The Rule Book (18 page)

‘Laura,’ the woman said. ‘Her name was Laura. I saw you with her once. You were talking to her near to the hospital.’

‘I think you must have her or me confused with someone else,’ he said calmly, keeping his inner rage from his voice, rolling over onto his back. ‘I’ve never met her. You think I’m The Raven?’ he asked incredulously.

‘I don’t know what I think,’ she said quietly.

‘You really think I could have killed those people in cold blood,’ he said, unable to keep his voice neutral. ‘I mean, why would I? How could I?’ He placed a hand on her hip. ‘I don’t know where you’ve got this crazy idea from, but I’m not The Raven. I don’t know who is, but it isn’t me.’

She stayed silent regretting having said anything. If her suspicions were right she was potentially lying next to a serial killer; a deranged lunatic who thought he could kill with impunity. She was fairly confident that he knew the first two victims. She’d barely seen him in the past few days, and he’d arrived at her apartment at gone
one o’clock
last night, ever so slightly hyper. Through the thin cotton of her nightdress she could feel him bristle with irritation at her silence.

After a few moments she swung her bare legs out of the bed, his hand sliding onto the sheets, and headed for the bathroom. The main thing was to get away from him, find somewhere to think things through, get her thoughts into some kind of order; somewhere where she didn’t feel under threat. She’d get ready for work as normal; tell him that she was sorry, that she was just being paranoid. She pushed the bathroom door shut and stared at her tired face in the mirror before bending to scoop up handfuls of lukewarm water, splashing them on her face trying to calm her inner panic.

He waited until the door closed and then followed, carefully rolling his feet to keep silent. He shut his eyes, gathering himself, trying to centre his anger, sucked air in through his nose and burst through the door.

She was bent over the sink. In one motion he grabbed hold of her hair, yanked up her head and violently shoved her face into the mirror. His anger crimsoned his vision, threatening to blossom into blind rage. He tugged her head back and slammed it forward again, the mirror cracking in a jagged pattern of concentric circles centred on the point of impact. He felt her go limp in his grasp and he managed to rein in his fury, letting her slide unconscious to the floor, blood tricking from her nostrils. Her once beautiful face a bloody mess.

He left her there and headed to the kitchen, now feeling strangely calm, his anger dissipating as quickly as it flamed. He retrieved some packing tape from a drawer and returned to the bathroom. He slipped the cotton nightdress over her head and levered her dead weight into the bath. Using the tape he bound her wrists to the handles of the bath and her feet to the taps. He then placed the tape across her mouth and wrapped it round her bloody head several times leaving her nose free.

Trust her to see through him. He’d accounted for everything except her. He didn’t think he’d need to. He’d been confident that he’d left no clues to his alter-ego and his project. She would now inevitably have to die and with her disappearance he would ultimately be exposed. But that was okay; he’d just need to re-think his exit strategy. He wouldn’t be able to blend back in to society; instead he’d need to disappear into the shadows. He’d planned for such a possibility; after all he was writing the rules not following them. He was even leaving a trail of clues that would lead right to him if the guards had enough brains to follow them; or perhaps they would follow his false trails instead.

He sat on the closed toilet seat and traced a finger over her alabaster skin, a red trace of pressure left in its wake. This would be a death he could savour.

Tony Bishop stared out the window and across the park. He was trying to convince himself that he was calm and collected, in control of things; that the butterflies in his stomach and the jitteriness in his blood were not real; that he could handle the bombardment of questions from the world’s media. And it was going to be global coverage. Three murders by a self-proclaimed serial killer in three days, with the promise of more until his sick, little book was written. The table behind him was covered with the day’s newspapers. The murders were on the front page of every one. There was little hope of keeping the cards and chapters under wraps now. One of the foreign papers would publish them and then they’d be all over the Internet.

He sucked in air slowly and let it out gently. He was dressed in a pristine uniform and subconsciously he played with the cuffs.

There was a knock at the door and he could hear it opening. He swung round, his manner turning immediately to one of irritation, his nervousness surfacing and escaping. ‘For God’s sake, Colm! Look at the state of you!’ He gestured angrily, a flood of red rising from his collar into his face. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’

McEvoy stared back impassively, then down at his attire, and back up again. His shoes were covered in blades of grass, the lower part of his suit trousers wet and dirty, his shirt and loosely knotted tie stained by coffee. He caught his reflection in the window, his face pale, skin tight to the bones and dark with stubble, crescents under his eyes.

‘You look like shit and you’re dressed like a scarecrow!’ Bishop berated him. ‘We have a press conference in an hour and you look a hurricane survivor.’

‘I’ve come straight from the murder site,’ McEvoy said as way of explanation.

‘You spent the whole night there?’ Bishop asked, incredulity in his tone. ‘Why the hell did you do that? It’s called delegating, Colm. You’re a manager for God’s sake. You should have handed it over to Jenny Flanagan when she arrived and gone home and tried to get some sleep. Jesus! How the hell are you going to catch him if you can’t think straight because you’re knackered?’

McEvoy stayed silent.

‘No wonder you look like shit,’ Bishop stated. ‘When was the last time you slept? Properly slept,’ Bishop qualified.

McEvoy shrugged. ‘A while ago, I guess.’

‘Well, you haven’t got time to go home to clean up now. You’ve probably only got a wardrobe of those ridiculous suits in any case. We’ll just have to try and find someone who’s the same size as you. Preferably someone wearing a uniform. It doesn’t matter what the rank is as long as it fits. I’ll get someone else to go and get you a razor and some deodorant from a local shop. I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t go anywhere. You understand?’

He brushed past McEvoy and out of the door. It clicked shut behind him.

McEvoy drew out a chair and sat at the table. He looked down at the papers on the table and then stared up at a Yeats print. He didn’t need to read the papers, their half-truths, conjecture and psychobabble analysis. He knew the reality of what was happening; he was living it. It was bearing down and crushing him.

His phone rang and he pulled it reluctantly from his pocket. ‘McEvoy.’

‘It’s Diarmaid Savage. We’ve found all the toes and notes,’ he said excitedly. ‘If you plot them …’

‘What do they say?’ McEvoy interrupted.

‘Well, they … er,’ Savage was thrown off balance. ‘Look, it’s, er, not so much what they say, as what they show, if you know what I mean. I mean, if you plot the location of each toe and note and draw a line between them in the order that they were left, then they draw the picture of a bird – the beak, the wings, and the tail. He’s drawn a picture of a bird – a raven – across the park.’

‘A raven,’ McEvoy repeated, trying to make sense of Savage’s news.

‘And where the murder occurred forms the eye,’ Savage said.

McEvoy stayed silent trying to digest the information. ‘You’d better tell me what the notes say,’ he muttered eventually.

Savage read them out.

3f. Do not draw attention to yourself. Act like an ordinary member of the public. 53,21,10.43, 06,20,13.78

3g.
Never
become complacent.

‘He’s underlined, never,’ Savage explained before continuing.

53,21,34.31, 6,20,54.18

3h. Do not create patterns – vary timing, method of killing, method of disposal, and so on.

53,21,28.02, 06,19,39.53.

‘Plus the master rule.’

‘He’s got it all worked out, hasn’t he,’ McEvoy said quietly. ‘The cocky bastard. You’d better let Jenny Flanagan know. I’ve got to go.’

He ended the call, wanting to process the information, to sit in silence. He stared up at the ceiling. The press were going to have a field day with the killer’s sky writing of his supposed emblem. The Raven was feeding the machine, developing a recognisable persona that would ensure he would be remembered well after he was caught and jailed. He lowered his eyes back to the Yeats print.

McEvoy slipped off his shoes and started to strip off his clothes, hanging them on a clothes hook. The borrowed uniform hung two hooks along the rack. His mobile phone rang and he dug a hand into his trouser pocket to retrieve it.

‘McEvoy.’

‘Colm, it’s Elaine. Do you have a minute?’

‘Sure, but it’ll have to be quick. I’ve got to have a shower and a shave. This press conference is in 20 minutes’ time.’

‘She was killed by asphyxiation caused by strangulation. He used his hands rather than a tie or rope, gouged his fingers deep into her throat. She had some deep spots of haemorrhaging under the skin, damage to her larynx and thyroid cartilage, and her hyoid bone had been fractured. Interestingly, she has a horizontal stripe of abrasions and bruising high across her chest. Up near her collarbones.’

‘A stripe?’ McEvoy repeated.

‘I’d say she’d been caught across the chest by a rope or wire. If I was to guess what happened, I’d say she was running along the path when she ran into a wire that whipped her legs from under her bringing her to the ground. Our killer then bashed her in the face to stun her and then strangled her. The blow to the face broke her nose and fractured her right cheekbone, but just stunned her. He hit her with something long and wide in shape – the blow fell across her face, rather than being concentrated into one point. The toes were cut off after death, which I can confirm as being around nine o’clock give or take half an hour. They’d been cut off with something sharp, but not serrated. Probably shears or pliers, bolt-cutters or something similar. She was also pregnant. I’d say she was about eight weeks’ gone.’

‘She was pregnant?’ McEvoy repeated, sitting down on the wooden slatted bench in his underpants and socks.

‘Just a few weeks,’ Elaine replied.

‘None of the people who’ve been talking to the husband told me that.’ McEvoy stared at the changing room’s tiled floor. Now they were investigating four deaths – three lives and one future one.

‘The husband might not have known. She might have been saving it, waiting until she was a bit further into the pregnancy when there was less likelihood of miscarriage before telling him.’

‘Jesus,’ McEvoy muttered.

‘Look, have your shower and do the press conference. If you’ve got any other questions come back to me, otherwise it’ll be in the report. And get some sleep.’ She ended the call.

McEvoy pulled each sock off, stood, pulled down his underwear and crossed the room to the showers. It was going to take more than water and soap to make him feel clean.

The uniform was a better fit than his suit, but it was still a size too big. McEvoy felt uncomfortable wearing someone else’s clothes, inhabiting their space, his hands straying into foreign pockets. He jammed a finger between his collar and neck trying to make space, though there was plenty of room.