She turned and headed back up the steps.
‘Inspector . . . what’s the fourth victim’s name? Are you saying there is going to be another killing today? What are your lines of inquiry? Do you have any suspects?’
The questioners didn’t wait for one to finish before another piped up.
Jo ignored them, and kept going, catching sight of the blinds askew in the incident room overhead.
‘They’re after your head,’ Foxy said, holding her coat, keys out, and the files she’d asked him to organize on the case as she got inside.
‘Back entrance,’ she told him.
‘What if he doesn’t kill today?’
She shook her head. ‘Why am I the only one who is taking today seriously?’
‘But why did you tell them it’s the same killer?’ Foxy asked. ‘We won’t have a minute’s peace now.’
‘One, because my conscience has enough baggage already, thank you very much. And two, I want to see how Ryan Freeman covers it now he has to. Did you notice? He didn’t even bother to show up. Get your job book out. I want every spit and cough on his background. I want to know why he wasn’t out there. There has to be a reason. You should check the phone exchanges between him and Sexton – has the frequency gone up in recent days? I want to know what he had for breakfast, if he wipes his arse with double-sided toilet paper – everything. Did you find anything on Mac?’
‘Nothing leapt out, Jo. Apart from those dropped cases that we know about already, he’s a model officer.’
She took the keys out of his hand. ‘Don’t let him out of your sight today. I’ve asked the lab to see if they can crossmatch the drugs in the apartment where Rita died with that Skids sting organized from the station a few months back. It’s just a hunch, but if we get that drug link, we can keep him for a week. I want him here till the last second. Him and Skinny – aka Andy Morris. You got that?’
Foxy nodded. ‘Where are we going now?’
‘Who said anything about “we”? I need some time alone to think. Oh, and can you get one of the uniforms to ring around the cemeteries in the city. See if they can find out about any grave desecrations or disruptions in the last five years. If nothing comes to light, widen it to the rest of the country.’
Foxy noted it down.
She tipped his chest. ‘And today’s study topic is necrophiliacs, specifically in the Bible. It’s not something you can consult Sal about, so you’re on your own.’
‘’Course,’ Foxy said, tucking his pen behind his ear and holding out Jo’s jacket for her to put her arms in. ‘If you’re wrong about today, it’s all over. They’ll shaft you – you know that, don’t you?’
‘If I’m wrong about today, I’ll go myself,’ Jo told him over her shoulder. ‘But I’m not wrong. Today is a big day for our killer. Today will be the most spectacular so far.’
‘Professor Hawthorne rang and left a message for you to call him. Said it’s important,’ Foxy called after her.
Jo nodded as she strode away. Her watch read 2.47 p.m.
39
Mac paced up and down the cramped space in the holding cell trying to get his head straight. The job; the few quid he’d put aside; the dream of running a little Irish bar on the Costa Del Sol – it was all about to go down the Swanee, and it was all because of that bitch Jo Birmingham. But she still wasn’t satisfied, and she wouldn’t be either, not till she had him completely stitched up. He still hadn’t seen his lawyer, and any minute now they were going to come and take his DNA – she’d said as much. They could use ‘reasonable force’ to take a cheek swab, and Mac knew only too well what constituted ‘reasonable’. It wouldn’t have mattered if he just opened his mouth and said ‘ahh’; he could just picture some of the lads queuing up to have a go once word went around of what he’d been up to. He had to get out of here. Mac knew what pain did to people.
He tucked his fists under his arms. He didn’t want any part of him touching the scabies-ridden walls, though he could have done with punching one of them. He should have been on a one-way flight the second Anto Crawley asked him if Ryan Freeman’s kid had been reported missing, he now realized.
He walked over to the cistern in the corner, unzipped and had a slash. When he was finished, he pulled his sleeve over his hand so he could turn the sink faucet in the corner without making contact, then splashed the water on the back of his neck and face, shook it off and exhaled tightly.
If he told them the name of the person who’d paid him to list who was involved in what had happened to the Freeman kid, he was a dead man. Every one of them – Stuart Ball, Anto Crawley, Rita Nulty, Father Reg – had been dispatched since.
He threw a glance at the coarse grey blanket covering the bed. If he had to stay here tonight, just thinking about the prison sentence Birmingham had in mind for him would drive him out of his mind. He sniffed under his arm. He needed to get home, to shower, to change and to get the numbers of his contacts. He could phone someone, organize for Birmingham to be taken down a peg or two. Everyone had a point at which they were willing to back off; the Skids had taught him that. It wasn’t enough for Birmingham that his career was dead in the water anyway. Any chance of promotion had gone by the wayside the night the kid in the cell died. Yes, he’d been helping some lowlifes jack poison into each other’s arms ever since. It was called enterprise in his book. But Birmingham still wanted her pound of flesh. She hadn’t been here that night, seen the way the kid in that file had answered him back. So Mac had given him one dig too many, so what? Some might say he’d done society a favour. It cost 100,000 to keep a prisoner inside for a year. He’d saved the taxpayer a potential fortune.
The key clanked in the door behind him and he turned jumpily. It was probably just some cheeky fucker going to offer him lunch. Mac knew exactly what bodily fluids were mixed up with any tray that slid under that door.
But when he saw the face looking back at him, he grinned. ‘Thanks be to fuck,’ he said. ‘Get me out of here.’
40
By 5 p.m., Jo was checking a roast chicken in the oven after taking a break from studying the files on the case. She was all fingers and thumbs with the food, her concentration a million miles away. She knew there’d be hell to pay for walking out at the time she had, but she couldn’t handle any more interruptions from Friar and her NBCI team, or the constant challenges to her authority. Time was too precious now. Foxy, Sexton and Merrigan were going to drop by for a late-night conference once her boys were fed and bedded down for the night. Until then, Jo needed some peace and quiet to pore over the details in the mountain of paperwork stacked on her desk containing background information on the victims and anything relevant that had turned up during interviews in the house-to-house enquiries. There had to be something in there that would crack the case, Jo told herself as she fiddled with the dials on the cooker.
‘The drug addict Stuart Ball was murdered on New Wapping Street,’ she said to herself. Scooping a handful of cutlery out of the clattering drawer, she pulled a knife free of the others and placed it on the bench to represent New Wapping Street. ‘Rita Nulty was killed on Castleforbes Road, which runs parallel to New Wapping Street,’ she said, picturing the building site where she’d found Rita and placing a knife side by side with the other.
‘First sign of madness, talking to yourself,’ Rory remarked from the kitchen table behind her.
Jo looked over her shoulder and back before he saw her smile. He had his school books spread all over the kitchen table, and the corner of his mouth was marked with an inky blob from where he’d been chewing his ballpoint pen. Harry was sitting on the floor beside him, grinding a rusk to pulp.
Jo grabbed a roll of kitchen towel and bent over to wipe the rusk off the floor before Harry scooped any more of it into his mouth. ‘Make yourself useful and either set that for dinner, or relocate to the desk in your bedroom so I can,’ she told Rory.
His chair screeched back as he stood up, sniffing over her shoulder as he headed out,
making Jo jerk the potato peeler straight into her thumb. She sucked it painfully.
‘The drug baron Anto Crawley was whacked on Spencer Dock, which runs parallel to both New Wapping Street and Castleforbes Road.’ Jo pictured the abandoned warehouse, pulling another knife out of the drawer. Three knives sat in a row. All three streets were joined at one end by North Wall Quay and on the other by Sheriff Street, where Father Walsh, the priest, was found. She sandwiched each end with a fork. ‘It has to mean something,’ she said quietly.
Spotting Rory’s books still spread all over the kitchen table, Jo called down the hall for him to come back and take them so she could set it. She was primed to give him an earful, but when she pressed the cordless house phone against her shoulder to answer it, while using her hands to scoop up his books herself, a reporter on the end of the line asking about recent developments got lashed instead.
Realizing Harry was attempting to climb up the leg of the chair, Jo put the phone down and rushed to his rescue, startling him so much he took off and managed to totter his first few steps in the process before stopping and wobbling precariously. She froze, feeling her tears well up. Then she knelt down in front of her baby turned little man and put her arms out. ‘Come on, sweetheart,’ she whispered. ‘That’s it, you can do it, come to Mummy.’
Harry managed another couple of steps before collapsing into her arms. Jo held him very close and planted a series of kisses on his soft head. Thank Christ! she thought, closing her eyes and rocking him from side to side. Thank Christ I didn’t miss that!
The smoke alarm ripped through the moment with piercing urgency. With Harry still in her arms, Jo ran to the oven and turned everything off, then grabbed a dishcloth and ran out to wave it frantically under the alarm. Finally, Rory appeared with a kitchen chair, climbed up and killed the ear-splitting noise.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Jo asked, swinging Harry up in the air. ‘Somebody’s baby brother has just started walking, haven’t you, my darling angel?’
‘Thought I’d help you get the garden in order, Mother,’ Rory said, tussling Harry’s hair, then pulling the lawnmower fuel from behind his back and holding it up. ‘The less time Dad has to spend on it, the better for everyone’s sake.’
‘Rory,’ Jo began, sitting Harry down. ‘Dad’s move home, it doesn’t mean . . .’
The doorbell clanged to life and she put her hand on Rory’s arm to stop him answering it. As she pulled the door open, she remembered where she’d seen the black mac before.
‘Hi, we’ve met, I’m Linda from the Mail,’ the woman said in an over-familiar tone. ‘Can I have a word?’
‘Absolutely not,’ Jo replied, starting to close the door.
‘Where do you find the time with a serial killer on the rampage?’ she asked patronizingly, looking over Jo’s shoulder at Harry on the floor behind her.
Jo began to close the door but stopped when she noticed the way the reporter had stepped sideways, then looked over her shoulder to a car at the end of the drive. Jo spotted a long lens balancing on the driver’s wing mirror.
‘Mind your baby brother, son,’ she instructed Rory over her shoulder, before pulling the door behind her, pushing past the hack and storming over to the car.
‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ she asked, wrestling with the photographer for the lens. ‘We’ve got privacy laws in this country.’
‘Damage that and you pay for it,’ he warned.
She spotted his name engraved on a tarnished gold bracelet – Darryl. ‘Now you listen to me, Darryl, and listen good . . .’
‘Why don’t you concentrate on your job and let us do ours?’ Linda had followed her over to the car. ‘You’re the one who’s put the country on high alert, telling them a madman was going to strike again today. And now you’re home. Couldn’t you get your overtime approved? Your childminder call in sick? People are dying, you know!’
‘Get out of here, Darryl, before I have you charged, and take her with you,’ Jo warned.
‘With what?’ Darryl asked aggressively.
‘Trespassing and loitering with intent, for starters,’ Jo warned.
‘Come on, Linda, she’s not worth it,’ Darryl said.
‘Wait a second, where did you get my home address?’ Jo asked, leaning in the window.
Linda caught her eye, and Jo thought she was going to say something. Then Darryl revved the engine and she got inside the car.
Shaking her head, Jo went back into the house. ‘Leave the garden for now,’ she told Rory. ‘And get your coat. We’re eating out.’
In the Eddie Rockets restaurant, Jo’s mood lifted as Harry started sucking happily on a cheesy chip. ‘Your dad and I broke up for a reason. It wasn’t working between us,’ she said to Rory.
Rory sucked Coke through three straws. Still just a big kid, Jo thought.
‘We did the facts-of-life talk years ago, Mother,’ he said, ‘and believe me, it was only mildly more embarrassing.’
‘I’m just saying, things have moved on now. Dad’s got Jeanie.’
‘But you haven’t met anyone,’ Rory said.
‘Yet,’ Jo corrected him.
‘Does that mean you’re looking?’
‘Of course I’m looking,’ Jo lied.
Rory’s eyes moved to the window. He jabbed his middle finger at it.
‘Rory!’ Jo remonstrated, turning anxiously and spotting Linda and Darryl parked outside, angling their camera straight at them. Smug didn’t cover the look on their faces. She gave them the finger herself.
The camera captured that moment too.
‘Now I’m the kind of mother who stuffs her kids with additives and resorts to vile hand gestures, as well as being a bad cop,’ said Jo, sighing.
‘Maybe they could run it as an ad in the singles section,’ Rory suggested.
Jo laughed. But there was an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wondered if she wasn’t willing the killer to strike again, just to bail her out.
41
By 10.45 p.m., Foxy and Merrigan were taking seats on Jo’s couch. Jo hadn’t had to ask them when she opened the door, their faces said it all – still no body.
‘The good news is Hawthorne’s been in touch,’ Foxy said, clearly trying to lift morale. ‘His prelim on Father Reg showed that the priest had pierced nipples.’
‘Not your average celibate then,’ Jo reacted, mood improving slightly.
‘Certainly opens up a whole range of possibilities as to what he’d been doing and the reasons why he might have come into contact with the Skids,’ Foxy said. ‘Also, the forensic lab phoned in to say you were right. They had a positive match on the drugs we found on the coffee table at Rita Nulty’s crime scene and that recent Skids sting the station brought in, which means you can keep Mac longer if you want.’
Jo bribed Rory to go to bed by unhooking the DVD player and scart lead from the telly and handing them to him. Rory gripped them with the kind of enthusiasm that suggested she’d have a job on her hands ever getting the player back out of his bedroom and disappeared upstairs. It was past his bedtime, but she’d let him stay up because he’d studied hard all evening, after a mild argument in which he’d demanded to know what possible contribution to his adult life half of the stuff on his curriculum could make.
‘Half an hour to help you unwind, that’s it,’ Jo warned him, crossing her fingers behind her back as she watched him head up the stairs. She didn’t want to curse the thought passing through her head, but the move home seemed to have done the trick: Rory was really knuckling down . . .
Back in her living room, Merrigan and Foxy were arguing over which channel to watch. She walked over and switched off the TV.
Merrigan threw his hands up then whacked them off his legs with a sigh.
‘Thanks for coming,’ Jo said. ‘I know we all have private lives, and I just want to say, I appreciate it.’
Merrigan pretended to play a tiny violin.
‘I’m being sincer
e!’ she warned. ‘Any luck on the door-to-doors?’
‘Yeah,’ he said reluctantly. ‘One of the uniforms found out that the dead padre had got his knuckles rapped for putting Rita up in his home. Father Reg claimed he was doing God’s work, but some of his parishioners believe she was doing him. Someone wrote to the bishop.’
‘Gives us a start on who was leading him by those nipple rings,’ Jo said, looking at Foxy anxiously. ‘Any luck with necrophiles in the Bible?’
Merrigan covered his nipples playfully and made a coy face. Jo was starting to get narked. It was all a big joke with him. Someone was going to die in the next hour and a quarter, if they hadn’t already.
‘Yes, actually. According to the Bible, there was one very famous necrophile . . .’ Foxy said.
‘Who?’ Jo asked.
‘Get me a sarnie and he’ll tell you,’ Merrigan said. ‘Doreen scraped my dinner into the bin when I said I’d to head out again.’
Jo sighed as he and Foxy followed her into the kitchen. Merrigan started pulling open drawers. Jo took over, reaching into the bread bin, grabbing a bread knife from the drawer and cutting a slice of white bread.
‘Go on,’ she prompted.
‘Only King Herod,’ Foxy said. ‘You know, the one who had all the male babies killed when he heard about the birth of Christ, the one who had John the Baptist beheaded for Salome after her Dance of the Seven Veils.’ He opened the fridge and retrieved a tomato. ‘Herod’s supposed to have kept his dead wife Mariamne – whom he murdered, by the way – seven years in his sleeping quarters for sex . . . after he’d killed her.’
If I Never See You Again Page 17
