The Dead (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 1) (14 page)

‘That was Tillman’s idea too,’ she said.

‘Tillman’s down there?’

‘He was, up until a few minutes ago. I called to let him know what had happened. I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to him, though. He said we could go into all that later tonight. He’s invited us both over to his rooms at Trinity for ten o’clock.’

I snorted.

‘I don’t recall Tillman being the type to throw cocktail parties.’

‘Who said anything about cocktails? This is work. He has his profile ready for us. At least he will have, he assures me, by ten.’

‘That was quick work.’

‘He knows how little time we’ve got,’ she said. ‘Don’t knock it.’

I looked out of the side window and saw a small line of people waiting impatiently to use the phone. How long had I been talking to Fitzgerald? Too long for their liking.

‘One more thing and I’ll let you go,’ I said. ‘What was the quote this time?’

‘Have you a pen handy?’

‘Shoot.’

*****************

Professor Salvatore still had his head bent over the leatherbound book when I returned. I handed him the slip of paper.
Stumble not at the beauty of a woman and desire her not for pleasure.

‘Sirach again, same section,’ he replied promptly. ‘I was reading it whilst you were gone. It is fascinating material. You’ve given me a whole new line of research. Look.’

He slipped the book across to me and pointed.

I had rather dwell with a lion and a dragon than to keep house with a wicked woman . . . the wickedness of a woman changeth her face and darkeneth her countenance like sackcloth . . . of a woman came the beginning of the sin and through her we all die . . . give the water no passage, nor a wicked woman liberty to gad abroad . . .

Convenient excuses, every single one, for a score of murders. Why would he stop at five with such a limitless supply of inspiration?

‘This Sirach had a bit of a problem with women, didn’t he?’

‘Show me an Old Testament-age holy man who didn’t,’ Salvatore said. He hesitated a moment before continuing. ‘Listen, I was thinking. Are you hungry? I’m hungry. I thought perhaps . . .’

I should have seen this coming.

‘Professor Salvatore—’

‘Max.’

‘Max. Look. I appreciate your offer, really, but I can’t go out for dinner with you. It wouldn’t be right. It’s just . . . trust me, that’s all, it’s not such a great idea.’

‘You have a husband, I should’ve guessed. My mistake,’ he said. ‘You can’t blame a man for trying. I never could resist a pretty woman.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Me neither.’

Chapter Fifteen

Fitzgerald hadn’t yet arrived when I got to Tillman’s rooms at Trinity shortly before ten. Mort let me in without a word. I was out of breath from climbing the stairs and collapsed gratefully into an armchair in the tiny sitting room, glancing round as I did so.

‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ I said.

‘You think so?’

‘No, I was being polite is all.’

‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ he said. ‘It’ll do.’

Aside from this small room filled with other people’s furniture and lined with other people’s books, there was only a door to the left which led, presumably, into a bedroom, and another doorway which revealed a narrow, dingily lit kitchen like the galley on a ship.

It was, in short, the standard submonastic accommodation that colleges set aside for visiting academics or staff from out of town who just wanted somewhere to collapse for the night. The only thing festive about the place was an artificial Christmas tree about one foot high sitting in a pot on the desk, draped half-heartedly with tinsel and crowned with a paper star. Someone had obviously put it up to welcome their visitor; someone with a warped idea of welcoming, that is. Still, it was more effort than I’d managed in my own apartment.

‘I’ll go make coffee, yeah?’ said Tillman.

God bless coffee. It fills every silence.

Where the hell, I wondered, as the sound of a kettle boiling filled his cell, was Fitzgerald? I needed her to spare me from the awkwardness that was sparking between Tillman and me. Out there by the canal where Mary Lynch died was one thing; there was enough space for everyone out in the open. In here was different. There was no escape, and neither of us had the small talk to hand to put up a pretence of normality. But that seemed to be the nature of our relationship now. There was no point mourning. Even when I’d called him earlier to pass on what I’d gleaned from Professor Salvatore, he was distant, and he certainly wasn’t trying tonight as he came back with the coffee and sat hunched over it like a patient about to face the dentist’s chair.

‘Chill out, will you, Mort?’ I said eventually. ‘You’re making me feel almost as tense as you look.’

‘I didn’t think anything made you tense.’

‘You’d be surprised. I’m human too.’ He looked sceptical. ‘Human-ish, then.’

He smiled faintly at that, and seemed about to say something when there was the sound of footsteps outside the door and a sharp knocking, and he rose almost reluctantly to answer it.

A moment later, Fitzgerald swept in, trailing apologies, casting her coat aside on the table and lowering herself into the chair where Tillman had been sitting.

‘Busy?’ I said.

‘Busy doesn’t begin to describe it,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Is that coffee?’

‘I’ll go get you some,’ said Tillman and ducked into the kitchen. ‘You know,’ his voice floated back, ‘if it’d made things easier, I could’ve come round to Dublin Castle tonight instead.’

‘It wouldn’t,’ Fitzgerald said, ‘believe me. Draker would’ve only started asking more questions. You being there this morning freaked him out enough as it was. Once he realised you were nosing around down in the market this afternoon too, he collared me and wanted to know all about you.’ She reached up as Tillman emerged from the kitchen again and took the coffee.

‘Maybe he has me down as a suspect,’ Tillman said.

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ answered Fitzgerald. ‘You come to the city, first criminal profiler we’ve ever had about the place. Next thing, the bodies start piling up. Watch out or we’ll be asking you to account for your movements soon.’

‘That wouldn’t take long.’

‘I doubt Draker has the imagination to think of you as a suspect, anyway,’ Fitzgerald went on. ‘It’s just that he’s from the old school. What you do makes him . . .’ She searched for the right word.

‘Uncomfortable?’ suggested Tillman.

‘More than that. Nervous. Uptight. Edgy. All of this is too out of the ordinary for him. He doesn’t want any of the murderers he has to deal with getting ideas above their station. Husband beats his wife to death with a poker because she was humping the postman: that’s the right sort of murder as far as Draker’s concerned. All this stuff the last few days, he just sees it as a challenge to his authority. Then you come along and it’s the last straw.’

‘These are like the arguments we used to have in the States twenty years ago. It’s about time police stopped fighting every new development, stopped thinking of everything as a threat.’

‘You’ll get no argument from me, but you’ve your work cut out with Draker.’

‘Thankfully,’ said Tillman bluntly, ‘it isn’t my job to convince anyone. I’m simply here to offer my observations as asked and then it’s back in my box I go. I’ve a public lecture to deliver in three days’ time that I’ve barely started writing yet. You’re on your own.’

‘Like I told you this morning,’ said Fitzgerald, ‘I’m grateful for any help you can give.’

Tillman nodded, satisfied.

‘Then let’s get started, shall we?’

He walked to the desk under the window, opened a drawer and lifted out an unexpectedly large pile of pages.

‘What’s that – your autobiography?’ I said.

‘Very funny. I just printed off a few extra copies in case they were needed.’

He peeled off two of the printed profiles and handed them to us, stapled at the corner. The others he put down on the desk. He didn’t bother lifting one for himself.

‘I just want to start by stressing that these are only my preliminary observations,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t think I’m claiming anything definitive for them.’

‘Yeah, yeah, we know all that, Mort,’ I said.

‘I’m saying it all the same, so there’s no misunderstanding later about what I’m claiming. I’m saying it for me, not for you. These are pointers, nothing more. Are we clear?’

He was looking at Fitzgerald as he said it.

‘I understand,’ she told him. ‘Just give me what you’ve got.’

‘Well, that’s the problem,’ he said. ‘Normally, in a case like this, what I’d be looking for first are the characteristics of each particular crime scene. What I’d be looking for is some indication of what the offender’s done and why he’s done it. Why he’s done things one way rather than another, that is. But we already know why this offender has done what he’s done in the way that he’s done it – because that’s what your old friend Fagan did. He wants to be as much like the old Fagan as he can; he wants to hide behind that other Fagan.’

‘You’re saying it’s definitely not Fagan then?’ said Fitzgerald.

‘Whoa,’ said Tillman, ‘I already said there were no definites. I’m just pointing up the difficulty of trying to separate the traces of this killer from the traces of Fagan. Even if it is Fagan, he’s still operating according to a pre-existing template, so it’s hard to disentangle the now from the then – but I’ll come to that in a minute. I just want to make things clear so I can’t be accused of missing something later.’

Was that a dig at me?

Christ, it was about time he got over it.

‘So what did the scenes tell you?’ said Fitzgerald.

‘Start with the basics. One, he’s very familiar with those areas. He’s clearly confident of coming and going without being noticed too much. He can find his way around. He knows the locations of the CCTV cameras. Has to if he wants to get in and out without being seen.’

‘Proper little Green Beret,’ I said sarcastically.

‘That’s probably how he likes to think of it. Each time it’s like a surgical strike. And to do that, he’s going to have to know these places as well as he knows his own backyard. That means he’ll have spent a lot of time in the area, hanging round, driving round.’

‘Does he live locally?’ asked Fitzgerald.

‘Hard to tell, since the places where Mary Lynch and Mary’ – he checked his notes – ‘Dalton were found are relatively far apart. But I don’t think so. Not live there. He needs prostitutes, he uses prostitutes, they feed some crucial fantasy element in his life, but he wouldn’t want to be contaminated by being that close to them all the time. Plus he’s careful of his own security, so he’s not going to take the risk of being recognised by a neighbour as someone who’s using prostitutes. That would diminish his self-esteem, and this is a man for whom self esteem will be everything. How he appears to others matters greatly to him. His reputation. His standing in the world. He couldn’t bear that to be slighted. But as I say, he needs them, so he may have a job which allows him to come into contact with them and those areas of the city.’

‘Taxi driver?’

‘I don’t think we’re looking at a taxi driver, but it’s tempting. He strikes at night each time, he’s obviously more comfortable at night, he feels it’s his domain.’

‘Familiar with the area, maybe works there, looks for excuses to come and go from the area, to be in contact with prostitutes. Add in the religious angle and we could be talking about Matt Stephens. He even comes there to walk his dog. At least that’s what he says.’

‘I don’t want to hear the names of suspects,’ Tillman said.

‘Sorry,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Go on.’

‘You’re looking for a highly intelligent individual. Definitely someone on the same intellectual level as Fagan. He’s organised, knows all about police procedure, he’s confident of evading detection. He’s also operating right now on high stress levels, yet the scenes feel calm, ordered, there’s no panic there; he never loses control, even when he’s potentially exposed to view, as he was when he killed Mary Lynch. Afterwards he’s also finding it relatively easy to detach himself from what he’s done, to rationalise it. I’d say he’ll want to have photographs of the body as a memento, but outwardly he’ll not be behaving differently.’

‘Age?’

‘Mid thirties, forty-ish. Again it’s hard to tell because he’s copying an already established pattern in Ed Fagan; Fagan’s his screen, and that’s the age Fagan was when he began killing. But the fact that this guy is able to do that with ease, at least so far, suggests someone older.’

‘Socially invisible,’ read out Fitzgerald, glancing down at her copy of Tillman’s profile. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Put it this way. He’s not the type to start ranting and raving about prostitutes in the street. Seen from the outside, he’s no more remarkable than I am. He’s able to form relationships, he’s probably married or living with a partner, though she knows nothing about what he’s doing. He drives a good car, holds down a steady job, owns his own house.’

So much for my suspicions about Fagan’s son Jack.

‘And,’ said Tillman, ‘he’s killed before. That’s something on which I am prepared to be definite. This is no beginner. No one is this good first time round.’

‘You know what Draker will say to that,’ said Fitzgerald.

‘It doesn’t mean it’s Fagan,’ I said, annoyed. ‘We can already assume that whoever wrote those letters to Elliott probably did kill Sally Tyrrell. Why else would he have mentioned her? He probably killed Monica Lee too. Of course he’s not a beginner. Right, Tillman?’

‘I never believed the story about Fagan coming back,’ he conceded after a pause. ‘Serial killers don’t retire, for one thing. If it is Fagan, where’s he been the past five years?’

‘Out of the country?’ suggested Fitzgerald.

‘It’s possible,’ Tillman said, ‘but it doesn’t fit. There’s always degeneration, escalation. Every case I’ve ever worked, all the literature, it all says there should be escalation. The offender starts with a basic fantasy model and then it varies, develops, because the basic model doesn’t satisfy him any more. He’s been there, done that, brought home the bloodstained T-shirt. You can see that with Fagan. He starts out with a straight strangulation and a Biblical quote left in Julie Feeney’s bag. Next time, with Sylvia Judge, the attack is more intense, her clothing is torn, and the scrap of paper with the quote on it is left inside her clothing. Next, Tara Cox is stabbed and the quote is left inside her bra. He’s doing more things to the bodies each time, like he has to do worse each time to keep getting the same kick, the same return on his investment.’

‘But that’s what’s happening this time too,’ said Fitzgerald, confused.

‘That’s the point,’ said Tillman. ‘It’s too perfect. Too clinical, too unemotional, too businesslike. He’s just recreating what Fagan did down to the last detail. He even cut off part of Mary Dalton’s hair so that she conformed to the physical archetype preferred by Fagan.’

‘What?’ I said to Fitzgerald. ‘You never mentioned the hair.’

‘Didn’t I?’ she said. ‘Oh God, sorry. I thought I’d told you earlier on the phone. He cut it off with the knife after she died. There was blood matted in the ends of her hair. Then it looks like he took it with him. It wasn’t anywhere in the storehouse where she was found.’

‘A trophy.’

‘You could see it like that,’ Tillman went on, ‘but the cutting off of the hair can’t be that symbolic in itself, otherwise he’d have done it to the others as well.’

‘Some profilers would see it as a sign he knew this victim,’ I said.

‘Not this profiler,’ said Tillman. ‘This profiler thinks it simply fits in with the offender’s desire to be seen as Ed Fagan. There have now been three killings, with only minor variations on the Fagan theme, such as the writing on the body of Mary Lynch, the quotations being taken from other sources, but that only confirms to me that he is playing out some game of his own.’