by Andrea Mara
Good point, Neil typed, and as we all know, while serial killers mostly kill for sport, the vast majority of murders are committed by people we know.
On that cheery note, I logged out.
I stood, catching my reflection in the mirror above the couch. The lipstick I’d touched up in Delaneys’ mocked me. What was I getting all worked up about? It was just a drink with an old friend. I rubbed my eyes, itching from the late hour and the drinks and the laptop screen, belatedly remembering I was wearing mascara. I took my hands away to inspect the damage, squinting through the blur. As my vision cleared, my eyes were drawn to something else.
A shadow.
A white face.
At the window behind me.
Someone outside, looking in.
I whirled, turning to face the window, to see who was there though I really didn’t want to see who was there. He was gone. It was gone. The window was blank and empty, nothing but coal-black sky beyond. I stood staring, frozen. My breath came fast, out of control. Like a panic attack. I’d never had a panic attack, I couldn’t tell. Slow down. Breathe slowly. Panic won’t help. I needed to close the curtains, but I couldn’t make myself walk to the window. Slow down. Breathe.
I turned back to the mirror. In it, the window reflected the living-room light. Was that what I had seen? But it was so like the white mask at my bedroom window. Wasn’t it? Or had I superimposed it, blurred by beer, rattled by talk of the Blackwood Strangler?
Still I couldn’t make myself go to the window and close the curtains. Instead, I walked to the light switches beside the front door and pressed the one for the porch.
Nothing.
No comforting glimmer from outside. I hadn’t forgotten to switch it on – the bulb must have blown while I was out. Or something else, said a little voice inside my head. Someone else. I pushed it away. The bulb had blown, that was all – I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had to put a new one in. And there was no way in hell I was going out there to change it tonight.
Still shaky, still pushing away other explanations, I checked the door was locked, and went to bed.
CHAPTER 47
On Friday morning, groggy after pints and the late-night scare, it took me longer than usual to open my eyes. Sunlight drifted in under bedroom curtains, promising, reassuring, and the face in the mirror was a blurry memory, seeming ever more like a trick of the light. Rubbing my eyes, I squinted at my phone. I could make out a Google alert, and a message from Barry. Shit. I still hadn’t replied to him. I waited until I had a first cup of coffee before opening it.
Marianne, I wish I hadn’t sent the message, sorry if I’ve annoyed you. If we could wipe the slate clean, that would be great. There was no pressure intended. In my circle of friends, it’s customary to reply to invitations, even when the answer is ‘no’. I guess that’s just the bubble I live in – we are all different.
Oh, for the love of God.
I started to type, to tell him I had friends who go weeks without replying to messages, but I stopped. That wasn’t going to help – knowing Barry, it would lead to a protracted discussion about manners and society in the social-media age. Instead I went for the age-old balm of apology.
Barry, I’m so sorry. Up to my eyes in work and both times I saw your msgs I was about to drive so couldn’t reply, then it slipped my mind. Sorry! Anyway, I’d love to meet at some stage but am just crazy busy with work right now. Can I get back in touch with you on it?
Moments later, a little tick showed me he’d seen the message. I sipped my coffee, waiting for a reply, but nothing popped through. I opened the Google Alert – articles had come up about Ray. A flicker of unease uncurled in my stomach as I clicked into the first one, a piece in TheDailyByte.ie.
Renowned US author Ray Sedgwick is back on our shores and will be signing copies of The Sophisticate in a number of bookshops around Dublin this week. The author, who wrote much of the book during his time in Ireland, returned to his native New Jersey ten years ago.
“I’m excited to be back on the old sod,” Sedgwick says. “There’s something about the Island of Saints and Scholars that inspires me like nowhere else. The warmest people, the best stout, the most beautiful scenery anywhere in the world.”
The next article was exactly the same, word for word – a press release sent out to all the papers. This one had a list of the bookshops he was due to visit though, including Seven-Storey Books in Dun Laoghaire that evening. Ray, after all this time, just thirty kilometres away. Fuck, actually just minutes away – I’d be in Dun Laoghaire library at the same time, at the Julia Land interview. Minutes away and far too close. Maybe I should stay home.
All day Friday it lurched around inside me. The easiest option would be to stay put. But why should I, just because Ray was in town? He’d be busy with his signing, nowhere near the library. What if I bumped into him before or after? Doesn’t matter, I thought, as I scrubbed the bathroom, cleaning the already spotless bath. It was a lifetime ago. He’d probably walk right past without recognising me. Could I park on the outskirts of town and avoid going anywhere near the bookshop, I wondered, watching the clock creep towards six, the empty evening stretching ahead. Fuck it. I wasn’t going to let Ray’s reappearance keep me hiding at home.
The café in Lexicon, Dun Laoghaire’s flagship library, was pulsing with jostling Julia Land fans, eager to get into the auditorium. Most of us arrived wrapped in huge padded jackets and woolly scarves, and these now unnecessary accoutrements made the space even tighter. A queue was forming and I joined it.
Feeling fidgety and wound up, I shuffled forward, wishing suddenly I hadn’t come on my own. Ray wasn’t going to show up here, I knew that, but too much time in my own head was proving unhelpful.
“Marianne?”
I turned and found myself staring into the face of someone I’d never met in my life. A balding man, a little shorter than me, was looking up at me expectantly.
“It is you, isn’t it?”
“Oh, hi,” I said, grasping desperately for clues, “Zorian, right?”
Confusion washed over the man’s face.
“Zorian? No, I’m Barry!”
Oh my God. Barry from Facebook. In the flesh. He was shorter than I’d realised, and had a lot less hair on top than his profile picture showed, but the glasses were the same and, now that he said it, of course it was Barry.
“Oh, hi, lovely to meet you in real life! What are you doing here?” I planted what I hoped was a welcoming smile on my face.
“I live nearby, so I come to a lot of the author talks. I was actually going to go to the Ray Sedgwick signing but I decided against it.” He sniffed. “I reckon he’s a bit up himself. I tweeted him to say I was coming and he didn’t reply. I hate that – why do celebrities even have Twitter if they’re not going to reply?”
I was pretty sure whoever was operating Ray’s Twitter account, it wasn’t Ray – unless he’d done a huge about-turn on his anti-technology stance in recent years.
“I didn’t know you went to things like this – did you come in from Carrickderg?” he asked.
It was odd to be standing here with this person I’d never met and to realise how much he knew about me – and how much I knew about him.
“Yep. So you live nearby?” I said, plucking for something to talk about.
“Yeah, an apartment down near the DART station. Small but perfectly formed.” He grinned as if making a joke I didn’t quite get. “Like me,” he explained.
“Ah, of course,” I nodded, then wondered if I should have agreed less readily. He really was unexpectedly short. Then again, it’s not like Facebook profile pictures tell you much about a person’s height.
“Actually – if you’re not rushing off after, why don’t we get a cup of tea and chat through some of our cases?”
I groaned inwardly, at the “our cases”, at the awkwardness of it, at the mean part of me that just wanted to escape.
“Sorry, that’s probably the last thing
you want to do, don’t mind me.” He raised his hands and bowed his head like a surrendering martyr.
“Of course we can go for a cup of tea – I have to get back to Carrickderg before the supermarket closes at nine, but that’ll give me half an hour maybe?”
His face lit up and I felt bad for how much I was resenting it – thirty minutes wouldn’t hurt.
As soon as the wonderfully distracting interview with Julia Land ended, a smiling Barry was at my elbow, escorting me out of the library. We made small talk as we walked along Queen’s Road, past the sea-facing cafés, all now firmly shut. Within minutes, we found ourselves opposite the DART station, out of tea options. Or not, as it turned out.
“This is my apartment actually,” Barry said, as we stopped outside an upmarket modern block across from the station. “Sure we’ll just go in here instead.”
I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no.
Inside his building, as the soft-close door shut behind us, the noise of traffic disappeared instantly. Deep carpets muffled the sound of our footsteps on the way to the lift, and the shiny doors and polished buttons spoke of good cleaning staff and high management fees. Barry’s apartment was on the third floor, and surprisingly spacious, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the train line and Dublin Bay beyond.
“Oh wow, the view must be amazing on a sunny day!” I said, looking out, while Barry walked through to what I assumed was a kitchen.
Moments later, there was a tap on my shoulder.
“Jesus!” I yelled, spinning around.
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to give you a fright.”
“Oh my God, I didn’t hear you at all!” I laughed, though my heart was still thumping. Poor Barry, I wasn’t turning out to be the most gracious guest.
“Sorry, the carpet absorbs all the sound. Do you want to give me your jacket – it’s warm in here – the insulation is almost too good at times.”
“Sure, thanks.” I shrugged off my jacket. “I have the opposite problem – no insulation at all, especially in the kitchen.”
“Ah, but your kitchen is an extension, isn’t it – they’re always a bit colder in those old cottages.”
I must have looked surprised, because he rushed to explain.
“You said it in the group once – that you were moving into the sitting room because it was too cold in the kitchen. Sorry, that makes it sound like I memorise details about you! I just have a weirdly good memory for details. I remember picturing you picking up your laptop and moving into the living room.” He looked at me, his eyes magnified behind his glasses and I tried again to imagine him as a tech entrepreneur but couldn’t quite get there.
“So, I don’t have long – will we chat through one of the cases before I have to head?” I said, pushing up the cuff of my jumper to check my imaginary watch.
“Of course. The kettle is on for tea. Take a seat,” he gestured to the black leather L-shaped couch, “and I’ll grab my notes.”
His “notes” consisted of four archive boxes filled with printouts and clippings – he placed them one by one on the sitting room floor, while I silently cursed myself for agreeing to it.
“That’s a lot of work you’ve put in!” I said, reaching over to open the first box.
He sat down right beside me and looked at me, owl-like from behind his glasses. I could smell onions on his breath.
“I believe in it, Marianne,” he said simply.
My eyebrows went up in an unspoken question.
“I believe that we’ll be the ones to find him – with enough time and effort, we can succeed where the police have failed, and the Blackwood Strangler will be stopped, one way or another.” This was delivered in full-on not-remotely-ironic superhero mode.
Part of me wanted to laugh, but mostly I wanted to move just a few inches away from the onion smell.
I knelt on the floor to pick a random file from a box marked “Sweden” and when I sat back I chose a spot a little further to his right, putting about a foot between us. I thought I’d done a good job of being discreet, but Barry looked at the newly created space and back at me, unblinking.
“Will we take a look at the Swedish case, since we’ve both read up on that?” I said.
That – the tangible plan – seemed to relax him. He pulled the Sweden box towards him and from inside took a folder of handwritten notes.
“So, the facts.” He began to read. “A woman murdered in her remote house outside Malmo, husband at a conference.” Barry glanced up at me. “His alibi checks out.”
I nodded and resisted the urge to ask him how he knew that – fewer interruptions meant I could get out of there sooner.
He carried on reading. “Wife phoned husband because someone had tidied their shed – laid out all the contents in a neat line – and she’d seen a set of footprints. They couldn’t make any sense of it on the call, but weren’t too worried. It seemed like a prank rather than something menacing, the husband said afterwards.”
A prank. A thread of unease wound its way through me. So many so-called pranks.
“Now, here’s the bit I researched most recently.” He looked up at me again.
In spite of myself, I was curious.
“The timeframe makes it possible that it was the Blackwood Strangler. The Swedish murder happened about four months after the last UK killing, and it was another twelve months before the next UK case, I think.” He flipped some pages forward. “Yes, the next one was over a year later.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but he held up a hand to stop me. I closed my mouth.
“I know, I know. Just because it could be him, doesn’t mean it was him. But look at it this way. There was no known serial killer in Sweden at that time. So the murder was either personal, or a burglary gone wrong. But burglars don’t tidy sheds, and the police found nothing in her personal life to suggest she had an affair or a jealous ex or anything like that. TV would have us believe there are serial killers up and down the country but, in real life, cases are few and far between. Thank goodness!”
He grinned at me. I shifted on the couch and smiled back.
“So if it was a serial killer, it had to be one operational in another location during that time.”
He waited for a response.
I murmured agreement and checked my imaginary watch again.
“And the thing is, the Blackwood Strangler had enough gaps between kills – he may have gone to other countries around Europe.”
An image of Hanne flitted suddenly into my mind and I shook it away.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes, sorry, just thinking about what you said. Do you think the police have ever considered the possibility he travelled to other countries? Did you find any articles suggesting they have?”
He shook his head, a wise and knowing owl, disappointed – or perhaps secretly pleased – with the ineptitude of the police.
“I don’t believe they have, Marianne. Which is why, crazy as it sounds, I think we’ve a good chance of cracking this case and nailing the guy.”
Nailing this guy. Oh, sweet divine Mother of God.
We spent another twenty minutes reading files and sharing theories, before I told him I really had to go. He insisted on walking me to my car, though I wondered what he’d actually do if we were confronted by some kind of danger – he was an unlikely bodyguard.
I slid into the Jeep as soon as we reached it, avoiding any awkward decisions about handshakes or hugs and, waving goodbye, I pulled onto the long, dark road home.
CHAPTER 48
I made it to the supermarket just before they stopped letting people in, though there were meagre pickings at the deli counter at almost nine o’clock on a Friday night.
“I’d go for the fish cakes if I were you,” came a voice from behind, and I turned to find Jamie grinning at me. “I tried to talk my da into getting them but no chance –if it’s not meat and potatoes, is it even a dinner?”
I laughed. “Okay, I’ll get
the fish cakes and you can live vicariously through me since you’re not allowed to get them yourself.”
I wondered – and perhaps he did too – if this was a cue to invite him over. It hung between us for a moment, before I turned to put in my order.
“What are you doing here this late anyway,” I asked as I waited. “Don’t you and Alan usually go to the Wooden Spoon for dinner in the afternoon?”
“We did, and then yer man insisted I go with him for a pint, and that turned into two, and sure you know yourself what he’s like once he starts going on about the politicians and the roads and the cost of everything. There’s no getting him out of the pub when he’s mid-flow. What has you here so late?”
“Oh God, long story. Right, I was at a book event and I bumped into a guy I know online – he’s in a Facebook group I’m in – and he recognised me. He ended up convincing me to go back to his apartment to look at his notes on some cases he’s researching.”
Jamie nodded slowly. “To look at his notes . . . hmm?”
“Oh Jesus, nothing like that!” My face reddened. “He’s sweet and means well, but kind of intense. Not my type.”
Again, the words hovered between us, said but not said.
“Is this your detective group?”
“Yeah, it sounds silly, I know. But we’ve found a whole heap of links between this serial killer in the UK and some other European cases, and –” I paused, searching for the right words. “It’s a rabbit hole. Once you start reading up on this stuff, it’s hard to stop. Barry is one of our more enthusiastic members – sometime takes it to a whole other level.”
“And did this guy Barry know you were going to be the book event?”
“No, not at all, it was just a coincidence. I think he goes to a lot of events. Speaking of which, Ray was doing a book signing in Dun Laoghaire tonight too. You don’t think he’ll come out this way, do you?”
