“He?”
And there it is, stirring in the black of his eyes. Circling in on itself, hollowing out its core, a living mix of evil and anger pulled back, readying itself.
He doesn’t answer. I’m unworthy of response. I’ve judged him. And his victims. Wrongly.
Straightening, I try to summon an air of control. “Why don’t we go downstairs? Talk this through. My team will be here any moment.”
There it is again. A flare of disgust.
“Your team. Your team,” he laughs. “Fuck. Who do you think I am? I don’t make the same mistakes, Detective, but clearly, you do. Where is your fucking team?” he spits.
His hand moves. Swift. Blur. And then, there is a knife, the wide blade almost white in the darkness. “Open the door,” he growls.
I know there is terror on my face. The scar at my temple aches. My throat is screechingly dry. I reach back and grasp the door handle. The round bulb of wood presses into my wet palm. The door swings easily inwards, and the smell of blood both pungent and bitter rises, the primitive centers of my brain screaming: Run!
Burke keeps the knife tight to his side. His eyes are stones of hatred, polished evil. Scornful. His arm trembles in anticipation, as if the weapon demands use. He moves forward, head low, and I stumble back into the room.
My feet slip on plastic sheeting and I put a hand out to steady myself against a dresser. Burke steps across the threshold, closes the door, and flicks on a light. The room is blue, soft baby blue with dark skirting boards. A glance behind shows me the window dressed in blue floral curtains. In my mind, Amy Keegan turns tired, bruised eyes toward a streak of sunlight before a hand reaches out, turns her to look at the camera, to face the horror of her death. And now, Burke’s latest victim lies pale and still on the same bed.
Lorcan Murphy. All his limbs are tied down, his body covered in knife wounds. A terrified sound groans out from somewhere, and it takes me a moment to know it’s risen from my own throat. I’m sorry! I want to shout. I’m sorry I couldn’t see the answers soon enough.
“Lorcan,” I say. Calm. Easy. Reassuring. “Lorcan? It’s Detective Sheehan. Help is on its way.”
His eyes flicker, and a swift flutter of relief beats in my throat. He’s alive.
Burke’s voice cracks across my thoughts.
“He’s alive because I wish it,” he says, as if reading my mind.
Anger loosens my tongue. “And what about Eleanor? Amy?”
Burke leaves the knife on the dresser, opens the top drawer, and removes a camera. He sets it on a tripod, points the lens in my direction.
“We were childhood sweethearts, you know. That takes something.” He gives me a serious look, pride full in his chest. “Eleanor had such an engaging way with her. Addictive. Flypaper. Everyone flew to her and got stuck. She tortured her husband for months. Stupid bastard. With me, she thought she pulled the strings, thought I’d pull her up to that beam, then let her drop, safe, to the floor. No harm done.”
His eyes glaze for a moment; pleasure plays at the corners of his mouth. He’s remembering. Remembering how good it felt to see the realization dawn on Eleanor’s face that it was he who held the power.
Even without light, I’d know the moment he looks at me. Really looks at me. I feel his eyes on me and I can’t help shrinking back against the window.
“She thought I’d let that rope go. But I didn’t.”
He returns to the camera. Presses a button at the side and a red light blinks on.
There is no engagement on his face. He has stepped away from the mask, retreated into his true self. He reaches into the dresser again, takes out a length of blue rope. He winds the thick band of nylon around his hands and approaches me as a hunter might approach an animal he means to kill. And he does mean to kill me. The desire is darkening in his eyes; it moves there like a living thing, writhing in the dark pools of his pupils. I glance to Lorcan. His eyes are open. Watching. Panic carved into his face. His mouth, swollen and bruised against his gag, stretches white as he tries to speak.
I wait until Burke is almost upon me, then push off the wall. I duck under his arms, but my chance to escape vanished the moment I stepped into his home. His hands come over my head, the rope taut between them. The rough band rises swiftly to my neck and I’m pulled back onto his chest. He’s heaving now with excitement. Exertion. The chase. The capture. The power. The rope rips against my neck. Skin broken. Raw, fresh pain. Pressure builds against my temples.
My hands scratch, scrape, dig against my throat. My feet kick, slip, slide over the crackling plastic. I feel his arms jerk backward, a sudden tightening of the rope, and my body twitches in response. Tiny bursts of light are popping across my vision. I am underwater, alone with the sound of my heart. Not even my breath reaches me through the fog. My arms are slack, floating at my sides. Darkness covers me. Warm, then deliciously cool.
* * *
—
I AM ANCHORED TO the ground. There is wetness on my face. Tears. Blood. I taste salt, metal in my mouth. I try to scream, but my tongue tangles, chokes on soggy fabric. I try to look, to see, but my eyes are so heavy. The curve of my eyelids weighs down on my vision. I smell sweat and blood. Something sharpens in my mind and it drags me through the fog of unconsciousness. I draw in dank, stinking air through my nostrils, chase the tinnitus from my ears, and slowly my body comes back to the room.
I turn my head, and a burst of pain flowers across my neck and into my cheek. My hands are above my head; I flex my fingers, feel the cold metal of the radiator against my knuckles.
I can sense my attacker. Know he’s moving somewhere in the room, an arm’s reach away. I make myself see, stretch open my eyes. Lorcan is somewhere above me on the bed. He doesn’t move, but when I hold my breath, I can hear the shallow chug of his breathing.
“Ah, you’re back.” Burke’s voice is hoarse. A mix of anger and anticipation.
A sinking sensation pulls at my vision, and the room begins to darken. I blink, swallow down a wave of nausea, and make myself focus.
“Feeling unwell?”
There are new pains spreading over my chest and abdomen, a throbbing bruise in my right leg.
He approaches, knife already in hand, already bloody. “That would be the loss of blood.”
His words have the effect of calling forth pain. I glance down. Blood is pooling around me, swelling out from my limbs. The dark fabric of my blouse is wet with it. A rush of faintness swoops through me, and I let my head drop to my chest, gasping. But he is on me, gripping my face between his fingers.
“Come on, Detective. I thought you were made of stronger stuff. Maybe a little pick-me-up is all you need. Pain has a beautiful way of sharpening the senses.”
He draws the knife along my face, from my cheekbone to the edge of my jaw. Pressure lighter than the trace of a finger. Razor-sharp. The point of the blade continues, rests at the top of my throat. I can feel the blade moving to the thrum of my pulse. He won’t slice through the artery, though. That would be too merciful.
The knife lifts, falls to the plastic sheeting, and he takes up the rope, wraps the ends between his hands. He holds it to my face. I struggle beneath him, but pain tears through my leg and abdomen; fresh blood runs from my shirt. He smiles; then his face twists and the rope slams against my neck.
I can’t breathe. My tongue pushes against the gag; my nostrils flare. I can’t breathe. I can feel the pulse of every blood vessel in my head, my lungs tight, rigid, waiting for air. He leans in against my throat. His face contorted, red with rage. My feet kick out at nothing; my hands flex, grasp the air, tug at their bindings. Each movement wins me more pain. My neck strains; something snaps in my shoulder; a bone cracks in my hand.
Darkness comes, coils around my vision, closes me up. My limbs are so heavy, leaden beyond my control. I am drifting. Away. Floating away.
* * *
&
nbsp; —
THERE IS MOVEMENT, somewhere in the darkness. Lights. Voices. Someone is crying. Feet pad close by. Hands, cold hands, lift my face, my eyes. Air steals into my mouth, sharpness into my chest.
“We got you, Frankie. We got you,” a voice whispers near my ear. “Jesus. Can we get a medic over here, please?”
CHAPTER 30
I PUSH THE BUTTON and the treadmill slows, then stops. My leg throbs; the injury objects to rehabilitation, and I stand for a moment until the dull ache subsides. The bonsai has followed me to work; I’ve decided it prefers the shade of the office over the shifting light of the flat. The foliage, although sparse, is a minty green, and there are new buds pushing into life along the branches, proof that desk life suits it, or that Steve, a witness to my neglect, has taken to tending to it when my back is turned.
There’s a soft knock on the door and I glance at the window. The sky is darkening. I imagine him in his cell, watching his cut of sky, only the sounds of the city slipping into his room and only the sound of his guilt answering back. A trail of sweat runs down my back, soaks my blouse. I pull the material away from my skin and lean for a moment against my desk, catch my breath.
“Come in!” I call out.
Baz steps in. “You all right, Sheehan?”
I smile, take up the case file, pass it to him.
“I’m great.”
And I am. Frankenstein’s monster has fewer stitches holding him together, but I’m at peace for the first time in months. My broken shoulder will mend; my leg will mend. The scar along my cheek is shallow and already shriveling to a thin line.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?”
“Yes. I owe it to them. To Peter, to Amy. Tracy. Rachel. Even to Eleanor, to some extent.”
Burke’s confession was only half there. There are some mysteries a killer likes to keep to himself. Burke was never going to paint a full picture, but it turns out broad strokes are enough. Prussian blue was used first by Eleanor, Burke’s longtime lover and patient.
Eleanor used the compound to counter any exposure to thallium, but soon it became an infatuation for both of them. An obsessive trigger of the power and control they had over Peter. When I think of the color, I can’t help the twist in my mouth. Their use of Prussian blue sneered at Peter Costello. Sneered at Peter’s love of art and of Chagall.
Eleanor became a victim of the monster she helped create. Photos found at Burke’s house charted the course of their destructive relationship. As teens, Burke, tall, angular, standing behind Eleanor, arms locked around her shoulders, Eleanor’s body folded against his chest. Smiling. Always smiling. Then later, Eleanor, in the kitchen of her aunt’s house, wedding band loose on her finger, holding a glass of champagne, toasting the camera.
Eleanor was the spark that ignited a conflagration in Burke, and eventually she was choked by his desire for absolute control. The Black Widow site was an easy and playful way to connect with potential lovers and, for Burke, victims. Amy tested out her fantasies on the wrong platform.
He doesn’t want to talk about Tracy’s murder or his attack on Rachel because he fluffed them. Early, rookie mistakes, rushed and amateurish. Not the control he sought. He thinks it matters. And to him it does, but we have his profile, his DNA. We don’t need his confession; his history leaves filthy fingermarks all over his crimes, and now we can trace them. Once we had a match on his prints, we found them all over the Tracy Ward case. The pigment found under Tracy’s nails was placed there by him. This was his calling card. A deliberate tag marking all his victims, even his accomplice, Eleanor Costello.
The evening I was attacked, Baz got the call that Nicole had returned home. She’d needed a break, had spent a week bingeing and partying with a friend. She sometimes needed to decompress; she’s a lot on her shoulders, she’d said. She had deliberately avoided my calls. She’d been frightened. Eleanor’s murder had swerved too close for her liking and she’d wanted out. I should’ve been angry, but I couldn’t rouse it in me. It was one less victim to add to the list.
I take up the crutch, position it under my uninjured shoulder, and move out of my office and onto the case-room floor. At the case board, I stop and take in the path of our investigation. Priscilla Fagan had her brother cremated, a move that was no doubt to save him from sharing a patch in the ground with his abusive wife. That was not the eternity she wanted for her flesh and blood.
She came to the hospital, hard-faced and red-eyed. She placed a bunch of stiff flowers on my side table and thanked me for showing Eleanor’s true face. Her final comment came to me with the sweet taste of a reprieve: “He’s free from her games now, at least.”
It takes me a while to get down to the car. Baz opens the passenger door, then moves round to the driver’s side.
“Don’t get used to the driving seat,” I say as I ease myself into the car.
He smiles. “Wouldn’t dream of it. I know you, remember?”
“Like fuck you do.”
“You know, I don’t need this shit. I’m gonna put in for a move. Maybe Ballistics,” he says. The corner of his mouth lifts.
I look out the window, suppress a smile. “Best place for you.”
We drive the rest of the way in silence.
Baz found me. He picked up that call. Right before I slipped the phone into my pocket, right before I went up those stairs. He heard me mention Eleanor’s aunt’s house. Heard Burke’s replies. Baz didn’t paint any grisly pictures of when he found me. He didn’t need to: I could read the scene playing out in his eyes.
Outside the court, the press are waiting. Waiting to get a shot at the middle-class doc who liked to play rough with his victims, who liked to “say it with knives.” Garda cars pull up, clear the entrance for the blacked-out van. In a rush of uniforms and shouts of hatred, Burke is escorted from the vehicle, hands clasped in front, cold steel round his wrists. He’s led swiftly inside, away from the questioning public to face justice.
“You said to me once that it was about winning. No matter the cost,” Baz says, his eyes fixed on the door of the court. “At the time, I don’t think I understood.”
He turns, smiles at me. “But now? Now I do.”
My teeth find the inside of my cheek. I look away. Cost? Lorcan Murphy survived. Or parts of him did. He needed his spleen removed; there’s permanent nerve damage in his left hand. He’s moved. Cork or Kerry. Somewhere in the bowels of the country where he can continue lecturing without Eleanor Costello haunting his every move. I visited him before he left. Gray pallor, the shine gone from his smile, a shifting anxiety in his eyes that I recognized. “It gets better,” I said. “I’m fine,” he answered. And then he was gone, a ghost of himself, but I could see his pain clinging to his shoulders like a goblin. I don’t want to think of cost.
Baz swings the car round and heads down a side street. Clancy is waiting at the back entrance. Face, as usual, like a smacked arse, a fag hanging loosely from his lips.
“He looks happy,” Baz says.
“Ecstatic,” I say. And I can’t help the smile.
I get out of the car and Clancy winces on my behalf.
“Christ, Sheehan. This is becoming a fucking habit.”
“Well, if one of you lazy articles could take the beating next time, I won’t be complaining,” I reply.
“Serves you right for being such a pushy bitch.” He gives me a rare smile. “He got close, though, Frankie. Too close.”
I rub the top of my thigh.
“All of this will fade. Will heal.” I lean into the crutch and meet his eyes. “Too close is not nearly enough to stop me.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A BOOK IS ONLY alive and finished in the mind of a reader, so my first thanks go to you. Thank you for reading Too Close to Breathe.
Thank you to my wonderful agent, Susan Armstrong, and to all the team at C&W Agency, especially E
mma Finn, Jake Smith-Bosanquet, Alexandra McNicoll, and Alexander Cochran. Thank you to Zoe Sandler at ICM Partners for her advice, belief, and enthusiasm, and thank you to Stephanie Kelly for her clever editorial input, and to all the team at Dutton.
Thank you to my sister, Ann Kiernan, for always replying with “try again,” for being a patient sounding board, a kind reader, and a constant cheerleader.
Thank you to friends and critique groups who read and commented on the manuscript.
Special thanks to those members of the Garda Síochána who have been so generous with their time, help, and expertise when I was researching this book. Any inaccuracies in police procedure are my own.
Lastly, thank you to Matthew: keeper of balance, provider of sanity, and defender of “time to write.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Olivia Kiernan is an Irish writer living in the UK. She was born and raised in County Meath near the famed heritage town of Kells and holds an MA in creative writing awarded by the University of Sussex. Too Close to Breathe is her first novel.
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Too Close to Breathe Page 27
