by Ingrid Black
And he wouldn’t be doing it again, I thought sadly. How the hell had Tillman found him? A random pick-up was one thing, but to know where to locate probably the one rent boy who shared a name with that other Jackie in order to send us off track needed time, it needed contacts. How had he done it?
I was glad when the phone finally rang and gave me something to do besides asking what felt increasingly like unanswerable questions.
‘Cassidy?’ I said, snatching it up. ‘Did you find it?’
‘You’ve spoken to Cassidy already? Then you are moving fast,’ said the same dull, dragging, robotic voice I’d heard for the first time in the café that morning. ‘I’m impressed.’
Boland was standing now at the water cooler. I scrunched a piece of paper and threw it at his back to draw attention.
He turned round.
‘Are you going to make a habit of this, Tillman?’ I said.
‘One final call, that’s all this is, and then I’ll be gone. Into – how shall I put it? Retirement. That’ll do. The undefeated champion stepping down from the podium.’
I wrote down for Boland: Put a trace on the line.
‘What do you mean – gone?’ I said as he ran out of the room to get help. I heard him hammering on doors down the corridor and put my hand over the mouthpiece so that Tillman wouldn’t suspect.
‘Sorry. No more helping hand,’ the voice went on. ‘You’re on your own now. I gave you the boy. I gave you the car. But don’t worry. You can’t be too far off if you’ve spoken to Cassidy.’
‘Won’t you even tell me what this was all about?’ I said.
‘I hate reducing motive to some mechanistic checklist. A broken home, a defective gene, a knock on the head. It’s insulting. You know that better than anyone. Remember Paul Nado? He said he did what he did because he’d been rejected for a job and wanted to punish society. Did you believe him?’
‘Of course I didn’t believe him.’
‘Then why would you believe me if I gave you a reason?’
‘I didn’t say I’d accept your reason,’ I said. ‘I simply wanted to know what you’d say. Why you thought you did it.’
‘In that case, it’s because I was rejected for a job and wanted to punish society,’ the voice said. ‘No, I tell a lie. It was because I fell in love with a brilliant and beautiful but obstinate FBI agent who betrayed me for money and fame.’
‘You’re breaking my heart, Tillman.’
‘Or was it because I got tired of always being in the shadows whilst the killers got the glory? I forget. Have you noticed that, by the way? We spend our entire lives catching killers and they end up more popular and renowned than we are. They have websites, for Christ’s sake. They have fan clubs. They even have books written about them.’ He laughed. ‘Of course I had a book written about me once. You may have heard of it. Last I heard, the author was reduced to sleeping with some second-rate police chief in some second-rate city whilst trying to persuade herself that her second rate life was sufficient to stave off inevitable stultifying dissatisfaction. Still, it serves her right, don’t you think?’
I ignored the jibe.
‘Where will you go?’ I said instead.
‘Somewhere you can’t follow. Not yet anyway. Shame to break up the game just when it was getting interesting, but it can’t be helped. The net is closing in. It’s too tight now for my liking.’
‘It’s only closing in because you allowed it to.’
‘True, but I would rather bring this to a close now on my terms than allow the pleasure I have to be sullied subsequently by failure. I’d rather keep it all as an exquisite memory.’
‘I’ll not give up,’ I said. ‘I’ll find you.’
A laugh again.
‘You’re welcome to come with me if you like,’ he said, ‘though I’m not sure you’d like the journey. Another time, perhaps.’
There was a click and the line went dead.
‘Tillman? Tillman? Damn it.’
‘Has he gone?’ said Boland.
I looked up to see him standing in the doorway. I didn’t answer him because I didn’t need to.
‘Did you manage to trace it?’ was all I said.
He shook his head.
What did it matter? He wouldn’t have been there anyway.
Ten minutes later, the fax began to whirr and I waited anxiously as it printed out the single sheet on which Cassidy’s secretary had written the promised address. I recognised it at once. The house had once been owned by Ed Fagan. He’d rented it out to students at University College where he taught. One of those students had been Sylvia Judge, his second victim.
Was this where Tillman had been hiding out? And if we were fast enough, was there still time to catch him before he fled?
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The house had been leased on a twelve-month contract in the name of Gus Bishop, but the agency who handled it couldn’t tell police anything about the man who’d leased it. He’d simply answered an ad in the evening newspaper that September, saying he wanted the house for his daughter, who was starting college in October.
A couple of days later he walked into the office, paid in full – in cash again, though no dollars this time – and took the keys away with him. He hadn’t even wanted to look at the house first, and, according to neighbours, it had been empty ever since. They hadn’t seen so much as a light switched on inside.
Police showed the letting agents a photograph of Tillman, but how were they to remember what Gus Bishop looked like? It was two minutes of their life, if that; it meant nothing to them.
‘How long are we going to sit here?’ I snapped eventually.
We were in Fitzgerald’s Rover again, a few hundred yards from the door of the house, waiting, watching. The repetitive swishing of the windscreen wipers was starting to take a toll on my nerves.
‘We should just break down the door and go in there.’
‘Slow down, Saxon,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘The armed response unit has to be in place before we move in. God knows what he’s got in there. No one’s going in until we’re sure it’s safe.’
‘Nothing’s safe with the ARU around,’ I said. ‘They’ll probably shoot up half the street.’
Fitzgerald smiled, despite herself.
Outside was growing uncharacteristically quiet as the traffic was diverted away from each end of the narrow road and plainclothes detectives moved from door to door telling residents to stay inside. I wondered whether Tillman would notice as the street fell still. If he was still in there.
An officer posing as a postman had approached and left a listening device on the door, but it had failed so far to pick up any sound of movement.
‘I almost forgot,’ said Fitzgerald as she watched the road gradually being taken over by police. ‘I brought you some food, seeing that you missed breakfast. It’s in the back there.’
I reached round for the bag that had been left on the back seat, and took out a sandwich, made from thickly cut dark bread.
‘I don’t know whether to eat this or keep it in case I need an offensive weapon later on,’ I said, lifting it up and sniffing it. I took a bite. ‘Actually, it’s not bad. You want some?’
‘I already ate.’
‘Liar.’
A burst of white noise from the police radio stopped her from answering. She leaned over and turned it up to follow the crackle of commands and whispers as more officers moved in.
I recognised John Haran’s voice making sure everyone was in place. At least there was one person here who knew what he was doing.
‘Jackson, you take the rear. Blake?’
‘I’m in place.’
‘Any sign of movement?’
‘Negative.’
‘McCabe, have you got that thing working yet?’
‘It’s working,’ came back McCabe. ‘No sound, that’s all.’
‘Chief?’
‘Go on, Haran,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘I’m listening.’
‘We’r
e set. Just give the word.’
She stared ahead at the street, gathering strength.
‘Do it,’ she said.
So much for my sandwich.
Through the wipers, I saw Haran climb out of a parked car at the end of the street and start the walk down to the gate. As he did so, another man appeared from the other direction, moving slightly slower, and three more edged forward from their hiding places opposite. An unmarked armed response unit van waited, ticking over, a short distance away, in case back-up was needed.
Haran was first to the gate. Soon as he went in, we lost sight of him; but we heard the knock that immediately followed.
And the silence following that.
‘McCabe,’ said Fitzgerald into the radio. ‘Are you picking up anything at all on the listener?’
‘Nothing, Chief.’
‘One more chance then, Haran,’ she said, ‘and if he doesn’t answer this time, get rid of the door and go in.’
Her words crackled back through the air to Haran’s earpiece.
A slight pause – then the second knock.
The second silence.
‘Go!’
We couldn’t see what happened, only hear the crash as Haran drew his weapon, stepped back and kicked open the door, and the remaining ARU officers surged forward through the gate and into the house. There were muffled footsteps echoing on what sounded like bare floorboards, and shouting, though it was difficult to make out words through the screech of tyres as the unmarked van rushed forward to the gate and the doors at the back opened, spilling more armed officers out.
I reached for the door handle to get out.
‘Wait till it’s clear,’ Fitzgerald said, grabbing the arm of my jacket, but I couldn’t. I shrugged off her hand and climbed out.
I heard a cry on the radio.
‘Fuck!’
‘Get the Chief!’
‘Now!’
No one tried to stop me as I ran across the road and through the gate, Fitzgerald close behind, into the house, where the sound of hard boots on the floorboards upstairs filled the air.
Inside there was scarcely any light, for the windows were smudged grey with dirt and dust; but ahead of us, down the long hall, the light from a torch was picking a path through the gloom, sweeping like the beam of a lighthouse, and that was what we followed.
‘Haran?’ said Fitzgerald.
He was standing in the centre of the back room, which was even darker than the rest because a blanket had been nailed over the window. It was Haran holding the torch. He said nothing as we entered, simply pointed the light to the floor, where a pair of stepladders lay toppled in a huge pool of blood.
Then he swept the beam upwards.
A man’s body dangled from a loop of electric flex attached to a hook, twisting gently round and round as if in a wind, shoes kicked off to show bare feet, left wrist slashed deep to the bone, crucifix dangling from the right; and his features were pulled so tight by the weight of the body beneath that he seemed to be almost smiling, nursing a secret.
Mort Tillman.
Behind him on the wall, a message was written in the same blood. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
**********************
Later, I retreated to the front steps and watched the cars crawl by as drivers, permitted down the road again now the armed response unit had dispersed, slowed to see what was going on. I lit a cigar and listened, at the back of it all, to the customary cries of the city. It was a soundtrack that could never be turned off or the volume down; either you accepted and became part of it or you got out. There was no middle way, no compromise. I had always accepted it, but then I wasn’t the sort for making compromises either. Right now, though, I wasn’t so sure.
Thinking about Tillman was making me hollow. I shouldn’t have cared about him, not after all that had happened; but I couldn’t help remembering that, save for Fitzgerald, he was still the person I knew best in this whole city. Or thought I had. It spoke wonders for my ability to form meaningful relationships, but there you go.
Besides, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was why he was dead now, that I was why too many people had died. I didn’t know how I was to blame, but I was. If it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t be hanging in there now – or rather lying in there, for Ambrose Lynch had come to examine the body in the hour since the house had been entered and he’d immediately ordered Tillman cut down.
Sometimes it didn’t do to know too much, to know what Lynch would do to Tillman once he was on the mortuary slab: how he would lift out each organ and weigh it carefully; how he would collect a sample of stomach contents to be sent for analysis if needed; how he would drain and store all fluids. The real Tillman had fled from the flesh, but it didn’t make the knowledge of what would be done to that flesh feel any less like an affront.
I sensed Fitzgerald was there beside me before she spoke, leaning against the doorway and watching me smoke.
‘Maybe that’s what I need,’ she said.
‘You?’
‘Why not me?’
I passed her the cigar and watched her lift it to her lips and take a mouthful of smoke. She coughed, like she always did, then raised a finger to pick a fragment of tobacco from the end of her tongue.
‘I’ll never understand how you can smoke these things.’
‘What’s to understand?’
‘I keep thinking if I try just one more I’ll see the appeal.’ Another mouthful. Another cough. ‘No, it’s no good.’
We took a step back as a crime tech officer in a white jumpsuit appeared in the doorway and made his way down to the van, carrying a box. It had been one box after another: the collected detritus of Tillman’s obsession, taken away to be catalogued, analysed, and finally stored in some airless, lightless vault, all that remained of this strange museum to the past seven days. There had been three boxes alone of photographs, hundreds of them. Shots of Mary Lynch, Mary Dalton, Nikolaevna mainly, but scores of other women that I didn’t recognise, each taken secretly as they were followed, kept watch over, the ground prepared.
The bathroom upstairs was his darkroom; countless undeveloped rolls of film lined the shelves. More photographs had been sellotaped across each wall, together with cards for prostitutes and massage parlours taken from telephone boxes, and photocopies of newspaper stories relating to attacks on women going back five years neatly snipped out and displayed.
There were books too, many of them the same ones that had been in Tillman’s rooms in Trinity, and an old portable typewriter whose typeface had been tested and shown to match that on the letters, not to mention plastic bags filled with various items of clothing, mostly underwear, shoes, items of jewellery; all stolen, I guessed.
There was one further box, similar to the one from last night, in which the crime tech officers had found the missing feet of the nameless woman in the churchyard, as perfectly preserved as the hands. The box was wrapped in Christmas paper, ready to be sent. Nick Elliott’s name and address were pasted on the front.
He’d be furious when he learned what he had missed. A story like that could have been his way back into favour.
There was no sign of the head.
‘So is that really it?’ I said. ‘It’s over?’
‘Isn’t that what we were hoping for?’ Fitzgerald answered. ‘That the killer, whoever he was, would just bring this all to an end himself? Tillman even warned us to expect it. He said in his profile that the offender might kill himself if cornered.’
‘But he wasn’t cornered,’ I said. ‘He backed himself into a corner. There’s a world of difference. He could have gone on indefinitely and never been caught. Instead he chose death.’
You’re welcome to come with me if you like, he’d joked grimly in that last conversation, though I’m not sure you’d like the journey.
‘Maybe he just wanted to make sure he never was caught. How did he put it to you?’ said Fitzgerald. ‘He was the undefeated champion, going into re
tirement where you couldn’t follow.’
‘And that’s what he meant by the message? The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. You could be right.’
‘I hate to spoil the party,’ interrupted Lynch, and we both looked round as the city pathologist emerged from the gloom and trudged heavily down the steps towards us, ‘but suicide isn’t defeating death. Death still wins, whichever way you look at it.’
‘Even if you choose the manner and timing of it?’
‘Why should death care about details as long as it has you?’
I had no answer to that.
‘I don’t suppose there’s any doubt it was suicide?’ I said.
‘How many times do I have to remind you that I cannot determine a true cause of death prior to an autopsy, and sometimes not even then?’
‘You’re not in court now, Ambrose,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘We’re only after your best guess. It certainly looks like suicide.’
‘I’ll forget you said that. I don’t want to have to report a chief superintendent for trying to influence my findings. But,’ he said, ‘off the record, I’ll admit that it looks like suicide to me as well. At some point in the last three hours, say.’
‘I spoke to him two hours ago,’ I said.
‘You did? At some point in the last two hours then. I’ll know more precisely once I’ve completed the autopsy.’
‘Are you going to do it now?’
‘What choice do I have? On the seventh day, the Lord rested. But not me,’ he said. ‘I still have to work.’
‘Everyone’s working,’ I said.
‘Everyone else gets days off, breaks, sick leave. They don’t work every case. I am legally obliged to attend the scene of every violent or suspicious death in the city. It doesn’t matter when it happens. Late at night or early morning. Christmas Day, Hallowe’en, my birthday, the Fourth of July. If someone decides they want to play Jack the Ripper with the local population, I have to be there. I’m tired of saying it, or perhaps just plain tired, but it’s time I got an assistant.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ I said. ‘I’m sick of the dead.’
‘Aren’t we all?’
