The Dead (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 1) (13 page)

So then, where had Fagan’s next victim died? Liana Cassidy had been killed in Prospect Cemetery, next to the railway line. That was no help. How many cemeteries were there, after all, how many miles of track? The police couldn’t watch over them all.

And then I stopped myself, realising what I was doing. A woman lay dead and my thoughts had already turned to the next one. It was as though I’d written off the chances of catching whoever was doing this before it happened again. And the worst of it was, maybe I had.

Chapter Fourteen

‘Professor Salvatore?’ I said as I came through the revolving doors of the National Library and a tall, graceful figure rose to greet me from one of the benches that lined the wall. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

‘No need to apologise,’ he said. The bookstore owner had told me Salvatore was Italian, but there was only the faintest trace of an accent in his voice. ‘And I insist you call me Max.’

‘Max it is.’

I recognised him at once from the photograph printed on the back cover of his books. He was an attractive man, with cheekbones you could go skiing on, and he was well-dressed too, with that careless elegance Europeans seem to manage so effortlessly.

‘Traffic a nightmare?’ he said.

‘Something like that,’ I replied, sidestepping the question. Then I wondered why I felt the need to invent excuses when the events of that afternoon were more than reason enough. ‘Actually,’ I started again, ‘the truth is that the police found another body.’

‘That’s awful. I’m sorry.’

‘She was only found about an hour ago. I was passing by chance otherwise I’d have been here on time. I’m grateful you waited.’

‘If this is a bad time . . .’

‘No. Or yes, it is a bad time, but perhaps you can stop it getting worse, like I explained on the phone this morning. This man is leaving messages, religious messages, each time he kills. The police have managed so far to keep the details out of the media, but what they really want, what I really want, is to know if they contain other possible meanings beyond the obvious.’

‘And that’s where I come in?’ he said.

‘You’re a theologian,’ I said. ‘Former priest, trained in Rome. See, I’ve been told all about you – not least that you’re one of the most important scholars right now in the field of Old Testament eschatology. Whatever the hell that is.’

‘The study of different concepts of heaven and hell,’ he laughed.

I noticed he didn’t object to my assessment of his importance.

‘There you go,’ I said. ‘Who better to explain what we’re dealing with here? Plus, from what I hear, you used to know Ed Fagan.’

‘I didn’t know Ed Fagan that well,’ Salvatore said. ‘We attended a few of the same conferences, contributed to some of the same symposiums and journals. He reviewed me once. Badly. Never give an academic a bad review, they’ll never forget it. We don’t make enough from our writings to put up with bad reviews. I wouldn’t have minded so much if he knew what he was talking about, but eschatology was not Fagan’s field. He was more a linguist and historian than a theologian.’

‘Fagan was interested in language?’

‘Well, he hadn’t published much by the time of his arrest,’ said Salvatore. ‘It was more of a developing interest. But it was something he told me once he wanted to delve into more.’

‘Hebrew?’

‘Not really. Principally Aramaic, Greek, the languages of the New Testament period. I doubt if he could even read Hebrew. That would be more my line of enquiry.’

‘Which is why I called you,’ I said. ‘I’m pretty sure the quotations must come from the Old Testament. You’re the Old Testament expert. It makes sense to put the two of you together.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Salvatore answered, ‘though let us hope that you do not succeed only in exposing my true ignorance. I have spent my whole career trying to keep it hidden.’

‘Max, my lips are sealed.’

‘Then let’s go up.’

Salvatore waved a hand to the stairs at the back of the high-domed hall and we climbed up. At the top of the stairs we turned right and pushed the heavy doors into the Reading Room.

I’d almost forgotten how huge it was in here and how the silence filled it like water in a deep pool. It had that incredible stillness all libraries possess, a quiet broken only by coughs and whispers, pages turning, the squeak of doors and chairs. I’d come here often to read in my early months in Dublin, or more usually just to sit and think. I’d spent all day here sometimes reading, and come out to find that it was dark already. I’d never considered those days wasted. Now I hardly came here at all. Another sign of how my relationship with the city was fraying.

Today it was all but empty and no one spared us so much as a glance as we wove our way among the desks to the back where he’d been working, books and papers scattered across his desk, and where he now pulled up an extra chair for me beside his own.

‘You have the quotations with you?’ he said.

I took out a piece of paper and slid it across the table.

‘This is a copy of the note the killer left on a body we found yesterday,’ I said.

‘
Go, see now this cursed woman and bury her
,’ he read out. ‘Well, at least I shan’t embarrass myself with this one.’

‘You know it?’

‘I am the most important scholar in the field of Old Testament eschatology, remember?’

‘One of the most important is what I said.’

‘Only one of? Funny, I didn’t catch that part.’ He reached over for a book – a King James Bible, I saw it was – and started to flick purposefully through the pages. ‘You know,’ he said whilst he looked, ‘you could probably have found all this information out for yourself with half an hour on the Internet. You’d be surprised what strange things are out there.’

‘Technology and I don’t get along.’

‘You and me both,’ he said with feeling. ‘I refuse to even have a computer in my office. I still use a typewriter. Ah, here it is. The Second Book of Kings, Chapter 9, Verses 33 and 34.’

I read the part he indicated.

So they threw her down: and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and on the horses: and he trode her under foot. And when he was come in, he did eat and drink, and said, Go, see now this cursed woman, and bury her: for she is a king’s daughter
.

‘Who is this woman?’ I said.

‘She is Jezebel,’ said Salvatore. ‘Wife of Ahab, King of Israel. She was denounced by the prophet Elijah for encouraging idolatry, and killed on the orders of a certain Jehu. But you don’t need to be a theologian to appreciate the popular connotations of the name Jezebel, no?’

‘A shameless or immoral woman,’ I said. ‘A whore.’

‘Precisely.’

I glanced back to the story of the murder of Jezebel, trying to work out if the words were intended as a sign that the woman in the churchyard was indeed a prostitute, or whether her killer was simply trying to say that all women were prostitutes, all women unclean, all women Jezebel. As I did so, my eyes saw the words that followed; and the breath caught in my throat.

And they went to bury her: but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands
.

This was getting bizarre.

Why would the killer leave a note referring to the murder of a woman of whom only the skull, hands and feet were found, on the body of a woman with the skull, hands and feet missing? Was it a sick joke? Or was there some hidden meaning in there which only he could decipher?

I looked up and realised that Salvatore was watching me curiously. My face must have betrayed something: incomprehension, excitement, disgust. Cool it, Saxon, I told myself. The press hadn’t been told about the missing body parts, and I wasn’t about to betray that secret now. I didn’t suspect for one minute that Salvatore would tell anyone else if I confessed the reason for my startled face, but I was taking no chances.

‘Are you ready to look at the second quote?’ I said instead, and he, thankfully, was courteous enough to pretend not to notice my reaction.

All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman
.

‘Now then,’ he said when I passed him a copy of the message found in the lining of Mary Lynch’s bag. ‘It’s not from the Old Testament, I’m fairly sure of that.’

‘It’s not?’

‘But it sounds familiar all the same. Let me think, let me think.’ He was half talking to himself, his eyes closed as if in prayer. ‘Stay here a moment, there’s something I must look at.’

I watched Salvatore retrace his steps and start a whispered conversation with the woman behind the counter; watched her go into the back and emerge some minutes later with another thick, leather-bound book; watched him carry it back to our desk, turning pages as he walked.

‘You find what you were looking for?’ I said.

He certainly had.

*******************

Where was my cellphone? I must have left it in Ambrose Lynch’s car. I cursed as I squeezed into the phone booth downstairs and jabbed out the number.

‘Can you talk?’

‘I have five minutes,’ said Fitzgerald.

I told her where I was and who I was with.

‘Has he been any help?’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘He traced the Mary Lynch quote. Turns out it comes from something called the Book of Sirach in the Apocrypha.’

‘Come again?’

‘That’s what I said. Seems that when the Bible was first officially put together, there were all these holy books that got left out because they weren’t considered genuine. They were called the Apocrypha and that’s where we get the word apocryphal, meaning made up. The story about Judith in the last letter the
Post
printed came from the Apocrypha too. That part about lying being justified in order to smite the enemy was why the Book of Judith was excluded from the official Bible. Lying didn’t fit the image of God they wanted to portray – although now I think of it, that part about the Hebrew midwives lying about Moses made it in, didn’t it?’

The pause was slight, but it was there.

‘Is there a point to this history lesson?’ she said.

‘It’s a message, don’t you see? What the killer’s saying is that he’s not genuine either, he’s apocryphal, he’s not Fagan. All Fagan’s quotes came from the Bible proper. Why would he change now?’ The silence was longer this time. ‘Are you still there?’

‘I’m here,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Just thinking how I’m going to put this to Draker. He’s going to love it. Do I have eyewitnesses, blood matches, a confession? No. But don’t worry, sir, I have a two-thousand-year-old book that proves conclusively the killer couldn’t be Ed Fagan.’

Now it was my turn to go silent.

‘Look, Saxon, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean to take it out on you. I was just pretty pointedly reminded this morning by Draker when I confronted him about the autopsy of how many other people there are who want my job and how much better they’d do it.’

‘Draker can’t fire you,’ I said.

‘He can promote me,’ said Fitzgerald, ‘and that’s worse. Before I know it, I’ll be one step higher up the pay scale, and handcuffed to a desk all day long, going stir crazy.’

‘He wouldn’t do that. You’re too valuable to waste at some desk.’

‘I’m glad you’re so confident. Unfortunately, you’re not Assistant Commissioner of the murder squad.’ She yawned quietly. Lack of sleep catching up on her, especially after last night’s wine. ‘Anyway, enough of my troubles. Shall we get back to this . . . what was it again?’

‘Apocrypha,’ I said, ‘but that can wait. Tell me what you’ve been doing instead.’

‘At the scene? Well, we found the knife.’

‘Naturally. Fagan left one behind when he killed Tara Cox. He wiped it clean of prints first, of course.’

‘This one wasn’t wiped,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘There was still blood on it. And fingerprints managed to lift a partial.’

‘You must be pleased.’

‘First break we’ve had, practically. It was Healy found it.’

But was the print a mistake by the killer or part of the game?

‘You have a name yet?’ I asked.

‘That’s another thing. She’s Mary Dalton. Twenty. Prostitute.’

‘Dalton?’

‘I already thought of it. First Lynch, now Dalton.’

‘There we were speculating what significance there was in the names of the women being Mary and we never even gave a thought to their other names. Is this part of his game as well, do you suppose, picking women with the same surnames as people on the investigation?’

‘It sure ain’t a coincidence.’

‘That means he must know who you all are.’

‘It’s not exactly classified information,’ Fitzgerald pointed out. ‘He’d only have to read a newspaper, and we know he likes doing that.’

‘I guess. What does Dalton make of having his name adopted by a psycho?’

‘Who knows what Dalton thinks of anything? He’s too busy right now rounding up half the market traders of Dublin so that he can practise his hard cop routine on them.’

‘Sounds like he’s getting nowhere.’

‘He has a few sightings of strange characters hanging round, but the times don’t fit. As you said, the body must’ve been put there before the market opened, and the sightings were all later.’

‘Maybe he came back to hang around the scene,’ I suggested. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time. Killers often get a kick out of being there when the body’s discovered. Or say he expected it to be discovered earlier, when the market traders arrived to open up – then nothing happens. He might’ve got nervous and turned up to check out what went wrong.’