by Ingrid Black
My God, it was him.
‘I swear, Tillman, I’m going to kill you.’
‘You’ll have to find me first. Tell you what. Do you know the phone booth at the corner of Exchequer Street?’
‘Of course I know it.’
‘Of course you do, because that’s where your favourite café is. The one you’re in right now. The one I watched you going into with Grace and Fisher earlier. Quite a cosy little party you have there. All for one and one for all. Like the three musketeers. Well, that’s where I am right now. I’m going to leave something for—’
I didn’t wait for him to finish. I dropped the phone and ran for the door. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fisher emerging from the men’s room, heard him shout, but I couldn’t wait.
I pulled the door open and ran out, nearly colliding with some old man who was reaching out a hand to the handle to come in. I yelled at him to get out of the way and went on running. There were steps behind me too, but I didn’t look back or slow down until I came to the end of the road and turned out of Exchequer Street.
The phone booth was less than twenty feet away.
He was gone. Of course he was gone. That was the point. That was the fun of it for him. I glanced left and right a few times, but the street was empty. My chest felt like it would burst.
‘He was here all the time,’ I gasped to Fitzgerald as she caught up with me. ‘He was calling from that booth.’
Tillman had even replaced the phone neatly back on its cradle before leaving, I noticed. There was no rush, like he said. No hurry. And there, taped to the inside of the glass, was a scrap of paper torn from some tourist map of the city, with a scrawled X marking the spot in pencil.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Fitzgerald drove fast, cursing the traffic, fingers drumming on the wheel, her palm striking the edge hard every time a light was against her.
Third time it happened, she just nosed through and went on anyway, ignoring the blare of horns that followed.
‘Take a left here,’ I said. ‘I know a short cut.’
‘My own town and I’m taking directions from a foreigner,’ she said wryly as she knocked down the indicator to signal left.
‘Now a right.’
‘I know the way you mean.’
As we drove, she called through on the radio to Dublin Castle to tell them what had happened and to send a team out to the place Tillman had marked on his map, and I explained to her about the incident he had reminded me of in his call. It was during the White Monk investigation. I’d been sent up to a nowhere, nothing kind of place in the north of Vermont, where Paul Nado’s mother had retired. The agent in charge of the case had a hunch that the woman knew where Nado was; he was on the run by this stage, just like Tillman now. History repeating itself.
As it happened, he was right; she did know, though it wasn’t thanks to me that she was caught out. That came much later.
I’d invited Tillman along for the ride, thinking he might be some help, and somewhere along the way, during a snowstorm, whilst Tillman slept in the passenger seat beside me, I’d lost my way completely and ended up just about halfway to Montreal. Tillman hardly stopped laughing for the whole two days we were up there, and I’d made him swear he’d never tell anyone what I’d done. I’d never have lived it down. Agents were always quick to latch on to mistakes like that with which to taunt one another.
‘Are you sure he never did tell anyone?’ said Fitzgerald.
‘Not to my knowledge,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m sure it was him on the phone. We’re the only ones who know about it.’
I checked one more time to make sure we were headed in the right direction and then we were passing through the pillars at Park Gate into the killer’s latest playground.
Phoenix Park.
Twice the size of New York’s Central Park, at night this place gouged a huge black hole in the north of the city, swallowing light; but it was day now and almost beautiful, with thickets of bare winter trees materialising like ghosts on either side of the road as we passed. A mist trailed rags among the trees, and the air between the branches was smudged with drifting, restless birds. Now and then I even thought I could see a glimmer of silver deer darting, hiding, watching.
Tillman had marked an area on the map not far from Oldtown Wood. The park was full of such evocative names. Furry Glen, White Field, The Hollow, The Wilderness, a reminder to the city of what it had risen from – though had it really risen so far? The wild still clung on stubbornly; I’d never really doubted that it did.
The trees huddled close like conspirators.
After a while, I told Fitzgerald to pull in.
‘Is this the right place?’
‘I think so.’
Without a more detailed map it was impossible to tell exactly, but here would do, here was close enough. Fitzgerald promptly pulled in and we climbed out.
The silence around us was incredible. There was only the dragging of wind through the branches over our heads like surf through stones, and somewhere far off a dog barking. Fitzgerald scarcely noticed. She was reaching back in and lifting something out of the glove compartment, dropping it into her pocket before I could see what it was.
‘Let’s split up and search the trees,’ she said.
‘Let’s not,’ I answered, and something in my voice made her stop and look at me for what felt a long time before nodding.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Let’s not split up.’
For how could we be sure that he wasn’t in there now, waiting, like Fagan had been waiting for me that night five years ago?
Together we began to walk slowly down the road instead, scanning the edges where the ground was strewn with wet and rotting leaves for signs of a body, though we didn’t put that thought into words.
We didn’t need to.
What was that?
I felt dizzy, but it was only a log.
A couple of hundred yards down the road, the trees on our right thinned momentarily and a track – fairly wide, though overgrown with weeds – snaked off into the shelter of the trees.
‘This is it,’ I said at once, and I could tell from the look Fitzgerald returned that she thought so too.
He’d been here.
‘Come on,’ she said.
In seconds, we were moving deeper into the wood until there was no sight of the road behind us when we turned our heads, and ahead of us nothing moved and no birds sang. We were probably no farther from the road than the start of the track had been from the car, but each step felt like it was leading us deliberately astray. The city beyond us had ceased to exist.
Fitzgerald saw the car first.
It was parked up ahead a little way off the track. A metallic silver Daihatsu, only a couple of years old. Not the sort of car to be lightly abandoned, at any rate. She didn’t break her stride, only reached into her pocket as we drew nearer and pulled out a new pair of latex gloves. That was what she’d lifted from the glove compartment earlier.
‘I’m going to take a look,’ she said.
We were only a couple of yards away by this point, and if the light had been better we’d have been able to see the inside of the car from where we were; but the trees wouldn’t allow it. We had come to a point almost adjacent to the driver’s side door before we finally saw what we’d feared seeing from the moment we passed through Park Gate.
There, on the other seat, a blanket draped over the head and falling to the knees so that the face and upper body were invisible, was the next offering in the game.
Fitzgerald circled the car carefully, peering in at each window, checking each door. The keys were still hanging from the ignition – a gaudy little plastic toy in the shape of a bee and a tag saying Cassidy’s Car Rentals alongside them; but only the passenger side door was unlocked. It would have to be that one then.
She could have left it for the crime scene technicians to deal with, but I understood how she felt. She needed to know who it was.
&nb
sp; Gently, she reached out to grasp the handle.
Pressed it down.
Opened the door.
Whichever way the body was sitting (whichever way it had been arranged?), the door was the only thing providing support, and as soon as she opened it fully the body fell out heavily.
Fitzgerald leapt back out of the way and nearly fell over, and I immediately made to rush forward to help her; but she waved a hand abruptly and shouted at me to wait. She was stooping over the tumbled figure at her feet.
‘Grace, what is it?’
She straightened up and walked back round towards me.
‘Do you know who she is?’ I said.
‘It’s not a she at all,’ she told me.
By the time we got back to the road, two patrol cars had already arrived and three uniformed police were standing round Fitzgerald’s Rover, squinting inside, wondering what to do.
They looked alarmed when they saw us stepping out from the trees – they’d obviously been sent out here without knowing what to expect – then simply embarrassed when they realised who it was. Fitzgerald quickly told them about the car and the body, and ordered them to secure the scene.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ she warned again as they headed off towards the track.
Another car appeared from the direction of the city as we stood by the road. Seamus Dalton. Terrific. He pulled to a stop with a crunch, opened the door roughly and climbed out. He put on a look of contempt when he saw me and popped a stick of chewing gum into his mouth.
‘You know something?’ he said loudly to me. ‘You could have saved us all a lot of trouble if you’d just told us from the start that your friend from back home was a psycho.’
‘Unlike you, Dalton,’ I said, ‘I try to wait for the evidence first before closing a case. You should try it sometime. Make a change from your usual method of deciding beforehand who did it and then seeing if you can make the evidence fit.’
‘What can I say?’ he said dismissively. ‘It works for me.’
‘Sure it does. That’s how, a couple of days ago, you were trying to pin all this on a guy who’s been dead five years.’
‘If you’re trying to annoy me—’
‘Dalton, I haven’t even started.’
‘That’s enough,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Both of you.’
Dalton didn’t wait for more. He shouldered past me pointedly without waiting for another word from Fitzgerald, and went instead to make himself unpopular with the uniforms.
‘He’s back to his usual form,’ I said.
‘Probably just as well,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Behaving like a decent human being for once didn’t suit him. Here.’
She handed me a scrap of paper on which she’d written the registration number of the Daihatsu, together with her car keys.
‘When you get back to Dublin Castle, tell Boland or Healy to call Cassidy’s Car Rentals and see if this really is one of theirs. Tell them if it is to find out who hired the car from them and when, and see if they have a contact address.’
‘Are you not coming?’
‘I should stay here until Lynch and the others arrive,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘Just call me as soon as you have anything.’
‘And if I don’t have anything?’
‘Call me anyway.’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I drove back out of Phoenix Park, my head aching with questions. I couldn’t help wondering why Tillman was making life so easy for us. First the map, now the car, and the keys. The best explanation I could come up with was that he knew he couldn’t stay hidden in the city indefinitely and wanted to dominate the endgame on his own terms. But why bring the car all the way out here, only to abandon it and leave himself with a risky journey back into town?
Come to think of it, how had he got back into town?
Taxi?
More important than all that, who had died last night, this morning, whenever it was it happened, back there among the trees? A rent boy was my immediate guess. Phoenix Park was notorious for being haunted after dark by male prostitutes and those who paid and preyed on them. It would’ve been easy for Tillman to pick up a potential victim without being seen. But why this one?
‘I promised you a Jackie and I always keep my promises . . .’
Was that it?
First thing I did when I got back to Dublin Castle, drawing a few hostile glances as I reversed the Rover into Fitzgerald’s parking space, was head for the canteen, where I found Boland eating bacon and eggs and reading the morning’s Post.
US Profiler In No-Show Mystery, read the headline.
Poor Elliott was missing all the action.
‘Where’s Healy?’ I said.
‘Some down-and-out who lives along the railway line near Pearse Street Station called the hotline to say he’d been approached by a stranger the night the last letter was sent to the Chief,’ Boland said. ‘According to him, he was offered money to drop a package off at another courier firm, but he was pretty drunk so the operator couldn’t get much sense out of him. Healy wanted to go down and see if there’s anything in it.’
A possible ID at last, but only when it wasn’t needed.
I guess that’s what they call irony.
‘What did you want him for, anyway?’
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Will you do me a favour?’
‘Name it.’
I told him about the body. From his face, it was clear that he hadn’t heard about it yet. When I also told him it was a young man we’d found, and that it looked like he’d been suffocated with a plastic bag over his head, he was even more surprised.
‘You want me to check the files for male prostitutes?’
‘That’s what I was thinking. No one checked them when the letter came in yesterday because we just assumed Jackie would be a woman; but Jackie can be a man’s name as well. He might be playing about with the names again, like he did with Nikolaevna.’
‘I’ll get on it right away.’
‘Thanks. And Boland? About yesterday, when I gave you the third degree—’
‘Forget it,’ said Boland. ‘I already have. We’ve all been running on our nerves lately. I shouldn’t have taken it so personally. I just hope you’re not going to make a habit of it, that’s all.’
I found an empty desk upstairs and dialled Cassidy’s Car Rentals on the South Circular Road. Making the call myself might stop me feeling so restless. Soon as they picked up the phone, I said where I was calling from and asked to speak to whoever was in charge.
Presently, Cassidy himself came to the phone – or someone who called himself Cassidy. Maybe they were all called Cassidy to make things easier.
He immediately confirmed that the car belonged to them. It had been hired out three weeks ago and was due to be returned in another week’s time, though I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it would be a lot longer than that now it was in the hands of Forensics. They hated handing anything back to its rightful owner too fast.
‘Who hired it out?’ I said.
I heard a rustle of pages as Cassidy checked the log.
‘Someone by the name of M. Tillman,’ he answered.
‘And how did you first hear from this M. Tillman?’
‘He called us. I took the call myself. About a month ago it was. He was calling from the US. An American, like you. He said he was coming over to Dublin soon on personal business and needed a car. I ran through the price list, he picked out the car he wanted and asked for it to be there at the airport when he landed.’
‘Why didn’t he just hire a car in the terminal on arrival?’
‘I didn’t ask,’ said Cassidy. ‘I didn’t want to lose a customer to the opposition, after all.’
‘Did he specify the colour?’
‘Not in so many words. He said he wanted a light-coloured car – white, silver, he wasn’t fussy – but it had to be light-coloured. He said he didn’t want it to look like he was driving round the city in a hearse.’
What did t
he profile say? What do killer profiles always say? Look for a dark-coloured car. Orderly, compulsive people prefer dark-coloured cars. Tillman had it all planned from the beginning so that he could mock any profile. Even his own.
By the end of the call, I’d managed to confirm that, on the day of his arrival, one of the garage staff had driven the car out to the airport to meet Tillman, checked that his licence was in order, got him to sign for the car, and then taken the full payment from him for the four weeks.
‘Cheque? Credit card?’
‘Cash.’
‘Is that usual?’ I said.
‘We don’t ask questions,’ replied Cassidy. ‘Like I say, I didn’t want to lose a customer. He paid part of the money that was owed in dollars because that was all he had on him.’
‘One last thing. What address did he put down that he was staying at while he was here in Dublin?’
The rustling was back and it took longer this time.
‘I don’t have that here,’ Cassidy admitted eventually. ‘It’ll be on file somewhere. Buried away, you know how it is. Why don’t I have my secretary dig it out and I’ll get back to you?’
‘You do that,’ I said.
Boland walked in while I was waiting for Cassidy to call me back, and I was growing more impatient with each passing minute.
‘You were right,’ he said. ‘Jackie Callaghan, seventeen years old, homeless, no family to speak of. He was in and out of children’s homes up until about six months ago, when he was thrown out to make his own way in the world. He had numerous offences in the juvenile courts for petty crime, shoplifting, peddling dope. None for prostitution, but he was reported missing this morning by another homeless kid who said he’d been out with Jackie in the park until about four a.m. He didn’t spell out what they were doing there, but it doesn’t take a genius to guess.’
‘He must’ve been worried if he called the police.’
‘He didn’t call the police. He called a gay helpline downtown and they passed it on anonymously. The boy who contacted them said it was completely out of character for Jackie to go AWOL, even for a few hours. He’d never done it before.’
