by L. J. Ross
“Meticulous,” Gregory muttered. “And he gained access into the house.”
“As for the knife, we haven’t found it,” Connor went on. “We’ve examined everything that fits the bill at the Kelly home, but the lab work came back clean. He must have taken it away with him.”
“We’ve been scouring the area,” Niall said. “No sign of it, yet.”
The killing had elements of ritual, Gregory thought, which necessitated a special implement in the mind of the one who had performed it. Not just any knife would do.
“What about DNA or prints?” he asked. “Must’ve been something on the duct tape.”
“Only as you’d expect,” Niall replied, unable to hide his frustration. “Plenty of samples from Liam and Claire, old prints from the wider family and a few from the first responders, but not a single other alien print or sample. No sexual assault—no semen, either.”
Small mercy, Gregory thought, but it didn’t mean her killer hadn’t enjoyed himself.
“What about the victim’s life? Was there anyone troubling Claire Kelly before she died?”
“Nobody,” Connor replied. “She had a clean bill of health, no skeletons rattling around in her closet.”
“We’ve knocked on doors, checked all the CCTV, and spoken to everybody in a five-mile radius, but it’s like the bastard disappeared into thin air,” Niall said. “Nobody saw a damn thing.”
“Had to be an outsider,” Connor decided, while Gregory was lost in his own thoughts. “Nobody in Ballyfinny would do something so…so evil.”
“It’s probably some lunatic over from the city, just wandered into the first house he came to,” Niall agreed. “We’ve a small community here, and none of them could’ve done this.”
Gregory turned to him with solemn eyes.
“I’m afraid I disagree with you,” he said. “An outsider could never have known how to perfectly time the attack for when Claire Kelly was likely to be alone in the house—long enough for him to set the scene he had in mind.”
“Could’ve got lucky,” Connor argued.
“Or, they might have been monitoring her routines. In my experience, violent attacks like these come after weeks or months of planning, where the perpetrator stalks their victim first, building up to the final act,” Gregory said. “The preparation, the careful execution, it all speaks of experience. This won’t be the first time.”
“We’ve never had anything like this happen here before,” Niall said. “It must be an outsider.”
Once again, Gregory shook his head.
“When I say it isn’t their ‘first time’, I don’t mean they’ve killed in the same way before. I mean they might have been cautioned for other, milder offences. They might have killed or hurt animals. Have you had any Peeping Toms?”
“There’ve been a couple,” Niall acknowledged. “But, to go from that, to what happened to Claire…it’s a big leap.”
“Not in their mind,” Gregory said. “They might’ve been building up to it for years.”
Connor scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck and appealed to his elder brother.
“I still can’t believe it’s one of our own.”
“I don’t want to, Con, but I can’t help but see the sense of it,” Niall murmured. “And, if Alex is right, if it’s one of ours who’s been working up to killing—”
He looked over at the tall, sombre man standing beside the window, who simply nodded.
“There’s every chance they’ll kill again,” Gregory said. “They’ve managed to get away with murder for over a month. They’ll be feeling invincible, but the rush will be fading. The urge to kill again will be strong.”
“How do we stop them?” Niall shot back. “How the hell do we stop them, if we don’t know where to look?”
“We look at the victim,” Gregory said simply. “We ask ourselves: ‘What it was about Claire Kelly that was so special?’ Why her, and why in that way?”
“Not just her,” Connor said, and Niall swore beneath his breath. “She was two months pregnant when she died.”
The breath lodged somewhere in Gregory’s chest, and he let it out again, very slowly.
“That’s another angle to consider,” he said, once his emotions were back in check. “And it means we have a double murderer on our hands.”
Another thought struck him.
“It’s common for a killer to seek to…recapture the rush, by visiting their victim’s grave site. Have you kept the cemetery under surveillance?”
The two Garda detectives looked amongst themselves, then Niall leaned forward.
“I thought somebody would have told you,” he said. “Claire’s body was only released a few days ago. The funeral’s tomorrow morning.”
“We’re drafting in more guards to manage the crowds,” Connor added. “The whole town’s likely to be there, and more besides.”
Yes, Gregory thought. Much more besides.
With an entire township there to mourn his handiwork, how could the killer resist?
He turned back to the window, listening to the dim sound of merriment wafting through the walls of the restaurant next door. They were out there, somewhere, he thought. Walking and talking, just like everybody else.
But inside…
Inside was a festering mass; a rotten core that must be cut out, before it was too late.
CHAPTER 7
Saturday
The woods smelled earthy and sweet, like the over-ripe scent of death.
The trees were dense, packed so tightly their branches had knitted together, obliterating the moon which shone somewhere in the heavens above. Thin leaves brushed his face as Alex wound his way between them, his feet crunching the soft ground underfoot as he followed the blurry light flickering in the darkness up ahead. His hands reached blindly into the night, feeling his way through the forest as he tried to touch it. He heard his own breath, impossibly loud in the surrounding silence, and the thunder of blood as it pumped through his veins.
The light grew brighter, and his pace quickened, his feet tripping over pine cones as he hurried forward.
Unexpectedly, he stumbled into a clearing.
For a moment, the moonlight blinded him. He threw up a hand to shield his eyes against its glare, then let it fall away again when he heard the faint sound of a baby’s cry.
In the centre of the clearing, a woman was seated on a child’s bed, bathed in a halo of light. Her skin was deathly white, her fingers bloodless as they clutched a small teddy bear against her chest.
“You’re too late,” she whispered.
He tried to rush forward, but found he couldn’t move. His limbs were suspended, as though he was trapped inside a glass cage, unable to break free.
In his hotel bed, Alexander Gregory began to thrash against the sheets, his body rearing up from the pillows.
Across the clearing, another figure stepped out of the shadows. She smiled at them both, her eyes vividly alive, her painted mouth a slash of blood-red.
“I’ll take care of the child,” she crooned. “I take good care of all my children.”
The baby’s cry grew louder then, echoing around the clearing. It grew louder and more desperate until he sank to his knees, pressing the heels of his hands against his ears to try to drown out the phantom sound.
“You’re too late,” Cathy Jones said, and took a seat beside Claire Kelly amongst the soft toys. He watched the dead woman turn glassy eyes towards his patient, then hand over the teddy bear for safekeeping.
No!
He screamed the word in his mind, clawing his way free from the covers on his bed.
No! Don’t give it to her!
Claire Kelly turned towards him, and in the centre of her chest, there was a gaping wound where her heart ought to have been.
* * *
Alex awoke with a shout, shaking and disoriented.
His body was covered in a film of clammy sweat, the bedclothes tangled at his feet. His heart raced as adrenaline ru
shed through his system, preparing him to stay and fight, or cut and run. He’d left a light burning beside the bed, and it shone a comforting glow around the hotel room. He leaned back against the antique headboard and concentrated on taking slow, even breaths while he thought of a quote from Gandhi that Bill Douglas had once told him, at the end of a particularly bad day at the hospital:
Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.
The constriction in his chest began to ease, and Alex looked around the room as if he was seeing it for the first time. He didn’t need to be a psychologist to understand the meaning of his dream, or what his own psyche was trying to tell him.
He was an impostor.
Who was he to think he could help the Garda—he, the ‘criminal profiler’, who was nothing more than a shrink? He was an interloper, a stranger to these shores, unqualified to pronounce judgment on its people, or its community. It wasn’t his job to hunt killers—it was his job to treat them.
When the police eventually tracked them down.
Alex swung his legs off the bed and padded into the adjoining bathroom, where he ran the cold tap and splashed water over his face and neck—once, twice, three times.
Then he leaned on the countertop and took a good look at the man who stared back.
His hair was dishevelled and flecked with the first hint of grey at the temples. His skin was drawn tightly across a symmetrical face, where everything fitted together with the kind of harmony people seemed to admire. It was a deceptively youthful face, despite the fine laughter lines around the eyes and mouth. Quick to laugh, quick to smile.
But it was the eyes that gave him away.
They were a deep, arresting shade of green, and fathoms deep with sadness; the kind that came from delving into the hearts and souls of those wracked in torment. A little rubbed off each time, though he tried to prevent it. A shadow of their fear and self-loathing imprinted itself on his memory and made a home there, swirling around the cavern of his mind until he could no longer tell where they ended, and Alexander Gregory began.
He turned away and walked to the bedroom window, where he pulled back the curtains. Outside, a new day was preparing to dawn, and the lough was a melting pool of deep lilac-blue. He watched birds of prey swoop down over the water and rise up again with triumphant cries, and was forcibly reminded of his purpose in being there.
His eyes strayed across to a thick cardboard file resting on the desk nearby. It contained summary notes, reports and images pertaining to the murder of Claire Kelly, and he’d read it cover to cover the night before. Somewhere within that file lay the answer to why she had been chosen; why, of all the women in the town, she had been so unlucky.
Or, so special.
With one last, lingering look at the rising sun, he prepared to delve into the shadows once more.
CHAPTER 8
Gregory walked a full circuit of the castle grounds before following the road that led to Ballyfinny. People emerged from scattered cottages along the way, wearing dark clothing and mournful expressions. They greeted him with mild suspicion, but their footsteps formed a procession and they followed the winding country lane through the trees and over tiny, hump-backed bridges until they reached the town centre.
As Connor Byrne had predicted, the whole town had turned out for Claire Kelly’s funeral.
Ballyfinny was quintessentially Irish; a small, stone-built haven with an enormous abbey church far too big for the population thereabouts, a white-washed pub by the name of ‘O’Feeney’s’, and any number of tea rooms set back from the cobble-stoned streets that were presently swollen with people in varying shades of black, grey and navy blue.
Gregory melted into the crowd, his eyes tracking the faces of those he passed, searching for a sign or, perhaps, a miracle…
The breath was suddenly knocked from his body, and he braced two hands against the child who ran headlong into his stomach.
He found himself looking down at the flushed face of a boy of five or six.
“Watch where you’re going, Mister,” he said, and would have run off again but for the staying hand that came to rest on his shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” his mother said, as she caught up with her wayward son. “Declan’s a ball of energy at the moment and doesn’t always watch where he’s going. I hope he didn’t hurt you.”
“No harm done,” Gregory said, and smiled at the gap-toothed child between them. “How about you, kiddo?”
“I’m thirsty,” he declared.
His mother produced a bottle of water from her bag, which he proceeded to chug down like a desert camel.
“Mammy,” the boy said, once he’d come up for air. “There’s Sophie and Finn!”
“Alright,” she murmured. “You go on ahead, I’ll catch up.”
The boy bolted off in search of his friends, who waved to him from the steps of the abbey.
“You’re not from around here,” the woman said, turning back to Gregory. “Were you a friend of Claire’s?”
Alex shook his head, and wondered how much to say.
“I’m a friend of the Mayor,” he replied. “I’m here to pay my respects.”
“You must be the psychologist.”
“Is it so obvious?”
A gust of wind caught the woman’s hair, lifting it away from her face to reveal a porcelain complexion, dusted with freckles. He scarcely had time to admire them, before the wind changed again.
“You’ve a serious, watchful look about you,” she admitted. “But it isn’t that. You’re the only Englishman in town.”
He nodded sagely.
“That narrows it down, a bit.”
“We’d better go inside,” she said, but made no move to leave.
He recognised the feeling. She wanted to prolong their exchange, just as he did, because there was chemistry here.
Unfortunately, it was something neither of them wanted to explore.
“I worked with Claire at the school,” she told him, and couldn’t keep the emotion from her voice. “She was a good friend.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. There were no other, better words.
“D’you think you can help?”
Gregory was an honest man in most things, and he gave an honest answer to the woman with windswept red hair.
“I’m going to try.”
She nodded, and heaved her bag higher on her shoulder, preparing to join her family.
“I’ll be seeing you,” she said.
“What’s your name?” he asked, reaching out a hand to brush her arm.
“Emma,” she said.
A moment later, she was gone.
Gregory watched her disappear into the crowd, then followed at a slower pace, keeping time with the clip-clop sound of hooves belonging to the traditional carriage hearse somewhere up ahead. The scene made him think of a biblical Exodus in reverse, with hundreds of people making their way to the church in eerie silence. Most of them moved in family clusters, others in couples, but rarely did he see anybody travelling alone. There were no loners skulking conveniently beside the church walls, nor any wild-eyed men or women who stood out from their neighbours.
The town moved together, united in its outpouring of grief.
And yet, a predator roamed freely amongst them, undetected and unstoppable, at least in their own mind—which was the most dangerous place of all.
* * *
Inside the abbey, it was standing room only.
At the foot of the altar, a priest stood resplendent in golden robes, his face suitably downcast as he exchanged a word with Maggie, who was dressed in a black trouser suit and sensible heels, looking every inch the town mayor. Her face was stoical; an emotion demanded of those in positions of authority, especially at moments such as these. On the front row, a small girl of three or four was seated beside her grandparents, two dark pigtails just visible over the back of the wooden pew. The Garda had turned out in force. Connor and Niall Byrne
wore full dress uniform, as did the guards who were stationed by the perimeter walls.
Gregory positioned himself at the back nearest the door, which afforded a clear view of proceedings and, more importantly, would allow him to observe anyone who slipped in or out before the funeral was over. Following their discussion, measures had been taken to ensure the doors remained under surveillance, but it was easy to miss somebody amid the throng.
When the priest moved to the head of the central aisle, an instant hush spread throughout the congregation. The local boys’ choir began to sing the first bars of a requiem and, though he could not claim any religious affiliation, Gregory was moved by its rousing melody, which resonated around the church walls.
Heads turned as Claire Kelly’s husband began his slow, painful journey down the central aisle, flanked by five other men who held her coffin aloft. When Gregory caught sight of the man’s face as he gripped the edges of the polished wood, he saw only raw, naked grief; the kind that could rarely be feigned.
Flowers fell as the coffin travelled onward and, while the townsfolk sent up prayers for the man and his child, one of their number scanned the pews, seeking another face.
The next face.
Aideen.
CHAPTER 9
“Might’ve known it’d be you.”
Alex stumbled across the mayor in a far corner of the churchyard, where she had stationed herself behind the wide girth of a tree to puff on an e-cigarette while she stared out across the gravestones and enjoyed a moment away from the madding crowd.
“I can leave,” he offered.
“It’d do no good,” she said, and let out a long stream of smoke. “No matter which way I turn, there’s still a girl of three without her mother, and not a bloody thing I can do about it.”
Gregory tucked his hands into his pockets.
At the family’s request, Maggie had given Claire Kelly’s eulogy less than an hour before. Though she wasted few words on small talk, her eloquence at the lectern had given him new insight into her character. Her voice rang out clearly and hadn’t faltered, though much of the congregation had been reduced to tears.
