The Dead (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 1) (28 page)

‘We should go to that.’

‘Of course we should go,’ said Fisher. ‘We’ll go together. We can talk to Tillman afterwards, perhaps even clear this whole mess up. Either we put our minds at ease, or . . .’ He paused. ‘No, I don’t want to think about the alternative.’

‘Till then?’

‘We can bring one another up to date over dinner,’ said Fisher. ‘I’m buying. It’s the least I can do after playing hide and seek with you for the last couple of days.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ I said. ‘But don’t think this means you’re off the hook, Fisher. I’ve had thoughts these last few days I don’t ever want to have again. It’s made me wonder who I can really trust. Made me wonder if I can trust anyone.’

‘Give me another chance,’ said Fisher. ‘It’s all I ask.’ He stopped. ‘Actually, no. There is one other thing I have to ask.’

‘What is it?’

‘Can I please go back and fetch my coat before I freeze? I had no idea the city was going to get this cold.’

‘Cold in December,’ I said. ‘Who’d have guessed it?’

Chapter Thirty-Three

By the time Fisher and I arrived at Trinity, there was hardly an empty seat left in the hall. A murmur of conversation rose like an orchestra tuning up; and looking round as we took our seats near the back, I saw familiar faces.

There was Tim seated near the front, and Tillman’s other students scattered about. Academics huddled together for safety on the edge of the room. There were even some people I recognised from the DMP, including Healy with a woman I took to be his wife. So she hadn’t left him. It wasn’t all bad news.

And was that Assistant Commissioner Draker? Of course it wasn’t. The trees on St Stephen’s Green would grow leaves of gold before Draker would be drawn to a lecture on criminal psychology. God forbid he should ever learn something new.

Reporters were out in force too, eyeing one another warily. A lecture by a well-known American profiler with inside knowledge of the week’s murders was bound to attract their attention. There was no sign of Nick Elliott, though. He must still be keeping his head down. No sign of Fitzgerald either. She’d said she would try and make it, but perhaps she’d been held up at Dublin Castle.

And what about Gus Bishop? Was he somewhere, sitting unobtrusively among the rows, enjoying his anonymity, nursing his secret? I searched the ranks of faces for clues, contemptuous of myself for being so foolish as to think I might see something. What did I expect – a guilty look, a bloodstained collar? And maybe Gus Bishop was out in the back of the hall instead, drinking sherry with the college bigwigs and making small talk, preparing for his grand entrance.

The podium where Tillman would give his lecture was lit already with one bright spotlight. Ladies and gentlemen, we present – well, who?

Who was Tillman any more?

If I’d known so many people would turn up for a mere lecture,’ said Fisher quietly, ‘I’d have started giving them myself years ago. Fiver a ticket and I’d be rich by now.’

‘You’re rich already,’ I reminded him, ‘and half these people are only here because of what they’ve read in the papers all week. It’s just some cheap second-hand thrill for them.’

‘You’re too hard on people,’ he said. ‘Maybe they’re trying to understand.’

‘More like trying to give themselves something gruesome to talk about in the bar later.’

I checked my watch. Tillman was due to start speaking at eight. Still another ten minutes to go. I wondered if I had time to call Jackie again. I’d rung her after meeting up with Fisher and told her something had come up and I’d be later than I’d promised. She hadn’t sounded too pleased, but then I wouldn’t be too pleased if I was her either. The night was what she said she feared and the night was here. The time for shadows.

‘What about me?’ she’d said.

‘I’ll be there. I need a little time, that’s all. You’ve got Haran.’

‘I want you. You promised.’

And there was no denying that. I had.

I’d made up my mind to call her again, though I doubted it would do much good, when a figure stepped up purposefully to the end of the row where Fisher and I were sitting.

I made to get up and let the newcomer through until I saw that it was Tim. He was wearing a T-shirt with the name on it of some band I’d never heard of.

‘I thought it was you,’ he said.

‘So we meet again,’ I answered. ‘Fisher, this is Tim – I’m sorry, I don’t know your second name.’

‘It doesn’t matter. No one knows yours either,’ said Tim brightly. ‘You’re Lawrence Fisher, aren’t you? I’ve read your books. I found them intriguing.’

‘Is intriguing a compliment?’ said Fisher. ‘I’m never sure.’

Tim laughed, but Fisher didn’t get his answer.

‘Have you come to hear the lecture or to speak to Mort?’ he asked me instead.

Mort now, was it?

‘A bit of both,’ I said. ‘But what about you? I thought you didn’t believe in psychological profiling. At least you didn’t the first time I saw you. Has Tillman made a convert out of you?’

‘Not yet. I’m still on the side of real science,’ said Tim. ‘But I never said I wasn’t open to alternative ideas. Do you think he’ll talk about the Night Hunter killings tonight?’

‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘You’d probably know better than me. You were friendly enough with him when I saw you both at lunchtime. I’m not someone he shares his intentions with that closely.’

‘He doesn’t like you.’

‘Are you asking me or telling me?’

‘Just making an observation,’ he said.

‘Is that what you call it?’

Tim leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice.

‘Don’t you want to know what he says about you?’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘What I want is for you to go back to your seat like a good little boy so that I can listen to Tillman’s lecture.’

‘No rush,’ said Tim, straightening up again. ‘There’s no sign of him yet.’

It was the first sensible thing he’d said. There wasn’t.

Now I realised it, I also began to notice that the conversation in the hall had taken on a different tone, a higher pitch, shot through with impatience.

I looked at my watch again.

Ten past eight.

Fisher didn’t seem to have noticed the change in the mood of the hall. Some psychologist he was. Rather he was watching Tim as the student made his way slowly back to his seat.

‘He was a bundle of laughs, wasn’t he?’ he said with a glance at me. Then he stopped. ‘What’s wrong? What is it? Don’t say you let that boy needle you?’

‘Screw Tim. Look.’

A door had opened at the far end of the hall from where Tillman should have emerged ten minutes ago. Now a woman came out and walked briskly up the side of the hall to the exit.

‘Something’s going on,’ I said. ‘Come on.’

I left Fisher to fumble for his coat whilst I made my way towards the exit in pursuit. He had to hurry to catch up.

‘Do you have the faintest idea where you’re going?’ he said as we stepped out into the corridor again and the door closed and the voices fell away to a hum again behind us.

‘No,’ I said. ‘But they’ll do as a first stop.’

The woman who’d appeared from the door at the far end of the hall was standing about a hundred yards away in front of three men who, from the look of them, must have been part of the college, her hands upturned and outstretched in that universal gesture of bewilderment.

One of the men looked up sharply as he saw us approach.

‘Whatever you want, this isn’t the time,’ he barked.

‘I’m a friend of Tillman’s,’ I said. ‘I’m with the murder squad.’ And I wondered which of the statements was the greater lie.

‘Then perhaps,’ he said with a look half of relief and half irritation, ‘you wouldn’t mind telling us where the hell he is.’

‘Tillman isn’t here?’

‘Don’t say you don’t know either?’

‘I came out here to look for him,’ I said.

‘Then as you can see, he isn’t here. He called about an hour ago, saying he had to go somewhere but that he’d be back in plenty of time for eight o’clock. Since then, nothing. There’s no answer at his rooms, he’s not responding to his pager. We have hundreds of people in there waiting to hear him speak and for all we know he’s decided to go and do his Christmas shopping.’

‘What’s the problem?’ asked a new voice.

We all turned and there was Sean Healy. I was glad he’d followed us out. A badge worked wonders sometimes. Quickly I explained to him that Tillman hadn’t shown up.

‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘one of us had better go to his rooms to check that everything’s OK.’

‘You’re not saying—’

‘I’m not saying anything. Just get the key.’

A couple of minutes later, the woman was leading Healy and me out into the rain and across the courtyard to the accommodation block where I’d been three nights ago to hear Tillman’s profile with Fitzgerald. Fisher hung behind at the lecture hall in case Tillman turned up in the mean time, though it was obvious from his face that he didn’t expect it.

The cobbles were wet with rain and shone with reflected light from the windows. Everything seemed restful and festive, the night at ease with itself, but that was only another lie. Healy was talking into a cellphone and the phone was replying in crackles.

Briefly I heard Fitzgerald’s voice fill the silence, then it was crackles again.

‘She’s on her way,’ Healy said.

A moment later, we were climbing the stairs and there was Tillman’s door. The sign on it still bore the name Dr Murray after the previous occupant. Healy stepped forward and knocked.

‘Dr Tillman?’ he said. ‘Are you in there? Open up. It’s the police.’ Silence. ‘Dr Tillman, can you hear me?’

The air held its breath, but there was no answer.

‘Open it,’ he said to the woman.

Her hands were shaking as she found the right key from the bunch in her hand, slipped it into the keyhole and turned.

The click was as loud as the tap of a hammer.

‘Stay here,’ Healy said to her. ‘You too.’

‘No way,’ I said. ‘I’m coming in.’

He didn’t bother objecting, or maybe he didn’t hear. He simply turned the handle, pushed open the door and stepped carefully into the dark. Or not quite dark. The faint glow of the city through open curtains took the edge off the blackness.

‘Tillman?’ I said quietly as I came after him, but I knew now that he was gone. Empty rooms have their own atmospheres.

Healy reached to the wall and pressed the switch. A dingy light like I remembered from the other night replaced the city’s glow and the room swam into relief.

Tillman’s coat lay draped across the back of one of the chairs. On the other lay a thin sheaf of papers. His lecture.
The Science of Murder – A Few Practical and Impractical Suggestions
, I read at the top of the page. The floor was littered with books – some from the library, others with barely a crease in the spine that might have been only days old.

I squatted down to take in the titles. They were books of theology mainly. Histories of the Church Fathers. The Confession of St Augustine.

I picked one up at random and flicked through it. Tillman had scribbled copious notes in the margin in pencil. He’d written so quickly, as though he was excited, that I could hardly decipher it.

Ox/pen/dove
said one scrawl, and that reminded me of the pen which had been found at the grave of Liana Cassidy.

What did it mean?

‘Hello, what’s this?’ I said quietly.

For the first time, I noticed that there was a large cardboard box sitting on Tillman’s table with a sheaf of Christmas paper laid to one side, like it was waiting to be wrapped up as a present.

The lid sat slightly askew on top of the rim. Without thinking, I nudged it aside with my finger and looked inside.

The breath caught in my throat at once, but it was in expectation of a familiar stench rather than at the stench itself. The only smell was one of disinfectant and the hands were perfectly preserved, with no trace of decay. I’d seen pictures of Iron Age bodies that had spent centuries encased in ice and looked much the same; you almost expected to see them twitch, though they hadn’t been shorn off at the wrists or come with fingers folded neatly together.

‘Healy,’ I said, louder, ‘I think you’d better call Ambrose Lynch.’

Chapter Thirty-Four

I took a taxi, made a couple of stops, then ordered the driver to drop me three streets away, outside the sort of bar that even I might think twice about entering. Minutes later, I was letting myself in through the back door of Jackie’s house after checking that the entryway was clear.

The Armed Response Unit was good.

I hadn’t picked up a sign of them at all.

Jackie was sulking when I walked in. She was playing cards with John Haran, staring at her hand through glassy eyes; she didn’t even look up. No need to ask whether she’d got the gear, as she called it.

‘The wanderer returns,’ was all she said to me.

‘I told you I’d be here,’ I said, nodding to Haran and taking a seat across the table from Jackie.

‘You told me a lot of things.’

I didn’t bother arguing.

‘I brought you cigarettes,’ I said instead, digging into the pocket of my jacket and tossing two packets across towards her. ‘And I put some more beer in the fridge.’

A smile. At last.

‘Why didn’t you say so?’

Jackie rose to her feet to go get it, walking carefully like she was afraid of falling over.

‘I heard what happened with the profiler,’ Haran said when she was out of earshot. ‘Do you really think it was him all along?’

Where could I begin?

‘Later, yeah?’ I hedged as Jackie reappeared, carrying two bottles of Bud. She tossed one to me. Looked like I was forgiven, and that only made me feel worse. Jackie was so used to being let down that she’d learned to be easily bought off.

‘Rambo isn’t drinking,’ she explained.

‘I have to keep my wits about me,’ Haran said, ‘to beat this woman at cards.’

‘What are you playing?’ I said.

‘Gin rummy. It’s the only thing I know,’ said Jackie.

‘Then deal me in and prepare to lose all your money.’

‘Think you’re good, do you?’ said Haran.

‘Ask Ambrose Lynch. He played poker with me a couple of nights ago and had to take out a loan with the International Monetary Fund to pay me my winnings . . .’

It was like any ordinary night playing cards and drinking beer, except for why we were there, what we were waiting for. Jackie had the radio switched to one of the rock music stations I hated so much. I tried to tune it out of my brainwaves, but it kept sneaking in and invading my thoughts. She was singing along absently.

She was flirting with Haran too, making suggestive remarks and then laughing, and not at all put off by his unresponsiveness, especially now that she’d started on the beer. Maybe it hadn’t been such a great idea, but I’d hoped it would put her to sleep, make her easier to handle.

Now and again Haran got up to make a circuit of the house, checking everything was as it had been before. Couple of other times his pager went off and he retreated somewhere quiet to make a call. Each time he returned, he gave me a look to say there was nothing to report. He always took care not to walk between the light and the windows so as not to cast a shadow there that anyone watching Jackie’s house would have known was a man’s.

Close to midnight, Jackie excused herself and sneaked off upstairs to the bathroom, and Haran and I exchanged glances, knowing what she was up to. A few minutes later she returned but the light had gone from her eyes temporarily and she was staring at nothing.

She lay on the filthy sofa and shivered.

Gradually she fell asleep.

‘What’s she been like?’ I said.

‘Jumpy,’ he said. ‘All over the place, never sitting still for a minute. I don’t know if it’s the drugs or she’s like that all the time, or whether she’s just afraid.’

‘She have any calls?’

‘Only one. Some man. Tony. Is he her pimp?’

‘Boyfriend, pimp, same difference.’

He snorted agreement.

‘She was trying to calm him down about something. I didn’t hear too much, but it didn’t sound like he was in the mood to be calmed down.’

‘He’s probably wondering where his next fix is coming from with her out of action for a couple of days. She tell him anything?’

‘Not that I could hear. She was whispering though. The Chief should have put a tap on the phone just to be sure.’ I saw his hand go to his gun, where it was hidden next to his shirt.

‘Do you mind if I take a look?’ I said.

‘At my gun?’ He seemed unsure. ‘You know how to handle one?’

‘Full ballistics training with the FBI. I carried a gun every day for the five years I was with the Bureau. Once took out a roomful of armed terrorists singlehandedly.’

‘You did what?’

He didn’t know whether to be impressed or dubious.

‘Yeah, seven of them. They were all made of cardboard. It was an exercise we did during my weapons training, and unfortunately I never got the chance to do it for real afterwards. Still, I don’t think I’ve forgotten how to handle one. You’ll be safe enough.’

He smiled and took out the handgun and handed it to me. It felt good to be holding one again, testing its weight.

I’d always liked guns, always felt safe when I had one. I didn’t know a woman who wouldn’t. That was always my standard response when people asked me, as they often did when they realised I was an American, whether I believed in gun control.

‘Only for men,’ I’d answer.

I hadn’t held one since . . . well.

‘I wish I had one now,’ I said. ‘Sitting here waiting for who the hell knows who to show, it’d make me feel a whole lot better.’ I handed it back. ‘Let’s hope you’re as good as Fitzgerald says you are. There’s three of us to protect and only one gun.’

‘Soon as anything happens, there’ll be a swarm of armed officers here in two seconds,’ he reassured me.

‘It’s those two seconds that do the damage,’ I said.

I went to the bathroom, ignoring the dirty needles I could see in Jackie’s wastebin, and stared at myself in the mirror.

Through the thin glass, I could hear cars, voices, music drifting from open windows down the street.

Tillman was out there somewhere. The killer was out there somewhere. Both statements were true, but however I picked at them I just couldn’t figure where they intersected.

Downstairs again, I went to the kitchen and opened another beer.

Jackie was still sleeping.

‘You want to play some more cards?’ said Haran. ‘Let me win back some of my money?’

I shook my head. The mood had changed as the night grew older. If he was coming, now would be the time. My nerves were aching tight with the strain of anticipation. I shook Jackie awake and told her to go to bed.

‘Promise you’ll stay?’ she said reluctantly.

‘Jackie, trust us. We’re not going anywhere.’

She wasn’t convinced, but made her way to the door anyway. Like I said, she was used to doing what she was told.

‘Wait. We have to hit the lights first.’

Jackie walked from room to room of her small house, switching off lights, then climbed the stairs, catching my eye as she went. She looked terrified and I didn’t blame her.

Upstairs we heard her moving about, heard the pull of the drapes, the creak of floorboards, followed by the squeak of the bed as she climbed into it, a light switched off. The charade of normality for any possible audience.

Haran and I sat in the dark, and I pictured Jackie lying there in the dark too, trying to sleep, hearing noises. He asked me in a whisper about my time in the FBI, but I brushed him off, shifting the talk to him instead. He gave me some of his favourite anecdotes about his time in the ARU. I got the impression he’d told them plenty enough times before.

Truth was, I wasn’t much in the mood for talking.

It was getting cold. Jackie had a gas fire, but we’d let it go down to make things seem as they should be, and also because cold kept you alert, and alert was what we needed to be. All I could see in the dark whilst we waited was the green glow of the digital clock that Jackie had in her sitting room, tracking the hours.

One a.m. . . . two . . . Jackie coughed faintly upstairs.

Outside was all quiet now, barely any traffic; the music of parties had died. Footsteps intermittently alerted my senses, but they had places to go and went to them without disturbing this house; and once they were gone, the night dragged again. Dark took on its own presence and sentience. My eyes became attuned to it, so that I could look round the room and see as well as if I had switched on a light. John Haran’s eyes glinted in the dark.

At some point, I must have nodded off, for I was back in my own apartment and I didn’t know how I’d got there. I knew at once that it was a dream and that I shouldn’t be sleeping, but I stopped myself from stirring because I was curious to know why I was here, what was here.

The door out to the terrace was open, and an icy draught was snaking round my feet. Outside was no city, only trees, a dark wood like the one where Fagan had died. There was someone in here with me. I knew it instinctively, like the particles in the atmosphere had been altered by a stranger’s breath, so that they felt desecrated.

As I stepped through the shapes of my furniture, down the hallway to the bedroom, I could hear a breathing that wasn’t mine. The door was closed. I touched it and it swung open. There on the bed lay Jackie. She was face down on the sheet, naked, a length of green twine twisted round her neck, her wrists and ankles tied with the same, only she had no hands. And there, sketched on to her back in blood, were two letters. Aleph. Lamedh. Tillman stood by the bed, pointing at them.

I started awake, only just managing to prevent myself from crying out, taking short, shallow breaths to compose myself. Then I noticed.

Haran was gone.

I was out of my chair in an instant. Quick look round the room. Into the kitchen. Check the time: shortly after three.

He wasn’t there.

Into the hallway, careful not to make too much noise. Not there either. Then the stairs, climbing them slowly, remembering Haran’s gun and wishing it was mine. Though what did I need a gun for? Haran had probably only gone to the bathroom. Hadn’t he? If he had, he wasn’t there now. Nor in the second bedroom.

That only left – Jackie’s room.

I was alarmed now as I stepped, quicker, quicker, down the hall to the front of the house.

Stop.             

Jackie’s door was ajar.

‘Haran?’

I saw him at once, standing close to the window nearest the door, peering out through a narrow crack.

‘Haran, what the—’

He raised a finger to his lips to silence me, though without taking his eyes off the window, and I saw he’d taken his gun out and now had it balanced lightly in his other hand.

‘There’s someone here,’ he whispered.

‘You should have woken me.’

‘You fall asleep, this is what happens. You miss all the fun.’

‘You call this fun?’

I stepped over to his side lightly, sparing a quick glance to the bed where Jackie lay. I couldn’t see her face, but I heard her breathing faintly.

Dead to the world.

No, don’t say that.

‘Why hasn’t he been closed down yet?’

‘Just waiting for the right moment. There. See him?’

Through the crack, I saw a shadow stir.

I looked over to the derelict house. I knew there was backup there, but right now I felt like the city had emptied itself of possible aid and we were alone. One gun. One killer. Was this him?

‘Come on.’

Haran crept back out to the top of the stairs. The door below was rattling faintly as the shadow tested the lock.

‘Soon as he comes in, you take cover,’ he said.

Haran levelled the gun patiently as the door began to open slowly and the shadow stepped over the threshold. How had he got past the lock?

There was no time left to ask. This was it.

‘Freeze!’ shouted Haran – and at that moment there was a scuffle outside and I saw two more shadows appear.

The figure in the doorway turned in alarm, and a shot rang out.

Not one of Haran’s.

There was a flash like lightning as he was hit, so bright that I could see his face. Not Tillman’s face, but familiar all the same.

Where had I seen it before?

He fell to the ground with a cry of pain, and from upstairs I could hear Jackie shout out too as she woke to the noise.

Haran took the stairs two at a time on the way down as another voice shouted at the injured man: ‘Stay where you are!’

Haran bent down and started to frisk the figure on the ground.

‘Who fired?’ he demanded. ‘Was it you, Baily?’

‘I thought he was going to shoot.’

‘He hasn’t got a fucking gun; what did you think he was going to shoot you with – a mobile phone?’

‘I thought—’

‘Wrong, Baily. To think, you’d need a fucking brain.’