by Ingrid Black
My drink was waiting when I got back to the counter, but I needed to move on. I paid up and made my way out into the street. Keep moving back towards the centre, that was the plan.
First stop, another bar. A little higher up the evolutionary chain this time. And that’s how the day panned out. Drinking, walking, smoking, moving closer to the centre each time. I ate a sandwich in one. Couldn’t say what was in it. I was just going through the motions. As I drank, I reflected on the irony of what I was doing. Tillman’s profile said the killer was using alcohol to stabilise himself too, to prepare himself for each killing, put him in control, and here I was doing the same thing.
Idly, I wondered what else we had in common, but I wasn’t going down that road. It was the differences between people that mattered, not the superficial similarities, and the difference between this killer and me was as wide as that between the dark and the day.
As I left the third (or was it the fourth?) bar, I noticed it was growing grey. Above my head fairy lights danced down the narrow curve of Wicklow Street, swaying and rattling in a cold breeze. This was how a day faded to nothing, if you weren’t careful. Drinking, then dark. But I knew what I was doing; I knew what I had to do. The time was close now. I took my place again, unobtrusively, in a booth at a bar I’d chosen specially for the job. It was a place I knew well, I drank here all the time, which was why I guessed no one would take any notice of me. It was strangers who got remembered. They stuck out.
I put on my gloves and drank coffee, eavesdropping on the conversation of the woman in the next booth. Megan had sneaked away early from the office. She was meeting Mark later. She didn’t know if it was going to work out with Mark, but what the hell, you were only young once. Did Brenda want another one? Brenda wasn’t sure. ‘Go on, be a devil,’ said Megan, and Brenda was in a devilish mood. Megan rose to squeeze out from the table, still talking as she went.
Women talk too much. I’m allowed to say that, being one.
And sometimes it’s as well they do. The eye, after all, sees less when the tongue is in fifth gear.
I glanced back briefly at her trying to catch the attention of the barman as I stepped out of the warmth once more into the street. I wished Megan well. I didn’t give much to her chances with Mark, in all honesty, but what the hell, right? How long would it be before she noticed her cellphone phone was gone?
Long enough for me.
I stifled a giggle. Didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I’d had too much to drink, obviously; but I do worry myself at times, the ease with which I can turn to crime when I have to.
Still, every girl needs a career to fall back on. And what was the alternative? I couldn’t risk buying a phone that could be traced back to me. Couldn’t go into a store and risk turning up on CCTV. I only hoped Megan was insured against theft; if not, she’d just have to make her own involuntary contribution to the murder squad’s latest investigation.
I found a quiet place halfway between Wicklow Street and my apartment, and turned on the phone. Just another shopper making a call. Hi, honey, home soon. It was awkward with gloves, but fingerprints had got me into enough trouble that day.
Elliott’s boyfriend liked text messages. Let’s see how he liked this one.
It was time for Fagan to come home.
Chapter Nineteen
I half expected to find the police waiting to arrest me when I got back to my apartment. Stupid thought – if they were that good, they would have tracked down Fagan’s doppelgänger already and I wouldn’t have had to do this – but I was used to stupid thoughts by now. All that waited for me was a message from Fisher telling me where I could catch him later, if I wanted, if I was free.
I took off my clothes and stepped into the shower, turned the water as hot as I could bear, then stood still, eyes tight, as the bad aura of the day washed off me and into the drain. My nerves shrieked at first, then got used to it. There’s a neat metaphor for life. What you think you can’t bear, you always can, and then some.
Finished, I wrapped a towel around myself and lay on the bed, shut my eyes. Slept; I must have done, for the day felt different when I opened them again, and I was almost cold. I realised I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, apart from that unconvincing excuse for a sandwich which had appeared at one of the day’s bars, and only half of that. What had breakfast been, anyway? Black coffee and dry toast. Hardly the Ritz.
I found myself missing the smell of baking bread that lingered in the streets when I went walking round dawn; missing too the afternoon walk down Clarendon Street to the shop that sold fresh pasta; then there was the Greek place on the river where I sometimes met Fitzgerald after she’d finished with work and I’d finished pretending I had any to do, and where we were so familiar that they hardly now needed to take our order.
The spectacle of the dead, and the dead to come, had taken the pleasure out of all those little everyday rituals around which I’d built my life of late, and now I longed for them with a renewed ache, like I was homesick for my old life.
In the end, I pulled on the first clothes that came to hand and padded through on bare feet to the kitchen, cracked and whisked some eggs and made myself an omelette, then sat in front of the TV with the plate on my lap, flicking channels aimlessly.
The phone rang sharply like an alarm after a while, and I switched the mute button to silence the I Love Lucy rerun which I now realised I’d been watching without noticing I was watching it, and waited for the answering machine to kick in.
‘Saxon, are you there?’
Fitzgerald.
‘Look, give me a call, all right? Soon as you get in. It’s important. You’ll have to get me on my mobile number, I won’t be in the office. I’ll explain later when we speak. Bye.’
Click.
I found myself missing Fitzgerald. It was that bye which did it. It felt like for ever since we’d had any time to ourselves, since we were just ourselves, nothing between us.
No, it was longer than for ever. It was another life.
O’Dwyer’s, not far from Baggot Street. Another bar. Fisher was sitting at the counter, pint of Guinness to hand, reading a copy of that morning’s Post. He’d only just arrived himself, even though I was fifteen minutes late. His hair was wet; he was out of breath; skin slightly flushed; coat still on. Put him near the fire and he’d have steamed.
‘The newspapers certainly love a good murder,’ he noted wryly as I slipped sideways on to a bar stool next to him.
‘That’s entertainment,’ I said. ‘It’s what happens when you make celebrities of serial killers. It becomes self-fulfilling.’
‘They kill in order to get the media coverage. Is that what you think is happening here?’
‘I don’t have the first clue what’s happening here,’ I said, ‘and right now I don’t give a shit. No, I don’t mean that. Obviously I give a shit. I just wish . . .’
‘What?’
‘That I was somewhere else,’ I said. ‘Someone else.’
‘You’re stressed out, nothing odd about that,’ said Fisher. ‘Stands to reason. After all this is over, you should take a holiday. Fly back to the States.’
When this is over, I thought bitterly, I’m more likely to be in jail, but I avoided the thought by reaching into my pocket for change as the barman brought me a pint, the twin to Fisher’s own, without being asked.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Fisher. ‘Put it on my tab, Joe.’
‘You’ve been in Dublin all of a day and you’ve already established a tab?’ I said. ‘I’m impressed.’ I raised my Guinness and took a sip. ‘I’d say Joe’s impressed too.’
‘Joe’s a barman. Barmen are impressed by nothing,’ said Fisher. ‘They’ve seen it all before. Anyway, this isn’t exactly my first time in Dublin, you know. I spent some time here filming my last series. I’ve been here for the odd weekend too with Ellen.’
‘Laura.’
‘Just testing to see if you remembered.’
‘No t
ime for sightseeing this trip,’ I observed, taking another slow sip at my drink, determined to make it last. I’d had enough today already; a hangover was the last thing I needed.
‘You can say that again,’ said Fisher. ‘I spent most of the day trying to track down anyone who knows about Mullen, but the whole place is buzzing with this print they’ve found of Fagan’s. It wasn’t possible to get much information out of anyone.’
‘They’ll get over it soon enough,’ I said. ‘Soon as they work out the print’s a plant.’
‘Yes, I could tell you weren’t exactly overjoyed about that earlier.’
I felt a twinge of guilt.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘About running out on you like that this morning. It’s just . . . well, seven days, that’s all we had. And the killer knows it. He’s the one who made it seven days. Planting the print was a smart move. Planting the print made it one less day. Tipped the scales even more in his favour. I don’t hear you disagreeing.’
‘I don’t like it either,’ he agreed. ‘It’s too easy. Too convenient. I’m not so sure you’ll only lose one day over it, though. From what I saw today, it’ll take a miracle to persuade them it isn’t Fagan now.’
‘Miracles happen,’ I said.
Careful. Dangerous territory. But Fisher gave no sign of noticing.
‘In the end, I gave up,’ he was saying. ‘I got my photograph, read Mullen’s file, then went round to see Mort Tillman instead. He’s got his first public lecture the day after tomorrow; he told me he’d like to bounce a few ideas off me.’
‘Did he show you the profile while he was at it?’
‘To be honest, it was hard to get him to talk about anything else. Having got me there, I’m not sure he mentioned his lecture at all. This case is really eating at him.’
‘Tillman was always like that when he worked a case,’ I said, rummaging through my pockets for matches to light a cigar. ‘He never could switch off.’
‘Maybe you shouldn’t have asked him.’
‘You were the one who suggested I ask him,’ I pointed out.
‘I know.’ It was Fisher’s turn to look guilty now. ‘I was buried under a heap of work, I didn’t know what else to say. After what happened, I just wonder if it’s all too much for him.’
‘The White Monk? That was ten years ago, for Christ’s sake.’
‘No,’ said Fisher, ‘I mean after what happened in Notre Dame.’ He must have seen the bemused look that came into my face. ‘You didn’t hear? Jesus, me and my big mouth.’
‘You may as well tell me now.’
‘Tillman got suspended from his job last summer. That was why he came over here. Dublin isn’t exactly the centre of the academic criminal psychology world, you know. Didn’t you wonder what he was doing here instead of back in the States? This is all he was offered.’
‘I never thought,’ I said, feeling bad again. ‘What happened?’
‘Some allegation of sexual harassment is what I heard.’
‘Sexual harassment? Tillman? That’s ridiculous.’
Fisher held up his hands in submission. ‘I’m only telling you what happened, I’m not saying I agree. Here,’ he added, catching sight of his own empty glass, ‘do you want another?’
‘I’m good, and you can wait. Tell me about Tillman.’
‘There was a student in his class, some first-year scatterbrain killing time on Daddy’s money, you know the type. Tillman gave her an F. Next thing you know, she’s claiming Tillman’s picking on her because she refused to sleep with him.’
‘And the college believed that Tillman would throw away years of his career over some little tootsie who can’t even pass first-year psychology?’
‘It didn’t matter what they believed,’ said Fisher. ‘What mattered was they were wetting themselves at the potential bad publicity. Her father was one of their biggest benefactors.’
‘So they dump him?’
‘Self-preservation,’ said Fisher. ‘Name of the game.’
‘Then the game stinks. Tillman’s no sexual harasser.’
‘Well, the row may have cleared up in time on its own,’ Fisher said, ‘but Tillman didn’t want to eat dirt for the sake of his job. He walked out. He said it was the right thing to do.’
‘Damn right it was.’
As Fisher ordered another drink, I remembered what Tillman had said the day I went round to Trinity to ask him to work on the profile. Am I a charity case now? He’d obviously thought I was asking out of pity, throwing him some scraps to make him feel like he was still in the loop.
‘Poor Tillman,’ I said. ‘He deserves better.’
Fisher was silent as Joe returned with the Guinness. He merely reached out to take it in mid air, holding it by the rim as his lips met the foam at its head and came away white, like an Arctic explorer’s.
‘What did you think of his profile, anyway?’ I asked him.
Fisher was noncommittal. ‘Most of what he’s given you is simply the application of standard profiling procedures. I’d have come to pretty much the same conclusions myself. The rest . . .’ He shrugged vaguely.
‘No shrugs, Fisher,’ I warned. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
‘There was something,’ he said at last. ‘Something Tillman might have missed.’
He reached down the side of the stool, lifted up his briefcase, then sat it on his lap whilst he clicked open the lock. He reached in and took out a copy of Tillman’s profile from among his own papers. Notes were scribbled in the margin, I saw. Seemed like this case was eating at us all.
‘You got one too?’ I said. ‘What’s Tillman doing – handing them out on street corners?’
‘He didn’t give it to me, I lifted one when his back was turned,’ said Fisher. ‘Thought it’d make more interesting reading on the plane home than your last book. Can’t do any harm.’
‘It can if it gets into Nick Elliott’s hands,’ I said.
Fisher wasn’t listening. He flicked through the pages, looking.
‘Here it is,’ he said presently. ‘See here, where Tillman says the places chosen by the killer will be symbolically important to him, because they were where Fagan killed his victims?’
‘I remember. I’d thought of that myself. He said the killer would have spent time there, soaking up the ambience, reliving it in his mind, long before he got around to killing anyone. So what did Tillman miss?’
‘Might have missed was what I said,’ Fisher said. ‘Might have missed the possibility that this killer would also try to mark the final three Fagan scenes in the way he marked the first two.’
‘We considered that,’ I said, ‘but it’d be too risky for him to leave any more bodies there. He might be seen. For all he knows, they could be under twenty-four-hour surveillance. At the least, he’d be assuming we’d expect him to return.’
‘I wasn’t talking about bodies. Of course he won’t leave any more victims at those places, but he might leave something else: jewellery, books, flowers, photos. It’d be his way of superimposing himself on Fagan’s territory.’
I shook my head firmly. ‘I still think the chances of his being seen are too high right now for him to risk it,’ I said. ‘The other sites aren’t under round-the-clock surveillance, as it happens, but patrols have been increased and they’ve all been told to keep an eye out.’
‘Maybe there’s no risk at all,’ Fisher said quietly.
‘You mind explaining how the killer could leave books and flowers at the scenes of Fagan’s other murders without any risk of being seen?’
‘By leaving them there before he killed Mary Lynch and before he dumped the body of the second woman in the churchyard,’ Fisher said, and I realised at once that he was right.
‘He wanted to mark each scene,’ I said, ‘but knew that he couldn’t go back there once the police realised he was retracing Fagan’s footsteps exactly. So he had to mark them, claim them, in advance, before the pattern was guessed at.’ Saying it out loud now made it seem so obvious.
It was obvious. ‘And you say you suggested this angle to Tillman?’
‘I mentioned it in passing,’ said Fisher, ‘but he wasn’t convinced. That’s why I thought I’d bring it up with you. You can easily have the scenes searched tomorrow when it’s light.’
‘Screw tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Let’s do it now. You’ve got a couple of hours to kill before your flight takes off for London, and I hate waiting.’
‘There isn’t enough time—’ he began, but I cut off his escape route.
‘Just the place where Tara Cox was killed then,’ I pressed. ‘It won’t take long.’ He was wavering now. ‘Come on, Fisher, where’s your sense of adventure?’
He sighed heavily, like Caesar about to wash his hands.
‘OK, OK, I’ll come,’ he said, ‘but if I get arrested, I’m telling them it was your idea.’
‘Suits me fine,’ I said. ‘You never get the credit if you’re not willing to take the blame sometimes as well.’
‘I’ll try to remember that comforting little motto when they’re reading me my rights.’
Chapter Twenty
‘The car’s at my apartment,’ I said as we came out of the swing doors of the hotel into the cold air and Fisher stopped to put on his coat. ‘It won’t take long to walk back for it.’
‘You can’t drive,’ said Fisher. ‘You’ve been drinking.’
‘One drink isn’t drinking!’
‘One drink is too much drinking. And don’t bother telling me that was your first of the day,’ said Fisher. ‘I’m a psychologist, remember? I can tell when you’re lying.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Read my lips. No. Way.’
I was just wondering what to do now, annoyed because Fisher was right, when a movement in the car park caught my eye.
A figure was standing there among the shadows.
‘Boland?’ I said, squinting to pick him out of the gloom. ‘Is that you? What are you doing here?’
