by Ingrid Black
It was the name, Jackie Hill, that alerted me as much as anything. I knew Jackie. Hadn’t seen her for months now, but I knew her. I’d met her when I was researching my book on Fagan. She’d been a prostitute even back then, and had been friendly with a couple of his victims. Every time we’d met since, she’d promised me she’d quit, soon, next year, once she’d got herself sorted out. I’d heard them all.
Would this finally persuade her to get out? Probably not, knowing Jackie. Why would it, if what Fagan did to her friends hadn’t?
What really disturbed me as I read the account of her attack was that she hadn’t been robbed. Rape of a prostitute was usually followed by the taking of whatever money she’d earned; most attackers seemed to derive pleasure from that final humiliation. Jackie’s attacker had taken nothing. He’d also told her he knew where she lived and would kill her if she talked to police.
She’d been hysterical, unsurprisingly, when the police interviewed her, convinced that she would die if she talked, but eventually they’d managed to take a statement from her, some DNA samples to send for forensic analysis. She hadn’t been able to provide a description. Because it was dark, she said, but knowing Jackie it probably had more to do with the fact that her brain was fractured from her last fix. Then they’d dumped her on to Victim Support, who were supposed to be arranging a follow-up visit, though I couldn’t help doubting they’d ever get around to it. Jackie Hill wasn’t the type to insist on her rights.
I made a note to find out who was dealing with her case. Rape was outside the Fagan pattern our killer had adopted for himself, but then so was dismemberment and that hadn’t stopped him; and even if he was acting out the role of the great Night Hunter, that didn’t mean he wasn’t up for some freelance sexual assault when out of his adopted persona.
He’d said he knew where Jackie Hill lived. The author of the Post letter had said he’d been watching Mary Lynch too. It wasn’t much, but I wasn’t willing to let any possible connection, however implausible, go begging. I had to start somewhere.
I rubbed my eyes roughly, trying to hurt myself back into alertness, then looked again at the boxes of files which Boland had brought round earlier that day. I couldn’t be more than halfway through, and on it went, this bizarre catalogue of human malevolence, endlessly lapping waves of a poisoned tide.
A picture of Fitzgerald entered my mind out of nowhere.
A hot volcanic pool outside Reykjavik, Grace splashing her feet and drinking vodka, refusing to get in because she couldn’t swim. We’d been on holiday, it was after midnight and the Northern Lights were showing off among the dull jealous stars; they seemed to get tangled in her hair when she turned her head.
Now someone had switched off the Northern Lights and Grace was most likely at her desk down at headquarters, making the same lists as me, seeing no end. It would all be followed up in time. We’d convince ourselves we were doing something, scurrying after each lead, but roads had led to nowhere before. What if they led us nowhere again?
What if our precious lists only led to more lists, files to more files?
What then?
Chapter Nine
Fitzgerald buzzed around nine, and as always I felt immediately guilty that I hadn’t given her a key. I always meant to, but something, just as inevitably, always stopped me. A key would have meant something, and I didn’t know if I was ready for what it would mean. Fitzgerald never asked, and she certainly didn’t ask tonight. She just came in wearily from climbing the stairs and shrugged off her coat.
‘Something smells good.’
‘Shall I put it out?’
‘Not just yet. Pour me some of that first.’ She took the glass of wine out of my hand and tasted it. ‘Not bad. What is it?’
‘Don’t quote me on this, but I think it might be wine.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘Yeah well, you know me. I only picked it up because I liked the label. It’s Italian, I think. Distilled on the slopes of the Appalachian Mountains by Corleone and Sons Winemakers. It was sitting there on the shelf, making me an offer I couldn’t refuse.’
‘Spirits are distilled, wine’s fermented,’ Fitzgerald said, taking another sip. ‘And the Appalachian mountains are in America, not Italy. Remember Appalachian Spring?’
‘Can’t say I do. Was John Wayne in it?’
‘It’s a symphony by Aaron Copland. Don’t Americans know anything about culture, even their own? You must have been thinking of the Apennines,’ she added, peering distractedly at the label. ‘Besides, this is French.’
‘Wherever.’ I paused. ‘Bad day?’
‘Is there any other kind?’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you about it over dinner. I’m going for a shower first. Is that OK?’
There it was again. The asking for permission. She wouldn’t ask for permission if she had a key. For a moment I wondered if the asking for permission was a rebuke, but I didn’t want to ask in case it was.
‘You know where everything is,’ I said instead, and she smiled and took the wine into the bathroom. A moment later I heard the shower, a hard rattle like gravel thrown against a window.
I sat by my own window and looked out over the city. The rain was back out there too, but it was a soft rain, the sort of rain that blurred the streetlights rather than obliterated them. Traffic moaned quietly below. Sitting here sometimes made me think of Boston, and the differences, and then I’d get homesick, recalling how long it had been . . .
‘What are you thinking?’ said Fitzgerald.
My eyes snapped open. I must have nodded off momentarily. I hadn’t even heard her come up and put her arms about my neck.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Or dinner. Take your pick.’
She was wearing my sweater, I saw; she wore it so often now it smelt of her rather than me. I didn’t mind. It suited her better.
Most of my things did.
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘let’s eat.’
I may not know much about wine, but I can sure cook a Class A pot roast. Even Fitzgerald, who had long since got used to snatching whatever food she could get hold of at short notice and now rarely noticed what she ate, had to admit that it was good. For decency’s sake, I waited until she’d almost finished before I asked about the latest body. The plan was to wait until she’d finished entirely, but patience was never my strong suit.
‘I wondered how long it’d be before you got round to that,’ she said.
‘Any indication yet how she died?’
‘She was only taken away about an hour ago,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘The crime tech boys got so little from the scene of Mary’s death overnight, I think they just wanted to make sure they didn’t disturb anything in the churchyard as well. Lynch said he’d do the autopsy tomorrow morning. I’m going round there after the crime team meeting to sit in on that one as well.’
‘Anyone see her being dumped?’
I conjured up a picture of the churchyard in my head. It was overlooked by a convent on one side, a terrace of houses on the other; a narrow lane branched off from the main road and round to an entrance at the side. Someone must have seen something, surely?
‘Teenagers drinking there last night claim they heard a car pulling up about one a.m.,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘But it was dark, they didn’t actually see anyone coming in.’
‘That would only’ve been a couple of hours after Mary was killed.’
‘He probably had the body in the boot of his car when he picked Mary up. Drove to the canal, killed her, then on to the churchyard, where he dumped the body of this one.’ ‘Risky,’ I said. ‘That’s two chances of being seen.’
‘If that’s when the body was left in the churchyard. It’s only the evidence of the kids that puts it at one a.m. She might’ve been left there earlier. The car might be unconnected.’
‘If she was left there at one, that puts the dog-walker in the clear,’ I pointed out. ‘He was conveniently giving a statement to the police down by the canal around that time.’
/>
‘Stephens,’ said Fitzgerald contemptuously. ‘Don’t talk to me about Matt Stephens.’
‘I assume from your tone of voice that you got to speak to him today.’
‘How did you know about that?’
‘Boland told me.’
‘Boland, right. Well, I did – if you can call it talking. Pleading and whining’d be nearer the mark. Creep. He’s the sort who, if you ask him the time, starts squealing “I didn’t do it, I’m innocent.” He admitted knowing Mary by sight, but he denies ever having talked to her, and he insists he didn’t know it was her when he reported finding the body. He says he didn’t admit to being in the Blessed Order of Mary at first because he didn’t want to drag them into it. Didn’t want them knowing he was doing a little freelance loitering in the red-light zone, if you ask me, but for now we’re going to have to take his word for it. Unless we get something on him.’
‘His knowing her might be significant,’ I said. ‘Eighty-five per cent of victims know their attacker.’
‘Fifteen per cent don’t,’ Fitzgerald pointed out, and I couldn’t argue with that.
‘What about Jack Mullen then? Fagan’s son? Did you get a chance to check him out?’
‘That’s the other bad news,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Mullen has an alibi. About twenty of them, to be exact. He was drinking last night in a bar near his place up by the North Circular Road. He told Healy he didn’t leave there till after two in the morning.’
‘Is he telling the truth?’
‘It’ll be straightforward enough to check out.’
‘I had a real feeling about him too,’ I said, and I felt sick all of a sudden. Mullen had been perfect. Mullen had made sense. If Mullen had an alibi, then we were right back to the beginning – but I wasn’t accepting that quietly.
‘You haven’t asked me about the autopsy on Mary Lynch.’ Fitzgerald interrupted my gloomy thoughts, reaching over to the wine bottle and refilling her half-empty glass.
‘I didn’t know if you’d want to talk about it yet,’ I confessed. ‘I remember what it’s like. It’s never easy.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you saw Ambrose at work,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘He doesn’t bat an eyelid.’
‘There are worse than Lynch. I knew a medical examiner in Vermont once used to lay out his sandwiches on the mortuary slab so that he didn’t have to stop for lunch.’
‘That’s sick.’
‘Sick’s right, but then we all must be a bit sick, working this field, true? So come on,’ I said, ‘tell me. Any surprises?’
‘On cause of death? No surprises. In fact, it was all pretty straightforward. Congestion of the face, cyanosis, petechial haemorrhaging in the skin and eyes, particularly prominent in the lips and behind the ears, slight bleeding from the ears. Numerous petechiae on the internal organs too, apparently, though I didn’t hang around for a closer look. Didn’t need to by then.’
‘A textbook strangulation.’
‘That’s what Lynch said. If you ask me, he was secretly impressed. Said he was going to keep the photographs to show in his lectures.’
‘Get anything on the ligature?’
‘Lynch lifted some fibres from inside the wound.’
I guessed before she said it. Green. Fagan had used green garden twine too. There was even some in his car boot when he was arrested. Conor Buckley, incredibly, had tried to have it discounted as evidence on the grounds that Fagan was a keen gardener, which was the first his garden had ever heard about it.
‘Whatever it was, it was certainly pulled tight,’ Fitzgerald said flatly. ‘There was serious damage to the thyroid cartilage, and the hyoid bone was broken.’
That was significant. A broken hyoid bone in the throat was associated more with manual strangulation. That it was broken in Mary Lynch was a sign of just how much force had been used by her killer, much more force than was necessary simply to render her dead. In Fagan’s five victims, the hyoid had been broken in only two.
‘What about knots?’
She shook her head. ‘The ligature was crossed over at the back, but there was no knot.’
That was like Fagan too. The killer was obviously keen to ape every part of his MO.
‘Any other injuries?’ I said.
‘Some bruising on the neck where she tried to pull the rope away,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘Scratching. We took scrapings from under the nails. It’ll all trace back to her is my guess.’ She paused. ‘What a civilised conversation for the supper table. Do you want more wine?’ I shook my head. ‘That’s not like you. I think I’ll have another.’
And that wasn’t like Fitzgerald. I was losing count.
‘Any other tampering with the body?’ I said as she started to pour herself yet another glass and, finding the bottle empty, reached over for the corkscrew to open a second.
‘No evidence of rape or sexual assault, if that’s what you mean. We’ll have to wait on the lab results to know for sure, of course, but Lynch seemed fairly confident they’d be clear.’
‘What about Forensics?’
‘They’ll get the results to me soon as they can. I’m quoting now. They’re short-staffed. They can’t perform miracles. When is the Commissioner going to approve their new facilities?’
Fitzgerald ticked off the complaints on her fingers, then sighed, avoided my eye.
‘I’m getting too old for this,’ she said.
‘It takes time,’ I said. ‘You’ll get there.’
‘Like I did with Fagan, you mean?’
Now it was me avoiding her eye. I didn’t trust myself.
‘That wasn’t your fault,’ I replied evenly. ‘You know that. And you also know it has nothing to do with what’s happening now.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘That’s not what they think at headquarters. Draker, Dalton, the Commissioner.’
‘The Commissioner? What’s he said?’
‘Phoned this afternoon. Wanted to know how I was getting on, that was how he put it, but it was Fagan’s name he kept coming back to. Even Lynch told me he thought that whoever killed Mary had killed before. Too neat and tidy for a beginner, he said.’
‘It’s not Lynch’s job to make those kinds of judgements,’ I said sharply. ‘It doesn’t exactly take a PhD and twenty years’ training to strangle a seven-stone junkie and get it right.’
‘He was just offering his opinion,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Same as you. All they see is the same MO, same victimology, same locations, same sick little trademarks, plus a published confession in the morning’s newspaper. Strangling’s not exactly a common method of serial murder, Saxon, yet we’re asking them to believe they’ve got the second one in a decade.’
I was glad to see it was still we who were asking them to believe it, at any rate. I didn’t know what I’d do if she started believing it was Fagan as well.
‘All I’m saying,’ she continued, ‘is that it’s not easy standing there and telling them that they have to ignore the one obvious suspect they’ve got, the only suspect, and start back at the beginning again looking for someone else.’
‘There are differences,’ I said. ‘Look at the state of the body you found this afternoon. Hands missing, head missing. Does that sound like Fagan? And Dublin isn’t New York; Fagan couldn’t simply wander round here without being seen by someone he used to know. It doesn’t add up, and they know it. We just have to find whatever it takes to make them admit it.’
She didn’t answer, so I took the opportunity to stand up and carry the plates through to the kitchen. Neither of us had much of an appetite any more for what was left of the pot roast.
Her voice, quiet now, followed me across the room.
‘There was one other thing. One difference, as you put it.’
I laid down the plates and turned round.
‘Go on.’
She didn’t look at me, just swirled the wine round inside her glass, staring at it.
‘There was a symbol of some sort, written on the sole of Mary Lync
h’s left foot. They found it when they took off her stilettos to send them for analysis along with her clothes. Thought it was a tattoo at first. It had been written on her skin with a fountain pen.’
‘Are you going to tell me what it was?’
‘It’s hard to explain. Wait there,’ she said, like I had anywhere else to go. ‘I made a copy.’
She put down the glass, got up and walked, a little unsteadily, to where she’d left her coat tossed over the chair. It took her some time to root through her pockets, but at last she found what she was looking for. It was a scrap of crumpled paper. She handed it to me to unfold, though it still didn’t make much sense when I did.
The symbol was like a letter x that was starting to curl, but made with thicker, darker pen strokes. I tried to imagine what it looked like on the dry, dead parchment of Mary Lynch’s skin, then wished that I hadn’t.
‘You going to tell me what this is?’ I said.
‘That,’ she said, ‘is aleph.’ She spelt it out. ‘First letter of the Hebrew alphabet.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘I am only repeating what the wise Ambrose Lynch himself told me this afternoon. Comes before beth and gimel.’ She didn’t bother spelling those out. ‘Literal translation from the Hebrew: ox.’
‘Well, if this doesn’t persuade Draker and the Commissioner that this isn’t the work of Fagan, nothing will,’ I said. ‘Fagan may have left around a few quotes from the Bible, but nothing like this. No symbols, certainly no writing on the skin of his victims. Wonder how the Post will explain that away if they’re still intent on insisting that it’s him?’
‘Let’s hope they don’t find out,’ said Fitzgerald, draining her glass again. ‘Not for a few days, anyway. That way there’ll be more time for us to work out what the hell’s going on.’
‘Maybe I can help there,’ I said.
‘Don’t tell me. You’ve been taking a night class in Hebrew scriptology.’ It was reassuring to see that alcohol hadn’t affected her sarcastic sense of humour.
