The Dead (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 1) (10 page)

‘Here,’ she said. ‘Pull over.’

I pulled to a halt and let Jackie out. There was a man standing in the same doorway where I’d picked her up earlier, obviously waiting, knowing she was bound to be back there if he waited long enough. He started hopping from foot to foot in his baggy designer pants when he saw her climb out of the car; scenting money. What was Jackie afraid of rats for when she picked vermin like him for company? He’d never end up lying dead on the bank of the canal with a cord around his neck.

Dead in an alleyway with a needle stuck in his vein maybe, but that was his choice. I tried to put him out of my mind as I drove away and left him jumping about like a hyperactive kid in my rearview mirror.

Finding Gus was more important now. Was it Gus who’d become Elliot’s communicative new little friend? Was Gus the so-called Night Hunter?

Night Hunter—

Stop.

I screeched the car to a halt and jumped out. There it was, a fresh poster for next day’s edition of the
Post
hanging outside a shop. I’d seen it out of the corner of my eye as I passed.

Night Hunter Writes Again
.

Again?

The Second Letter

Apologies about Sally Tyrrell. As it is written in Psalms: ‘He who works deceit shall not dwell within my house; he who tells lies shall not continue in my presence.’

Though did the Hebrew midwives not lie to Pharaoh about the birth of Moses? He would have killed Moses otherwise. And did Judith not lie to King Holofernes to save her people? ‘Smite by the deceit of my lips the servant with the prince and make my speech and deceit to be their wound and stripe, who have purposed cruel things against thy covenant.’ Nor, to be blunt, am I prepared to endure lectures on falsehood when I have been the victim of such absurd and lurid speculations as appeared in your newspaper following the demise of Mary Lynch.

I refer in particular to the article published under the name of Maeve Curran which accused me of harbouring a ‘hatred of women’. This is nothing but a repetition of the vile libel which Nick Elliott perpetuated against me in his book. Hatred is a highly pejorative term and I repudiate it absolutely, just as I resent being subjected to what are little more than hysterical outbursts of semi-literate bargain-basement popular psychology. If anything, I do not hate women so much as pity them; and in that, I concur with no less an authority than our Church Father Chrysostum who said of women that ‘they need greater care precisely because of their ready inclination to sin . . . the whole sex is weak and flighty’. Women need protecting from their own natures. Is offering that protection then to hate them?

Indeed, one must ask whether it is those who lazily throw accusations of misogyny at me who are in fact guilty of hating women. It is they, after all, who are equating all women with those that I am foresworn to eradicate. In the words of Martin Luther: ‘The evil spirit sent these whores here and they are dreadful, shabby, stinking, loathsome and syphilitic.’ It is certainly ironic that my critics seem unable to grasp this simple distinction when those who might be expected to disagree most fundamentally with my methodology, such as Mary Lynch, say, grasp it immediately. That is the advantage of working with prostitutes. They know the rules. They seem to realise at once that what is happening was bound to happen eventually and that indeed it had to happen; they recognise the justice of it. There is none of that tiresome indignation. I commend their resignation. I commend their instinctive appreciation of the proper order of things, of the urgent need for the wicked to accede to the authority of the virtuous.

Alas, too few have the necessary understanding. That much was obvious from Tara Cox. She just did not seem able to understand that I had nothing against her personally, any more than I would against a rat beneath the floorboards of my house. Prostitutes are the carriers of a deadly plague, and I am the poison, I am the arsenic in the bloodstream of the city; taste me. Not Tara, though. Oh no. Tara thought she was better than that, a cut above, though it was my cut which sent her below in the end. Now there’s poetic justice – but no, I must not boast. I am but an instrument of the Lord and through me He manifests His divine will.

And if only one stinking, loathsome, syphilitic whore should turn from the path of wickedness as a result of my work, shall it not have been worth it? Remember that ‘joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance’. Five dead to save a city from its own festering corruption is hardly excessive. But who next? There’s the rub. It is, you may be sure, a matter to which I have given the most careful and devout consideration. To be the means by which a people are cleansed and purged of their impurity is a singular honour and one would not want to throw it carelessly away on the ungrateful or unworthy, especially with so many candidates from which to choose. So let it be Mary again. Mary the First fulfilled her part in the sacrifice commendably; I have no reason to suspect that her namesake will disappoint.

I shall know soon enough.

Pray for her.

THIRD DAY

Chapter Eleven

Mort Tillman wasn’t there when I stopped outside the front of Trinity to pick him up on the way to the crime team meeting; but then I was pretty late.

I’d dropped round to the offices of the
Post
first to confront Elliott about the new letter, though as it was I hadn’t managed to get past security – which was probably just as well for the reporter’s good health. I couldn’t believe what Elliott had done. I’d woken Fitzgerald last night soon as I found out that the killer had written to the
Post
again, and she eventually tracked him down and got the whole story out of him. He’d received a call from the killer about eleven, just as they were about to go to press with Elliott’s front-page story about the body in the churchyard being Sally Tyrrell – another stroke of luck for him.

The voice was muffled and slow, he said, like the caller was using some kind of device over the mouthpiece. It told Elliott to get down to the public garden next to St Patrick’s Cathedral, where the next letter would be taped under one of the park benches. So that was what he did. The killer had him well trained.

Elliott claimed that he’d tried to contact Grace a number of times on her cellphone to tell her, but it was switched off. So instead he sent the story to the presses.

Like you do.

I waited a while for Tillman, and when he still didn’t show I decided just to carry on up the hill from Trinity towards Dublin Castle. I was nervous enough about the crime team meeting without being late as well. I only hoped he’d gone on ahead without me. By the time I found a parking space, I was ready to kick something with impatience. I settled for slamming the car door instead, before hurrying across the yard to the front door of the police headquarters, glancing up as I did so at the statue of Justice on top of the old tower to the north, her back turned disdainfully away from the city. Till they were mended, I’d once heard, her scales used to tip when it rained. And it always rained. That just about summed up my mood.

I say castle. There was certainly one in there somewhere. Thirteenth century, apparently. But now what was called Dublin Castle was really just part of an untidy complex of old and new buildings tucked away near the summit of Dame Street as it climbed lazily out of the heart of the city. It had been home to the Dublin Metropolitan Police from the force’s inception some eighty years ago, and nothing much seemed to have changed in the interim.

I went in at reception, and waited whilst a young female uniformed officer disappeared into the back for the pass that Fitzgerald had promised would be waiting for me. Then she led me up the stairs to the room on the first floor where the meeting was to be held.

I was relieved to find that it hadn’t started yet. The room was still filling up with detectives from the murder squad, others from Vice and the crime scene forensic unit, some I’d never seen before. I just slipped in and took a seat near the back. There was no sign of Tillman.

A few glances came my way, but nobody challenged my right to be there. Then again, nobody exactly made an effort to speak to me either.

Voices dropped a notch. I felt like the pass pinned to my lapel marked me out as an intruder. Fair enough. That’s what I was.

I ignored them, and deliberately picked up a copy of that morning’s
Post
which had been left on the chair next to me. I’d already seen it last night, of course, and had no desire to look at it again, but I gratefully hid myself in the pretence of reading it all the same, until a pair of oversized shoes appeared in my line of sight and I looked up.

‘DS Boland,’ I said. ‘Good to see a friendly face.’

‘Can I get you coffee?’

‘You don’t have to get me coffee,’ I said. ‘Make me get my own. It’d do me good.’

‘Only if the coffee doesn’t kill you first,’ Boland said.

‘That bad, is it?’

‘Worse.’ Making the chair look as small as a child’s, he took a seat next to me. Well, no one else had. ‘Is it just my imagination,’ he said, ‘or did the temperature drop five degrees when you walked in?’

‘Serves me right,’ I said. ‘At least now I understand how outsiders used to feel when they were brought in on investigations for the Bureau. This feels like payback time.’

‘They’ll get used to you,’ he said.

‘I don’t care if they get used to me or not. I just wish they wouldn’t make me feel like they’re about to drag me down to the cells for interrogation.’

‘There aren’t any cells here,’ said Boland. ‘This is all administrative. They’d have to take you to Pearse Street station for that.’

‘That makes me feel a whole bundle better.’

‘Only trying to help, Special Agent.’

He was the second person to call me that this morning, but the truth was I didn’t much feel like a special agent at that moment, not even a former special agent. I looked round the room. Everyone else seemed to have something to do, some purpose for being here. What was I doing here? What use was I any more?

Over by the coffee machine, Dalton and Lawlor were sharing a joke. Paranoia made me think it was at my expense, then I recalled the old line: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. And where those two were concerned, they usually were.

My eye was drawn to a whiteboard on the far wall with a photograph of Mary Lynch – no doubt stolen by Dalton from a frame on her mother’s mantelpiece; that was his usual way – fixed to the rim, and others taken by Tom Kiernan, the squad photographer, scattered about.

One showed Mary’s face laid flat against the grass by the canal, tongue protruding thickly from between her teeth, eyes open wide more in astonishment than fear or pain. That was often the final look. Another showed a close-up of her neck, the mark left by the ligature standing out on the skin like a snake’s winding trail in the sand. Another close-up of that scrap of paper and its vicious words:
All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman
. So much for the killer’s professed annoyance at being accused of hating women. I wondered idly why Ed Fagan had never used that quote himself; it was the religious misogynist’s creed in a nutshell. Made a mental note to check out where exactly it came from.

There were photographs too of the body which had been found in the churchyard of St John the Divine yesterday. It was the first time I’d seen her for myself and I wasn’t sure now I wanted to. The shape in the picture bore the same relationship to a real woman as a shank of raw meat hung from a butcher’s hook bore to the animal out of whose skin it had been torn. What had happened to her?

Inside the rough circle formed by the photographs hung a map of the city, two red pins to mark the spots where Mary’s body and that of the latest woman had been found. And what was that? It was hard to make out, but it looked like another pin, white this time, immediately to the left of the red pin for Mary Lynch. Julie Feeney, I realised at once.

My eyes tracked across the map, following Fagan’s path. Where each woman had fallen, another white pin. The churchyard for Sylvia Judge. The Law Library on Constitution Hill for Tara Cox. The Royal Canal and Prospect Cemetery on the Northside of the city for Liana Cassidy and Maddy Holt, Fagan’s last two victims in the weeks before he was arrested. Boland saw me looking, saw me getting angry.

‘Draker’s orders,’ he said.

‘What kind of asshole is he?’ I said, realising at once why I was needed here, how awry Draker could send the investigation if he was unchecked. So much for him lecturing Fitzgerald about working the scene. ‘He’s got no evidence Mary Lynch’s death has anything to do with Fagan! Since when was an article in the gutter press accepted as Exhibit A?’

‘Don’t get mad at me,’ Boland said. ‘He just said we should explore the possibilities.’

‘Is that how he put it? Explore the possibilities?’

‘His exact words.’

‘Prick.’

I would’ve said more, but at that moment Fitzgerald walked in, looking better than she had any right to look after last night, checking the room to make sure everyone was there, her eyes gliding over me without stopping. I wasn’t sure how many people here knew about our relationship, but she was clearly determined not to give them any added reason to bitch. The investigation would be difficult enough as it was.

‘Quiet, everyone,’ she said as she reached the desk next to the whiteboard. ‘This won’t take long. Ambrose Lynch has kindly given us a little of his precious time this morning so we can get the second autopsy done, so we’ll have to keep this short.’ There was a murmur of familiar laughter. They knew Ambrose. ‘Dalton, I want you along for that.’

‘I’ve got an interview at ten,’ said Dalton. ‘Mary Lynch’s dealer.’

‘Lawlor can do it,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘Think you can manage that, Lawlor, without Seamus along to hold your hand?’

‘I’ll do my best, Chief.’

‘You do that. Now,’ she went on, ‘two things. First, you all saw this morning’s edition of the
Post
. This guy isn’t hanging around. I want you all to dig deep and see if there’s anything in this latest letter that strikes a chord. There isn’t much to go on, but anything that comes to you, anything at all, bring it to me. Turn your minds to the Mary angle. Why two Marys? Is that a coincidence or does he have some kind of fixation on the name? And if so, why? Are we looking at some twisted Virgin Mary angle? Does he have something against all women called Mary?’

‘That could be you, Boland, what about it?’ said Dalton loudly.

I glanced across at Boland for an explanation. He looked embarrassed.

‘My ex-wife was called Mary,’ he said quietly, avoiding my eye.

‘Better make sure you have an alibi!’ Dalton laughed.

‘That’s enough,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Think about it, that’s all I ask. Just because you can’t grasp the meaning of something doesn’t mean it doesn’t have one. Everything has a meaning. Now, second thing. Some of you may have noticed that we have a new face here with us. Those of you who haven’t noticed, you’re in the wrong job. Saxon, say hello.’

I nodded hello coolly. I wasn’t going to seem too eager, or make them think I was after their approval. Besides, I was still too furious with Draker to give a damn what they thought.

‘Saxon’s going to be along for the ride, so try and make her feel welcome. I know you won’t, but I’m saying it anyway. I’m sure you know who she is. She’s got a lot of experience, so make use of it. And oh, if any of you have a problem with her being here, have it out with her on your own time. We’re here to work, understood? This guy gave us seven days in which to find him before he runs to ground again. If we don’t pull together, we’re doing his dirty work for him.’

‘That’s telling them,’ whispered Boland, then he lifted his head sharply as Dalton laughed out loud again at some remark by Ray Lawlor.

I felt that nag of paranoia return.

‘Seamus, do you have something to add?’ said Fitzgerald.

‘Just clearing my throat, Chief.’

‘Well, now it’s cleared, you can start. Show us all what a good little policeman you are. Let’s see what you’ve got on Mary Lynch.’

And so it began. I’d been here many times before, not in this room maybe but ones like it. It didn’t matter what city it was, or who the victim; the routine was always the same: the same air of tension, excitement, especially in a case like this when everyone knew how time mattered, that the clock was counting down to the next death; the same patient putting together of each tiny fragment that detectives brought back with them off the street; the slow amassing of detail in the hope that it would eventually fall into shape and amount to something.

There wasn’t much to work with here, though.

According to Dalton, the last known sighting of Mary Lynch was about 10.45 p.m. on Baggot Street Bridge on the night of her death. Her body was found about half eleven. Dalton refused to say which of the two was nearer the time of death – too many variables, he said – but she probably wasn’t dead much more than half an hour if the last sighting was to be trusted.

‘Probably not even that long,’ Dalton added. ‘It’s not Connolly Station out there, but it’s busy enough. There’s punters and prostitutes coming and going all the time, and she wasn’t exactly well hidden. She’d have been found earlier if she was there to be found, is my guess.’

‘Then that means discovering where she was between ten forty-five and eleven thirty,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Are we making any headway there?’

‘Short answer,’ said Dalton, ‘is no.’

Detectives had spent all the first day trying to track down and isolate witnesses, but so far they hadn’t come up with a single person who would admit seeing Mary after 10.45. Taxi drivers gave the same story, and they were usually good for information. People got used to not noticing other people in the city, that was the problem. It became a habit. CCTV footage from businesses in the area was more hopeful, but it would take weeks to get through. Even now they had a list of over a hundred number plates to follow up. Some drivers who’d been in the area at the time had already identified themselves in response to an appeal for information. Others would take longer to track down and eliminate, or not, from suspicion. Lone walkers identified by the same pictures were proving harder still to trace. A hotline had been set up to gather in information. Fitzgerald was going to make a televised plea for witnesses.