Last Kiss (26 page)

‘What else can you tell us?’ Kate probed.

Again Giordano paused. Then, lowering his voice almost to a whisper, he said, ‘The gentleman was experienced and experimental sexually, but apart from the possessive nature of the relationship, he said he felt he was being groomed.’

‘Be specific.’ Adam’s tone was harsh.

‘At first the man felt it was mutual exploration, but soon realised the woman sought more. Once she had identified his sexual needs and potential fetishes, she became dominant, compelling him to be more adventurous.’

‘How adventurous?’ Kate asked, half guessing the answer.

‘Apart from the various acts of bondage, she liked using a blade.’

‘Anything else?’ Adam leaned forward.

‘There is one thing, Detective, but I cannot be certain of it.’

‘Tell us anyhow.’

‘I think the woman may have been foreign. By that I mean she wasn’t Italian.’

‘What makes you believe that?’ Kate glanced at the tourists firing coins into the fountain.

‘The relationship with the gentleman began within a couple of weeks of Michele Pinzini’s death. It lasted about a month, before the attack, at the end of the summer.’

‘You’re saying you think she was in Italy for the summer?’ Adam sounded unconvinced.

‘It wasn’t only the timing of the affairs that brought me to that conclusion. If the woman had been Italian, living in Rome or any other part of Italy, I have no doubt the gentleman would have had her killed.’

‘What makes you so sure he didn’t?’ Kate asked.

‘When he spoke, he referred to her in the present tense, not in the past.’

After Giordano had left, Adam and Kate had their first proper conversation since Adam had received the text from Lynch the previous night.

‘Well, Kate, what do you think?’

‘He seemed like a man who was passionate about his work. I guess his kind never retires.’

‘He wasn’t prepared to reveal his source.’

‘It doesn’t matter if his informant is connected to the Mafia, politics or both, but if it’s true, we can draw some conclusions from it.’

‘Such as?’

‘If you combine what Andrea’s mystery man said about being groomed, and what we know about Rick Shevlin’s behaviour, it’s likely she does groom her men, the pupil turning into the teacher.’

‘I still don’t get why you believe Rick Shevlin was being groomed.’

‘His behaviour with the escort had inconsistencies. He was playing with both sides of the coin, wanting to receive pain and give it. People generally group sadism and masochism together as sado-masochism, but there’s usually a preference one way or the other. It’s seldom both. He backed off when Annabel wasn’t going with the flow. She may be experienced, but she wouldn’t have been able to distract him if he was used to a particular path. These things escalate over time. The more you explore a fetish, the higher the bar becomes.’

‘So what is our killer looking for?’

‘Control is certainly part of it, but she’s also seeking affection in the only way she knows how. The idea that the killer spent the summer here is interesting. Assuming she was in Paris in the autumn of 2005, she could have stayed on in Europe then or decided to travel to Rome in the summer of 2006.’

‘If she’s one of the females on the list we got from Jacques, she would have set aside time for her stay in Paris. Finishing her studies early made her a free agent.’

‘She would also have been younger. Her circumstances will have changed since then. For all we know, she might even be married. The lipstick on Pinzini’s images undoubtedly links the killing, but with Rick and Pierre, it’s probable; they simply opened the door and let her in. Unlike Andrea’s mystery man, I doubt either of them became suspicious of her. They knew her prior to their deaths, and trusted her enough to let their guard down. They may still have desired her even though, in her eyes, they had fallen out of favour.’

‘So?’

‘If she’s capable of fooling her lovers into thinking she still cares, even after she’s made the decision to kill them, she’s capable of fooling others, including those closest to her. So, yes, marriage is a possibility.’

‘This brings us back, Kate, to her motivation, and what she actually wants.’

‘We’re looking at someone who has learned the art of pleasing men, whatever their sexual desires may be, but for her, emotions and sexual behaviour are inextricably linked. If she was abused as a child, difficult as it is to fathom, she may have perceived a level of affection from the abuse. When a child is starved of love, they will do everything in their power to find it, wittingly or unwittingly. It’s part of the human psyche, going in tandem with wanting to be needed by others, and is for many an affirmation of their individual worth.’

‘But these relationships are doomed to failure, right? She can never hold down a proper one, can she?’

‘She can, if she’s able to detach herself from her demons, live parallel lives. I can’t shake the feeling that we’re still missing a huge part of this jigsaw, but there is one other thing we’ve learned from Andrea.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The killing of Pinzini happened within months of Pierre Laurent’s murder. Potentially, she then formed another relationship after only weeks, perhaps even days. As I said in my report, these crimes happen because of a stressor, the result of a rise in anxiety levels. However, once she is in that mind-set, she has the ability to move on to the next victim quickly.
Her desires, despite the gap in time of the Shevlin murder, are escalating. With each new target, she will want more.’

He leaned back in his chair and let out a sigh.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘I doubt I’ll be involved with this case when we’re back in Dublin.’

‘You’re talking about that newspaper report.’

‘The force always protects itself, Kate. The chief might have given me a chance with this one, but now the heat is on, my involvement will be history. He won’t risk leaving me in a key position. He’ll want to sever the reason for the journalist’s attention at source. It’s the way we do things. Remove, keep quiet, move on, and protect the force at all costs.’

When his mobile rang, he answered it. ‘Hi, Mark … I see … Thanks for letting me know.’

‘What is it?’

‘Mark has done a check on Sandra Ryan’s details. Like her college application, her address and phone numbers are false.’

‘So it’s another dead end.’

‘He’s checking the others on the list with Girardot, but they’re all French nationals. I don’t have a good feeling about this. Whoever Sandra is, she’s part of it, she or one of her friends.’

‘You didn’t tell Mark about the lipstick matching?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I guess there’s a part of me that still isn’t thinking right today.’

She was silent, the cascading waters louder somehow, until finally she said, ‘Me neither.’

‘Kate …’

‘Look, let’s drop it for now.’

‘If that’s the way you want it.’

‘It’s not a question of what I want. It’s a question of too much happening for it to be the right time.’ She hadn’t wanted to sound harsh, but they weren’t carefree people with uncomplicated lives.

‘There was a time, Kate, I would have agreed with you, but not now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s the excuse I used for not contacting my son. It was never the right time.’

She didn’t answer him, but he had sown a nagging doubt in her mind. Perhaps he was right.

I’VE NO IDEA how long I’ve been asleep, but it’s dark in the studio when I wake.

Getting up from the sofa bed, I pull the tartan picnic blanket off me. I’m nervous walking over to the windows to look outside. At first, I think I see another shadow, but it’s only a trick of the light. The gleam of the moon is bright, but it disappears as the trees sway back and forth. I close the curtains, before reaching down to check the radiator. The heating must be switched off. What time is it? I remember calling Alice at some point. Switching on the studio lights, I search for my mobile phone, but I can’t see it anywhere.

I go to the door, listening for sounds coming from outside.
If Edgar was home, I would hear him shuffling about, but the house is silent. I turn the studio lights off again, listening a second time. Still nothing. Unlocking the door, I wonder if she has been in the house again. Maybe I could smell her perfume, or find something moved, but everything is as it should be. Even in the dark, I’m quite sure of it.

The clock in the hallway says eleven p.m. Why didn’t Alice call? Perhaps she did, and I didn’t hear her while I was asleep. I start touching things, the pictures on the wall, the banisters as I walk up the stairs. The carpet is soft under my bare feet. I stop midway, turning back, looking out to the drive. I can’t see Edgar’s car. I begin walking again, trailing my hand up the wall, connecting with the familiar, not knowing why, other than the nagging sense that I could be in terrible danger.

On the landing, a shiver passes over me, and I realise there’s a cold breeze coming from our bedroom door. I have goose-bumps on my legs and arms. I hear something – are the footsteps coming from outside? At the bedroom door, I stop and listen, leaning my hands and ear against it. Hearing nothing, I turn the handle, pushing the door halfway open, peering around the room. The curtains on the windows are flapping, the sash window open. For a split second I wonder if I’m in her house at Greystones. It feels like a replica of what went before. I swallow hard, still holding the door handle, half afraid to walk in. The house creaks, jolting me. I sense she has been here, shadowing me again, trying to push me to the edge. I can’t let her do that. I won’t let her.

I walk quickly across the room, crashing the window down, pulling the catch into the locked position, my hands trembling
uncontrollably. She opened the window, just as I opened the window in her house. She knows I was there. Then, I think about the time – eleven o’clock: the heating shouldn’t have clicked off until midnight. Who switched it off? What if she’s still here? It feels as if I’m not alone, and even though I’m half afraid to look behind me, and my legs are like jelly, I turn, and in the half-light of the moon, attempting to take in every part of the room, every last detail, my eyes move too quickly over the bed, but then they dart back. Her silk dressing gown is lying on my side, laid out like a person. Looking at the bedside locker, I see a tube of lipstick and pick it up without thinking, checking the shade. Carmine. Why is she doing this? But I already know the answer. She’s telling me she knows what I’ve been up to, that she’s getting closer.

I look back to the bed again, unsure what to do next. A card sticks out from under the dressing gown. It is face down, with an intricate gold fleur-de-lis pattern on the back. I pick it up, turning it quickly, needing to know what’s on the other side. A face stares back at me. At first, I can’t tell if it’s an animal or a man. There are roman numerals, XV, at the top. The card is blurring as I read the two words at the bottom and fall to the floor. The words ‘The Devil’ swirl in my head as darkness takes over.

ADAM’S INVOLVEMENT IN the investigation had been curtailed practically the moment they landed at Dublin airport. A phone call from Chief Superintendent Gary Egan as they went through Passport Control reassigned him to desk duties, wading through a backlog of traffic fines.

Kate hadn’t heard from him for a couple of days and, despite the information gained while in Paris and Rome, Mark Lynch’s maverick efforts to date, the nine hundred statements taken, including re-interviewing Shevlin’s ex-girlfriends and known escort companions, hours spent searching CCTV footage and the close co-operation across Europol, the investigation was no nearer to finding the killer. The sketch from Simon Reynolds,
the owner of the Grey Door club, hadn’t brought in any fresh leads, and Kate had wondered about its accuracy. Maybe Rick Shevlin’s lady friend, like the mystery woman in Rome, had disguised herself. Either that, or Reynolds had been less specific than he might have been. Whatever the reason, the only new breakthrough came from the second round of interviews with the hotel staff and a missing room key. The security personnel had assumed the police had taken it as evidence, and vice versa, which reflected badly on Lynch. It felt like the investigation had reached another dead zone.

With Charlie asleep in bed, Kate switched on the nine o’clock evening news, filled with talk of green shoots after Ireland’s six years of recession, the Pope and his new Twitter account, and the war in Syria. She flicked it off, and started reading her notes on the Shevlin case again. When the phone rang, she saw before she answered that it was Adam.

‘What’s up?’ she asked.

‘I’ve found something.’

‘I thought you weren’t on the case?’

‘I’m not, at least not officially.’

‘Adam …’

‘Before you start giving me a lecture on following orders, listen to what I have to say.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘Do you remember the fake details given by Sandra Ryan on her application to that Paris college?’