by Ingrid Black
‘You’ll get no argument from me, but you’ve your work cut out with Draker.’
‘Thankfully,’ said Tillman bluntly, ‘it isn’t my job to convince anyone. I’m simply here to offer my observations as asked and then it’s back in my box I go. I’ve a public lecture to deliver in three days’ time that I’ve barely started writing yet. You’re on your own.’
‘Like I told you this morning,’ said Fitzgerald, ‘I’m grateful for any help you can give.’
Tillman nodded, satisfied.
‘Then let’s get started, shall we?’
He walked to the desk under the window, opened a drawer and lifted out an unexpectedly large pile of pages.
‘What’s that – your autobiography?’ I said.
‘Very funny. I just printed off a few extra copies in case they were needed.’
He peeled off two of the printed profiles and handed them to us, stapled at the corner. The others he put down on the desk. He didn’t bother lifting one for himself.
‘I just want to start by stressing that these are only my preliminary observations,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t think I’m claiming anything definitive for them.’
‘Yeah, yeah, we know all that, Mort,’ I said.
‘I’m saying it all the same, so there’s no misunderstanding later about what I’m claiming. I’m saying it for me, not for you. These are pointers, nothing more. Are we clear?’
He was looking at Fitzgerald as he said it.
‘I understand,’ she told him. ‘Just give me what you’ve got.’
‘Well, that’s the problem,’ he said. ‘Normally, in a case like this, what I’d be looking for first are the characteristics of each particular crime scene. What I’d be looking for is some indication of what the offender’s done and why he’s done it. Why he’s done things one way rather than another, that is. But we already know why this offender has done what he’s done in the way that he’s done it – because that’s what your old friend Fagan did. He wants to be as much like the old Fagan as he can; he wants to hide behind that other Fagan.’
‘You’re saying it’s definitely not Fagan then?’ said Fitzgerald.
‘Whoa,’ said Tillman, ‘I already said there were no definites. I’m just pointing up the difficulty of trying to separate the traces of this killer from the traces of Fagan. Even if it is Fagan, he’s still operating according to a pre-existing template, so it’s hard to disentangle the now from the then – but I’ll come to that in a minute. I just want to make things clear so I can’t be accused of missing something later.’
Was that a dig at me?
Christ, it was about time he got over it.
‘So what did the scenes tell you?’ said Fitzgerald.
‘Start with the basics. One, he’s very familiar with those areas. He’s clearly confident of coming and going without being noticed too much. He can find his way around. He knows the locations of the CCTV cameras. Has to if he wants to get in and out without being seen.’
‘Proper little Green Beret,’ I said sarcastically.
‘That’s probably how he likes to think of it. Each time it’s like a surgical strike. And to do that, he’s going to have to know these places as well as he knows his own backyard. That means he’ll have spent a lot of time in the area, hanging round, driving round.’
‘Does he live locally?’ asked Fitzgerald.
‘Hard to tell, since the places where Mary Lynch and Mary’ – he checked his notes – ‘Dalton were found are relatively far apart. But I don’t think so. Not live there. He needs prostitutes, he uses prostitutes, they feed some crucial fantasy element in his life, but he wouldn’t want to be contaminated by being that close to them all the time. Plus he’s careful of his own security, so he’s not going to take the risk of being recognised by a neighbour as someone who’s using prostitutes. That would diminish his self-esteem, and this is a man for whom self esteem will be everything. How he appears to others matters greatly to him. His reputation. His standing in the world. He couldn’t bear that to be slighted. But as I say, he needs them, so he may have a job which allows him to come into contact with them and those areas of the city.’
‘Taxi driver?’
‘I don’t think we’re looking at a taxi driver, but it’s tempting. He strikes at night each time, he’s obviously more comfortable at night, he feels it’s his domain.’
‘Familiar with the area, maybe works there, looks for excuses to come and go from the area, to be in contact with prostitutes. Add in the religious angle and we could be talking about Matt Stephens. He even comes there to walk his dog. At least that’s what he says.’
‘I don’t want to hear the names of suspects,’ Tillman said.
‘Sorry,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Go on.’
‘You’re looking for a highly intelligent individual. Definitely someone on the same intellectual level as Fagan. He’s organised, knows all about police procedure, he’s confident of evading detection. He’s also operating right now on high stress levels, yet the scenes feel calm, ordered, there’s no panic there; he never loses control, even when he’s potentially exposed to view, as he was when he killed Mary Lynch. Afterwards he’s also finding it relatively easy to detach himself from what he’s done, to rationalise it. I’d say he’ll want to have photographs of the body as a memento, but outwardly he’ll not be behaving differently.’
‘Age?’
‘Mid thirties, forty-ish. Again it’s hard to tell because he’s copying an already established pattern in Ed Fagan; Fagan’s his screen, and that’s the age Fagan was when he began killing. But the fact that this guy is able to do that with ease, at least so far, suggests someone older.’
‘Socially invisible,’ read out Fitzgerald, glancing down at her copy of Tillman’s profile. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Put it this way. He’s not the type to start ranting and raving about prostitutes in the street. Seen from the outside, he’s no more remarkable than I am. He’s able to form relationships, he’s probably married or living with a partner, though she knows nothing about what he’s doing. He drives a good car, holds down a steady job, owns his own house.’
So much for my suspicions about Fagan’s son Jack.
‘And,’ said Tillman, ‘he’s killed before. That’s something on which I am prepared to be definite. This is no beginner. No one is this good first time round.’
‘You know what Draker will say to that,’ said Fitzgerald.
‘It doesn’t mean it’s Fagan,’ I said, annoyed. ‘We can already assume that whoever wrote those letters to Elliott probably did kill Sally Tyrrell. Why else would he have mentioned her? He probably killed Monica Lee too. Of course he’s not a beginner. Right, Tillman?’
‘I never believed the story about Fagan coming back,’ he conceded after a pause. ‘Serial killers don’t retire, for one thing. If it is Fagan, where’s he been the past five years?’
‘Out of the country?’ suggested Fitzgerald.
‘It’s possible,’ Tillman said, ‘but it doesn’t fit. There’s always degeneration, escalation. Every case I’ve ever worked, all the literature, it all says there should be escalation. The offender starts with a basic fantasy model and then it varies, develops, because the basic model doesn’t satisfy him any more. He’s been there, done that, brought home the bloodstained T-shirt. You can see that with Fagan. He starts out with a straight strangulation and a Biblical quote left in Julie Feeney’s bag. Next time, with Sylvia Judge, the attack is more intense, her clothing is torn, and the scrap of paper with the quote on it is left inside her clothing. Next, Tara Cox is stabbed and the quote is left inside her bra. He’s doing more things to the bodies each time, like he has to do worse each time to keep getting the same kick, the same return on his investment.’
‘But that’s what’s happening this time too,’ said Fitzgerald, confused.
‘That’s the point,’ said Tillman. ‘It’s too perfect. Too clinical, too unemotional, too businesslike. He’s just
recreating what Fagan did down to the last detail. He even cut off part of Mary Dalton’s hair so that she conformed to the physical archetype preferred by Fagan.’
‘What?’ I said to Fitzgerald. ‘You never mentioned the hair.’
‘Didn’t I?’ she said. ‘Oh God, sorry. I thought I’d told you earlier on the phone. He cut it off with the knife after she died. There was blood matted in the ends of her hair. Then it looks like he took it with him. It wasn’t anywhere in the storehouse where she was found.’
‘A trophy.’
‘You could see it like that,’ Tillman went on, ‘but the cutting off of the hair can’t be that symbolic in itself, otherwise he’d have done it to the others as well.’
‘Some profilers would see it as a sign he knew this victim,’ I said.
‘Not this profiler,’ said Tillman. ‘This profiler thinks it simply fits in with the offender’s desire to be seen as Ed Fagan. There have now been three killings, with only minor variations on the Fagan theme, such as the writing on the body of Mary Lynch, the quotations being taken from other sources, but that only confirms to me that he is playing out some game of his own.’
‘Dismembering the body in the churchyard isn’t a minor variation,’ I pointed out.
‘As to that, I tend to agree with your initial idea that the motive for removing the head was to delay identification. Or to stymie the forensics perhaps,’ he said. ‘His own DNA would have ended up under her fingernails if she scratched him; he wouldn’t have taken that chance.’
‘That still doesn’t explain the feet.’
‘The head was gone, the hands were gone,’ Tillman said coolly. ‘So why not remove the feet as well to make it seem as though the quote about Jezebel has a deeper significance?’
‘You don’t think there’s anything in the quotations?’
‘I’m not ruling it out completely. What I am saying is that these killings are being perpetrated mainly to prove a point, to play out a game. He doesn’t actually believe any of that stuff about the wickedness of women and stumbling not at beauty. He feels contempt for them, sure. They’re disposable. But Fagan killed prostitutes because they offended his religious sensibilities; this one kills them simply to mimic Fagan in order to outwit the cops, all the experts.’
‘So he doesn’t want to kill women?’ said Fitzgerald. ‘He has a funny way of showing it.’
‘No,’ Tillman stressed. ‘He enjoys the killing, it’s a bonus to him, and that will assert itself ever more strongly the more women he kills. He will start to introduce variations and deviations, he won’t be able to avoid escalation. But for now the killing isn’t the point. If it was, he would’ve had to make things conform more closely to his own fantasies already. It’s the acting out of the game, this contest of wills, of intellects, which is the point. This little innovation of his in choosing the names of people connected to the investigation confirms that much.’
I wasn’t convinced.
‘You don’t think you’re dismissing the significance of the Hebrew writing on Mary Lynch’s body too easily?’ I said.
‘Of course it must mean something. I don’t think it’s part of his fantasy, that’s all. I made a few enquiries of my own, just to see what the ox metaphor might mean. The best I could come up with is that the ox ploughing a field disturbs the earth in order to make it ready for new life, just like he said he was doing in his letter, making the world a better place by ridding it of sin. It’s a standard mission motive scenario. It doesn’t mean anything except as a statement of intent.’
‘You don’t know that. It might be the key to this whole thing.’
‘OK, you have it your own way; but even if it is the key, then my guess is it’s either going to be so simple you’ll overlook it completely, or so esoteric, so personal, that it’s something which will only make sense in retrospect. Either way, all you’d be doing is wasting time. That’s what he wants you to do, lose yourself in some artificial complexity.’
Fitzgerald sighed and reached for her coffee, took a sip and realised it was cold. ‘So how the hell do we catch him?’ she said, pulling a face and pushing the cup away.
‘When’s Mary Lynch’s body being released for burial?’
‘It’ll be a while yet. There’re still tests to be done.’
‘Pity. I’d have said have people watching the funeral. I’m sure he’d turn up for it, send flowers, maybe visit the grave later when everyone’s gone home, leave a gift.’
‘Does the same go for the places where Fagan’s other victims were killed?’ I asked.
‘No. He won’t risk revisiting them now,’ Tillman insisted. ‘It suited the game for him to use the same places as Fagan for the first two killings, but he won’t carry it on once it’s ceased to be his private joke. He knows now you’re watching, waiting. The fact he didn’t take Mary Dalton to the Law Library, like Fagan did Tara Cox, proves that. He might still try, though, to insert himself into the investigation as Fagan did. Check it out. See if anyone’s been asking too many questions of a member of your team. Watch out for a witness who keeps ringing up with more details he’s claiming suddenly to remember. He’ll be obsessed by the media coverage he’s getting too. There’s a possible angle.’
‘How?’
‘Use the media against him. Plant stories. At the moment, it’s all positive coverage as far as he’s concerned, it’s all good for his ego. But if the paper started reporting that, say, profiles suggested the killer was sexually impotent, or had a low IQ, bad body odour, then it’s going to alter his cosy relationship with the media and maybe make him careless. Look how annoyed he was when Maeve Curran in the Post tried to psychoanalyse him. It’d be better if it came through Elliott, because he obviously has a relationship of sorts built up there.’
‘Elliott wouldn’t do it,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t jeopardise his love-in with the killer. It’s too important to him to keep the exchange going. He wouldn’t want to scare him off.’
‘Then use other newspapers, TV, radio. Call a press conference. Say there was a witness even if you don’t have one. Say you have a description, a sighting of the offender’s car. Anything to make him start to doubt that he’s as much in control as he likes to think.’
‘And then?’
‘And then you wait.’
We all knew what that meant.
FOURTH DAY
The Third Letter
‘God I thank thee, that I am not as other men are.’ But still I am beginning to grow tired of being ignored. I have explained my purpose, is that not enough? Yet all I hear is hypocritical pity for those through whom I have chosen to work the alchemy of spiritual renewal for all. It is not as though I have made myself a menace to the innocent ‘Woman is a misbegotten man and she has a faulty and deceptive nature. One must be on one’s guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil’ – St Albert, our Church Father. Surely that is simple enough for you to understand?’ But they seeing see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.’ I would, like Our Lord, that this cup had passed from me if possible. But it was not to be. This is my burden, I was charged with the salvation of souls, the expiation of sins, and still they speak of me as if I was some aberration of nature, some monster. And for what? For taking nothing from these filthy diseased vermin that would not be taken by time itself.
‘Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die.’
Is that such a complicated concept to grasp? Is it? They should be envied, that I have chosen them, as I have chosen Nikola – there, are you satisfied now that you have a name to run after? They have escaped from two prisons, the prison of flesh and the prison of this sick lustful earth, and you dare feel sorry for them? ‘I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. God promises us that the dead shall see Him as he is after the manner of His own being. Why then should the dead be pitied? They know as truth what the wise have only guessed at for centuries. And now they st
and outside of time, as my enemies shall soon be out of time themselves. Seven days I gave and three are spent. Verily was it written: ‘There are nine things I have judged in my heart to be happy, and the tenth I will utter with my tongue: A man that hath joy of his children and he that liveth to see the fall of his enemy.’ Though that’s two things, surely? Naughty Scripture, cheating like that. Honestly, you just can’t trust anyone these days.
Chapter Sixteen
‘Right, people,’ said Assistant Commissioner Draker. ‘As you can see, we have another communiqué from our friendly neighbourhood serial killer, Mr Fagan. You should all have a copy by now. Anyone who doesn’t can pick one up from the front desk after.’
Communiqué? What a dumbass word. And jabbering on still about Fagan was even dumber. Presumably if the killer said he was St Francis of Assisi, Draker would believe that too.
He was standing now in front of the map of the city, to which, I noticed, he’d added another of his little pins to represent Mary Dalton. He always liked to take meetings himself when there was progress to report, Fitzgerald once told me, but was this what he called progress?
To be honest, I was in a bad enough mood as it was without having him to contend with as well. Tillman’s profile hadn’t exactly delivered what I’d been hoping for; I could have given the same preliminary sketch of the killer myself. I’d been looking for more from him. Some flash. And it hadn’t been there. I certainly wasn’t as willing as he was to ignore the evidence of the Hebrew writing or the dismemberment of the body. It may have just been part of the game, but leads were sparse enough without dismissing the few that we had as irrelevant.
Now this.
God I thank thee, that I am not as other men are.
Was he for real? Woman is a misbegotten man and— Enough already. I was growing seriously hacked off with this half-baked mystic mumbo-jumbo. He didn’t really believe he was on a divine mission any more than I did.
