The Dead (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 1) (9 page)

The symbol was like a letter x that was starting to curl, but made with thicker, darker pen strokes. I tried to imagine what it looked like on the dry, dead parchment of Mary Lynch’s skin, then wished that I hadn’t.

‘You going to tell me what this is?’ I said.

‘That,’ she said, ‘is aleph.’ She spelt it out. ‘First letter of the Hebrew alphabet.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘I am only repeating what the wise Ambrose Lynch himself told me this afternoon. Comes before beth and gimel.’ She didn’t bother spelling those out. ‘Literal translation from the Hebrew: ox.’

‘Well, if this doesn’t persuade Draker and the Commissioner that this isn’t the work of Fagan, nothing will,’ I said. ‘Fagan may have left around a few quotes from the Bible, but nothing like this. No symbols, certainly no writing on the skin of his victims. Wonder how the
Post
will explain that away if they’re still intent on insisting that it’s him?’

‘Let’s hope they don’t find out,’ said Fitzgerald, draining her glass again. ‘Not for a few days, anyway. That way there’ll be more time for us to work out what the hell’s going on.’

‘Maybe I can help there,’ I said.

‘Don’t tell me. You’ve been taking a night class in Hebrew scriptology.’ It was reassuring to see that alcohol hadn’t affected her sarcastic sense of humour.

‘I called Lawrence Fisher today. The profiler, you remember?’

‘I remember Fisher. You wrote about him in your book. The third one, the one that didn’t sell. He’s working on a new serial offender database for Scotland Yard, isn’t he?’

‘Among other things. I asked him to run the details of Mary Lynch’s killing through the system to see what comes out. I thought seeing as Mullen was in London up until a few months ago . . .’

I didn’t need to join the dots.

‘That looks pretty futile now, of course, but you never know what’ll turn up. He faxed me through the form this afternoon, but I wanted to check some of the details with you first and take a look at the initial crime scene and autopsy reports.’

‘They’re all in my bag. Help yourself.’

‘I asked whether he’d consider drawing up a preliminary profile.’

‘I’m not sure about that,’ said Fitzgerald carefully. ‘Draker’s not exactly the world’s greatest fan of profiling. Far as he’s concerned, it’d be like bringing in a witch doctor to help with the investigation. Even when I suggested making enquiries to see if there was some significance in the quotes the killer had left so far, and whether there was anything in his choice of the feast day of St Agericus for the start of his seven-day sequence, he nearly went through me. Gave me his working-the-scene lecture. I couldn’t release the funds without his authorisation.’

‘Money’s not the problem,’ I said. ‘The problem is that Fisher turned me down and passed me on to Mort Tillman instead. Yeah, that Mort Tillman. Turns out he’s going to be in Dublin for a while, giving some guest lectures at Trinity College.’

Fitzgerald whistled softly.

‘Do you think he’ll talk to you?’

‘He already has,’ I told her, ‘and he’s agreed to help. And there’s no need to look so surprised either. He can’t hold a grudge for ever. Anyway, I told him to come along to the crime team meeting tomorrow morning and said I’d bring him to the scene afterwards – if that’s OK with you. Maybe it’s what we need right now to throw some light on this hieroglyphics bull.’

‘I hope you’re right, because I have a feeling we’re going to be needing all the help we can get.’ She reached for her glass again, only this time she knocked it over and red wine spilled across the tablecloth.

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

‘I’ll do that,’ I said, but she wasn’t making any attempt to clean it up anyway.

She had her elbow on the table, her chin in the scoop of her palm, and the other hand was pinching her nose. ‘I think somebody must have kicked me in the head when I wasn’t looking,’ she said. ‘Have you got any aspirin?’

‘You can have aspirin in the morning when the wine’s worn off,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you just go to bed? I’ll clear up.’

By the time I got back with a cloth, she’d gone. I found her lying on top of the bed, too tired to even pull back the quilt and climb in. I fetched her coat and laid it over her, then went to find a blanket to lay on top of that. The night was going to be cold. She would need it.

Chapter Ten

Too restless to sleep, I took the Jeep from the underground car park and started to drive, nowhere in mind. There was hardly any traffic at this hour, and in no time at all I’d made my way to the seafront, where the road followed the railway line along the curve of the bay, and was driving with the city on one side and the black water glittering on the other.

Somewhere out there, Howth Head rose out of the blackness, the lighthouse blinking at its foot, and there was a ship winding its way in across the Irish Sea to sweep cumbersomely into harbour, where another lighthouse blinked back. Here was where the city came to pause for breath, and I felt for the first time since yesterday morning that I was pausing for breath too.

On Dalkey Hill, I got out and smoked a cigar, and tried to tune my thoughts again to the unhurried beat of the lighthouses below as they called to one another silently across the water. It was so cold that the self-pity was frozen out of me. But I resisted a second cigar, climbed into the Jeep again instead, turned the heater up high, and made my way back to the city.

Soon I was making a circuit of the streets and lanes around where Mary Lynch’s body had been found, where the prostitutes always lingered, along the canal, past the Peppercanister Church, spinning round Fitzwilliam Square, looking for a familiar face. It was months since I’d seen Jackie, and I felt guilty after reading what I’d read about her that night. I knew she’d still be out here, though. This was her beat, her domain, same as Mary.

A momentary panic gripped me when I thought she wasn’t there, a vision of what might have happened to her, but I forced it back down. I’d no right to console myself with this show of sudden concern; she was out here every night. OK then, but I still needed to talk to her, for Mary Lynch’s sake if not for hers; or if not for Mary Lynch’s sake, for she was long past concern, then for the next Mary Lynch and the next one after that. There were always Mary Lynches.

Finally, by chance, I found her sheltering in the pale light of an insurance broker’s architect-designed doorway, dressed for the cold as usual in microskirt and fishnet stockings and leather jacket, the standard international uniform of the streetwalker.

She’d told me once that she was sixteen and only weeks on the street when Fagan killed his first victim, so she couldn’t be more than twenty-four now, but she could have passed for forty on her worst nights, and this was definitely one of those. Her skin looked stretched and parched, her eyes wide and heavy-lidded under thick black make-up, her hair lifeless as straw.

I pulled alongside her and wound down the window.

‘Jackie,’ I said. ‘Long time.’

‘What can I say?’ Jackie said thickly when she realised who it was. ‘I’ve been busy. People to see, things to do, cookies to bake, you know how it is.’

She was putting on an American accent, she always did when we met. She thought it was funny and I always smiled, like I would at a child. But there was no disguising her rough accent, or the rasp in her voice that told me she was as far from conquering the habits that kept her out here as she had been last time we met.

‘You got any fags?’ she asked.

‘I don’t smoke, remember?’ I said. ‘Don’t smoke cigarettes, that is. But get in. I’ll go get some.’

‘I’d better not, it’s not been a good night.’

‘Jackie, get in. I’ll make it worth your while.’

Friendships in this part of town were always sweetened with money, that was part of the deal, but I could still see her wavering, right up to the moment when she came over and climbed in.

‘Heated seats!’ she said once she’d slammed shut the door. ‘Jesus, I wish you were a man, I’d do you for free just to get out of the cold. Heated seats, shit. This is some motor.’

‘Same one as last time, Jackie.’

‘Last time was summer. Everything was different in the summer.’

She shivered as warmth slowly took hold, and I could see the shadow of the bruises still festering under her make-up. I could see why the nurses in Casualty had called the police.

‘You been out there long?’ I said as I pulled away.

‘An hour, a bit more,’ she said.

I found a look of sympathy coming to my face, then stopped it. I wasn’t going to sympathise with her for not finding any strangers to abuse her. No strangers meant no money, then maybe she’d sort herself out. I’d tried often enough to help in the past.

‘It’s last night,’ she said. ‘You must have heard what happened. It always keeps the punters away for a while. Some of the girls haven’t even bothered coming out. They think the cops’ll be all over the place, scaring the cars off. It wasn’t too bad earlier on, but now it’s just dead—’

She stopped short at the word, alarmed by it.

‘Do you think there’ll be . . . more?’

‘Killings?’ I said. ‘There’s always more.’

‘If it’s Ed Fagan there will be. That’s who they reckon did it, don’t they?’

I said nothing to that, kept my eyes on the road.

A moment later I pulled into the forecourt of a garage, and hopped out for cigarettes, picked her up a sandwich while I was at it. I handed them to her along with fifty in notes. She made a half-hearted attempt to give it back. ‘Hey, Saxon, you don’t have to . . .’

‘Take it,’ I said. ‘It makes me feel better.’

She’d already taken out the first cigarette and lit it from the car lighter. Now she looked at the sandwich, almost shyly, as if wondering what that was about, why I’d bought it, unsure what to do with it, almost amused. She turned it over a few times in her fingers and then put it up on the dashboard. I kept the car ticking over but made no attempt to drive away.

‘I heard about what happened to you,’ I said in the end. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I only saw the incident report tonight. I’d no idea.’

‘Goes with the territory,’ she said, willing herself hard. ‘Least I kept the money. They catch who did it yet?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Are they even trying?’

I remembered the crime scene report, how thin it was, and avoided the question with another one. ‘Victim Support been in touch yet?’

She saw what I was doing and ignored me.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I just want you to know you can call me any time. You have my number.’ She nodded, but I don’t think she was really listening any more. The appeal of the heated seats was wearing off. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened.

‘I just need to clarify a few things,’ I tried to explain.

I thought she was going to ignore me again, she took so long to answer, but she simply asked: ‘What good will it do?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe I can help the police find who did it. The Chief Superintendent’s asked me to help out with the enquiry into Mary Lynch’s death. Maybe there’s a connection.’

It took her a moment to realise what I was saying.

‘You think the freak who killed Mary was the one who raped me?’

‘What do the police call it? A line of enquiry. That’s all it is I’m following. Had you ever seen the man who attacked you before?’

‘Not sure.’ Begrudging, but at least it was an answer. ‘I might’ve.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘I – I was wrecked, wasn’t I, all right? I didn’t even know what fucking day it was.’ She raised her voice to cover her embarrassment at having to admit she’d been taking drugs, though it wasn’t as if she could hide it. ‘He just walked up to me, didn’t he? It was dark, he had one of those hooded tops, I didn’t really get a good look at him. We just went down by the canal, down where Mary was . . . where Mary died . . . and then he went nuts and attacked me.’

‘Near there, you mean, or the exact place?’

‘Same place, I think, from what I saw in the paper.’

I tried to keep my voice level. It hadn’t said in the report exactly where she’d been attacked. It probably hadn’t seemed important at the time.

‘Did he suggest going there or you?’

‘Him,’ she said firmly. ‘I hate it down there. There’s rats there, I’ve seen them, I don’t like going under the bridge. But he offered me another twenty if I’d do it. Twenty’s twenty.’

‘And did he say anything to you during the attack?’

She shook her head.

‘After?’

She gave a snort.

‘He said I should go and sin no more.’

‘Those were his words?’

‘Yeah. Bastard. Like it was me who was in the wrong.’

Go thou and sin no more
. I was no theologian, but even I recognised that.

‘Just a couple more things, Jackie, and then I’ll leave you alone. The report said the man who attacked you told you he knew where you lived, is that right? Try to remember. Did he tell you where you lived, or just say that he knew? To frighten you, you know?’

‘I think . . . yeah, I think he told me where it was. Said he knew I shared a house with Penny. That’s my cousin. She moved in with me a couple of months ago. She was the one made me go to Casualty. He said he’d seen me with her, said he knew we lived down the Coombe.’

‘The Coombe, that was all? No address?’

‘He might’ve done. I can’t remember. I’d been taking these pills, on top of everything else, to help me sleep. The doctor said they might make me confused. I don’t . . .’ She trailed off again, before gathering herself. ‘What else? You said there was a couple of other things.’

‘So I did. I want you to look at a picture, see if you recognise the face.’

‘I keep telling you, I can’t remember.’

‘I just want you to take a look at it, see if anything looks familiar.’

‘Is it the one who did it?’

‘It’s no one.’

‘If it’s no one, what do you want me to look at it for?’

‘Will you look?’

I reached into my pocket before she could think of any more reasons why she shouldn’t cooperate, and brought out the photograph of Jack Mullen. I’d snipped it so his father wasn’t in the shot; I didn’t want Jackie recognising him. The photograph was more than eight years old, but it was all I had.

‘Who is it?’ said Jackie.

‘Just someone I’m checking up on. You recognise him?’

She looked at Mullen’s face briefly, then shook her head.

‘Take a longer look, if you like,’ I said.

She took the photograph from my fingers and stared at it for a long time.

‘There’s something about him,’ she said presently. ‘The eyes, maybe.’

‘What about the eyes?’

‘Something familiar maybe . . . no. No. Sorry,’ she added as she handed it back. I tried not to show my disappointment. I had no right to be disappointed.

‘That’s OK. You did great.’

‘Fat lot of good it’ll do anyway,’ she said bitterly. ‘The police aren’t going to find who did this to me any more than they’re going to find who did that to Dolly.’

‘Dolly?’

She looked at me like I was stupid.

‘Mary. That’s what we called her – Dolly Parton. She said that’s what she’d do, you see, if she ever got rich, go get her tits done like Dolly Parton. It was a nickname.’

‘I didn’t realise you knew Mary Lynch.’

‘Sure I knew her,’ Jackie said. ‘All the girls out here knew Mary. I used to let her crash at my place sometimes when she was stuck. She was with me the night before she . . .’

She didn’t need to finish.

‘Did she seem worried?’ I asked.

‘Why should she be worried? She didn’t know what was going to happen, did she?’

‘She didn’t give you any hint that she might be in danger? That she might’ve been followed recently, or threatened, anything like that?’

‘She was just the same as usual,’ she said. Then she smiled, remembering. ‘We had a good laugh about her fancy man.’

‘Fancy man?’

‘That was her name for him,’ said Jackie. ‘It was a joke. He was just a client, he’d picked her up one night a few months ago and he’d been back a couple of times a week ever since, more some weeks. Said his wife was dead and told Mary he wanted to marry her. As if.’

‘Did she say what his name was?’

‘Let me think,’ she said. ‘Gus, was that it? Something like that.’             

Gus, the same name that had come up in the Monica Lee investigation.

I felt numb.

‘Did you tell all this to Dalton?’

‘Who?’

‘Seamus Dalton from the murder squad. He was supposed to have been conducting interviews with the people who knew Mary Lynch.’

‘Well, he never conducted one with me.’ And she glanced pointedly over at the clock on the dashboard and sighed loudly. ‘Look, can I go now?’

What was I, her fifth-grade teacher?

‘I’ll drop you off,’ I said.             

Jackie kept her nose to the glass like a child as we drove, pressing her palm flat to wipe away her breath every time she needed to peer out and see who was there. She was looking for her boyfriend, now she had the fifty, so the both of them could get stoned. I wished I’d had the courage not to give her any; I’d only done it because it made things easier for me.