishment.
He tapped his nose, pointing to the pic.
‘It was strictly business between them,’ she said.
‘Didn’t look that way in the film,’ Sexton said.
‘You’ve got it wrong. Anto was making sure no harm came to her or her family, and in return she was making sure no harm came to his. Now who’s confessed to killing Anto?’
Sexton stood up, and flicked his fag at her gas fireplace. ‘Afraid I’m not at liberty to say.’
She swore and picked up the glass paperweight on a nearby coffee table.
The kid came flying out into the hall to see what had happened. Sexton thought about slipping him some money, but knew his ma would have smelt it from the other room and it would only cause the kid problems. Feeling even sicker than when he’d arrived, he went back out to his car, inspecting it for damage before getting in.
As he gunned the engine, Sexton knew he couldn’t keep protecting Ryan Freeman. He was in enough trouble with Jo Birmingham already. If she found out what he’d been keeping from her, it wouldn’t just be the investigation he’d lose out on: his job could be on the line. And that was all he had left since Maura had died. But having seen for himself the warehouse where Katie had been held, he was going to talk to one last person first. The woman in the picture.
‘Why didn’t you tell me Rory’s been mitching?’ Jo snapped.
Dan looked like he’d misheard. He’d nicked himself shaving, Jo noticed, but forgotten to remove the paper blotting the blood. She put her hands behind her back and held them there.
‘We don’t have time for this now. Don’t you realize . . .’
‘I’m his bloody mother!’
He raised his arms and headed inside, glancing behind her after a couple of seconds to make sure she didn’t disappear again.
On the other side of the door, Jeanie was touching up her make-up with a compact.
‘You missed a bit,’ Jo told her, following Dan inside.
None of the backs of the three heads facing Dan’s desk turned as Jo came into the office. There was no greeting, and none of the officers from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation outranked her either, but the way they had
joined their chairs in flank told her they all thought they did. A fourth, free chair sat at the end of their row, but Jo walked to the far side of Dan’s desk so that she was facing them, and remained standing.
The way they were continuing to make small talk amongst themselves was more than just condescending: it showed a level of contempt. Jo knew that the same superior attitude could be found in every specialist group in every police force in every part of the world – from the Feds in the States to MI5 in the UK. There was out-and-out hostility between customs officers and the gardaí working in the airports, for example. But right now, what she was finding hardest to deal with was the complete waste of her bloody time. If a showdown was imminent, it was going to mean blood on the walls, because Dan may have had the time to sip tea and nibble sandwiches, but if anyone thought they were going to take this investigation from her without a fight, they were deluded. As long as she believed she had the best chance of cracking the case, she would battle for it tooth and nail, especially now Foxy had told her that tomorrow was Doubting Thomas’s feast day. Jo had no doubt in her mind that if she didn’t find their killer before then, she’d have another body on her hands.
Beside her, Dan was trying to control his own agitation by clicking the top of a pen up and down; two seconds exactly between each press.
Jo took the sum of her opposition. She had worked with only one of the NBCI officers before – Jenny Friar – but she knew the other two by reputation. Frank Black was the most recognizable face on the force – fifty-odd, overweight, with a moustache trimmed neatly above a purple top lip. He wore a dapper paisley silk scarf above his gold-buttoned navy
blazer and had an ability to wax lyrical about his own crucial involvement in cracking the country’s worst crimes when a camera and mic were being thrust in his face, though colleagues who’d worked on the same cases remembered things differently.
Alongside him sat Dave Waters, twenty years younger, ambitious, studious, expensive rimless glasses displaying a vanity to which his looks gave no purchase. With a doctorate in psychology, he was a novelty in a job where the only accomplishment that counted was hours on the streets. In recent years, he had increasingly assumed the role of the force’s unofficial psychological profiler. To Jo’s mind, he was neither instinctive nor intuitive, and the string of letters after his name had made him fluent only in jargon.
Of the delegation, Jenny Friar was the most formidable. Aged in her late forties, she had a Princess Diana haircut, an expensive wool pashmina and a set of heavy semiprecious gems strung around her neck. At one time, Jo had looked up to her, but that had been before she sold out to management.
Dan asked Jo to take a seat. The old days, when he’d have walked across the room to carry it back to her, were gone. Jo felt the back of her neck and shoulders tighten. ‘I’d rather stand,’ she said.
He gestured with a hand as he did the introductions. Jo noticed that not one of them had the balls to look her in the eye.
‘You may or may not be aware,’ Dan began, ‘that the family of Father Reginald Walsh switched off his life support today.’
It shouldn’t have come as a shock, but it did. Jo felt her stomach constrict. Now she understood why the atmosphere
in the room felt so feral. The body count had just risen to four. But she was also bloody livid. As head of the investigation, she should have been informed first. Why had nobody told her?
‘The commissioner contacted me today,’ Dan continued, ‘and he informed me of his intention to add to our resources by assigning these three new members to our team.’
Jo sneaked a quick glance at Dan. It was a relief to know that he hadn’t been instrumental in this ambush.
‘We’re very glad to have you all here today,’ Dan said. ‘I understand you’ve each been studying the case notes. Why don’t you each give us your assessment?’
Jo folded her arms tightly.
Dan leaned forward. ‘Let’s get on with it, shall we?’ He turned to the profiler. ‘Dave, why don’t you go first? Who do you think we’re dealing with?’
Dave Waters stood up and hooked his thumbs in the waist of his pleated jeans. College stripes hung in a scarf around his neck. ‘We’re dealing with a narcissist,’ he stated.
Jo began to pick the leaves off Dan’s geranium.
‘He’s an egotist who is probably known to the force for crimes in the past.’
‘What about Jo’s theory of a Roman Catholic motif?’ Dan asked.
‘I’m afraid I don’t think much of it,’ Waters replied. ‘Sharia law says the same thing about an eye for an eye, so perhaps we should be visiting members of the Muslim community?’
‘We don’t have time for this now,’ Jo interrupted sharply. ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve already established a link between the killings, and who the killer thinks he is . . .’
‘Are we to understand that the status of the investigation
has changed and you now have a suspect?’ Jenny asked, smoothing the wrinkles in her skirt.
Designer, the kind of clothes only a woman with a salary to spend on herself can afford
, Jo thought. ‘The killer thinks he’s some kind of avenging angel. All these people have wronged him, and once we find out how, we’ll have him. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work.’
Jenny Friar stood up, walked to the side of Dan’s desk and sat on it, crossing her legs at the ankles, blocking Jo’s exit.
‘Do you or do you not have a suspect?’ she asked authoritatively.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, I’ve only had twenty-four hours on the case.’
‘Well, I’ve only had twenty minutes, and I have a suspect,’ Friar replied. ‘He made a confession right here in this station to DI Gavin Sexton. His name is Andy Morris, but I believe his nickname is Skinny.’
Jo’s anger was sharpening by the minute. For the second time today, he’d kept her in the dark about a solo run – on her investigation! How could he not have told her he’d interviewed someone who’d confessed to Anto Crawley’s murder? She’d get over Jenny Friar rubbing her nose in it, but what she found hardest of all was the look she’d spotted in Dan’s eye. He actually felt sorry for her. What the hell had Sexton been thinking?
Jo knocked at the suspect’s door, then at his window with the ball of her fist. There was no bell, let alone a knocker on the door. Skinny was either not at home or playing silly buggers. Jo stepped over to the neighbour’s door to find out which, but hadn’t so much as touched it before an old man in a string vest, glasses with bottle-thick lenses and high-waisted trousers appeared and told her to try St Andrew’s Resource Centre, where a Concerned Parents Against Drugs meeting was taking place. In the eighties and nineties, the
CPAD had mobilized the anger of frightened parents who’d lost or were losing children to addiction by organizing evictions of drug dealers. If CPAD were back in action, it was a real sign of how bad the drugs problem was again in this part of town.
Sexton pulled into the complex, just as Jo was driving out. He lowered the window of his year-old, 5-series BMW. ‘I did tell you about his statement, I know I did.’
Jo glared at him, then shut her eyes tightly as a pain stabbed through them, causing her to lose her vision momentarily. Then she put her foot down full throttle and tore down Hanover Street towards St Andrews, her exhaust belching black fumes behind her.
Sexton stayed on her tail, a set look on his face every time she glanced in her rear-view mirror. When she crossed to the wrong side of the road to grab a parking spot, he was still there like glue, taking a big chance with the oncoming traffic.
He jumped out before her and leaned in her window, both hands on the car door. ‘It’s not what it looks like.’
Jo reached over to the passenger seat for Skinny’s statement and picked it up by a corner like she was handling a turd. She held it up in front of him. ‘Only it looks like you took a statement from someone confessing to Anto Crawley’s bloody murder.’
‘It was a try-on!’ Sexton said. ‘The statement isn’t even bloody well signed. So he knew about Crawley’s teeth. Big deal! But he got the incidentals wrong – he told me they were smashed in. And how could they think him mentioning the knife was corroboration of his knowledge of the crime scene? It was all over the bloody
News
and hardly inside information.’
‘What are you saying, Jo? That I filed a confession that’s not worth a shit to make you look incompetent? I filed it because it’s procedure. That’s my job. I wasn’t going to waste your time or mine on a wild-goose chase.’
Jo frowned, scanning the building opposite. ‘And I’m saying that here is yet another example of you keeping things from me. What else haven’t you told me?’
Sexton looked away. He was hiding something, Jo was sure of it, but it would have to wait till they were back in the station.
She crossed the road and headed into the building towards the room at the back where the CPAD meeting was taking place.
Inside, it was cramped and there was standing room only. Sexton stood beside her, nudging her shoulder with his own to indicate the man holding court at the top of the gym. He was dressed in a shiny black bomber jacket.
‘That’s him,’ Sexton said out of the side of his mouth.
Jo noted the green, looped ribbon pinned to Skinny’s breast telling her he was a Shinner. The hypocrisy of Sinn Fein’s members chilled her to the bone. It may not have been PC, given the sensitive nature of the post-peace process, but it was the fact that they were exploiting parents’ misery by using the threat of force to move other drug dealers along so they could take over the market for drug distribution for themselves that upset her most.
She concentrated on Skinny. Part of him was constantly on the move, but not in a synchronized way. His hands would dart in one direction, his head another. He was arguing with an old woman seated up front, a thyroid-related
bald patch on the top of her scalp, thick ankles under heavy tights. In between blowing her nose, she was insisting that her son had nothing to do with drugs and she could not evict him from her home.
‘I know you from the time you were a nipper, Andy,’ the old lady said to Skinny, holding her hand so high off the ground. ‘How many times did I take you in after school and give you a hot dinner if your ma wasn’t home?’
Skinny stood over her, radiating aggression. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. The people have spoken.’
Jo glanced at Sexton. She could tell he was having doubts too about his initial reading on Skinny’s innocence too.
Meanwhile, the crowd had burst into applause, and then started up the old familiar chant: ‘Pusher-pusher-pusher out-out-out.’
The old lady cracked. ‘How can I get him off drugs if he’s on the streets?’ she begged, tears running down her cheeks.
The chanting grew more ferocious.
Every age is here, Jo thought, casting an eye over the crowd. The men in bomber jackets standing at strategic points around the kangaroo court were watching the crowd, not Skinny. One of the heavies had LOVE HATE knuckles folded over his crotch and was looking over at Jo and Sexton. They stood out a mile, she knew this only too well.
The old lady was trying to sidle her way out of the row of chairs past extended legs. No neighbours stood to pat her back or shifted their legs an inch to aid her progress.
Sexton touched Jo’s arm. She could see what he was thinking. If these people realized who they were, the mob mentality could turn nasty.
‘If he’s not gone in twelve hours, every stick of furniture
in your home goes over the balcony,’ Skinny called after the woman.
Jo reached out as the woman approached and took her by the wrist, turning her around. The room went silent. Jo led the old lady back to the top of the room, pulled her ID out, held it aloft. Sexton pulled out his mobile, kept it at waist level and started dialling for back-up.
‘Proud of yourself?’ Jo called as a round of boos struck up. ‘Look at her.’ The volume of the noise decreased, but not much.
Skinny was throwing furious looks at everyone in a bomber jacket around the room, making hand gestures that all involved removing Jo. Sexton had the phone to his ear.
‘What age are you?’ she asked the woman.
‘You have no business here, copper,’ Skinny shouted. ‘If your lot could handle the drugs problem, we wouldn’t have to deal with it ourselves. Even the prisons are riddled with heroin.’
Applause. Cat calls. ‘Out-out-out.’
The bomber jackets started moving towards Sexton, who put his phone away, and gave Jo a nod that said help was on the way.
‘I’ll only leave if one of you can tell me why you’re taking orders from the likes of him’ – Jo glanced at Skinny – ‘a pervert who has sex with dead women!’
Now she had their attention.
‘What the fuck are you talking about, copper?’ Skinny asked, his face contorted.
‘Did you or did you not confess to the murder of Anto Crawley in Store Street yesterday?’ Jo asked him, holding his statement up for all to see.
Skinny shrugged.
‘Well, the man we want also likes to have his way with dead women. That you?’
‘What’s she talking about, Skinny?’ a man’s voice called from the crowd.
‘Don’t try and deny it. We record everything that takes place in interview rooms these days, or have you forgotten that?’ Jo told the crowd.
Skinny held his hands up. ‘I was having a laugh,’ he said. ‘It was all bullshit, I’d nothing to do with Crawley’s murder.’
‘I believe you, but others may not,’ Jo said. ‘And if anything happens to this woman, we’ll turn over every flat belonging to anyone in here.’
Without warning, the old lady spat at Jo’s shoes.
The crowd applauded.
Jo sighed then walked calmly towards the exit.
‘You as bent as the rest of them in Store Street?’ Skinny called after her.
As he drove, Sexton phoned Dan from the hands-free, explained what was happening and told him to collect the kids and to send a tow truck to pick up her car. Jo could hear the irritation in Dan’s clipped answers. She didn’t know if he was more annoyed because he was put out or because Sexton was in the driving seat. When it came to Dan, she didn’t know anything any more . . .
She pinched the bridge of her nose and held on to the door handle, opening her eyes to identify the smell making her stomach heave. A Magic Tree dangled from the rear-view mirror. Jo pulled it free, pressed the window button and chucked it out. Sexton raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
‘You need to get yourself a life,’ she told him, staring at a box of tissues perched between the cream-leather seats, pulling one free and spreading it flat on the back of her neck.
‘How’d you afford this car anyway?’
He didn’t answer.
Jo was sorry she’d put him on the spot. How he spent his money was his business. At least she had the kids, even if it was over with Dan.
‘Tell me how well you know Ryan Freeman,’ she asked, changing the subject.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He called the incident room the other day asking for you. Today he shows up at a place where nobody knows you’ll be.’
Sexton pulled up at lights and turned to face her. ‘He helped me out last year. I was going through a bad patch, and was driving under the influence. I crashed the car.’ He brought his hands together, creating angles over the wheel. ‘Don’t look at me like that. Nobody was hurt, except me.’
‘How did you get around a conviction?’
‘There was a problem with the warrant.’
Jo groaned.
‘I told you, nobody was hurt. The insurance covered everything, but that wasn’t enough for the guy who owned the car. I mean, fair enough if he’d been in it, but he wanted my job. He tried to get Ryan Freeman to run an exposé about how I got around the charges. Ryan looked after me, so I guess you could say I owe him.’
‘Where was I when this was going on?’
‘You were away on maternity leave.’ There was another long pause. ‘Is it really over between you and Dan?’ Sexton asked, after another long pause.
Jo kept her eyes shut. The muzziness in her head was growing.
‘I presume it’s serious with Jeanie,’ Sexton went on. ‘I
remember seeing the way they were together, a couple of years back. I think it was the inspectors and sergeants annual conference, down in Westport. I thought it then too.’
Jo wanted to concentrate on anything other than the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. But even more than that, she just wanted to shut Sexton’s words out.
On the N11, Sexton jerked suddenly as the lay-by in which they were driving came to an abrupt halt. He was going to have to merge with the rest of the traffic, but at the top of the queue a driver in an ‘I love NY’ cap with a row of flashing lights along his front bumper was looking in the opposite direction and refused to let them merge.
With a screech of brakes, Sexton jumped out of his car and held his palm up, forcing the driver to stop and stick his hazards on. After showing him his ID, Sexton checked his tax and insurance and told him to turn off the engine, as he took down his details.
Jo watched in disbelief. For the next ten minutes, other drivers beeped and got out of their cars to see what the holdup was. They didn’t care if Sexton was a plain-clothed garda, they wanted to get home. Finally, Sexton got back in the car and pulled out ahead of the ‘I love NY’ driver.
‘I want the names of each and every cop who ever interviewed any of our victims on my desk first thing tomorrow morning,’ Jo told him as they neared the Lamb’s Cross junction. The sliproad to her house was just beyond it. ‘Bar the priest, all the victims were criminals to a greater or lesser degree, so there should be quite a few entries on the system.’
‘What’s your thinking?’ Sexton asked.
‘You heard what Skinny said at the drugs meeting: “Are you as bent as the rest of them in Store Street?” What was he getting at? We know our killer is avenging a crime, and
he’s doing it on our patch. Doesn’t that indicate to you that somebody in the station might know what that crime is?’
‘You’d take Skinny’s word?’ Sexton said, sounding disbelieving. ‘He’s a lying toe-rag.’
A newspaper vendor rapped the window as they waited to turn right at Slate Cabin Lane. Sexton waved him off but Jo signalled she’d take a paper, reaching across to Sexton’s window with the change.
The newsprint stank, making her stomach lurch again, but she pulled it in and placed it on her lap. It hurt to read, but as she made out the headline she realized the good news was they’d just found Rita’s mother. The paper had an exclusive interview under the banner headline ‘My Girl Was No Hooker’. Old Mrs Nulty had probably been holed up in some hotel by the newspaper so no other editor could get her before the story went to print. That meant she was no longer AWOL.
The bad news was that the small print was dancing nauseatingly in front of her eyes. Jo’s migraine was about to take hold.
His own sense of indignation came as a bolt from the blue, and he realized instantly why. Him looking down his nose at anyone else’s parenting skills was a bit rich. If it hadn’t been for him, and the criminal activity he’d been exposing in the underworld, Katie should have been getting ready for school this morning, turning the house upside down for her copy book, demanding the crusts be cut off her sandwiches and begging to be let sleep over with her best friend. ‘Please, please, please’ she’d have been saying and, of
course, he’d have acquiesced. Instead, the choices he’d made in his own life had changed the course of her life for ever.
A nurse came into the room and pulled the birthday girl out of the pool of vomit. She was an Irish nurse, a sign of the changed times. Before the recession, the nurses were all Indian or Filipino. At least they were all kind in Paediatric, Ryan thought, not like their angsty counterparts working with geriatrics.
‘Can I help?’ he asked the nurse.
She shook her head and rang the bell. Another nurse came and whipped the sheets off the bed and began packing them into sterile plastic sacks. Freeman heard them soothe the toddler by her name – ‘Talullah’. He shook his head. What kind of parent would pick a hippy-dippy Hollywood starlet name for a kid with no life expectancy?
He moved to the side of Katie’s bed and sat on the chair alongside, watched her sleeping. He felt the lump in his throat rise as he touched her hair. She’d been an IVF baby, conceived after the point when he and Angie had both presumed they’d left parenthood too late. Knowing the lengths they’d gone to to have her and the cotton-wool existence they’d planned to give her added an extra dimension to his guilt.
She’d been admitted yesterday after the convulsion and was waiting for an ECG to establish if there was any permanent damage in her brain that may have caused the equivalent to what one of the docs had described as ‘a short circuit in her wiring’.
Ryan glanced at the clock on the wall. It was nearly 7 p.m. Angie was due in any second. On cue she appeared in the doorway, looking thin and over-groomed. She strained her head away as the smell of vomit hit her.
‘I’ve already passed your concerns on to the matron,’ the nurse said, tucking new sheets into the cot. ‘As soon as another bed becomes available, we’ll try and move you.’
Angie came over to Ryan, taking her coat off as she did so.
‘I’d have got back sooner, only for that bloody Mad Cow roundabout,’ she said. ‘How are you supposed to get through it when it’s not a roundabout? And anyway, there isn’t even a pub on it any more. I nearly ended up on the Navan road. How is she?’
‘No change,’ he said.
Talullah started to moan and cough as the nurse changed her clothes. Angie was about to kick off again when a rap on the door distracted her. It was Gavin Sexton.
Both Ryan and Angie stared in surprise.
‘I’m sorry, visiting hours are not until –’ the Irish nurse began.
‘It’s okay, we know him,’ Angie said.
‘It’s not okay, there are children trying to sleep,’ the nurse insisted.
‘Why don’t you and I head down to the canteen and grab a coffee,’ Ryan said to Sexton.
‘Actually, I need to talk to both of you,’ Sexton said.
‘But one of us has to stay here,’ Ryan pointed out.
‘It’s important.’
Ryan looked to Angie, expecting her to protest, but she put up no resistance. After giving the nurse his mobile number and making her promise she’d ring if Katie woke, he
followed Sexton and Angie down the corridor.
By the time they had emerged from the elevator a minute later, Ryan knew two things with certainty. If Sexton couldn’t tell them whatever it was en route, it was going to be something very bad. You don’t need to get people sitting down if you’re delivering good news. He was also convinced that Angie already knew what it was.
‘I want to talk about the day Katie was abducted,’ Sexton said when they were finally settled over coffee. ‘I’ve got a pal in the computer section who did me a favour and analysed the last digit of the registration and the make of the car caught in the CCTV footage parked at the school gate the day Katie was taken. I know who the car belonged to, and the name of the woman who was seen arguing with Crawley.’
Beside him, Angie started to cry softly.
‘Who was it?’ Ryan asked, a cold trickle of fear running down his spine.
Angie turned to him slowly. ‘It was me.’
She rolled her head sideways slowly, opening her eyes to try and make out the time on the alarm clock on the bedside locker. The red light of the digital display stung too much for her to focus. Seven something – she was sure the first digit was a seven. She closed her eyes again quickly. Since her visit to the warehouse, she understood that inflicting pain meant every bit as much as creating a spectacle to this killer. She had to find him before he made anyone else suffer. Once the migraine had passed, she could get back to work. She prayed it would soon. Otherwise, tomorrow there’d be a fifth . . .
She could hear Dan and Rory’s muffled voices in the kitchen under her room. She wanted to call them, to let Dan know the freezer was fully stocked and that he could have his pick for the boys’ dinner. But nothing came out. The tablets were finally starting to take effect: she was starting to drift off . . .
She was in her father’s car, in the back seat with Sue. Their dad was laughing at them for flapping their arms like wings,
willing the car up a steep hill. They used to do it at the same spot every day on the way to school. He’d laugh every time. She watched him straining around for a glimpse of them, his green eyes twinkling, the same way they did whenever he turned the garden hose on them instead of sprinkling the flowers. Over his shoulder, Jo could see the lorry coming straight for the car. Sue vanished. Jo opened her mouth to warn her father, but the words just froze in her throat. She tried to point, but her arm wouldn’t move. Her father turned back around, too late.
Sitting bolt upright in the bed just before the moment of impact in the dream, her skin drenched, her heart racing, Jo gulped deep breaths of air. Her head was pounding, but there was a faint realization breaking through. Tomorrow would be the killer’s most symbolic killing so far. He was going to inflict the ultimate act of vengeance. He was moving on from Exodus. He would need to show just how much he hated Jesus Christ. That meant he was going to crucify his next victim.
