The Dead (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 1) (29 page)

‘Tony!’

The last cry made me turn, and there was Jackie at the top of the stairs, hand over her mouth, shaking.

Tony.

Of course. I remembered now where I’d seen him, hopping from foot to foot in his baggy pants, waiting for Jackie at her usual pitch the night I’d gone out in the Jeep to find her.

It was the end of another malignant day.

And tomorrow didn’t look like being much better.

Seventh Day

Chapter Thirty-Five

‘But he is going to be all right?’ said Fisher.

‘There’s nothing wrong with him,’ I said. ‘He only got hit in the shoulder – though to listen to him whining, you’d have thought he was being tortured by the Vietcong.’

‘What about the officer who shot him?’

‘Baily,’ said Fitzgerald, ‘will be shunted off into official purgatory for a while to await the findings of an enquiry.’

‘A bit harsh,’ I said, ‘considering his only mistake was not finishing the job properly.’

‘You don’t mean that,’ she said, but at that moment I almost did

Probably nothing would have happened at Jackie’s house if Tony hadn’t turned up, the night was running out as it was; but we’d never know now. It could have been over. Instead . . .

‘Look, forget about Tony,’ I said gruffly. ‘What about breakfast? Have you decided what you want yet?’

It was just after eight and we were sitting in the same café where I’d been that first day when Nick Elliott walked in and the world went dark. Same table, same view out the window, same rain. Margaret had welcomed me back like she hadn’t seen me in years instead of days.

It was good to realise some people would miss me if I was gone; I was strangely touched. Or maybe she was just glad I had company for a change. Company meant extra orders.

Apart from us, there were no other customers.

‘I’m not hungry,’ Fisher said, laying down the menu which he’d been peering at without taking in the words for the last ten minutes. He looked beat. ‘I’ll make do with a coffee.’

‘You don’t make do with a coffee here,’ I told him. ‘You have to eat something or they take out a professional hit on you. The owner’s Italian. It’s an honour code thing.’

‘In that case,’ he conceded with a sigh, ‘I’d better have the scrambled eggs.’

‘Fitzgerald?’

‘My usual.’

Margaret, who’d been waiting patiently for our order, stepped over to the table, pad and pencil at the ready.

‘Scrambled eggs with extra toast for Fatty Arbuckle there,’ I told her, ‘and we’ll just have a couple of coffees. Black.’

‘Coming right up.’

‘But you said – oh, never mind,’ said Fisher. ‘I’m too tired to resist. I hardly got a minute’s sleep last night. I was tied up at Trinity till all hours, then when I eventually got back to my hotel my mobile hardly stopped ringing with reporters looking for information on Tillman – where he’d got to, whether it was true that he was a suspect. Your department’s leakier than the Titanic.’

‘You should have switched it off,’ said Fitzgerald.

‘I couldn’t in case either you or my wife was trying to contact me. I don’t even know where the vultures got my number from. They wouldn’t take no for an answer.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘I just fob them off with the usual lie about following a definite line of enquiry.’

Lie was right. The police were as bemused as the press about what had become of Mort Tillman. He certainly hadn’t turned up at the airports or ferry docks trying to flee the country, and there hadn’t been a single sighting of him. From what they could reconstruct of his movements, Boland and I were among the last people to see him when we turned up yesterday lunchtime to ask about his visit to the courier’s office the night before. He’d been seen returning to his rooms half an hour later by two witnesses in the college, and then nothing more.

Now, twenty hours later, here we sat, none the wiser, waiting for some sign, some portent that would make the shattered fragments of the last six days repair themselves into the semblance of a shape – though that was looking even less likely to appear than Fisher’s breakfast.

In the end, he got tired of waiting for it to arrive and said he was going to the men’s room.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said once we were alone.

Fitzgerald had been frowning ever since we came in and now she lifted her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose.

‘Is it your head? I’ve tablets somewhere if you want one.’

‘My head’s fine,’ she said. ‘Or no worse than it’s been all week, at any rate. I still can’t believe it about Tillman, that’s all. Why? That’s what I don’t get. Why would he get involved in something like this? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘You heard what Fisher had to say. That he’s seeking revenge on me for ruining his life over the White Monk case.’

‘You don’t exactly sound convinced.’             

I didn’t answer her directly.

‘It adds up, I can’t deny that,’ I said. ‘Say something was building inside him, some kind of breakdown. For the first time in his life he loses his self-control and he’s suspended with nowhere to turn, no family, no partner, old friends and colleagues all keeping their distance. It’s one stressor after another. Textbook stuff. Next thing is, he gets invited to Dublin and the gears start clicking and slotting together in his head. He knows I’m here, he knows about Fagan.’

Or he thought he did.

‘And where does that leave all our theories about Mullen?’

‘Mullen attacked Jackie that night at the canal, I’m sure of it,’ I said, ‘and he attacked those prostitutes in London. And the more I go over it in my head, the more convinced I am that he was part of what Fagan did as well. I don’t know how, we might never get to the root of it, but they were in it together. But maybe he didn’t have anything to do with this. Maybe it only looks like he did because Tillman was playing games with all the bits and pieces of Mullen’s past too, just like he was with ours, and Fagan’s son being back in town was only a coincidence.’

‘You once told me there was no such thing as coincidence.’

‘You should know better by now than to listen to anything I say,’ I reminded her with a smile, and I would’ve said more, only at that moment my cellphone began to ring from deep inside my jacket and I had to fumble through my pockets to find it.

I didn’t recognise the number but took the call anyway. I could always cut the connection if it wasn’t important.

‘Yeah?’ I said.

‘That’s no way to answer the telephone,’ a voice said back. ‘Didn’t they teach you manners in the FBI?’

I remembered how Elliott had described the call from the killer he’d received at the start of the week. Obviously it was some sort of electronic device attached to the phone. The voice sounded slowed down and robotic, like a tape in a Walkman when the batteries were low.

I mouthed to Fitzgerald:
It’s him
.

Quickly, she got up and stretched across the table and put her ear as close to the phone as she could.

‘It’s hard to be polite,’ I said once she was in place, ‘when I don’t know who I’m speaking to.’

‘But that’s exactly the way I like it,’ the voice said with a short stab of a laugh. ‘As Scripture says:
Without a parable spake he not unto them, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables
. The Gospel of St Matthew, Chapter Thirteen, if memory serves me right.’

‘I thought we’d given up all this religious play-acting.’

‘I know, I know, but I’ve sort of gotten attached to it. I find it comforting. And isn’t consolation one of the great benefits of religion? Besides, you know very well who I am.’

‘Is that you, Tillman?’ I said. ‘Because if it is, just tell me what you want. Do you want me to say I’m sorry? Do you want me to admit I was wrong about you? Is that what you want?’

‘It’s way too late for apologies. I simply called for a friendly chat. The seventh day is here. Time we talked freely.’

‘We can talk as freely as you like. How about it? Why don’t we meet somewhere right now?’

That laugh again.

One step at a time, Saxon,’ the voice said. ‘There’s no hurry. No rush. I’ve looked forward for so long to being able to talk with you without pretence. I think we understand one another. I certainly have a great deal of respect for you.’

‘You don’t say.’

That’s why I’m disappointed in you. The others – well, I expected nothing from them. Draker. Dalton. Obedient little Sergeant Boland. Not forgetting Chief Superintendent Fitzgerald. No doubt Grace has her attractions for you as a playmate, but as an investigator she leaves a lot to be desired, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Seems to me like I’m not saying anything,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s you doing all the talking.’

‘See what I mean? That’s the spirit. That’s why I had such high hopes of you. Now I’m beginning to wonder if I was wrong. What do you say? Shall I give you another chance?’

‘That depends on what you mean by another chance.’

‘I mean Jackie,’ the voice said. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not talking about your trashy friend from the canal. I actually find it insulting that you thought I could be snared so easily. Still, I promised you a Jackie and I always keep my promises. Those are the rules of the game. Are you ready to play your part?’

‘Listen,’ I said, my voice rising, ‘don’t even start that bullshit with me. There is no game, do you hear me?’ There was silence. ‘Are you listening, damn it?’

‘You know, Saxon,’ the voice returned, ‘you should really try and control that temper of yours. It is most unladylike. And how are you going to get anywhere if you fly off the handle at every setback?’

‘According to you, we’re not getting anywhere as it is.’

‘That’s where I come in. Think of it as a helping hand from an old friend. To start, I have directions to something I think you’ll find interesting. Do you have a pen and paper?’

‘I’ll remember them.’

‘Are you sure? They are rather complicated and I know how useless women are at finding their way around. Remember that winter we were travelling in Vermont and you nearly took us over the border into Canada? You didn’t put that in your book, did you?’

My God, it
was
him.

‘I swear, Tillman, I’m going to kill you.’

‘You’ll have to find me first. Tell you what. Do you know the phone booth at the corner of Exchequer Street?’

‘Of course I know it.’

‘Of course you do, because that’s where your favourite café is. The one you’re in right now. The one I watched you going into with Grace and Fisher earlier. Quite a cosy little party you have there. All for one and one for all. Like the three musketeers. Well, that’s where I am right now. I’m going to leave something for—’

I didn’t wait for him to finish. I dropped the phone and ran for the door. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fisher emerging from the men’s room, heard him shout, but I couldn’t wait.

I pulled the door open and ran out, nearly colliding with some old man who was reaching out a hand to the handle to come in. I yelled at him to get out of the way and went on running. There were steps behind me too, but I didn’t look back or slow down until I came to the end of the road and turned out of Exchequer Street.

The phone booth was less than twenty feet away.

He was gone. Of course he was gone. That was the point. That was the fun of it for him. I glanced left and right a few times, but the street was empty. My chest felt like it would burst.

‘He was here all the time,’ I gasped to Fitzgerald as she caught up with me. ‘He was calling from that booth.’

Tillman had even replaced the phone neatly back on its cradle before leaving, I noticed. There was no rush, like he said. No hurry. And there, taped to the inside of the glass, was a scrap of paper torn from some tourist map of the city, with a scrawled X marking the spot in pencil.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Fitzgerald drove fast, cursing the traffic, fingers drumming on the wheel, her palm striking the edge hard every time a light was against her.

Third time it happened, she just nosed through and went on anyway, ignoring the blare of horns that followed.

‘Take a left here,’ I said. ‘I know a short cut.’

‘My own town and I’m taking directions from a foreigner,’ she said wryly as she knocked down the indicator to signal left.

‘Now a right.’

‘I know the way you mean.’

As we drove, she called through on the radio to Dublin Castle to tell them what had happened and to send a team out to the place Tillman had marked on his map, and I explained to her about the incident he had reminded me of in his call. It was during the White Monk investigation. I’d been sent up to a nowhere, nothing kind of place in the north of Vermont, where Paul Nado’s mother had retired. The agent in charge of the case had a hunch that the woman knew where Nado was; he was on the run by this stage, just like Tillman now. History repeating itself.

As it happened, he was right; she did know, though it wasn’t thanks to me that she was caught out. That came much later.

I’d invited Tillman along for the ride, thinking he might be some help, and somewhere along the way, during a snowstorm, whilst Tillman slept in the passenger seat beside me, I’d lost my way completely and ended up just about halfway to Montreal. Tillman hardly stopped laughing for the whole two days we were up there, and I’d made him swear he’d never tell anyone what I’d done. I’d never have lived it down. Agents were always quick to latch on to mistakes like that with which to taunt one another.

‘Are you sure he never did tell anyone?’ said Fitzgerald.

‘Not to my knowledge,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m sure it was him on the phone. We’re the only ones who know about it.’

I checked one more time to make sure we were headed in the right direction and then we were passing through the pillars at Park Gate into the killer’s latest playground.

Phoenix Park.

Twice the size of New York’s Central Park, at night this place gouged a huge black hole in the north of the city, swallowing light; but it was day now and almost beautiful, with thickets of bare winter trees materialising like ghosts on either side of the road as we passed. A mist trailed rags among the trees, and the air between the branches was smudged with drifting, restless birds. Now and then I even thought I could see a glimmer of silver deer darting, hiding, watching.

Tillman had marked an area on the map not far from Oldtown Wood. The park was full of such evocative names. Furry Glen, White Field, The Hollow, The Wilderness, a reminder to the city of what it had risen from – though had it really risen so far? The wild still clung on stubbornly; I’d never really doubted that it did.

The trees huddled close like conspirators.

After a while, I told Fitzgerald to pull in.

‘Is this the right place?’

‘I think so.’

Without a more detailed map it was impossible to tell exactly, but here would do, here was close enough. Fitzgerald promptly pulled in and we climbed out.

The silence around us was incredible. There was only the dragging of wind through the branches over our heads like surf through stones, and somewhere far off a dog barking. Fitzgerald scarcely noticed. She was reaching back in and lifting something out of the glove compartment, dropping it into her pocket before I could see what it was.

‘Let’s split up and search the trees,’ she said.

‘Let’s not,’ I answered, and something in my voice made her stop and look at me for what felt a long time before nodding.

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Let’s not split up.’

For how could we be sure that he wasn’t in there now, waiting, like Fagan had been waiting for me that night five years ago?

Together we began to walk slowly down the road instead, scanning the edges where the ground was strewn with wet and rotting leaves for signs of a body, though we didn’t put that thought into words.

We didn’t need to.

What was that?

I felt dizzy, but it was only a log.

A couple of hundred yards down the road, the trees on our right thinned momentarily and a track – fairly wide, though overgrown with weeds – snaked off into the shelter of the trees.

‘This is it,’ I said at once, and I could tell from the look Fitzgerald returned that she thought so too.

He’d been here.

‘Come on,’ she said.

In seconds, we were moving deeper into the wood until there was no sight of the road behind us when we turned our heads, and ahead of us nothing moved and no birds sang. We were probably no farther from the road than the start of the track had been from the car, but each step felt like it was leading us deliberately astray. The city beyond us had ceased to exist.

Fitzgerald saw the car first.

It was parked up ahead a little way off the track. A metallic silver Daihatsu, only a couple of years old. Not the sort of car to be lightly abandoned, at any rate. She didn’t break her stride, only reached into her pocket as we drew nearer and pulled out a new pair of latex gloves. That was what she’d lifted from the glove compartment earlier.

‘I’m going to take a look,’ she said.

We were only a couple of yards away by this point, and if the light had been better we’d have been able to see the inside of the car from where we were; but the trees wouldn’t allow it. We had come to a point almost adjacent to the driver’s side door before we finally saw what we’d feared seeing from the moment we passed through Park Gate.

There, on the other seat, a blanket draped over the head and falling to the knees so that the face and upper body were invisible, was the next offering in the game.

Fitzgerald circled the car carefully, peering in at each window, checking each door. The keys were still hanging from the ignition – a gaudy little plastic toy in the shape of a bee and a tag saying Cassidy’s Car Rentals alongside them; but only the passenger side door was unlocked. It would have to be that one then.

She could have left it for the crime scene technicians to deal with, but I understood how she felt. She needed to know who it was.

Gently, she reached out to grasp the handle.

Pressed it down.

Opened the door.

Whichever way the body was sitting (whichever way it had been arranged?), the door was the only thing providing support, and as soon as she opened it fully the body fell out heavily.

Fitzgerald leapt back out of the way and nearly fell over, and I immediately made to rush forward to help her; but she waved a hand abruptly and shouted at me to wait. She was stooping over the tumbled figure at her feet.

‘Grace, what is it?’

She straightened up and walked back round towards me.

‘Do you know who she is?’ I said.

‘It’s not a she at all,’ she told me.

By the time we got back to the road, two patrol cars had already arrived and three uniformed police were standing round Fitzgerald’s Rover, squinting inside, wondering what to do.

They looked alarmed when they saw us stepping out from the trees – they’d obviously been sent out here without knowing what to expect – then simply embarrassed when they realised who it was. Fitzgerald quickly told them about the car and the body, and ordered them to secure the scene.

‘Don’t touch anything,’ she warned again as they headed off towards the track.

Another car appeared from the direction of the city as we stood by the road. Seamus Dalton. Terrific. He pulled to a stop with a crunch, opened the door roughly and climbed out. He put on a look of contempt when he saw me and popped a stick of chewing gum into his mouth.

‘You know something?’ he said loudly to me. ‘You could have saved us all a lot of trouble if you’d just told us from the start that your friend from back home was a psycho.’

‘Unlike you, Dalton,’ I said, ‘I try to wait for the evidence first before closing a case. You should try it sometime. Make a change from your usual method of deciding beforehand who did it and then seeing if you can make the evidence fit.’

‘What can I say?’ he said dismissively. ‘It works for me.’

‘Sure it does. That’s how, a couple of days ago, you were trying to pin all this on a guy who’s been dead five years.’

‘If you’re trying to annoy me—’

‘Dalton, I haven’t even started.’

‘That’s enough,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Both of you.’

Dalton didn’t wait for more. He shouldered past me pointedly without waiting for another word from Fitzgerald, and went instead to make himself unpopular with the uniforms.

‘He’s back to his usual form,’ I said.

‘Probably just as well,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Behaving like a decent human being for once didn’t suit him. Here.’

She handed me a scrap of paper on which she’d written the registration number of the Daihatsu, together with her car keys.

‘When you get back to Dublin Castle, tell Boland or Healy to call Cassidy’s Car Rentals and see if this really is one of theirs. Tell them if it is to find out who hired the car from them and when, and see if they have a contact address.’

‘Are you not coming?’

‘I should stay here until Lynch and the others arrive,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘Just call me as soon as you have anything.’

‘And if I don’t have anything?’

‘Call me anyway.’