by Ingrid Black
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘What’s wrong with people?’
‘Healy just found it in her bag.’
‘I thought her bag was searched?’
‘Only quickly, looking for ID,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘This was inside a tear in the lining, folded up tight.’ That was like Julie Feeney too. Our boy was playing out Fagan to the letter. ‘Seems we have a name too. One of the uniformed officers reckons it might be one Mary Lynch. That fits. It should be easy enough to verify. Most of the girls round here have a record.’
‘Relative of yours, Ambrose?’ said Dalton.
‘Most amusing,’ said Lynch with a tolerant smile. ‘I fancy we moved in rather different social circles. More likely one of your old girlfriends, I should have imagined.’
‘Touché.’
‘Look, boys, if you don’t mind,’ said Fitzgerald, ‘we’re just about to start a sweep of the scene, see if anything else’s been left, so if you want to get started, Lynch, I’ll take you over.’
Lynch nodded, and ducked heavily under the tape as Fitzgerald held it up. ‘So much for the shoes,’ he said. ‘Ah well, all in a night’s work.’ He raised a hand at me in farewell.
‘I’ll have to get back too,’ Fitzgerald said to me. ‘Catch you later?’
I understood, offered a smile, then she was gone. Dalton took out his gum and threw it to the ground at my feet, and followed.
He hadn’t looked at me once.
I retreated to the other side of the road, every step emphasising my distance. People had gathered now to watch what was happening, distracted on the way home from bars or roused from sleep in nearby apartments. Police work always draws a crowd, like car smashes and lovers’ tiffs. Whispers mingled with the low crackle of police radios, a murmur of excited rumour. Some watched me, wondering what connection I had with the scene, though none dared to ask.
I leaned against the wall, lit a cigar, creating my own silence, looking at the lights of the city at the edges of the darkness, watching the blue flash in the trees, as Fitzgerald’s unit started their slow circles one way and then the other round the body of the forsaken Mary Lynch.
I knew the routine. For now it was about sketching, measuring; looking for blood spatters, and taking samples – hair and soil, fibres and leaves; and making notes, there were always endless notes. Above all, now was the time for collecting what physical evidence they could find in the vicinity of the body, though there wouldn’t be much of that tonight, I guessed. This was as bad as it got for any scene-of-crime officer: out in the open, winter weather, the rain just starting again and heavier with each moment that passed, though they couldn’t rush.
There certainly wouldn’t be much chance of finding fingerprints. Mary Lynch’s killer wouldn’t have hung around long enough to leave any; and anyhow they didn’t show up on wood, stone, rocks, leaves, or indeed on most types of cloth, and here that was all there was.
Worse, there were so many footprints – hooker and client, hooker and client, in joyless procession – that finding an intact one to lift would be almost impossible. It was strange that I felt so excluded. I had been at scenes like this before, many times, watching over the broken and the dead. It was always the same scene, the same calm going about things that only ever seemed to be a cover for some inner scream.
A place where there had been such pain and terror was always afterwards so quiet, and yet it would never be entirely free of its past. Bad things lingered, and it turned those places bad in turn, so that other bad things happened in time. One evil act could instigate a chain that, if not snapped, would unravel for ever. I had always wondered if that was what ghosts were: the accumulated bad memories of places where things that could not be forgotten, should not be forgotten, had happened.
I shook my head, irritated by my own thoughts, and thought about Fagan. About Fagan’s ghost. About Julie Feeney. About Mary Lynch.
It was a few moments before I realised there was somebody standing next to me. I turned my head, and there was Nick Elliott, watching, smiling. I wondered how long he’d been there.
‘If you’re here to start a fight, Elliott,’ I warned, ‘I’m not in the mood.’
‘I’m not going to say a word. What’s done is done. It’s my own fault for showing you the piece. I should have known you’d play the Good Samaritan and pass it on.’
‘I wasn’t playing. What else could I have done? It might’ve saved somebody’s life.’
‘Didn’t, though, did it?’ Elliott replied smugly, and he came to stand by me, lighting a cigarette from the remains of the last one, pulling his coat hard around him.
‘Perhaps things would’ve been different if you’d handed the letter over soon as you got it, instead of hanging on to it for a few days,’ I said, though what difference would it have made? No one had believed it anyway, except me and Elliott. ‘I suppose this means now you’re going to run with your friend’s little written contribution to the academic debate on crime?’
‘We shall see what we shall see.’
‘That means yes.’
‘If you want to know, buy tomorrow’s paper,’ he said. ‘What about you, anyway? Your friend Fitzgerald give you anything juicy?’
He always said ‘friend’ with that faint leer.
‘If she did, I wouldn’t tell you,’ I said. ‘You’d just have it on the front page next day, spiced up and attributed to one of your legendary sources.’
‘Well, I have as much as I need for tomorrow’s edition anyway. I spoke to one of the detectives about ten minutes ago. He tells me it was a prostitute, and the name seems to match. I’ve been having a word with some of the local ladies of the night too.’
‘They offering you a discount in return for a mention on page one?’
‘I like that, that’s funny,’ Elliott said, and he actually laughed, as if it was. He was on a high, I could tell. Buzzing. He wasn’t really thinking about the murdered woman, he was just thinking about his letter from Fagan, or the person he thought was Fagan, and what an impact it would have when it was published. His name was up in lights in his head.
Or maybe he was just refusing to be distracted from his work. As soon as the letter arrived, it was obvious some woman would die. We had all written someone off, we just didn’t know who it was that we were writing off.
Perhaps Elliott was just being realistic. He had a job to do, and that letter, this death, gave him a chance of making something better out of it. Indeed, the killer had struck so quickly following my handing the letter over to the police that it had probably saved Elliott’s skin. Any longer and someone would’ve talked, news leaked out, bang would’ve gone his exclusive. This way it didn’t matter any more.
That was why Elliott was so ready to forgive my handing the letter over to the murder squad – because it hadn’t ultimately stopped him getting the story. He wasn’t going to waste any more energy on being angry with me when fame beckoned.
‘Look, here comes your great source,’ I said just to irritate him, seeing Ray Lawlor emerge from the shadows by the path, step under the crime scene tape and make his way back towards his car.
I was pleased to see Elliott flinch.
‘Lawlor’s not my source,’ he said.
I shrugged dismissively. Everybody in the DMP knew Lawlor had been taking money from crime reporters for passing on information for years, and not just from Elliott. I’d seen the two of them out drinking at various bars round town myself; it wasn’t hard to plot the connection between their nights out and Elliott’s sudden insights into an investigation.
‘You surprise me,’ I said. ‘I always thought you couldn’t possibly be as stupid as you looked. Hell, was I wrong.’
‘I told you—’
‘Yeah, whatever. Better hurry now before you miss him.’
I shut my eyes to shut him out, and when I opened them again he was gone. I hung around a little while longer after that, but it was obvious I wasn’t going to be able to talk with Fitzgerald again, and there wasn’t
much point staying otherwise. Around three I finally set off for home, taking the same streets, emptier than before yet somehow more sentient, more aware. Inside my apartment was almost colder than out, and the central heating wouldn’t switch on automatically for another hour or so. I was weary, worn out. All I wanted was to sleep.
I was about to climb into bed fully dressed when my clothes reminded me of the scene down by the bridge. I took them off, and tossed them into the basket. Then I climbed into bed, and was asleep immediately. Fagan was waiting for me in the darkness, dead, resurrected Fagan, and the face of Mary Lynch, whoever she was.
I wasn’t too surprised to see it was my own.
SECOND DAY
Chapter Four
I was one drink ahead of Fitzgerald by the time she finally arrived at the bar where we’d arranged to meet for an early lunch.
The eyes that sought me out in the gloom were blackringed and exhausted. She’d obviously not gotten much sleep last night, if any. I’d not gotten much myself; I’d been up again before six, checking out the news, not liking what I heard.
‘You’re not drinking?’ I said after she’d ordered an orange juice from the waiter.
‘Better not,’ she replied. ‘Long day ahead.’
We ordered sandwiches, and whilst we waited for them to come she took a copy of that morning’s Post out from her coat and tossed it on to the table in front of me.
‘Have you read this yet?’
‘I resisted buying a copy,’ I said, ‘in case the proximity of the words Nick Elliott and exclusive turned my stomach.’
I glanced down at the front page: Night Hunter Back.
Fagan had been the Night Hunter since the second killing. Once he’d been arrested, some newspapers tried to make play of his academic background and call him Doctor Death, but it had never caught on.
Doctor Deaths were two a dime, after all.
‘They always have to have a nickname, don’t they?’ I said. ‘Angel of Death, Alligator Man, Candy Man, Red Spider, Ripper.’
‘White Monk,’ said Fitzgerald.
‘That wasn’t my choice,’ I said. ‘They only called him that because he always killed his victims close to a church or a monastery. You know how the legends start: some high school kids decided it was the ghost of an old monk, the freesheets ran with it and a nickname was born. After we caught him, that was what Nado seemed proudest of. Said he was going to use it for the title of his autobiography. White Monk Blues, can you believe that?’
That was the problem with the sort of coverage the Post was providing. For some, killing was their way of making a mark, of asserting who they were, even of finding out who they were; but once they started, then the reactions of others reinforced their behaviour. They weren’t just some pathetic sack who cut up women for kicks any more; they were the Angel of Death, the Red Spider, the White Monk, the Night Hunter, and then it was that which they acted out, always wanting to become more like that image. It was a vicious circle, and the victims were caught right in the middle.
‘Take a look at the rest of the paper,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘You might as well depress yourself some more while you’re at it.’
The first nine pages were devoted to last night’s murder. Picture after picture on the first few: grainy long-distance shots of incident tape stretched between trees and crime scene techs in white overalls; one of Fitzgerald talking into a cellphone; another of the covered body being lifted into the mortuary van. The paper had obviously printed late.
I checked the name: Simon Mee. A staff snapper with the Post. I hadn’t seen him around the night before. He must have turned up after I left.
There was background too by Nick Elliott, incontinent reams of it, together with photographs and stories of Fagan’s five victims, and an analysis, if it could be called that, by one Maeve Curran, an undistinguished clinical psychologist whose pieces I’d occasionally come across and who always seemed to me to be more screwed up than most of her clients.
‘The perpetrator of last night’s awful murder is filled with rage against women,’ I read out, shaking my head. ‘He will kill again. Does she get paid for this or does she do it for a joke?’
And there, on pages six and seven, the letter.
Pressure from the Dublin Metropolitan Police had stopped them saying that the letter definitely was written by Ed Fagan, but they as near as damn said it. In fact there was a photograph of Fagan alongside the article, which made the link inevitable, and an anonymous quote from a police source – hello, Lawlor – that police had ‘no doubt’ Fagan was the killer. It was all there. The perfect blueprint of the classic serial killer. Even if he’d been frightened off by what had happened last night, there was no way our perpetrator could give up after this sort of accolade.
It was an open invitation to live up to his billing, to be the sort of monster they wanted him to be. It was an invitation that I didn’t doubt he’d take up.
‘It’s worse than I expected,’ I said. ‘They’ll be giving him his own TV show next.’
Fitzgerald nodded. ‘And this was just the first death. Our guy promised more. They’re almost wetting themselves, waiting for the next instalment. Unless we can stop him. Only benefit is, he promised to give details of where Sally Tyrrell was if the Post published. Well, they sure lived up to their end of the bargain, and then some. Now we’ll see if he lives up to his.’
The sandwiches came, and as we ate she told me that detectives from the murder squad had started door-to-doors in the area first thing, interviewed a few people who knew Mary Lynch, searched her house. It didn’t seem yet as if they’d come up with anything that would help. Other prostitutes in the area weren’t exactly queueing up to be cooperative either.
‘No funny customers to tell of, no strange clients?’
‘Only all of them,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘They’ll take more breaking down yet. It’s my fault. I put Seamus Dalton on it. You know what a gift he has for dealing diplomatically with people.’ She pulled a face. ‘Dalton. Christ, what was I thinking?’
I wasn’t surprised that they’d hit a wall in the streets round the scene. Where Mary Lynch worked and died wasn’t the sort of area whose residents relished talking to the police. In fact, it wasn’t the sort of area where residents noticed much of anything. They got used to turning a blind eye, a deaf ear. It was all either short-term rentals who came to be nearer where they could buy drugs round the clock, or else high rent high rises where they only cared that their cars were safe.
‘I could have a word,’ I suggested. ‘I know some of the girls round there. They might talk to me.’
‘That’s what I told Draker.’
Assistant Commissioner Brian Draker was her immediate superior at the murder squad. Rumour was that he had never actually worked a case in his entire career, but that hadn’t stopped him leapfrogging over those who had, like Fitzgerald, to the top job when it became vacant. He was one of nine assistant commissioners who ran the various police departments in the city.
‘What did he say?’
‘He didn’t like it, told me that I should concentrate on working the scene instead of wasting my time bringing in outsiders. Like he ever worked a scene in his life. But he was just giving me the assistant commissioner act, showing me who’s boss. He recognises you know more than anyone else about Fagan.’
‘I thought we agreed this wasn’t Fagan?’
‘You know that. Maybe I know that. But they don’t know it. Fagan’s the obvious follow-up to them. That’s where they want to concentrate resources. It makes it neat and tidy for them. They can’t see past the letter, the stuff from the Bible, the MO.’
‘They’re all bullshit. You know that.’
She shrugged. ‘Path of least resistance, that’s Draker’s favourite route. If the papers want it to be Fagan, then Fagan’s what it’ll be for him. At least till he’s shown otherwise.’
‘I could show him otherwise.’
‘Then show him. Show him why it can’t be F
agan. That’s your way in.’
‘I’m not sure I want in,’ I admitted.
Fitzgerald looked out of the window, pushed her sandwich away half eaten. ‘It’s your choice, Saxon. No pressure.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning there’s a place for you if you want it. As a consultant on the case. We’re putting together a major crime team; I had a word, said you could help. I don’t have as much influence as I’d like. The label might say Chief Superintendent, but Draker’s still jerking my strings. But he did listen to me on this. He knows your background well enough. He’s willing to take input from you, as long as it’s unpaid, let you sit in on meetings, interviews, read the case notes, review the evidence. But if you don’t want to, fine. Just don’t beat yourself up about it.’
I caught her eye. ‘You’re one to talk about beating myself up after what you said about Dalton.’
She smiled. ‘Two of a kind, that’s you and me.’
I held her eye and smiled too.
‘I’ll do it.’
She touched my hand lightly in thanks. ‘I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist,’ she said. ‘That’s why I told Draker you’d be offering your services.’
‘You already told him I’d agreed?’
‘I told him you would agree, there’s a difference. And it’s as well you did. I don’t mind admitting I have no idea where to start with this. You can help me out. You always have ideas.’
‘I have ideas all right. Ideas are about the only thing I do have. It’s a way of making anyone listen to them that I don’t have.’
‘Precisely. And that’s what I can give you. Just get me started.’
I felt impatient all of a sudden, like the bar had gotten too small and I wanted to be out walking.
‘Then start with Fagan,’ I said.
‘But you said—’
‘I know what I said. But like you said, all roads lead to Fagan. It can’t be Fagan, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t someone who’s connected to Fagan. The Fagan references must mean something. Whoever has done this has picked on him for a reason. Maybe there’s a message there. He didn’t have to be anyone, he could have killed who he liked. But he wanted to become the Night Hunter, wanted us to think that he was the Night Hunter. That must mean something.’
