The Psalm Killer

by Chris Petit

  47

  THE incident cracked what remained of their fragile relationship. Cross told Deidre that he didn’t know what was going on but he believed the house was unsafe.

  They decided that it would be best if she and the children stayed with her parents for a while. Both of them tried hard to keep the discussion practical. Cross marvelled at how grown up they sounded.

  ‘Is this the start of a separation?’ he asked.

  ‘Why don’t you come with us?’ Deidre replied.

  ‘It’s only for a few days. I’ll be all right here.’

  Their leaving paralysed him. After phoning the barracks and reporting sick, he took the phone off the hook.

  Cross drank away the empty hours of his time alone. His behaviour was a delayed reaction to his beating, he decided. In his few lucid moments the withdrawal felt deliberate. He told himself he was searching for something akin to Breen’s final dereliction, and in reaching that state would discover what he might otherwise miss. Whatever, the solution was interior.

  He looked haggard in the mirror, unshaven, his eyes smudged with exhaustion. Drink made him reckless. He left the lights on all night, curtains undrawn, and woke on the bathroom floor with no memory of how he’d got there. When he was sober enough he telephoned the children. He felt that he’d never been a real father to them. His work and its residual anxieties were like a screen between them. Even normal activities such as shopping or going to the playground were tinged with an awareness that all of them were potential targets.

  He filled exercise books with lists and thoughts, few of which made sense when he read them back. Once or twice he thought he saw things for what they were. He seemed to be caught in some kind of pincer movement involving those wanting Warren’s story suppressed and whoever was responsible, via Moffat, for muddying and deflecting his own investigation. Perhaps they were one and the same. Then there were the Provos who wanted him dead because they believed Cross had set up McMahon. And then there was the killer.

  He called the Dublin number she had given him, several times, but there was never any answer and no machine to take a message. He’d thought up questions to ask her about Warren that were just an excuse to talk to her. His mind often returned to his infidelity, picking over the details with guilty pleasure. For all the awkwardness of the encounter, there had been an openness, he believed, and a willingness on her part to tell him things she had told no one else.

  He wanted to see her. Perhaps he would, he thought, usually around the end of the bottle.

  Somewhere in the swirl of his thoughts Cross had a vague memory of fleeing the house to escape his isolation. He’d memorized the address from earlier and thought he was just about undrunk enough to drive. He wondered at the sense of what he was doing.

  The boy had answered the door himself and it took him a while to recognize Cross with his stubble and hollow eyes.

  ‘Are you crazy, mister, coming here?’

  He hurried him in and shut the door. They stood whispering urgently, Vinnie telling Cross to go away and Cross, half-laughing, saying that he was there to tell Vinnie to do exactly that.

  Vinnie said, ‘You really are crazy, mister.’

  ‘Go on. Fuck off to Dublin and get a new life. Your days are numbered if you stay here.’

  ‘Who’s counting?’

  Cross told him about Heatherington. ‘Touts end up dead. How old are you?’

  Vinnie did not reply and Cross answered for him. ‘Eighteen, nineteen? You’re in a high-risk business. I’d say you have the shortest life expectancy of anyone I know. Dead in a ditch at twenty-one, if you last that long.’

  Afterwards he wondered if he had dreamed the whole thing, but his building society pass book showed a withdrawal of a thousand pounds. He had a vague memory of Vinnie telling him to leave by the back.

  Cross called through the closed door, ‘Go away, I’m busy.’

  It was Westerby. She sounded urgent. He tried to stall her. He didn’t want her to see the state he was in. But she was insisting.

  ‘Come back in the morning.’

  He listened to her voice coming through the door, saying it couldn’t wait, and reluctantly he let her in.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  Cross was swaying unsteadily. Westerby thought he looked worse than in hospital and tried to hide her shock.

  They tried sobering him up with pots of black coffee. Cross still felt woozy and her words swam in and out of focus. He frowned, recognizing the name Eddoes.

  ‘Don’t you see? It fits. He’s still at it,’ she said.

  She was aware of the ridiculousness of talking to a man in Cross’s condition. Without thinking, she took his hand and squeezed it, to convey the urgency she felt.

  ‘He’s still at work and the same pattern applies.’

  She explained once more how the murder of Mrs Eddoes had apparently sparked off a sectarian tit-for-tat and there had been reprisal killings throughout the North. Several Catholics and Protestants had been shot.

  ‘But look,’ said Westerby, ‘it starts with Eddoes, forty-nine. Then Caddy, forty-two, and Causley, thirty-five. Caddy was a prison officer and Causley a civil servant. Both shot outside their homes. Caddy was coming back from the night shift too early for anyone to be up, so there were no witnesses. Causley was shot in the face as he leaned down to speak to someone in a car. He’s repeating the pattern except this time with Protestants.’

  Cross stared dully at the floor. It was strange having her there. Westerby wondered how much he was taking in.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘I do wonder about the names. Taking the first letter from each one doesn’t seem to add up to anything: ECC. Eccentric, ecclesiastical? Hardly. They’re about the only words I could find.’

  ‘Latin,’ said Cross.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s Latin. In the Latin Mass the priest held up the host and said, “Ecce Agnus Dei.”’

  Cross remembered the old Mass of his childhood, before it changed. Ecce Agnus Dei. Behold the Lamb of God.

  Westerby got up and made more coffee. Cross was starting to think clearly. He was sceptical about the Eddoes killing. Eddoes himself had provided a clear enough motive by saying it was the INLA in retaliation for his public attacks. Cross was momentarily struck by the coincidence of the INLA again. Breen had been INLA – but then his thoughts collapsed.

  ‘These killings are much more in keeping with ordinary sectarian ones, Psalms or no Psalms,’ he concluded.

  Westerby conceded that, but said she was sure the deaths were part of a general plan. What she could not understand was why the rate of killings was accelerating.

  ‘Freezing Breen, taking his time. Then with the first Mary it was like he was courting her. And abducting Mary Ryan, again taking his time. Setting up Catherine Edge. Now it’s bang! bang! bang! He’s in a hurry.’

  ‘But Eddoes,’ said Cross.

  ‘Eddoes started me off. I saw his age in the paper. Same age as Francis Breen. Forty-nine. And they both go back to the beginning of the Troubles. And the line of killings that began with Breen started with the murder of someone the killer knew. So maybe the Eddoes killing is personal.’

  ‘But he didn’t kill Eddoes, he killed his wife.’

  ‘Yes. That worried me at first.’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ he said ponderously.

  ‘What’s unusual about this killing?’

  Cross felt as dumb as the class dunce.

  ‘Our man goes to the door, rings the bell—’ she said and looked at him expectantly.

  ‘But he couldn’t know who was going to answer,’ Cross said.

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘So it doesn’t make sense. In all the other cases he knew exactly who he was killing.’

  ‘Unless?’

  ‘Unless it didn’t matter—’

  He had it but let her finish.

  ‘—because they were both the right age.’

 
He woke in an armchair, wondering where the blanket had come from. The room felt different. It was tidy, for a start. The curtains were drawn and a table lamp had been left on. His head was splitting and his mouth parched. He went to the kitchen and splashed water on his face, then remembered.

  He found her upstairs, asleep on Fiona’s bed, and fought the temptation to lie down beside her.

  Cross didn’t sleep after that. Instead he nursed his hangover and tried to piece together what they had talked about. He remembered with some embarrassment rambling on about Deidre and the children.

  By the time Westerby was up and they were having breakfast everything seemed bleak to him. Even if she was right, who did they tell?

  ‘There’s only Moffat or Nesbitt to tell,’ she said.

  Cross confessed his growing paranoia. ‘But you’re right. There’s only Moffat or Nesbitt to tell.’

  Westerby asked to speak to Moffat that morning and was predictably blocked, so she badgered Hargreaves to let her speak to Nesbitt.

  ‘You can’t just barge in and start talking to the DCI.’

  She didn’t trust Hargreaves to put her case for her but she could hardly say so.

  ‘We already have a suspect in custody. He’s admitted the Mary Ryan killing,’ Hargreaves added.

  Westerby couldn’t help wondering what they had done to Willcox to get him to confess. Her father had treated men after interrogation in Castlereagh. They had suffered terrible residual damage as a result.

  Hargreaves came back at lunchtime and told her that they had an audience with Nesbitt. Hargreaves looked crafty and she realized that if it went well he would take the credit. Otherwise the blame would be hers.

  Hargreaves began by putting distance between himself and Westerby, announcing that she had something to say. Nesbitt addressed her with a heavy-lidded stare. Westerby was afraid of Nesbitt. She had always been susceptible to bullies.

  He threw her by listening patiently to everything she had to say, his head cocked.

  When she was done, he said, ‘So, it really is your opinion that we have a multiple murderer stalking the streets of Belfast, killing first Catholics and now Protestants?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Westerby, who seethed at his condescension.

  ‘If what you say is true, this is very alarming. I’ll pass it on to Mr Moffat and if he needs to get back to you he will.’ He smiled at her brightly.

  ‘Is that all?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, that’s all.’

  ‘Is that enough, sir?’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Constable?’

  ‘I think there’s a man running around killing people and you say, “I’ll make a note of it.”’

  She saw the look of calculation in Nesbitt’s face, weighing up whether to lose his temper or not. He carried on in the same polite vein.

  ‘Why would anyone run around killing Catholics and Protestants?’

  ‘Because he’s a maniac.’

  ‘Maniacs are for the Yanks.’

  Westerby sensed Hargreaves grinning behind her.

  ‘Why aren’t you taking me seriously, sir?’

  ‘I might not be taking you seriously, WPC Westerby, because I dislike insubordination, but I am taking what you say seriously. I told you I would pass it on to Mr Moffat. He will evaluate your material and act accordingly.’

  Westerby opened her mouth and Nesbitt rose up out of his seat with a roar.

  ‘That’s enough! It may have escaped your attention, but because of the circumstances that exist in this country we have one of the most developed and sophisticated police forces in the world. If Mr Moffat believes that your material is worth acting on it will be acted upon.’

  ’With respect, sir, this force may have its technology, but it is backward and bigoted and run like some nineteenth-century Victorian school.’

  She had the satisfaction of seeing Nesbitt’s jaw drop before she turned and walked out.

  48

  MOFFAT left Belfast that morning and flew to RAF Northolt on the edge of London. He read Jung on the plane, enjoying the fact that he was temporarily out of reach, and occasionally paused to ruminate on the fractured relations between his department and that of the man he was going to see. The balance of power which had been held for so many years by his side was shifting subtly in favour of its old rival, largely because of a greater closeness to the Americans. The Americans were behind the unprecedented Anglo-Irish Agreement due to be signed later in the year. It was their ultimate intention to have an Ireland united at the expense of the Protestant Unionists.

  Moffat’s own department had always taken a more traditional line, offering covert support to the Protestants while pursuing a policy of unconditional surrender towards the Provisional IRA. He thought of the man he was about to meet and remembered a line from Bob Dylan. Let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.

  It was raining in England. The waiting car drove him a half-mile along the airfield perimeter to a Nissen hut where a meeting room, smelling of floor wax, had been set aside. Chintz armchairs gave the otherwise spartan room the air of a stage set.

  Davenport was already waiting. Moffat knew him slightly but they greeted each other warily. Davenport tried to hide his curiosity. The meeting had been called by Moffat and as he was flying in for it Davenport had arranged to drive out to Northolt.

  A thermos of coffee was laid out on a table, with the same regulation biscuits they got in Belfast. Moffat poured them both a cup, fussing over the details of milk and sugar. His fiancée had just left him and since then he often experienced a mild panic in the face of small social rituals.

  ‘It seems we have a multiple killer on the loose in the Province,’ Moffat said conversationally. ‘We wondered if it might be one of yours.’

  Davenport blinked and recovered quickly. He shook his head.

  ‘Nice of you to think it’s us,’ he replied pleasantly.

  ‘I’ve done you a file.’

  He handed the dossier to Davenport, who scanned it quickly and pointed out that as his department was now more or less inactive in Northern Ireland he didn’t see how he could help. ‘It’s your show,’ he pointed out. ‘And has been for the last ten years.’

  ‘The thing is, it’s no one we know. Our stables are clean.’

  Davenport rode the silence.

  ‘By the way,’ Moffat went on, switching tack, ‘we’ve been doing a bit of hoovering on your behalf.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Davenport was clearly a student of the pregnant pause. Moffat swallowed his irritation.

  ‘A journalist. A total alcoholic, but running round asking a lot of awkward questions and rattling old skeletons, yours and mine.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Kincora.’

  ‘I thought we’d heard the last of that.’

  ‘He was threatening to expose—’

  ‘How far back?’

  Each was aware that the problem with Kincora was that it affected them both. Several key figures in the scandal had worked for Davenport’s department in the early years of the Troubles, before it had lost control to Moffat’s side.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Davenport.

  Moffat drily explained that a couple of visitors who’d been round to see the journalist had got a bit carried away.

  ‘So they made it look like he’d accidentally hanged himself. Um. While dressed in women’s underwear.’

  Davenport was amused. He came from a background that appreciated smut. ‘Is anyone buying that?’

  Moffat inspected his nails. ‘Um. They made it look pretty pervy. You know, sordid details. Always helps in a cover-up. The man who did the autopsy is a friend of the department and agreed to keep it vague.’

  Davenport guessed that friend of the department was a euphemism for being blackmailed.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘None, really, except the policeman investigating the case. Unfortunately for us he’s also dealing with the murders, and he’s on to
both. I’ve included a copy of the journalist’s story, by the way.’

  Davenport sorted through Moffat’s file until he found it. This time, as he read through it, his eyebrows shot up in surprise.

  ‘Quite,’ said Moffat. ‘If that stuff about McKeague came out, that’s egg on your face, not ours.’

  ‘Big egg,’ agreed Davenport, wondering why Moffat was being so co-operative.

  ‘There’s another journalist we’re in the process of persuading not to touch it,’ continued Moffat. ‘Awful balls-up, they got the wrong man at first and beat up the policeman.’

  The two men snorted with laughter.

  ‘Bloody freelancers,’ said Moffat.

  ‘How serious is this other business?’ asked Davenport.

  ‘Put it this way, we’re having a devil of a job sitting on Stalker. He won’t be deflected. If there were another scandal – a mass murderer on the loose with some sort of connection with British intelligence – I’d say you could have a civil uprising on your hands.’

  ‘Your hands, not mine,’ said Davenport tartly.

  ‘Um, that depends,’ replied Moffat cryptically.

  ‘But why is he not declaring his hand?’

  ‘He will, I’m sure of that. In the meantime, I think you should look and see if there are any funny sections in your department that everyone’s forgotten about. This man goes back to your time. He was an agent then. You’d better pray to God he’s not still one now.’

  ‘Your boys haven’t got anything up their sleeves for this Anglo-Irish thing, have they?’ Davenport asked mischievously.

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Moffat said disingenuously.

  ‘Well, you certainly managed to spoil the party last time.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’ said Moffat, suddenly uneasy.

  ‘You torpedoed the last agreement, we all know that, bombing Dublin and all the rest. Are you sure these killings aren’t the first stage of someone’s plans to fuck it up this time around?’

  ‘In which case it would be us running this maniac rather than you, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Exactly. Don’t forget we’re all in favour of giving the North to the South. Have been for years. You’re the ones that have wrecked every initiative between Dublin and Westminster. So perhaps you should take another look in your stables.’