Impostor

by L. J. Ross

  In his experience, the police had their own ways of doing things. Those ways seldom responded well to outside interference; but then, he hadn’t accounted for that interference coming in the form of the town mayor, who also happened to be the mother of two of the town’s finest boys in blue.

  The car rattled up the remainder of the sweeping driveway and came to a shuddering standstill outside the main entrance to the hotel.

  “We’re here,” Padraig said, and slammed out of the car.

  * * *

  Aideen McArdle hummed as she unpegged laundry from the line outside the cottage she’d lived in for over forty years. It wasn’t much, she supposed, not by some standards. But, to her, it was her sanctuary, the home she had worked hard to build. Every floor and wall held a lifetime of memories, both good and bad.

  Mostly, good.

  “I’ll be off now, then, my love.”

  Her husband stuck his head out of the kitchen door and blew her a kiss.

  “Don’t think you can sweet-talk me, Colm McArdle. You’d best be back here before eleven or, so help me, there’ll be a holy show in this house.”

  He threw a hand to his heart.

  “In the name of God, woman! When have I ever been out so late?” he asked, with every appearance of sincerity.

  She dragged a sheet off the line with exaggerated force.

  “Only every given Saturday,” she muttered, and pointed a warning finger. “Mind yourself, Colm. You’re not as young as you used to be.”

  “Now, she insults me!” he proclaimed, to nobody in particular. “I’m as able as any man to share a pint of the black stuff with me pals and stumble home afterwards.”

  “More able than most,” she mumbled, with a peg between her lips.

  Her husband trotted up the garden path and slipped his arms around her waist, chuckling when she yelped in surprise and tried to bat him away.

  “Give us a kiss, colleen,” he murmured, as he’d done all those years ago.

  Aideen smiled to herself, and favoured him with a quick peck.

  “There’s more of that, if you get yourself home in one piece.”

  She was still smiling as he made his way back inside the house, whistling an old tune between his teeth. It was a fine life they led, all told. It had been hard in the early years, it was true, but what young couple didn’t have their share of problems to iron out? They’d made the best of it, and of themselves—and were happy now because of it.

  With creaking knees, she bent to retrieve the laundry basket. These simple tasks weren’t as easy as they used to be, but she was damned if she’d get a cleaner in to help.

  She’d sooner go to the glue factory.

  Aideen nudged the back door closed with her hip and went about the rest of her day, never thinking anybody had seen their private exchange; never suspecting the lengths one person had gone to, just to spend the time watching her, admiring her.

  Loving her.

  They made a careful note of the time Colm McArdle left the house, and smiled. That made four weeks in a row he’d left around five-thirty. The daylight was fading fast, but in another week or two, it would have disappeared entirely as the long, winter nights set in.

  It’d be very soon, now.

  * * *

  After a quick shower and change, Alexander Gregory retraced his steps through the grand hallways of the Ballyfinny Castle Hotel. It was an imposing, thirteenth-century edifice, which had been home to one of Ireland’s oldest and wealthiest families. As such, it boasted hundreds of priceless artefacts and antiques, gleaming silverware and chandeliers in every room—including the gents—and was precisely the opposite of the faded Bed and Breakfast he had expected to find in a small, backwater town.

  But, when he reached the bottom of the main flight of stairs, he was reminded of why Ballyfinny would never be a ‘backwater’. A long bank of windows looked out across the lough, which gleamed like burnished gold in the setting sun. The little ferry that carried passengers to various stopping points around the water chugged slowly back towards the hotel jetty, like something from a picture postcard. Thick pine trees grew right up to the water’s edge and were reflected in the rippling water that lapped against the shore.

  Views like that would always attract visitors; people who came from far and wide to enjoy the kind of tranquillity they lacked in their ordinary lives.

  People like him, he thought.

  The hotel had recently been taken over by some international conglomerate or another, who’d apparently had the good sense and foresight to appoint a local person to run the place on its behalf. That duty fell to Maggie’s brother; a tall, stately gentleman with a belly like Father Christmas, who awaited him now in the reception area.

  “Doctor Gregory? I’m Seamus Murphy, General Manager of the hotel.”

  Gregory took his hand, and found it firm.

  “Thanks for putting me up at short notice,” he replied. “You’ve got a beautiful spot, here.”

  “Aye, and we’re hoping it won’t be tarnished by all that’s happened,” Seamus replied, earning himself a reproachful glare from his sister, who hovered beside him. “It’s an awful thing, Maggie, but it’s only the truth. We’ve had over twenty cancellations since word got out about what happened to Claire Kelly, and I’ve got a hotel full of staff to think of—all with bills to pay and young mouths to feed.”

  “That may be so, but it’s hardly the time to think of such a thing,” she snapped, then turned to Gregory in mild embarrassment. “As you can see, this murder has had an effect on all of us. I’ve got more’n half the town breathing down my neck, calling for justice. Liam Kelly calls my office most mornings, begging to know whether anything’s being done. On the other side, the police are doing all they can, with what they can. I’m at my wit’s end.”

  “I understand,” Alex replied, diplomatically. “It’s in everybody’s interest to see her killer brought to justice as soon as possible.”

  Maggie made a sound like a harrumph, and he smiled. He found that he liked this woman with her mop of wild grey hair and no-nonsense attitude. It was refreshing to find someone apparently so unaffected by public office.

  But then, appearances were often deceptive.

  “Sorry we’re late, Ma. Some daft bugger in a rented Mercedes drove straight into the back of Ned Malloy’s tractor—”

  Gregory turned to see two men of around his own age cross the hotel foyer. At first glance, they were indistinguishable, both being of above-average height, with dark brown hair and eyes. Upon closer inspection, he noticed one was slightly taller and broader than the other, who had a lean, wiry build.

  “Never mind—you’re here now,” Maggie replied. “Doctor Alexander Gregory, meet my eldest son, Detective Inspector Niall Byrne, who heads up the Divisional Garda office over in Castlebar,” she said, indicating the stockier of the two. “And this here’s my youngest, Sergeant Connor Byrne, who heads up the local Garda office right here in Ballyfinny.”

  Both men donned polite smiles, which Gregory assumed to be exclusively for their mother’s benefit.

  “Glad to meet you,” he said, and wondered whether the difference in rank had caused any sibling rivalry over the years.

  Hazard of the job.

  “So, I hear you’re some sort of head doctor,” Niall said, sticking his hands in the pockets of his trousers. “Come all this way to read our minds? Why don’t you tell me what I’m thinking right now?”

  Maggie flushed an angry shade of red and opened her mouth to intervene, but Gregory beat her to it.

  “You’re thinking what we’re all thinking, inspector,” he said, easily. “Murder, and dinner. Not necessarily in that order.”

  There was a second’s pause, and then Niall Byrne laughed shortly.

  “Let’s at least get the dinner part out of the way, first.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Seamus Murphy flexed some of his managerial muscle to secure a private dining room, away from prying eyes inside the
main restaurant. None of their party was naïve enough to imagine that word had not already spread about Gregory’s arrival but, with tensions already running high, there was no need to broadcast the fact. Speculation was the bane of any detective’s existence, even the well-meaning kind, and there had been plenty of that already.

  Soon enough, they were seated at a gleaming mahogany table inside a small side room, with mullioned windows overlooking the forest. As the sun made its final descent on the far horizon, the temperature outside dropped. Mist rolled in from the water and curled its way through the tree trunks like long fingers, twisting a pathway through the woods before disappearing into the penetrating darkness.

  “So, doctor, you’re here to tell us we’re looking for a white male, aged eighteen to forty-five. Am I right?”

  As the senior-ranking officer in the room, Niall Byrne seemed to have taken it upon himself to lead the discussion and, if Gregory was not mistaken, the general tone.

  “I’ll thank you to remember that Doctor Gregory is here as our guest,” his mother hissed, but Niall merely shrugged.

  “I’m sure Doctor Gregory’s time is precious, and he doesn’t want to waste it on a fool’s errand,” he replied, and fixed him with a challenging stare. “I don’t rightly know what a criminal profiler can possibly do to help us, Ma. Not when half the Garda of County Mayo have already tried…unless he feels he’s better qualified than any of us?”

  Gregory had heard the tone countless times before, in and out of his consulting room, and prepared himself for a battle.

  “What Niall means to say is—” Maggie began.

  “Detective Inspector Byrne means to say, ‘What the hell is a stranger doing coming over here, trying to tell me how to do my job?’ ” he interjected, mildly.

  Niall inclined his head.

  “Nothing wrong with your ears, Doc.”

  “Give the feller a chance,” his brother murmured, from the chair beside him. “He isn’t the one we’re lookin’ for.”

  Niall folded his arms across his burly chest.

  “We can look after our own,” he growled.

  “There’s Liam Kelly to think of, and his wee girl,” Maggie said. “You’ve gone over and over it but there’s nothing new. It’s time for a fresh pair of eyes.”

  Gregory wasn’t sure whether her authority was derived from her status as their mother, or as the mayor of the town but, either way, both men fell silent.

  He took that as his cue.

  “Let’s get a few things straight,” he said. “I’m a senior psychologist at Southmoor Hospital, in London. It’s a high-security facility, and I work exclusively with people who’ve been legally detained by the courts, either because they’re a serious danger to themselves or to others. Usually, both.”

  “You try to cure them,” Niall surmised, and his lip curled.

  Rocky ground, Gregory thought. And the retribution-reform debate was something they had no time for, at present.

  “You need a shield and a sword for balance in this world,” he ventured to say. “But, let’s not get into that now. What you need to know is that I’ve seen a lot of very unstable people, who’ve committed terrible crimes, like the one committed against Claire Kelly. Every patient is different, they’ve come from a range of backgrounds but, nonetheless, I’ve seen certain…similarities. There are patterns that might help to paint a picture of the sort of person you’re looking for. Maybe you’ll recognise something—”

  “They’re not all mad,” Seamus interrupted, causing four heads to turn in his direction. “I read about the Yorkshire Ripper, who had all the psychologists fooled for a while back in the eighties. Told everyone it was the ‘voices’ that made him do it, but that was a load of old blarney. Who’s to say all these ‘unstable’ people aren’t just playing the system?”

  Gregory nodded.

  “I agree,” he said, surprising them all. “Not every person who kills or commits violent crime is legally insane, but that doesn’t mean they’re fine and dandy, either. Look, I won’t tell you the system is perfect, because it isn’t. We just try to do the best we can with it.”

  He paused, watching Seamus break his bread roll into six perfectly even pieces.

  “I try to help the perpetrators, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten the victims. I never forget the people who’ve been on the receiving end and, if you’re worrying that I’ll be looking to provide whoever killed Claire Kelly with some kind of psychological excuse for his—or her—actions, you’re mistaken. Questions of culpability are for the police and the courts to decide.”

  Conversation paused while the door re-opened to admit their waiter, only resuming after it closed again.

  “What do you get out of it?” Connor asked, quietly.

  Gregory turned to face the younger of the Byrne brothers.

  “Same as you,” he said eventually. “I get to know that, in the end, there’ll be one less of them roaming the streets. Some of them are compulsive, some of them are careful planners. But, in the end, they’re killers—and they need to be stopped.”

  For the first time that evening, a broad smile broke across Niall’s face.

  “Well, why the heck didn’t you say so in the first place?” he asked.

  CHAPTER 6

  The discussion did not turn to Claire Kelly’s murder until the plates had been cleared, for which Alex could only be grateful. He had a strong constitution, and the sight of blood alone did not unsettle him, nor did crime scene photographs—they were enough to turn any man’s stomach, but they were merely evidence of something far greater and more disturbing.

  The outer limits of the human mind.

  In keeping with Garda protocols, Seamus Murphy and Mayor Byrne excused themselves from the table, the latter pausing to put a motherly hand on his shoulder.

  “Despite the frosty welcome,” she said, throwing one last disapproving glance towards her sons, “I want to say that I’m grateful you’re here, Alex. Even if there’s only the remotest possibility something’ll come of it, we have to try.”

  She turned an imperious cheek in his direction and Gregory realised it was an invitation to give her a peck goodnight.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he did.

  Afterwards, Maggie moved around the room, fussing over her boys and reminding them to get some sleep as she bade them a lengthy farewell. Gregory watched the ritual, which was one he’d observed many times before. Unbidden, an image of Cathy Jones popped into his mind. He thought of all the cloying attention she’d given her children—even singing a lullaby as she’d spooned salt into her baby’s bottle.

  Was it any wonder that some people grew up to be killers?

  The door closed and, in the ensuing silence, Niall and Connor Byrne loosened their ties in one synchronised motion and reached for the bottle of wine sitting half-full on the table.

  All cop, now, Gregory thought.

  “Look, you seem like a decent bloke,” Niall said, topping off his glass. “It was nothing personal, before—”

  “Not at all.”

  “It’s just that we get a lot of charlatans calling in, telling us they’ve seen the ghost of Claire Kelly and all that,” Connor explained. “Had somebody calling herself Mystic Mandy ring the station the other day, would you believe.”

  “It’s not just the local crazies, either,” Niall put in, and shot Gregory an apologetic look. “No offence, Doc, but I say it as I see it. We’ve had ’em calling in from all over this blessed island, claiming to be her killer.”

  “Any of them seem genuine?” Gregory asked, but both brothers shook their heads.

  “We followed up on all of them,” Niall said. “But none could tell us exactly where, or how, Claire Kelly was found. That’s not public knowledge,” he added.

  Your mother knows, Gregory almost said, and so does Padraig.

  “I heard she was found on the little girl’s bed,” he said instead. “Staged with a book, and a teddy?”

  Niall ran a
tired hand over his face.

  “Aye, she was found like that,” he said, and turned to his brother. “Connor was the first on-scene, after the family.”

  “Took a call from her husband,” Connor said quietly. “When I got to the house, he was just sitting on the front lawn outside, rocking little Emily back and forth. Never seen a man more broken in all my life.”

  He sucked in a deep breath before continuing.

  “I couldn’t get much sense out of him then, not when the little one was there to hear, so I took a look inside the house. Didn’t take much looking, before I found her.”

  The little girl was called Emily, Gregory thought. Just like Cathy Jones’ baby daughter.

  Annoyed at himself, he shoved the thought of his patient to one side and told himself to focus on the matters in hand.

  “How did Claire die?” he asked, after a heavy silence.

  “Single knife wound to the heart,” Connor replied. “Doctor arrived pretty quick, but anybody could see she was gone.”

  “There must have been blood everywhere,” Gregory thought aloud, and grieved all over again for the child and what she must have seen.

  But Niall shook his head.

  “Whoever it is, he took his time. Bastard whacked Claire around the head, first, to immobilise her. Then, far as we can tell, he took her into the bathroom and put her in the tub. That’s where he used the knife and let her bleed out nice and tidy. Washed her up, afterwards, put duct tape over the knife wound, then dressed her up like a doll and took her through to Emily’s bedroom.”

  Gregory was silent for a full minute, then he rose from the table and moved to the window to stare unseeingly at the night sky.

  “What about the knife?” he asked. “What was used to immobilise her?”

  “Single blow to the back of the head,” Connor replied. “They used the back of a bronze sculpture from the hallway table—”

  “Which he cleaned, thoroughly,” Niall put in. “We only found out it was used after the forensics team came in. Even then, there was barely a spot of blood left on it. Same story with the bathtub; we only found out it was the kill site after they examined the pipes. Everything else was spotless.”