The Dead (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 1) (20 page)

‘What’s a goad?’ I said.

‘A pointed stick,’ said Ambrose.

‘An ox, a pointed stick, the first and twelfth letters of the Hebrew alphabet. One and twelve make thirteen. Is that it? Unlucky for some? This freak’s certainly been unlucky for some.’ I could feel myself growing frustrated. ‘I wish I could work out what it means. Tillman reckons it’s probably something so simple we’ll never even consider it.’

‘Occam’s Razor,’ said Lynch. ‘He could be right.’

‘You mind explaining that?’

‘William of Occam was a philosopher who formulated the principle that the fewest possible assumptions should be made when explaining a thing. It’s called Occam’s Razor.’

‘Is that right? And what principle would this William formulate to explain why someone kills innocent women then leaves little messages hidden all over town like the Easter bunny?’

‘That I cannot answer,’ conceded Ambrose, ‘but what he would say to you, I’m sure, is that you are doing your best and it’s not your fault if you have failed so far to put all the pieces together. You shouldn’t beat yourself up about it, as I believe you Americans put it.’

‘Are you kidding?’ I said. ‘Beating myself up is about the only thing I’m any good at these days. Well, that and poker.’

‘You play poker?’

‘I play poker the way John Coltrane played the saxophone.’

‘That sounds very much like a challenge,’ said Ambrose, ‘and I hope you realise that I never could resist a challenge.’

‘Save your money and blushes, Lynch. You haven’t a prayer.’

‘That decides it. Where did I put those cards?’ Ambrose rose to his feet and started searching purposefully through the drawers. ‘There’s just one thing I need to ask you first.’

‘Fire away.’

‘Who exactly was this John Coltrane person?’

I think he was joking.

Fifth Day

Chapter Twenty-Two

Later, I learned that her name meant ‘belonging to God’; and she did now.

She was Nikolaevna Tsilevich – not quite the Nikola that the letter-writer had promised, but close enough to have made it possible to identify her before she was killed, if only we had known her real name, but Nikolaevna Tsilevich was known to those around her only as Sadie. She came from Novosibirsk in Siberia, Russia’s third largest city – an empty wasteland, so the travel guides said, of grey Stalinist apartment blocks and filthy factories, where the river was so toxic that it couldn’t freeze in winter. There were coalfields to the east and vast mineral deposits to the west – and nothing in the middle for a nineteen-year-old girl like her.

She’d come to Dublin on a short-hop flight from London about six months ago and disappeared into the city like a diver breaking the water, never to emerge back into the air. She was equally unknown to Immigration and Vice. One more invisible woman. It was a familiar story, and one in which Niall Boland became something of an expert in the coming days. The cops over in Vice explained to him how it worked. Employment agencies throughout Eastern Europe advertised jobs in Dublin for nannies, chambermaids, waitresses, then when the girls got here, lured by the promise of money beyond what they could ever hope to earn back home, they were coaxed, cajoled, intimidated, whatever, into prostitution instead.

They were told that the money which had brought them to Dublin was only a loan and they would now have to pay it back. And what other way was there? Anything they made on top, meanwhile, they got to keep, and for many that did represent a considerable sum.

As I looked through the wardrobe in Nikolaevna’s Temple Bar apartment in the city centre about twelve hours after she’d been killed, and only half an hour or so after her body had finally been taken away by the city pathologist, I found it filled with expensive labels.

‘She was obviously doing well,’ I said, flicking through the hangers.

‘There was about ten thousand a month going into her account,’ Fitzgerald said.

She was standing by the window, looking out. A small crowd had gathered below at the news of another murder.

Why does a crowd always gather? What is it that they want to see? The dead borne out on stretchers in a public display?

‘You’ve been through her bank records already?’

‘No point hanging around,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘She was sending about two thousand home each month, to her mother and father, spending the rest. She had a kid, a daughter, her parents were looking after her.’

I looked over at the bed where the body of the Russian prostitute had been found by the cleaner when she arrived that morning. I could still see the indentation in the sheet where she’d lain.

I thought about her parents in the cold east, a small child who’d never see her mother, about the friends she’d known who’d watched her flying off to the west, envying her no doubt, entranced by the glamour of departure, the lure of possibilities; and what they’d all think now.

Nikolaevna had been naked when she was found, face down, hands tied behind her back, one foot trailing on the ground, half on, half off the bed. Her neck was crisscrossed with post-mortem slash marks, and it looked as though she’d been raped, though whether this was post-mortem too would have to await the autopsy report from Ambrose Lynch.

And there was the quote we’d all been expecting.
He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone
.

Which was exactly what the killer had done.

The back of Nikola’s head had been all but obliterated by the force of a rock striking down, and the rock itself had been left on the pillow, on top of the scrap of paper with the typewritten message, weighing it down.

That, presumably, was his idea of a joke.

The differences between this murder and the previous three, not to mention between this and the murders carried out by Fagan, were so obvious I hardly needed to list them in my head. In fact, apart from the quotation everything was different. The rape was different – Fagan had never raped any of his victims, nor had this latest killer so far. The use of restraints was different – that reminded me again of Monica Lee, the prostitute dumped in the mountains three years ago. There was the rock too. I wondered if it would turn out on analysis to be the same type of rock whose traces were found on Monica’s body, and I knew in my heart that it would. There was no strangulation.

Tsilevich was hardly a name connected to the investigation either, and there was no buried reference in where or how she died to Fagan’s killing of Liana Cassidy. He’d stopped pretending now. His self was coming through, as Tillman had said it would. And he was growing bolder, more assured. He had even stayed a while afterwards to take a shower. It made sense; Lynch said he’d have been splashed with blood. There was something callous about that too. First you kill a woman, then clean yourself up in her own shower. He wasn’t taking precautions against leaving traces of his hair in the plughole, that was for sure. Because he didn’t expect ever to be caught – or because he didn’t care if he was caught?

I’d have liked to ask Tillman about that, for all I hadn’t been impressed with his profile; but Tillman had been curt with me when I phoned earlier to tell him about the latest killing. No, he didn’t want to come down to the scene. No, he didn’t want to look at photographs. And no, he didn’t want the opportunity to review the evidence with a view perhaps to fine-tuning his initial findings. He’d agreed to provide a preliminary profile, that was all; his work was over. Now he was working on his lecture, so would I kindly leave him alone?

That Nikolaevna had been killed indoors wouldn’t hurt the investigation, at any rate. No need to worry what the weather had done to the physical evidence, no worrying who had trampled through the scene or what was here that had nothing to do with the victim or the killer. This was her apartment. What was here was only what should have been here. Everything was evidence. Inch by inch the technical bureau would find it.

‘What did the neighbours hear?’ I said, shutting the wardrobe door and turning round, avoiding the sight of the bed, the blood on the walls.

‘Dalton and Lawlor are still doing the door-to-doors,’ Fitzgerald explained. ‘There are about twenty other residents in this block, only half of whom claim to have been in last night when the killing happened. So far, most swear they saw and heard nothing. Goes without saying.’

‘You said most.’

‘Lawlor got something interesting a couple of doors down. I’ll tell you about it later.’

‘Fair enough. Anyone else in the vicinity last night?’

‘There’s no doorman, you can see it’s not that kind of place, but the caretaker is Joe Keogh,’ she confirmed. ‘He’s told us what he knows, which isn’t much. He seems on the level. He ran up when the cleaner started screaming. Same old story. He didn’t see anyone he didn’t expect to see. Though who knows, maybe it was someone who lives here or who comes here often, someone familiar who wouldn’t be noticed.’

I followed her out of the bedroom, glad to leave it, into a small sitting room where the fingerprint team were still dusting for prints along all the surfaces: windows, doors, handles, tables, chairs, cups.

Nothing would be overlooked.

‘You were missed yesterday,’ she said to me as we stood together in the silence, watching them work.

‘In the mountains?’ I said carefully.

This morning was the first time I’d seen her since sending the message about Fagan, and I still felt awkward.

‘The mountains, the office.’ She caught my eye. Held it. ‘You know, if this is all too much for you—’

‘No!’

‘If it brings back too many memories.’

What was she trying to say?

‘It’s not that,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s just . . . I needed to get away yesterday,’ I explained. ‘It was all getting too much. I’m back now.’ I tried out a smile, though it didn’t seem convincing even to me. ‘Besides, who was there to miss me? Dalton? Draker?’

‘There was me,’ she said. ‘I missed you.’

As if I didn’t feel bad enough already.

‘At least we know now it isn’t Fagan we’re looking for,’ she went on before I could think of what to say to cover my discomfort. ‘That’s something, though Draker, can you believe it, is still refusing to make it official until we have a definite ID on the body.’

‘He would,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t like admitting that he’s wrong.’ Fitzgerald shrugged.

‘Maybe he’s right to be cautious. The simplest way to clear it up would be for Mullen to offer a DNA sample so that we can make a match to the father, but he’s refusing. He’s even got himself a lawyer to hide behind. You’ll never guess who.’

‘Not Conor Buckley?’

‘The very same.’

Just what we needed. More ghosts.

‘Why does Mullen need a lawyer? He’s not officially a suspect.’

‘He says he doesn’t trust the police. He says they stitched his father up and he’s not going to let them stitch him up too.’

‘Has something to hide, more like.’

‘Everyone has something to hide,’ said Fitzgerald.

And there was my paranoia hammering again.

Change the subject.

‘So what next?’

‘What’s next is we get back to work,’ she said. ‘We’ve got more than enough to be getting on with. I heard what Fisher brought over with him. If Mullen’s picture is recognised by any of the women who were attacked in London, we’re going to have to put his alibi for Mary Lynch’s murder under the microscope again. If Mullen is involved, that would certainly explain how the killer got hold of a knife belonging to Fagan.’

‘It definitely wasn’t the same one used to kill Tara Cox then?’

She shook her head. ‘I sent Healy down to check out the old evidence stores, like you suggested. It didn’t come from there. He’s making enquiries now to see what happened to all Fagan’s belongings after they were auctioned off; but it’s a lifetime’s work. Still, it was good thinking, Saxon. Good thinking too last night about the other scenes.’

‘Thank Fisher for that, not me. Has anything turned up there yet?’

‘Nothing so far, but searches, as we often like to say to fob off the press, are continuing. Till then, Nikolaevna is what matters. Whatever the killer is playing at, this apartment is what matters.’

‘How did he get in?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ said Fitzgerald, ‘there was no sign of a break-in.’

‘So she knew him, let him in.’

‘Looks like it,’ she said. ‘There were two glasses of wine on the kitchen table, half drunk. Two glasses suggests company.’

‘How did she find her clients?’

‘How did they find her, you mean. Ads mainly. Here.’

She passed me a copy of a glossy magazine inside an evidence bag.
Dublin Today
. A listings magazine. I’d seen it sitting around on the shop shelves, even remembered some controversy in the papers about the ads it carried at the back. Ads for what, in that euphemistic way the vice trade had, were always termed massage parlours and escort agencies.

Women for rent.

Nikolaevna’s – Sadie’s – ad was near the back.
Russian Lolita Wants To Play
, with a cellphone number to call. There was a picture but it wasn’t her. I recognised a teenage actress from one of the daytime American soaps that were shown over here on cable. Prostitutes often did that. Men saw the ad and called up, expecting one thing, then when the girl appeared, she looked nothing like the shot. What were they going to do – complain to the trading standards office?

‘Is that her personal number?’ I said.

‘Apparently. Her services were advertised under the same number in some of the local adult magazines too. Boland’s going through each call to see what comes up, but the killer won’t be stupid enough to get caught through his home phone records when he could pick up a cellphone any day of the week and never be traced.’

‘You never know,’ I said. ‘You might get lucky.’

‘Other people get lucky. Me, I just get a headache. Excuse me.’ Her cellphone was ringing. ‘Boland, what it is?’

Her expression didn’t change as she listened to him.

‘Bring him in. I’ll be right there.’

‘Developments?’ I said as she hung up.

‘I had Boland go through Nikolavaena’s phone records,’ she replied. ‘The same number appears more than a hundred times in the past two months. Some days as many as six calls. Want to guess who it is?’

‘Someone I know?’

‘You know him alright.’

Though perhaps not half so well as I’d once thought.