The Dead (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 1) (7 page)

‘Grace?’

Tillman must have seen something in my eyes when I returned a few minutes later, for he said: ‘Bad news?’

‘Mary Lynch’s killer made contact again about an hour ago,’ I said. ‘He sent a text message to the golden oldies request line of some local radio station, giving them the location of Sally Tyrrell’s body.’

‘He’s doing what he said he’d do,’ Tillman said. ‘That’s good. Something else to go on at least. He still wants to play the game. It’d be more worrying for you if he’d retreated, gone back in on himself.’

‘Nine times out of ten, I’d agree. Only problem is,’ I said, ‘Fitzgerald just told me it isn’t Sally’s body that they found.’

Chapter Eight

‘Is it true?’ said Elliott. ‘That they’ve found another body?’

I turned and there he was, lurking at my shoulder. I should have him arrested for stalking. I’d only come into the store round the corner from my apartment on the way home from Trinity in order to pick up something for dinner. I was supposed to be cooking for Fitzgerald tonight, though I didn’t know if she’d remembered – the arrangements had been made before either of us had even heard Mary Lynch’s name – or what time she’d be there if she had.

‘What do you do?’ I said, turning back and reaching up for pepper. ‘Do you follow me?’

‘I saw you come in, that’s all,’ he said. ‘I was passing. It’s a small town. Look, why don’t you just tell me what I want to know and then I’ll be out of your hair? Is it true?’

I tried to remember what it was he’d said to me last night down by the Grand Canal. Yeah, that was it. ‘We shall see what we shall see,’ I reminded him.

‘Screw you, Saxon,’ Elliott said.

In his dreams.

‘There’s no point lying to me,’ he went on once he realised I wasn’t paying him any attention, ‘because I already know the police found another one. I don’t get it. We printed his letter like he asked; why didn’t he come to us with this instead of some trashy radio station?’

‘You know how it is, Elliott, love fades. Even between a serial killer and his pet reporter. Maybe he’s been seeing other crime reporters behind your back. Maybe he wants a trial separation, an open relationship even. You get to write about other sickos, he gets some other reporter to jerk him off.’

‘You think that’s what I’m doing?’

‘What’d you think, that he hates all this attention?’

‘I’m only doing my job,’ said Elliott sulkily.

‘I think you’ll find that the usual excuse is you were only obeying orders,’ I corrected him. ‘Copyright Nuremberg, circa 1945.’

‘So I’m a Nazi now?’

‘No, Elliott, you’re a Pulitzer Prize-winning lyric poet and an all-round humanitarian. Satisfied now?’

I tried walking on, but he just wouldn’t quit.

‘I only want you to tell me one thing,’ he said, catching me up. ‘One thing, all right. I have a deadline coming up, I need something for tomorrow’s edition. Just tell me if it’s Sally.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Not even that?’

‘Your boyfriend said he’d reveal where Sally Tyrrell was if you published his deranged ramblings,’ I said. ‘You published them. So what do you think?’

He stared back, trying to read me, like it was a trick question; which of course it was.

‘I think it’s Sally Tyrrell,’ he said at last.

‘You think you can trust him?’

‘I think so, yes.’

I’d heard it all now.

‘Well then,’ I said, ‘you’ve got your answer.’

I wished I felt guiltier about deceiving Elliott once again, it was getting too easy; but he was out of my mind the minute he left the store.

My mind was still a couple of miles away, in the churchyard of St John the Divine in Ballsbridge, where the as yet unidentified body of the latest woman had been found. I hadn’t been up there to see her for myself. I’d get the reports later; right now, I’d only be in the way. And I certainly didn’t need to go there to fix a picture of the place in my head.

The churchyard at St John’s was where Sylvia Judge, Fagan’s second victim, the student, had been murdered. We were back to the same pattern again, and once again I’d missed it. Missed it because it seemed too obvious after Mary Lynch, but that only proved how clever our busy, communicative little killer was turning out to be. He knew that going back to the scene of Fagan’s second killing was too obvious as well. That was exactly why he calculated he’d probably get away with it. The obvious was always the last thing on anyone’s mind at a time like this. Even if there were watches put on Fagan’s other scenes now, it was already too late.

Fitzgerald had called me as soon as she got there and talked me through what she found.

The dead woman had been laid down in a corner of the cramped churchyard, close by a moss-covered wall. She had been dead some time, Ambrose Lynch estimated; killed somewhere else, dumped here; but he was talking weeks, not years. If it had been Sally Tyrrell, she should have been little more than bones by now. What was more, the clothes which the victim was wearing when she died suggested an older age range, as did the apparent loss of elasticity to the skin. Lynch, though, wouldn’t immediately hazard a guess as to when exactly she died, or how, and for once his legendary reticence could be forgiven, for this woman’s head was completely missing – ‘Cut off cleanly,’ Fitzgerald told me flatly over the phone – and likewise her hands, and . . . Fitzgerald paused whilst she made sure . . . yes, her feet as well.

‘Looks like a single stroke for each of them,’ she confirmed.

She sounded bewildered and I didn’t blame her.

Removing the head was one thing. Perhaps the killer simply wanted to delay a possible visual identification of the victim. Taking away the hands similarly could be explained if the dead woman had a criminal record and could be tracked through fingerprints.

Or perhaps it was that the killer feared there might be traces of his DNA under the fingernails, where the victim had scratched his face – or was it her face that was damaged? He might have bitten her cheek, say. An offender’s teeth are as unique as his prints. Whatever it was, there were plenty of reasons why he might have chosen to dismember the corpse. But why cut off the feet as well? That didn’t make any sense.

That only made it seem like there was some deeper symbolic significance to the act, but what? Fagan had certainly never done anything remotely like it. Nor was there any clue in the neat typewritten message which was found, just like with Sylvia Judge, tucked inside the dead woman’s bra.
Go, see now this cursed woman and bury her
.

The Bible was indeed a charming book.

I got back to find that Lawrence Fisher had faxed through the promised form while I was out seeing Tillman. The sheets, all thirty of them, lay curled separately on the floor where they’d fallen and I had to gather them up and arrange them in order before I could begin.

Basically it was an amended version of the VICAP form that Tillman’s student had mentioned earlier. There were scores of questions about the victim – what build was she, what ethnic grouping, did she have any physical abnormalities, missing teeth, did she wear glasses, what colour was her hair, did she have tattoos or scars and if so where, what kind of clothes was she wearing when she died, what was her last known location? Questions too about the killer’s MO.

Did he use restraints and if so were they in excess of what was needed simply to restrain? Was the face or body covered after death? Was any clothing missing? Torn? Did the body show signs of being re-dressed post-mortem? Did the attack take place in a vehicle, in an open field, in a wood, near a school? Was the body concealed?

On and on the questions went, each one a separate line of enquiry, each one a separate road unwinding out possibly to eternity. I had filled out similar forms many times in the past, too many times, but this time I felt myself drowning in detail. I knew so little about what had happened to Mary Lynch; I’d have to wait for Fitzgerald to fill me in on all these points. And what about this latest body? That meant another form – and still more to come. Not months later, or weeks, but only days and hours away. Frustrated, I laid the form aside and went to wash my hands.

Then I washed them again.

I felt stained.

I put on a pot roast to cook slowly, and wondered as I did so what Mary Lynch would’ve been doing this time last evening. Eating dinner, watching TV? I wanted to imagine her wired into some normality like that, but I only wanted it for me; it was no good to her any more.

And anyway, I knew in truth that what she’d probably been doing was scoring heroin off her dealer, or screwing some fat loser to pay for it.

And what had I been doing? Waiting for Fitzgerald to call.

Waiting for Mary to die.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts. Thinking of Mary Lynch was no use to anyone right this minute. Work was, and it was time to get back to it. I took a Coke from the fridge, and sat down to recommence my ascent up the north face of the incident reports.

The next few hours made for miserable reading. Prostitutes were always reluctant to report trouble to the police, didn’t matter what city you were in, so if this was only the tip of the iceberg then it was a wonder the city hadn’t ground against it and sunk years ago.

Week after week, going back through the records, there was the same forgotten story. Prostitutes were robbed, raped, beaten, harassed, followed, on the streets, in rented flats, in massage parlours. One had been stabbed by a dirty needle, and sent for an Aids test. The report gave no reason to believe that officers had even followed up to find out if the test was positive or not.

The case files for most of these incidents were so thin that sometimes I had to open them just to convince myself there was anything inside. Usually there was an incident report from the (inevitably) lowly officer sent to the scene, with an accompanying victim statement, the odd picture if the photographer was available, and that was that, wham bam thank you ma’am.

The most recent such report came from only two weeks ago, and concerned the rape of a prostitute by a punter she’d picked up in Lad Lane, not far from where Mary’s body had been found. The victim said she wouldn’t even have bothered reporting what had happened, but she was so badly beaten that a friend had taken her to Casualty, where nurses called the police.

It was the name, Jackie Hill, that alerted me as much as anything. I knew Jackie. Hadn’t seen her for months now, but I knew her. I’d met her when I was researching my book on Fagan. She’d been a prostitute even back then, and had been friendly with a couple of his victims. Every time we’d met since, she’d promised me she’d quit, soon, next year, once she’d got herself sorted out. I’d heard them all.

Would this finally persuade her to get out? Probably not, knowing Jackie. Why would it, if what Fagan did to her friends hadn’t?

What really disturbed me as I read the account of her attack was that she hadn’t been robbed. Rape of a prostitute was usually followed by the taking of whatever money she’d earned; most attackers seemed to derive pleasure from that final humiliation. Jackie’s attacker had taken nothing. He’d also told her he knew where she lived and would kill her if she talked to police.

She’d been hysterical, unsurprisingly, when the police interviewed her, convinced that she would die if she talked, but eventually they’d managed to take a statement from her, some DNA samples to send for forensic analysis. She hadn’t been able to provide a description. Because it was dark, she said, but knowing Jackie it probably had more to do with the fact that her brain was fractured from her last fix. Then they’d dumped her on to Victim Support, who were supposed to be arranging a follow-up visit, though I couldn’t help doubting they’d ever get around to it. Jackie Hill wasn’t the type to insist on her rights.

I made a note to find out who was dealing with her case. Rape was outside the Fagan pattern our killer had adopted for himself, but then so was dismemberment and that hadn’t stopped him; and even if he was acting out the role of the great Night Hunter, that didn’t mean he wasn’t up for some freelance sexual assault when out of his adopted persona.

He’d said he knew where Jackie Hill lived. The author of the
Post
letter had said he’d been watching Mary Lynch too. It wasn’t much, but I wasn’t willing to let any possible connection, however implausible, go begging. I had to start somewhere.

I rubbed my eyes roughly, trying to hurt myself back into alertness, then looked again at the boxes of files which Boland had brought round earlier that day. I couldn’t be more than halfway through, and on it went, this bizarre catalogue of human malevolence, endlessly lapping waves of a poisoned tide.

A picture of Fitzgerald entered my mind out of nowhere.

A hot volcanic pool outside Reykjavik, Grace splashing her feet and drinking vodka, refusing to get in because she couldn’t swim. We’d been on holiday, it was after midnight and the Northern Lights were showing off among the dull jealous stars; they seemed to get tangled in her hair when she turned her head.

Now someone had switched off the Northern Lights and Grace was most likely at her desk down at headquarters, making the same lists as me, seeing no end. It would all be followed up in time. We’d convince ourselves we were doing something, scurrying after each lead, but roads had led to nowhere before. What if they led us nowhere again?

What if our precious lists only led to more lists, files to more files?

What then?