Little Bird: a serial killer thriller

by Sharon Dempsey

  ‘Hi, it’s me.

  21

  Mortuary suites didn’t bother Anna. She always found the scene of the crime more disturbing. The body, sometimes still warm to the touch, the air only recently expelled from the lungs. Here, in the sterile world of stainless steel and over bright lighting, the body was reduced to physical parts: flesh, bone, sinew and muscle, carefully examined to give up the clues and secrets of death.

  Dr Margaret McCann looked up and nodded as Anna entered the room. She was instructing her assistant to place her instruments in a precise order, left to right.

  ‘She’s over there,’ Margaret said, indicating with a nod of her head. Anna walked over and offered up a silent prayer. Grace Dowds looked so young as she lay stretched out on the steel table. The skin over her cheekbones appeared stretched, highlighting her fragility, the freckles appearing even starker than when Anna had first seen the body. Her strong brows, which in the photographs, framed her pretty face, looked too heavy and dark against the blue, waxy paleness death had reduced her to.

  ‘Did you see the strangulation marks, here and here?’ Margaret asked as she put on her Dictaphone to record her every cut and finding. Anna nodded looking at the angry, purple and red welts around the girl’s delicate neck.

  ‘Same as Esme Wells?’

  ‘Looks like it. No fingerprints, though. He definitely wore gloves. SOCOs have recovered some fibres – leather, and although there was no wood wool this time, as you know, we have this.’ She held up a plastic bag containing the bird. ‘The SOCO team said they have a trace of wood wool on one of the feathers.’

  Anna caught herself holding her breath. There was something unsettling about the smell – the gassy smell of death and rubbing alcohol, mixed with an unpleasant undercurrent of disinfectant. She never voluntarily attended autopsies, but like the crime scene, they too, offered up morsels of information. Each fact or suggestion helping to paint shade and light onto the larger picture.

  ‘As you can see, it was a robin,’ Margaret removed the bird from the plastic bag.

  It lay on the table, small and still. Anna moved over to look closely at it. It was small and slightly plump, with tawny brown feathers slick with some sort of coating. Its distinctive orangey red breast was flattened into its chest so that it looked like it had been punctured, knocking all of the air out of it. The thought of it being inserted into Grace’s mouth made Anna want to be sick.

  ‘Do we know how the bird died and if it was alive when the killer struck Grace?’

  ‘Hard to say, but I think it was alive when it was put into her mouth. I can tell you that it died from being crushed which suggests it was alive before being placed in the victim’s mouth.’

  Margaret adjusted the microphone attached to her lab coat, ‘I will be checking the teeth and mouth to see if there are signs that she clamped down on the bird, that would be consistent with the fractures in the bird’s bone structure as seen in the X-ray. The material coating the bird is residual vomit. She most likely gagged as it was put in her mouth.’

  Anna left the mortuary before Margaret began her post mortem. There were some things she didn’t need to see. She made mental lists on her way back to the office. The feather and the fibre played on her mind. They had enough to think it was the same killer. They assumed the wood wool found in Esme’s mouth was from packaging – a crate of wine, or something fragile that needed to be encased to protect them. But maybe they had got that wrong. What if the wood wool was used as stuffing? The idea of the fibres being forced into Esme’s screaming mouth made her stomach heave, but the bird was a step further. As if the sickening violence wasn’t enough.

  At the office, Anna called up the profile notes on her computer. The killer was beginning to feel real. Someone presentable, good looking even, not old, maybe twenty-five to thirty years old, charming and persuasive enough to lead two girls away from a busy venue to their deaths. They must have felt comfortable and relaxed with him. Anna sat at her desk staring at the open file. She had mapped out narrative sketches – lists of known associates, places of interest where they would be travelling to school, for both girls. She was looking for similarities, cross over points, anything to link them but so far nothing solid. They didn’t know each other, either in the real world, on Facebook, Snap Chat or on Twitter. But she couldn’t ignore that they were both young women, out celebrating. Pretty girls with everything going for them. Education and the comfort of wealth behind them, especially in the Dowds’ girl’s case.

  She had an unnerving feeling of having missed something tangible but she wasn’t getting anywhere sitting there.

  ‘Holly,’ she called across the room, ‘Do me a favour, ring the school and tell the head I’m on my way to pay them a visit. I want to talk to some of Grace’s friends,’ Anna said as she grabbed her jacket, the pool car keys and headed off.

  Grace’s school was the closest thing Belfast had to a posh public school. Drummond House was a co-ed grammar, situated on the edge of Belfast city centre. Like Esme, Grace’s school was elite. The use of academic selection at the age of eleven had created for a number of grammar schools in Belfast. Each offering a first-rate education to any pupils who had met with the entrance criteria. Anna drove through the wide gates at the bottom of the driveway, taking in the trees at either side and the brilliant green lawns, immaculately kept and edged with rhododendrons and azaleas, before going around to the back of the building. An old, distinguished looking red brick building housed the main school with smaller buildings around an internal courtyard at the back. It all smelt of money and privilege.

  The pupils all wore a uniform of charcoal grey blazers over sharp, bright white shirts, with dark green ties and grey pleated skirts for the girls and black trousers for the boys. There was little to differentiate them apart from school bags, hockey sticks and swaths of long hair on the girls. The boys moved in clumps together, jumping on each other in horseplay and firing a rugby ball back and forth between them. They moved in a mass, like a flock, all on the same path to whichever class they were heading to next.

  Anna parked and made her way into the main building, following the sign for visitors. She showed her ID to a secretary seated behind a glass partition. ‘You’ll want to speak to the principal Mr Collins, I assume?’

  ‘Yes, he should be expecting me, can ask him to give me a few moments please?’

  The principal’s office was panelled in dark mahogany with an oil painting depicting the school building hanging above his highly-polished desk.

  ‘Mr Collins, this is Detective Cole,’ the secretary said as Anna made her way forward into the room. Anna held out her hand. ‘Sorry for the intrusion, but would it be possible to speak to some of Grace’s friends?’

  A group of students had been gathered in to the common room. Some of them had been crying. One girl was still sniffing into her balled up tissues.

  ‘I’m sorry and I know this is a hard time for the school. You must all miss Grace and feel really upset about how she died,’ Anna said sitting down in front of them. A few of them nodded in agreement. ‘I need you to think carefully. If there is anything which may be of help, you have to tell us. Did Grace have any friends outside of school? Any boyfriends or acquaintances that she kept from her parents?’

  Anna knew that she should have structured the interviews, selected the girls and boys close to Grace and brought them in for questioning, but experience told she would hear more if they weren’t intimated and being made to answer questions with mummy or daddy listening in.

  She took a list of their names. Six best friends, and several who were said to be good friends but not ‘best’. Anna hated the whole ranking of friends that went on. The inner circle and those on the fringes competing to be accepted by the ‘in’ crowd. Grace appeared to be popular and well liked.

  ‘Mia, can you think of any reason why Grace would have left the hotel on the night of the prom?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘She might have gone out for a cigare
tte, or she might have felt sick. She had been drinking a lot.’

  ‘Does anyone remember Grace saying she was going outside?’ They all murmured ‘no.’

  Anna was able to identify the boy who had been Grace’s date for the night. Ben Radcliffe spoke quietly, ‘We had a fight. Grace wasn’t happy that I was spending most of the night with my mates at the bar. She wanted me to dance with her.’ He looked grief stricken. His clean shaved skin, made him look even younger than his eighteen years.

  ‘And this was at around eleven you said?’

  ‘I think so, I can’t be sure. She stormed off and I went back to the party. I didn’t see her after that,’ he said looking down at his hands.

  ‘Has anyone any idea of if she would have gone off with someone?’

  ‘Do you think it was someone at the formal?’ a girl called Ashleigh asked.

  ‘We have to consider every possibility. We will be talking to everyone who attended on the night and hotel staff. You can imagine it will take time to interview everyone, so we need you to think carefully, and if you can think of anything give me call.’ She handed each of them her card.

  Holly was pouring coffee when Anna returned to the office. ‘Want one?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure, white, no sugar.’

  ‘King was looking for you earlier.’

  ‘He probably wants an update before the main briefing. I’ll get to him in a minute.’ Anna could see the trace of a smirk play at Holly’s mouth. She didn’t need the whole place thinking she had shagged a colleague. If he has said anything, she’d be pissed off. It was hard enough gaining their trust and respect as the outsider. She cursed herself again for being seen heading off with Thomas on the night out. She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

  The briefing meeting had been set for 2.00 p.m. McKay strode in with a thunderous look on his face. He’d probably been getting flak from above, Anna thought. The powers-at-be were keeping the pressure on, and as the press had used Grace’s death to run with a double-murder angle, the force risked looking slow and incompetent.

  ‘Let’s get started. As from today the two cases will come under the code name Operation Ophelia. We don’t choose the name but it isn’t the worst they could come up with. DI Cole, update us on the Esme Wells case and what we have so far on Grace Dowds?’

  ‘Yes sir.’ Anna stood at the white board and clicking on her laptop, displayed the first photograph – Grace Dowds lying in-situ.

  ‘PM is back and cause of death for Grace Dowds is the same as Esme – strangulation. Unlike Esme, there were no other major injuries except for bruising and marks, which suggest she fought her attacker. DNA samples are not back yet, we’re still hopeful that we’ll find something, though it appears our attacker is careful.’

  She clicked the mouse again and a new photograph appeared of strands of fabric. ‘Significantly, with both girls, traces of this fibre have been found. In Esme, the fibre, called wood wool was stuffed in to her mouth.’

  Thomas King spoke, ‘In Grace’s case, SOCO found a few stray fibres. Possibly transmitted to the victim from the perpetrators clothes. At the first crime scene, seven days after the murder, a bird was recovered. Apparently placed as some sort of marker.’

  He clicked on the picture, showing the dead, black guillemot. ‘As you can see the eyes have been removed. There is evidence that whoever removed the eyes knew what they were doing, the eye sockets remain intact with no damage and this apparently takes a bit of skill and practice.’

  Anna continued, holding up some wood wool, ‘This is an example of the fibre we are talking about. It is used for stuffing toys and certain types of packaging. It is coarse, dry curls of finely serrated wood, almost like a thick papery texture. As Thomas said, it is also used in taxidermy. We are looking at all of those angles.’

  The room murmured.

  ‘And going back to the first bird,’ Anna clicked on the link and a photograph of the dead, eyeless bird flashed up on the screen.

  ‘This was found at the first scene, a week after the murder of Esme Wells. As you can see, the eyes of the bird have been removed. It’s a strange finding. The site had been cleared days before who ever left it must have been watching to make sure we’d cleared off. We have a report from a forensic entomologist, which is on the system so have a read. Basically, they told us the bird had been dead for a while, probably a few weeks and stored.’

  She went on, reading from her notes, ‘The feather mites usually die off after the bird is dead and don’t cause any further damage to the feathers. The bird has also been soaked in a mild detergent, which would get rid of them anyway. What usually eats the feathers away, later down the road are moths or larvae. This tells us that, whoever left the bird, knew how to work with wildlife. And of course, it is also significant that the eyes have been removed without damage to the socket.’

  Thomas took over, ‘In the case of Grace Dowds, a bird was placed inside her mouth. We now know that the bird was put into Grace’s mouth before she died, and that the robin was alive. The robin died through the force of Grace’s mouth clamping down on it. There was residual vomit on the bird, and its neck bones were crushed along with some of the skeletal bones.’

  The room murmured.

  ‘Sick bastard,’ Magee said.

  ‘Yes, we are dealing with someone who has a penchant for the ghoulish,’ Thomas paused, letting the room settle down again. ‘He obviously knows the sites well, has access to the girls, is perhaps familiar with them or is confident in chatting with them and leading them to their place of death. He also knows his way around wildlife, so we may have some sort of a specialist on our hands.’

  Anna clicked on to the next picture, ‘As you can see the scene where the body was found is mainly a small woodland in the hotel grounds. She was covered in trace elements from the environment, soil composition and twigs, debris of the natural habitat. All pointing to the fact that this is the primary scene. Footprints are of no use – possibly covered up by the attacker.’

  Anna turned to Thomas, ‘You have the PM report.’

  He stayed in his seat and read from his file. ‘Time of death in Grace’s case is estimated at sometime between midnight on Saturday and 2.00 a.m. Sunday morning. Contents of her stomach were consistent with the meal she ate at the formal, and toxicology reports show she had drunk vodka, quite a bit.’

  ‘Was there a sexual assault?’ asked Holly.

  ‘Again, like the Esme Wells case, no sexual assault.’

  ‘Tox screen was negative for drugs, although she had been drinking, she was in no way out of it and we can assume she went willingly with the killer,’ Anna added.

  ‘We’re looking at the same man then?’ asked Conlon.

  McKay turned to the room. ‘I don’t want the press getting wind of the fibres or the dead bird. Until we have more to go on we tell the press to treat this as a separate case.’

  ‘Could she have been targeted because of who her father is?’ Holly asked. ‘He’s pretty high profile.’

  ‘Mr Dowds has already asked if it could be connected to him standing for the elections. He’s worried dissidents had something to do with it. Previously, threats had been made against him and his family, but at this point we aren’t convinced there is a connection.’

  ‘Where are we with staff interviews?’ McKay asked. Manus Magee had been tasked with over seeing the painstakingly work of collecting information on the staff lists of the two hotels.

  ‘I was getting to that. The regular staff all checked out, nothing of interest but both venues hire in extra bouncers and security staff for big events and significantly, both use the same company. There are a few names on the list that weren’t scheduled to work the night in question so we have ruled them out but we need to go back to them.’

  ‘Right get on to it and obtain a comprehensive list of anyone working for the two venues, whether they were scheduled to work or not.’

  ‘Already on it, sir. Esme’s phone records are still with th
e IT department and we need to see if she had any unusual activity on her Facebook – any new friends, secret messages that kind of thing.’

  ‘Chase them up,’ McKay said, bringing the briefing to close.

  The morning briefing lacked the eagerness and excitement of the week before. There was an eerie hush in the incident room. New back up staff brought in to assist, were methodically sorting the extra paperwork, thrown up by the reward. Calls were coming in, mostly crank, a few promising possibilities, but they all needed to be checked out. Half-finished coffee mugs and the remains of hastily eaten lunches sat giving off a stale odour that they were all too preoccupied to deal with. The team was deflated and quieter than usual. There were significant links between Esme Wells and Grace Dowds. What DNA samples they had from Esme, hadn’t matched anything in the system. Hundreds of police hours had been spent interviewing the wedding guests, examining the CCTV and generally picking through the detail of the two cases.

  The day had drifted away from Anna. She had spent it following up phone calls, checking on data the floaters were logging. The higher the stakes, the quicker the days seemed to rush past as if time was speeding up. Anna was lost in thought, thinking about Grace Dowds and the moments before she died; the squirm of the bird being shoved into her mouth, its beak hitting the back of Grace’s throat, making her gag, its heart thumping against the roof of her mouth, the dry desiccated feel of the feathers. How she must have bit down in pain, trying to fight back, feeling the crush of the bird’s brittle bones underneath its flesh. Anna took a swig from her bottle of water, her throat parched, almost imagining how Grace had felt, when Thomas came careering in.

  ‘Grab your coat, Cole, let’s get out of here,’ Thomas said.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I need substance, a dinner that doesn’t come served in plastic from a microwave and a drink. You don’t mind driving, do you?’ he replied, feeling in his jacket pocket for his keys and then tossing them to Anna before she could respond. They headed to the Botanic area of Belfast. At that time of the evening, workers were heading home and students where queuing up for Boojum, the burrito bar. They parked and made their way through the rain-drenched streets to The Empire Music Hall, a church like venue with stone steps leading up to the first-floor entrance.