by Ingrid Black
* * *
My first mistake was to call his house in north London. The phone was picked up by his au pair. She was from the Far East somewhere and sounded like English wasn’t even her second language, never mind her first, but she understood well enough that I wanted to speak to Fisher and communicated well enough back that he wasn’t there.
I tried his office next. His secretary told me that Dr Fisher was out of the country. I knew that, I explained, because it was me he’d come to see, but he ought to be back by now. She said she didn’t know anything about that. Was there a number where he could be contacted?
She said she didn’t know that either.
Anyone I could speak to?
No.
Did she ever wonder, I asked finally, how she managed to keep her job despite obviously having the intellectual capacity of an amoeba?
She said she didn’t like my attitude.
I said I didn’t like that she was an idiot but we were both going to have to live with it.
The line went dead.
Scotland yard next. Inspector Neil Taylor was the name Fisher had given me, and he proved easier to track down, at any rate.
‘I recognise your name,’ he said once I’d introduced myself. ‘Lawrence told me all about you. He said you wrote books, isn’t that so? Maybe I should pick one up, eh?’
I tried not to sound too impatient, but my words came out quickly as I tried to stop him starting a conversation.
‘Is Fisher there now, Inspector? I really need to talk to him.’
‘You’d have more idea where he is than I would,’ he said.
‘Me?’
‘Fisher’s not going to be back here for a few days. He called me last night, said he was staying on in Dublin a while longer. He had the photographs couriered over to me this morning; you just caught me as I was heading out the door to show them round.’ He paused as if not knowing what else to add. ‘Did he not tell you?’
‘There must’ve been . . . a misunderstanding.’
It sounded feeble, but I couldn’t think of any word right now that would cover the fact that Fisher hadn’t been straight with me.
Why hadn’t he told me he wasn’t going home?
And more to the point, where the hell was he?
I extricated myself from the call as quickly as I could and sat staring out beyond the terrace to the tempered steel of the sky, a coldness creeping over me. Eventually I phoned the airport and asked to be put through to the British Airways desk.
‘Hello, how can I help you?’
‘I want to check whether a passenger made a connection to London Heathrow last night.’
‘And you are?’
I explained about the investigation, dropped a few names and a few hints without quite admitting that I didn’t have the authority to be delving after Fisher’s personal details.
‘It’s important,’ I added as a footnote.
‘Hold on a moment.’
I heard the rattle of a keyboard in the background and a tannoy announcing the last call for a flight to Düsseldorf.
‘What flight did you say he was on?’
I gave her the flight number. ‘It was scheduled for take-off last night at twenty-two hundred hours.’
‘Yes, I have it here. What was the name again?’
‘Fisher. Dr Lawrence Fisher.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘there was no one on the plane by that name.’
Maybe he’d used a different name.
‘Could you try the night before?’ I said. ‘A flight came in from Heathrow at twelve fifteen, I met him off the plane.’
More rattling.
‘Yes, according to the records a Dr Fisher was booked on to that flight.’
‘Does it say when he was due to return?’
‘I’ll check.’ She checked. ‘It was a one-way ticket.’
‘A one-way ticket?’
‘That’s right, madam.’
‘Right, I’m going to ask you to do something for me.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘I want you to check all the flights that left Dublin last night for London. All airports, Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, see if Dr Fisher was booked on to any flight. Can you do that?’
‘It may take some time.’
‘Quick as you can. I’ll give you my number.’
Nothing made sense any more, I reflected bitterly after I hung up. The only reason Fisher would have me take him all the way out to Dublin Airport when he had no intention of making a flight was to fool me into thinking he’d left the city when in fact he was still here.
But why would he want to do that? He’d got what he’d come for; at least he’d got what he’d told me he’d come for. I couldn’t suspect him of being involved in anything sinister, I simply couldn’t, but it was difficult to imagine any benign reason why he would have lied to me. The one thing I had to cling on to was the hope that I’d misheard him when he told me he was on the 2200 flight, or that he was the one who was mistaken and he’d actually been booked on a later plane. That still wouldn’t explain the one way ticket, but one step at a time.
Half an hour later, the girl from British Airways called back. Fisher’s name had not appeared on the lists for any of the flights leaving Dublin for England last night. He was still in the city. And he obviously didn’t want me to know where he was.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It didn’t taken long to find out where Jack Mullen was living. A quiet call to someone I knew in Probation and I had an address. He was back near his father’s old haunts, in a couple of rooms in a crumbling terrace off the North Circular Road in the dark shadow of Mountjoy Prison. Perhaps he missed his old home. Perhaps it contained some malevolent spirit that soothed him. It certainly seemed to pervade the streets as I drove through the rain to get there.
Most of the houses in the area had been converted into apartments and bedsits. A few remained in the hands of the old and the stubborn, but once they died, the battle would be lost. It was one of those city districts which had made the all-too-common passage from grandeur through slow neglect and indifference to final despair, with few stops on the way.
I parked at the dead end of the narrow street, so that if Mullen did come out any time soon he wouldn’t walk this way and see me. I had no doubt now that he’d remember me. The rain made the day darker than ever, hammering on the roof of the Jeep with a lonely, metallic, empty sound, and the houses, black with soot and damp, didn’t help. Even the windows were black holes, curtains drawn, as if everyone was still in bed, late afternoon though it was, with nothing to get up for. There was no sign of Christmas. Occasionally a figure emerged from a door to trudge down to the corner store for cigarettes or milk or evening paper.
I could see the warm glow of it at the end of the street, beckoning like a campfire in a hostile wilderness.
I’d lost my taste for this sort of waiting and watching work. I didn’t even know if Mullen was in. All that kept my impatience in check was my need to know whether Mullen really was measuring up to fill that offender-shaped hole.
After a while, I rummaged round for a cigar, and eventually found one, slightly bent, in the glove compartment. I was about to light it when I saw . . . was it him? Was that Jack Mullen?
Someone had appeared at the door of the address I’d been given, just as the rain started to ease. He must have been waiting for it to stop. He had no coat on, just a thin jacket wrapped about a shirt, and he had the familiar hunched, secretive, evasive stance of a man who spent his life waiting for the hand on his shoulder telling him that he was finally caught.
I felt sure it was Mullen; there was something unmistakable in his eyes, about the way he carried himself. The only difference was that this man had a thick, unkempt black beard.
I realised my mistake at once. The picture I’d shown to Jackie to test whether Mullen was the man who’d raped her down by the canal had been taken more than five years ago, when Fagan was still alive. He d
idn’t have a beard in those days. What a fool I was. Of course Jack Mullen would have changed.
I recalled Jackie’s hesitation when I asked if she recognised him. There was something she said, but no, she couldn’t be sure. But what if I could show her a more recent picture?
I watched as Mullen shuffled down the steps of the house where he now lived and along the road. Now was my chance. But how long would he be gone? I’d have to follow to see where he went.
I opened the door of the car, climbed out and closed it behind me. The door shutting sounded like a shot in the still air, but miraculously he didn’t turn round.
By the time I got to the end of the street, I thought I’d missed him. There were more people here. The North Circular Road was busy. The traffic rumbled by. Then I saw him, stepping to the kerb as a bus approached and flagging it down. He must be going into town. Couldn’t be better. I saw him hop on and take his seat on the lower deck as the bus pulled away. I watched till it disappeared. Then I turned round, and nervously made my way back towards his house, pulling on my gloves as I went. Here’s hoping I hadn’t forgotten all my breaking and entering skills. Though hold on, no need. The door had been left ajar.
I was suspicious at once. It was too easy, almost as if Mullen had known I was outside and was luring me in; but screw it, I didn’t have time for hesitation. He’d no reason to suspect me of being here.
I made up my mind, pushed open the door and stepped inside. Closed it. Steadied my breathing.
I was looking down a narrow corridor with three doors on the right, all thankfully shut. Behind them I heard hammering; the sound of fake laughter on daytime TV; a kettle shrieking.
Probation had told me that Mullen’s place was second from the top, so I hurried up, stairs creaking. The carpet was worn and thin, and sticky underfoot; there was a bad smell in the air, like drains and fried food; the wallpaper curled with damp. At his door, I paused once more to make sure no one was coming. Then I took out my credit card, slipped the lock, waited for the click, and I was in. Easy as that.
I shut the door behind me and listened for any noise outside . . . no, all was quiet . . . before turning to inspect Mullen’s mean domain.
It only occurred to me then that Mullen might have had someone in here with him, and that I might’ve disturbed them. That was careless, but fortunately it was obvious at once that he had been alone. The silence was too intense, the air too stagnant.
There wasn’t much to his home at all. One main room, a kitchenette along the back wall with dishes thrown in the sink, the remains of a chip supper wrapped in greasy paper, a lingering smell of fish, used tea bags clogging the plughole, spoons stained brown, stale bread; in the fridge, some tins of lager, sliced ham, cooked sausages in a dish, milk gone off. In the middle of the room, an armchair and sofa that had seen better days, a small gas heater, a table on which dirty clothes had been piled. The only things that looked like they were worth anything were a TV and video. And a computer, looking new. Stolen? Probably.
Two doors led off from this room. One into a tiny bathroom, with a towel heaped wetly on the floor and a toilet with no seat. The other led into a bedroom, almost as small, where—
I stopped.
All around the walls were pasted religious pictures, cut from newspapers and magazines or torn from the pages of books or downloaded, from the look of them, off the Internet.
There were pictures of the Crucifixion, and of Christ in Gethsemane weeping tears of blood; of Thomas with his hands thrust into Christ’s wounds, and Christ in a crown of thorns, and Judas hanging from the tree in a field of blood. And there were pictures of the Virgin Mary too – perhaps the name Mary had been important, after all. A calendar of saints hung above the filthy mattress on the floor that served Mullen as a bed.
It was all exactly as Fisher had described the room of the offender in London.
Next to the mattress was a small heap of magazines, and they weren’t back issues of the New Yorker either. I flicked through them quickly. It was the usual hardcore bedtime reading of dysfunctional loners everywhere. Many of the magazines came from the Far East and featured girls who looked barely out of puberty. I was glad I was wearing gloves. Among them, too, a copy of yesterday’s Evening News open, surprise, surprise, at the page with the leaked last letter from the killer.
There was no law against taking an interest in crimes supposedly committed by your dead father, but even so.
And what was this under the pillow? A Bible, leatherbound, with an inscription inside – To Jack, my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Your loving father EF – and a photograph, used as a bookmark, of Mullen’s late mother in the garden of their old home, cotton pattern-print dress, shielding her eyes from the sun, looking far too lovely to have deserved either of them.
Apart from the mattress, the only other furniture in the room was a wardrobe. Inside that, more magazines, some clothes. A jacket, cellophane-wrapped, just back from the cleaner’s. An extra pair of shoes, spotlessly polished. Unusually clean for this place. To wipe away any identifiable traces from Nikolaevna Tsilevich’s flat? No, I was going too fast, I was letting my own desire to bring this game to an end get the better of me. Mullen could simply have had them cleaned for a job interview. Or a date. Stranger things had happened.
Back in the main room, I noticed for the first time the pile of videos on the carpet next to the TV, cheap pirate porn films, I saw from the labels, picked up in what were laughingly called the adult shops round Capel Street. Stunted adolescence shops would be a better description. That was probably where he was off to now.
There were some blank videos among the pile too. I switched on the TV at the socket, turned down the sound, and slotted one into the video to check what was on it. At least he was consistent. Mullen had recorded something off one of the cable porn channels. It sounded like German, though there wasn’t much actual dialogue to go on. I fast-forwarded impatiently to see if anything else was there.
I don’t know what I expected to find. Shots of the murdered women, perhaps. The killer had watched them so closely before their deaths I wouldn’t have been surprised to find that he’d filmed them too. It would be a way for him to keep alive the memory of what he’d done to them, of sustaining the fantasy. But it was a long shot. I hadn’t even seen a stills camera in the bedsit so far, never mind a video camera, and this tape spooled to its end with no surprises.
I tried the second video, then the third. Nothing more sinister there than the same young women with the same silicon breasts and the same absence of inhibitions cavorting on screen.
I switched off. The computer next? For a man with Jack Mullen’s appetites, the Internet would be a door to an infinity of forbidden, suffering flesh. But no, it would take too long, and like I’d said to Salvatore, I was useless with technology. If Mullen had encrypted the contents of his computer, I’d be sunk.
Besides, there’d be time enough for that if the police in London got Ellen Shaw or one of the other two prostitutes who’d been attacked to identify him.
I certainly had no doubt now that Mullen was the man they were looking for. But was he the man we were looking for too? I had to admit that there was no evidence here of the highly intelligent, sexually competent offender with his own car and house and steady job that Mort Tillman’s profile had spoken about, nor of one who was only using religious symbolism because it was part of some intellectual game. Mullen, worryingly, was far more like his father in that respect. He wasn’t faking anything. Which left us where exactly?
I made one last circuit, trying to ensure everything was the way I’d found it and wishing there was someone I could tell about what I’d found – I could have told Fisher if he hadn’t decided to play hide and seek – then I tiptoed back to the door and readied myself to leave.
And that was when I heard the front door below slam, as someone came in.
It’s Mullen, I thought at once. I checked my watch. I’d been in here more than half an hour; he co
uld easily have returned in that time.
Anxiously, I pressed my ear to the door and listened.
The someone was climbing the stairs.
I hurried back as silently as I could to the kitchenette, slid open the drawer, lifted out the sharpest knife I could find, and returned.
The footsteps were nearer now, but slow. It was almost as if the someone was deliberately trying not to be heard, or was trying to frighten me, knowing I was here. My heart was pounding; I needed to take deep breaths, but didn’t want to in case I was heard.
The footsteps came closer and closer . . . was this it? Then they went on – on up, to the flat above. I heard a door click, a muffled cough, silence. Only then did I realise how much I was sweating and how terrified I’d been. I wanted to get out of there and never come back, but I had to wait a while longer, not least to calm down. I couldn’t believe what a fool I’d been, how easily I might’ve been caught.
I planned on waiting another five minutes, but managed three before opening the door and slipping out. Relief. No one there. I shut the door as gently as I could behind me, skipped down the stairs to the front door, and a moment later I was out in the air again.
It was dark, and the street was still deserted and the rain hadn’t returned, and I got back to my car and climbed inside; lit that cigar I’d wanted earlier, hands shaking. I drew in deeply, relishing the scent that filled the Jeep after the fetid oppression of Mullen’s place.
