Little Bird: a serial killer thriller

by Sharon Dempsey

  ‘I’ve already accepted. I’m going.’

  He had walked out after that and didn’t return until she had fallen asleep. Anna had left early in the morning for her run and the next time they spoke, it was as if they hadn’t disagreed and that her moving to Belfast was part of their grand plan after all.

  Saying goodbye in a crowded airport was not ideal, but hands down it beat the alternative. At least here, surrounded by people, Anna could contain her emotions. Jon would know better than to expect tears. She didn’t do crying. Didn’t do I love you or overt displays of affection. He’d be better off getting a dog, she’d told him, more than once.

  Leaving had been easier than she thought. One suitcase full of work clothes, underwear, a few tops and a couple of pairs of jeans, a rucksack containing her art stuff and she was gone. It was surprising how little any one person needed. The books, the vinyl albums, jewellery – none of it mattered to her. Not really.

  ‘You’ll ring me, won’t you?’ he asked, pulling her into his arms, his mouth pressed down on to the top of her head. Anna knew she was being selfish. Childish even, but for once she didn’t care about how he felt. She bent down to release the handle of the pull-along suitcase and without another word, headed off towards security clearance for flights to Belfast, turning only once to catch a last glance of his face.

  When she was planning the move, she hadn’t given much thought to the house. It was somewhere to stay, a base to lay her head. Now, as she climbed out of the taxi, she was pleased to see it was decent. The semi-detached Victorian red-brick house was edged with a neat lawn and a driveway. It all looked quietly expensive and smug. It was a ‘mixed’ area according to the documentation. Protestants and Catholics living in middle-class harmony. The political turbulence was generally kept in the working-class areas, although the relocation specialist in HR had warned her to be vigilant against dissident extremists who operated under the radar. She was to consider herself a so-called legitimate target.

  Anna had worked her way methodically through the paper work, the figures and the dry reports explaining the statistical breakdown of incidents. The terrorist attacks, the riots of the summer past, the flag protests, the shooting of two policemen in September, the maiming of a prison warden – all in a days’ work it seemed for this part of the world. But experience had taught her that all the research in the world couldn’t compete with practical, on-the-ground experience. Talking to people. Hearing their take on their situation. That was how you got a feel of a place, and Belfast would be no different.

  In the quiet of the strange house she felt even more lost than usual. Thirty-one-years-old, with an increasingly sense of purposeless, she had a strong desire to try to make sense of her life. She didn’t want her job to define her – she risked becoming too institutionalised and cynical, but she didn’t want to start a family either. She could hear her mother saying you can’t have it all ways girl. Be grateful for what you have.

  Maybe she was expecting too much from life. Maybe this is as good as it gets – chasing bad guys and sleeping with the good ones. Lately she had felt depleted, wrung out and too tired to rise above it. Belfast was supposed to be her saviour. In the small kitchen, she rummaged around, opening and closing cupboards. She’d have to shop for the essentials and stock up for the week ahead. She glanced out the window, across the patch of lawn at the back, and saw a grey and white cat dart into the undergrowth of shrubs.

  Looking for distraction, she switched on the television and caught the evening news.

  Police in Belfast have stepped up security and carried out searches and vehicle checkpoints following an attack that saw a 130lb proxy car bomb partially explode in the main shopping district of the city.

  So much for the peace process, she mused. It seemed that nothing much had changed. In spite of her briefing and what she knew of Northern Ireland’s dissidents, she hadn’t expected bombs to be going off outside shopping centres. The broadcaster moved on to the second item of news, the murder of a young girl at a wedding. Anna sat up. Bombs and punishment beatings were the usual for Northern Ireland, but a young woman being murdered wasn’t so commonplace. That type of murder was lower than the average for the rest of the UK.

  Police have issued a further appeal for any information on the brutal murder of seventeen–year-old Esme Wells. Miss Wells was acting as a bridesmaid at her sister’s wedding and was last seen in the vicinity of Malone House Manor on the outskirts of South Belfast, the venue of the wedding. A press conference will be held tomorrow marking one week from the time of the murder.

  No doubt, she’d learn all about it tomorrow, when she officially took up her new post in the Serious Crimes Department. The SCD was responsible for investigations into organised crime, serious crime, terrorism and murder. Anna had been told she would be working alongside in-house specialists, crime analysts, and others to manage intelligence and carry out investigations. She hoped she wouldn’t be kept outside of the proper work. She was here to contribute, not job-shadow and she had made sure her Super in Cardiff had spelt this out to his Belfast counterpart.

  Her colleagues in Cardiff thought she was mad. ‘Belfast?’ Bethan had asked, her eyes wide with incredulity. ‘What on earth do you want to work in Belfast for? Is there not enough action for you on St Mary Street on a Saturday night?’ Anna had smiled and said as little as possible. The opportunity had come up and the timing was right. She didn’t need to explain herself.

  Besides, Northern Ireland was where she had been born. Where her story had begun.

  It had been a while since he had been with a woman. He didn’t feel the same need these days. The flirting, the dating, it all seemed so superfluous.

  He thought back to the last one he’d brought home. He had met her in Aether and Echo, one of his favourite haunts in Lower Garfield Street. She had been hanging over him all night, whispering in his ear and making it clear she fancied him. Her friends eventually moved on to another club, probably Thompsons, and left them finishing off their drinks before he called for a taxi.

  She was half way to being unconscious when he fucked her, but he didn’t mind. Afterwards he enjoyed lying back and stroking her hair while she slept. It spread out across the pillow in a halo of glorious abundance, dark at the top of her head and faded to a pale golden brown towards the ends, reminding him of autumn.

  She slept deeply, with her mouth slightly open, oblivious to his study of her. He listened to her murmuring in her sleep and watched as she burrowed down into the duvet. It was while she slept, that he reached over to the bedside cupboard and retrieved a pair of scissors to snip a section of her hair. He was certain that because it was so thick and long, she wouldn’t notice.

  He had only needed one good snip, that was all he required for the doll. He knew Maude, his old aunt, would love it. It had been a good find. He could tell from the matte finish of the face that it was made of bisque. It had a translucent quality, pale and cold looking. He liked how it seemed to represent a dead girl rather than a living one. The doll’s hair was painted on, fair curls painted in fat whorls. He could improve on it by using real hair. It would be a painstaking job, but he knew he could thread small sections of the hair together in tight little bunches and glue them into place on the doll’s head.

  It was a few days later, while working with the doll that he first thought of his plan. The cold bisque face stared up at him like a dead girl, creating an image in his mind. An image that he couldn’t shake. It taunted him, begging him, making him hungry for it.

  He didn’t need to go clubbing and looking for pick-ups after that. There was no going back, after he had thought of what he could do.

  4

  Declan watched as Izzy shuddered, her head over the toilet as she threw up again. He could see her grief was physical. Raw, uncompromising and resolute. She had been sick from the morning after the wedding. He couldn’t bring himself to call it the day of the murder. He wanted to refer to the day as Lara’s wedding rather than Esm
e’s death. He was stupid and pig headed. It didn’t change a thing – no matter what he called the bloody day.

  He could imagine no end to this. How could they find their way back from the horror of losing a child in such a brutal way? There would be no finding a ‘new normality’ that God-awful phase that had been bandied about after his legs had been blown off. He reached from the chair to hand Izzy a towel to wipe her face. She had been sick during her pregnancies. Hyper emesis the doctors had said – grave sickness was the translation from Latin. Now her body appeared as if it was being held hostage by the same sickness only now it was bearing witness to death instead of new life.

  She ran the cold water and splashed her face. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I can’t seem to keep anything down.’

  ‘It’s shock,’ he said, stating the obvious. ‘Your body is reacting to the stress and trauma.’

  Declan manoeuvred himself out of the downstairs bathroom, the door had been made wider to accommodate his chair. Lots of little changes and alterations to help make his disability more palatable. He could think of nothing to help lessen the grief he felt now. Nothing beyond catching the bastard and seeing him brought to justice.

  ‘Do you know, I can’t for the life of me remember who told me about Esme,’ Izzy said following Declan into the living room. She sat looking out over their garden.

  ‘My brain has blanked out the messenger completely. I keep asking how could happen to Esme, to us?’ she bent over clutching at herself as if there was a physical pain surging through her body.

  He was at a loss as to know how to help her. He instinctively wanted to hold her and offer some sort of comfort but they were past that kind of affection.

  Turning her head towards him she said, ‘Isn’t it ridiculous that only a week ago we were up to our eyes in all the wedding planning. Chair covers, buttonhole flowers, bloody twinkling fairy lights.’ She grasped at her head as if she could dislodge the horror. She made a sound, like a strangled sob.

  ‘It’s as if I’m drowning. Declan, I can’t take this,’ her tone was almost pleading, as if she needed Declan to fix it all, to make this nightmare dissipate.

  ‘I know Izzy. Life has a way of doing that – everything turns on an axis and we go from one extreme to the other.’ He had seen it before. The grandmother raped and murdered in her bed. Someone’s son shot in the back of the head for dealing drugs in the wrong area. A Filipino girl, traveling miles from home, to start a new life only to find the nannying agency is really a sex ring. Bearing witness to someone else’s nightmare was different from living in your own. The bomb should have been his lot. He often thought over the years, that surely nothing worse could ever happen. Though sometimes in the dead of the night fear, that it might, nagged at him.

  ‘To think of all the time taken up by the wedding preparations. I was cross at Lara for insisting on burlap wrapped jam jars with tea lights instead of the crystal candleholders. All the while Esme had kept to the background, consumed with her life at school and going out with her friends.’

  She put her face in her hands, ‘Jesus, I can’t even remember when I last spent time with Esme, one on one. What with work and the wedding, life ran away from me. How had any of it seemed important?’ She was walking around the room now, without purpose. Her grief scared Declan. He needed her to hold it together.

  She turned abruptly, ‘You don’t think a guest did it, do you? It can’t be someone we know.’

  ‘God, I hope not.’ They both fell silent, contemplating the unthinkable. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Izzy that in most murder cases the killer knows the victim.

  ‘They’ll catch whoever did this, won’t they?’ again she was pleading with him.

  ‘I’ll make fucking sure they do.’ His clenched fists were lodged down the sides of his chair. Every muscle in his body was tight, as if ready to spring in to action.

  ‘Did they tell you what she was like? How she was when they found her?’ her voice was hoarse, worn out from crying.

  ‘Only that she hadn’t been dead long.’ Declan had no wish to tell Izzy that in all likelihood their daughter’s body had been flaccid, not yet rigid from death. That her features may have been frozen in place, her mouth open in a silent scream for help. That her pink bridesmaid dress had been bloodied and dirty, possibly tore and that a huddle of forensics people in white bodysuits would be scraping at her fingernails, collecting samples of secretions, while the photographers would be documenting the scene, click by click. Like all young girls, she was constantly photographed in life, by her friends and by herself, searching for the perfect selfie or profile shot to post on Facebook and Instagram. Now in death she would also be documented.

  He knew that where she had been found was little more than a ditch running alongside the river Lagan that the hotel backed on to. A scenic spot by day, which would now take on all the trappings of the macabre, for kids to visit and taunt each other with tales of the girl, their daughter, found murdered in the undergrowth at her sister’s wedding.

  5

  ‘For fucks sake is there never a friggin printer in this place working?’

  Anna turned to the barked-out comment and shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me. First day and all that.’

  ‘Cole? Isn’t that right?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, Anna Cole.’

  ‘I’m Richard McKay, Detective Superintendent, your new boss,’ he reached out to shake her hand. His grip strong and dry with surprisingly soft skin.

  ‘Right you’ll be hitting the ground running. Busy time for us as you can see,’ he said indicating with the document in his hand towards the heads down in the quiet bustle of the office, signifying work being done. ‘The daughter of Declan Wells, a former police psychologist, has been killed.’

  Anna said, ‘Yeah, I heard.’

  ‘So you’ll understand that we don’t have time for preliminaries and a welcome party,’ he sighed. ‘Terrible case all together, but we need to make sure we are on the ball and that nothing gets missed.’

  ‘I’m not looking for hand holding, just let me know what you want me to do,’ Anna replied.

  He nodded, ‘Settle yourself in and if you need anything ask Holly over there, she’ll tell you who to go to for all that HR shit.’

  Anna looked over to the girl with hair dyed a blue-black colour cut in a razor-sharp bob, giving her a hard look, as if she was trying to be intimidating. She wore stylised make up, a cat’s eye flick of dense ebony eyeliner, precise and clean and a ruby red matt lipstick. It was a uniform of sorts. Anna wished she could have enough interest in herself to devise a style, but she had never been good with make-up, preferring to rely on a quick smudge of mascara and a sweep of coral blusher to warm her pale complexion.

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ Holly said, without taking her eyes off her computer screen. ‘He’s a gobshite.’

  Anna looked perplexed, unsure of the colloquialism.

  ‘Full of shit? Comprehendy vous?’

  ‘Yeah, I get it.’ Anna said staring at her.

  ‘We’re all under a lot of stress. Murder of Declan Wells’ daughter has everyone on edge.’

  ‘I’m sure. One of your own always hurts the most,’ Anna offered.

  ‘Nah she isn’t one of us,’ Holly said finally taking her eyes of the screen giving Anna a once over look. ‘Not that we think that way these days,’ Holly added.

  ‘I thought Declan Wells worked with the force?’

  ‘Yeah, he used to – forensics section, psychologist. He’s a doctor, not a real cop. Never got his hands dirty on the job.’

  Anna absorbed the conversation realising she had considered the murder of Dr Wells’ daughter to be more personal to the force. She found it unsettling when ‘one of your own’ didn’t include your work colleague.

  The briefing packs were passed out during the 10.30 a.m. meeting. Anna flicked through the pages, taking in the format, the highlighted information and the subheadings. The bare bones of the investigation to date reduced to six
pages of print.

  Richard McKay took to the floor and waited for the hush to fall before starting to speak. ‘Right as you all probably know the funeral is today. There will be a significant representation from the force. We are there to pay our respects first and foremost, but of course keep an ear open and your eyes peeled. You never know what could be said at these things or who’s rubber necking.’ He looked around allowing his gaze to fall on Anna, taking a second to place her.

  ‘Anna Cole is here with us on secondment. I’m sure you will all go out of your way to ensure she is welcomed, and show her how we do things over here. Anna if you want to accompany me to the funeral today we can get to know each other on the way to the church.’

  ‘Sure, sounds good.’

  Anna noticed Holly smirk and raise her groomed eyebrow. His easy authority and intense dark eyes were bound to make him desirable even if his manner was lacking.

  Suddenly she felt intensely homesick for the security and familiarity of her own incident room in Cardiff. Here she was the new girl and an outsider to boot. She glanced down at her clear desk, missing the messy disorder of her old one. She even found herself missing Rhys Edwards, her Superintendent, with his acne pocked skin and habit of scratching his beard with a pen. Her colleagues may not have been her best friends but she knew them well and would put herself out for them at every turn, as they would do for her. Now in Belfast she would have no one to rely on, no one to pick up the slack if she needed it, and no one to make her laugh when the day turned grim.

  ‘So, first day then. What do you make of us?’ Richard swung the car into reverse while Anna clicked her seatbelt into place.

  ‘I shall keep my judgment until I have more to go on.’

  ‘Wise woman.’