by Ingrid Black
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Assistant Commissioner Brian Draker had called a press conference for five o’clock to announce that the investigation was ended.
I skipped the celebrations. I wasn’t in the mood to see Draker grinning like a halfwit; and besides, it didn’t feel ended to me.
‘I’ve been over it a hundred times and the pieces still don’t knit together,’ I said to Fisher when I went round to his hotel and found him drinking in the bar, desperate for news.
He’d been shocked when I told him Tillman was dead.
‘I can’t believe it,’ he kept saying.
‘In case you’ve forgotten,’ I pointed out, ‘it was you made me suspect Tillman in the first place.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s what makes it worse. I suppose I hoped you might be able to prove to me it couldn’t be him.’
‘Well, it’s too late for that now,’ I said. I looked at my watch. ‘An hour from now, Draker will be announcing to the world that Tillman was a dangerous killer, not to mention taking personal credit for hunting him down. If only there weren’t so many loose ends, it’d be easier to accept.’
‘Loose ends?’
‘It’s something that’s been niggling at me, that’s all. When we were in the café this morning and the first call came through, I thought it was Tillman because he reminded me about some story only he and I knew, how when we were driving up to North Vermont on the White Monk case I got lost in a snowstorm.’
‘And you nearly crossed the Canadian border,’ Fisher finished.
I was astonished.
‘You know about that?’
‘Tillman told me about it once. In strictest confidence, of course.’ He noticed the look on my face. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘I don’t mind – at least, it hardly matters now; but you’re missing the point. I didn’t nearly cross over the border into Canada; I did cross the border. It was only when the signs started appearing in French that I realised. But the caller said the same as you. Why would Tillman have remembered it wrongly?’
‘Why do I get the impression you’re asking me questions when you already know the answers, or suspect that you do?’
‘I don’t have any answers,’ I said bitterly. ‘I’m not even sure I have any questions that deserve answers. I’m just trying to make all those pieces I told you about knit together.’
‘Who says things always have to make sense?’
His words depressed me. Had I come all this way only to settle, like Draker, for an unsatisfactory ending just because it made things simpler? No. I wouldn’t do it. I pushed back my chair roughly and rose to my feet, glad now that I’d refused Fisher’s offer of a drink.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’re going.’
‘Where?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough.’
I pulled to a halt outside Cassidy’s Car Rentals with an unintended screech, making the people hidden under umbrellas in the forecourt turn their heads our way with alarm. I’d wanted to make sure we got here before it shut. Already some of the stores had pulled down their shutters and closed up for the night.
‘They probably think you’re here to hold up the place,’ said Fisher as we climbed out. ‘Do you ever think about getting a new wardrobe so that you look more respectable?’
‘The way your waistline’s expanding these days,’ I shot back, ‘a wardrobe will soon be about the only thing that fits you.’
‘I asked for that.’
We ran through the rain to the door and pushed inside.
‘Can I help you?’
The standard introduction, delivered by a middle-aged man in a pinstripe suit, hair combed over to hide his bald patch, fingers cupped together.
‘Cassidy?’ I said, taking a wild guess. ‘I talked to you earlier today on the phone from Dublin Castle.’
‘About the car for the American gentleman. I remember.’
Another standard salesman’s trick: to remember one little detail to make the customer feel they were the most important person in the room. So he remembered about Tillman? Big deal. It would’ve been remarkable if he’d forgotten. It was only a few hours ago, and taking a call from the murder squad was the most excitement he was likely to get this side of sneaking a quick grope with his secretary at the Christmas party.
‘I want to look at the registration form Tillman filled out when your car was dropped off to him at the airport,’ I said.
‘Now?’
‘No. Next summer should do. Of course now.’
A flash of irritation, but he brought it under control admirably.
‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’ll get it straight away.’
Cassidy fell back to the safety of his filing cabinet and presently returned with a single sheet, which he handed over.
‘If you need me, I’ll be in my office.’
Fisher and I glanced at the sheet.
‘That’s not Tillman’s signature,’ I said immediately.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Look,’ I pointed out, ‘it’s signed Mort Tillman.’
He looked confused.
‘That was his name.’
‘No it wasn’t,’ I said. ‘It was what he called himself, but his full name was Scott Mort Tillman. Scott was his father’s name; Mort came from a favourite uncle. When Tillman got older he took the name Mort, to annoy his father mainly, I think, but he always signed himself S.M. Tillman. The boys in the FBI used to joke that it stood for Sado Masochist. Sado Masochist Tillman. Point is, he never signed himself Mort. Never. This is a fake.’
I raised my voice to reach Cassidy.
‘Who took the car out to Tillman that day?’
‘Brendan,’ he said. ‘He works for us in the garage.’
‘Is he here now?’
‘No. He called in sick this morning. I can write out his phone number if you need to speak to him.’
‘His address as well.’
Cassidy glanced round for a scrap of paper, but there was nothing to hand, so he lifted down some cheap religious calendar that was hanging on the wall behind his desk. December showed a picture of Christ in the manger, the shepherds and wise men gathered around.
He tore off a strip of paper from the bottom where the days were numbered and wrote what I asked. I checked the address; it was a street not far from the canal where Mary Lynch had died.
I put it in my pocket as I made my way to the door.
‘It’s all coming back to me,’ I said as the dark streets unfolded under our wheels back to the city. ‘I’ve been so stupid. When we burst into the house and found Tillman hanging there, he had a crucifix in his right hand. It was the crucifix that was taken from the body of Monica Lee. But Tillman couldn’t have killed Monica. That happened two years ago, long before he came to Dublin.’
‘How can you be sure it was Monica Lee’s crucifix?’
‘I can’t, OK, not yet. But I’d put my life on it all the same. It just fits. And if I’m right, then Tillman couldn’t have killed Nikolaevna Tsilevich either, because the knots binding the two women were exactly the same. They must have been killed by the same man. And if he didn’t kill Nikolaevna, then what sense does it make to say he killed Mary Lynch and the others?’
‘Slow down a moment, I’m getting confused. If what you’re saying is right, then that means Tillman must have been—’
‘Murdered. Exactly. The killer even hinted at it to me during that call in the café, when I first became convinced he was Tillman. I asked him what he wanted, if he wanted me to say I was sorry, say I was wrong, if that was what this was all about, but all he did was laugh. He said it was too late for apologies. It was too late because Tillman was already dead by then. The message on the wall of the house is the same sort of confession, don’t you see?’
‘Frankly,’ said Fisher, ‘no.’
‘Mort is Latin for death. Tillman used to make macabre jokes about how appropriate it was that a profiler should be called Death. S
o when the message said The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, what it meant was the last enemy that shall be destroyed is – Mort. And that’s another thing about the message,’ I went on hurriedly before Fisher could raise a counter-argument and knock me out of my stride.
The thoughts were crowding my brain so fast now that even my words were too slow to keep up with them.
‘Tillman was left-handed. If he wanted to cut his wrist in order to write a message in blood, surely he would have held the knife in his left hand and cut his right wrist? Yet it was the left wrist which was slashed.’
‘But the hands in Tillman’s rooms—’
‘They were sent to him, it’s obvious now, same way that the other parcel was packaged up ready to be sent to Nick Elliott. The box wasn’t sitting there that night waiting to be wrapped. It had been unwrapped by Tillman and he’d folded up the Christmas paper afterwards and laid it to one side. You remember how crazy he was about being tidy. It was the parcel that made him rush out that night. It confirmed something that he’d started to suspect from his reading. All those books were research; not signs of his obsession, like we thought, but of his tracking down the roots of the killer’s obsession. He hadn’t given up his interest in the case, he only wanted us to think he had; his interest had actually intensified. Like you said yourself, he was desperate to prove we were all wrong about him, so he went off on a solo run.’
‘And paid for it with his life,’ said Fisher.
His voice sounded empty as the realisation of how he had failed Tillman – how we all had, me for a second time – wormed into his head.
‘What are we going to do?’
‘I’m going to drop you round at Dublin Castle. Find Fitzgerald. Give her the address Cassidy gave us for his driver and have her send someone round to get a description of the man he met at Dublin airport who claimed to be Tillman.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Back to my apartment. I have a photograph of Monica Lee somewhere in my notes, showing her wearing the crucifix. Draker won’t be able to deny it’s the same one if he has the proof in front of his eyes. After that I’m going round to Lynch to get a set of Tillman’s fingerprints to run against those found in Nikolaevna’s apartment. I’ll be along as soon as I can.’
*********
The lift was broken again. What was wrong with this bloody country? Everything was either broken or, if it was working, useless anyway. The porter wasn’t even around for me to complain at. Making himself scarce, if he had any sense. I didn’t think my feet could manage the stairs. The last time I’d slept was in Jackie’s house, when I’d dreamt about Tillman trying to make me see what he’d seen. But I made it to my door in the end. One step at a time. The only way.
Soon as I reached the top of the stairs, I saw it.
A box, wrapped in Christmas paper, with my name and address on the top. I knew what it was at once.
I unlocked my door, stepped over the box and went inside. Left the door open whilst I walked to my phone. I called the porter seven floors below. He picked up after three rings.
‘Hugh, there’s a box outside my door—’
‘That’s right, I brought it up for you,’ the porter said. ‘It’s been sitting down there for the past two days, but you’ve not been in to collect your mail. Been busy, have you?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Well, I thought I’d save you a journey, especially with the lift out of order again. Did I do the wrong thing?’
‘It’s fine, no. I just wanted to know.’
Replacing the receiver, I stepped back to the door, bent down and picked up the parcel, then carried it to the table, where I laid it down gently before going to the kitchen for a knife.
I should have left it for the police, but I couldn’t. Like Fitzgerald with the body in the car, I had to know who it was.
I cut off the Christmas paper carefully and laid it to one side. Same way Tillman had. Then I opened the box. I almost cried out when I saw what was inside. It wasn’t what I’d expected. At least, not exactly. But I didn’t. The dead could hurt no one. I’d learned that after killing Fagan.
There was no face. Everything which might have identified her had been removed, dissolved, and now there was only bone, the smooth curve of the skull picked as clean as if it had been left out in the desert sun for a decade. But why? It didn’t take a genius to figure out. Because I would have recognised her otherwise. Recognised her face. Recognised – who?
From nowhere, an image came to me of a familiar face. Go, see now and bury this cursed woman, for she is a king’s daughter.
King’s daughter.
I felt suddenly cold.
I put my hand into my pocket and lifted out the scrap of paper which Cassidy had torn from his calendar. I’d forgotten to give it to Fisher when I dropped him off at Dublin Castle. I’d looked at it briefly before, but the words must have entered my mind at some deep level without me even being aware of it happening, for my hand had reached for it unthinkingly. Now I stared at it, numb with disbelief, and yet calm too, knowing that finally I had the answer.
I picked up the phone again and dialled a number, again hardly knowing how I remembered it. I’d only dialled it once before.
‘Hello,’ said a voice when it was picked up.
‘Professor Salvatore?’ I said. ‘Can we talk?’
Chapter Forty
The air was sterile and antiseptic in the autopsy room, but Ambrose Lynch wasn’t there. Nor was Tillman; and I wasn’t sorry about that. I hadn’t wanted to see him lying there. What I’d seen of him already that day was bad memory enough. A lab assistant was washing down the surfaces and told me he’d been taken back to the morgue, where he would remain, alone, cold, until his family made arrangements to fly his body back to the States. As for the city pathologist, she thought he’d gone back to his office on the first floor to write up the autopsy report.
I made my way up the stairs after him.
I found Lynch sitting at his desk, the only light coming from a lamp angled towards the page on which he was writing.
He looked up and smiled when I walked in.
‘They’re on the table over there,’ he said. I’d called earlier to tell him I’d be over to pick up Tillman’s fingerprints. If you hang on a few moments, you can bring this autopsy report too. It won’t take long.’
I sat down in the chair opposite and sighed.
‘I suppose I ought to call them,’ I said.
‘Who?’
‘Tillman’s family. Telling them what happened is the least I can do. Though it might help if I knew what had happened. I was hoping you could help me there.’
He looked up from the page and frowned.
‘What are you saying?’
‘You know what I’m saying,’ I said.
Lynch smiled again over the top of his spectacles, and his smile this time was contorted slightly by the way his face was lit by the desk lamp, like some shadow inside of him was breaking through. And maybe it was. He didn’t have to pretend any more.
‘It’s about time,’ he said. ‘I was beginning to think you’d never work it out. This calls for a drink, wouldn’t you say?’
He reached down to his side to open the drawer in his desk.
‘Stop,’ I said, and before he could move I’d risen from the chair, pulled the gun from my pocket and levelled it at him.
It was the first time I’d seen Lynch genuinely speechless. I’d picked the gun up on my way to the mortuary from the safe deposit box where it had lain, untouched, since the day after I used it to kill Ed Fagan. Keeping it had been stupid, probably. The sensible thing would have been to fling it into the river at a point where the water was deep and the current would have dragged it out to sea and it could never resurface to incriminate me; but I couldn’t. It would have been like throwing a part of myself away. Besides, I hadn’t known when I might need it again.
Like now.
‘I’m afraid I don’t ha
ve much practice at this sort of thing,’ Lynch said after he’d recovered from his initial surprise. ‘Am I supposed to – how do you say? – stick them up?’
‘No,’ I told him. ‘You’re supposed to stay exactly where you are and shut the fuck up for once. That would do.’
I manoeuvred round the edge of the table without taking my eyes off him, then felt down and pulled open the drawer.
A quick glance. It was empty save for a bottle of whiskey, three quarters full, and two glasses.
‘Satisfied?’ said Lynch.
He lifted out the glasses and the bottle, twisted open the cap and poured two generous measures whilst I made my way back to the other chair and sat down again, the gun nestled comfortably in my hand.
He slid one of the glasses over to me, and drank deeply.
I ignored mine for now.
‘I must say, I expected us to be having this conversation sooner,’ he said. ‘I had great faith in you, as I told you on the telephone at the café this morning. Even Tillman was on to me quicker. Not that it did him much good. He was so confident of solving this little mystery all by himself that last night, when he found the house, he just walked in. I left the door open and he just walked in. Incredible. But that was our friend Tillman. Good on the academic theory part of the equation, not so hot on the not getting yourself killed part. And now you just walk in too.’
‘I’m not going to end up like Tillman,’ I said.
‘Tillman didn’t think he was going to end up like Tillman either. Right up until the moment when I looped the cord around his neck, and – well, I’ll spare you the details. You can’t imagine the trouble I had afterwards pulling him up into place in mid-air to make it look like suicide. I should have just slit his other wrist and been done with it, but there was something about the way he looked dangling there, something dramatic, that made it all worthwhile.’
‘He didn’t bring a gun,’ I pointed out.
‘True,’ said Lynch. ‘He had some rather quaint ideas about obeying the law of the land. Those things are still illegal in Dublin, am I right in saying? Not to worry. I won’t report you.’
