If I Never See You Again

by Niamh O'Connor

  25

  Having told Sexton to get on with the job he’d been given, which was to interview Anto Crawley’s wife, Jo headed back to the station. Once inside the noisy incident room, she walked past Merrigan and the two rows of detectives collating the questionnaires and answering the phones, heading straight for Foxy, or at least the neat stack of books on the desk in front of him. She picked one up and began flicking through the pages.

  ‘Oi,’ Foxy protested. ‘They’re my Sal’s books. She’s been collecting anything to do with saints.’

  But Jo had already found what she was looking for. Curling her finger, she indicated to him to follow her, throwing a look of intense irritation at Merrigan, who was on the phone telling his wife what he wanted for dinner.

  Book under her arm, she led Foxy down the fire escape stairs, where she could be spared the sound of Jeanie on the Tannoy paging her to Dan’s office. Satisfied the coast was clear after a quick recce up and down the corridor, she ducked into the cleaning lady’s store room.

  ‘That’s him,’ she told Foxy excitedly, holding the book open for him at eye level. The room was so small she couldn’t fully extend her arms.

  Foxy looked around awkwardly.

  ‘That’s our killer!’ Pointing at something in the book, she handed it to Foxy. ‘He only thinks he’s bloody well Doubting Thomas!’

  Foxy cleared some space between some toilet rolls and sat down on a shelf. Removing his reading glasses, he let them dangle from a string around his neck and adjusted the book to the spot in his vision where the painting became clear.

  The image was of a robed Christ holding his tunic to the side of his chest to accommodate three bearded spectators straining to see his open wound. The nearest one was crouched up at eye level, prodding the flesh with his finger. He was the figure Jo had been pointing out.

  ‘The Incredulity of Saint Thomas: aka Doubting Thomas . . .’ She paused. ‘A work by Caravaggio.’

  Foxy put his glasses back on quickly. ‘Jesus is telling him, “Reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.”’ He peered at Jo over the tops of his specs.

  ‘The wounds on all of our victims,’ she explained.

  Somebody rapped on the door outside, making them both jump. Sarah, a female officer with a round, rosy-cheeked face, stuck her head around the door. Jo knew her from indoor soccer, though she hadn’t played with the team since Harry had been born. She didn’t have the time any more.

  ‘’Allo, ’allo,’ the officer said, giving Jo a wink. ‘Thought I saw you two lovebirds coming in here. You know the chief’s looking for you?’

  Jo nodded. The messenger grinned and ducked back out.

  ‘I need you to get me everything you can on Doubting Thomas,’ Jo told Foxy. ‘Who was he? What did he do? And what is his relevance to our killer? Got it?’

  ‘Who was Doubting Thomas?’ Foxy repeated. ‘Sal did a project on the apostles some months back, so I can tell you that he didn’t just doubt the Resurrection, he doubted Christ at the Last Supper. And, according to the Bible conspiracy theorists, he was a brother of Christ . . .’

  Jo opened the door then stopped. ‘So that’s why the killer told Rita Nulty’s mother he was a priest’s twin!’

  ‘But what about Caravaggio? Is the killer taking a lead from him?’ Foxy asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Jo said. ‘Caravaggio just helped me piece it together.’ She looked at Foxy. ‘What time you get to bed at last night?’

  Foxy opened his mouth but Jo silenced him with a prod of her elbow because, after a quick rap, Merrigan had poked his head around the door.

  ‘Ho, ho,’ he said. ‘So this is the bolthole you’ve locked yourselves up in.’

  Jo could tell from the smug look on his face he was pleased about something.

  ‘Just letting you know the boys from NBCI have just arrived and they headed straight for Dan’s office.’

  ‘Who’s there?’ Foxy asked, pulling the door open and pushing past him into the corridor.

  ‘Frank Black’s there, and he does not look happy,’ Merrigan explained with relish.

  ‘Well, he can bloody well wait,’ Jo said crossly, running her fingers through her hair. The National Bureau of Criminal Investigation was the force’s equivalent of the UK’s Special Branch and had subsumed the old murder squad. She didn’t need him or Merrigan to tell her that the NBCI’s arrival meant that her days heading this investigation were very probably numbered.

  But Merrigan had more news.

  ‘Did I mention a tray of tea and sandwiches was delivered in to the chief? You know what it means if he’s organized catering: he must have known they were coming.’

  Jo stepped closer to him. ‘Between you, me and the wall, I think the killer could be black.’ She watched his eyes light up, ignored Foxy clicking his tongue behind her and went on. ‘Can you start cold-calling some of the refugee centres, see if you can round me up any possible suspects?’

  Merrigan nodded with an open mouth, then took off like a man possessed.

  Foxy was shaking his head.

  ‘Somebody’s been feeding the press, and I just want to see whether it’s Merrigan.’ She filled him in on how she’d found Sexton in the warehouse where Anto Crawley had been killed, and how she’d fed Ryan Freeman the same line. If Freeman’s source was Merrigan, he’d double-check it with him and get it corroborated, meaning that her red herring would appear in the paper.

  ‘You’re the only one bar me who knows who the killer thinks he is,’ Jo concluded. ‘And that’s the way I want it kept for now. Right?’

  ‘Without a team behind you, you’re peeing in the wind,’ Foxy replied. ‘Two of us won’t solve this.’

  ‘We may have to,’ Jo said. ‘I’ve got a horrible feeling he’s closer than we think.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s more than coincidence that all our victims have turned up in our district? Rita Nulty was right on site, waiting for us to find her. Stuart Ball, Anto Crawley and Father Reg . . . all in our jurisdiction. That’s the only reason we’ve held on to the inquiry this long. We will need to brainstorm these locations as soon as possible.’

  ‘Want me to set up a conference?’ he asked.

  She nodded and checked her watch. ‘Once I’ve faced the music in Dan’s office.’

  Foxy put his hand on her arm. ‘I’ve ordered the records from Customs showing any importations of myrrh. It’s an aromatic gum which grows in Arabia, India or Abyssinia, did you know that?’

  She looked at him appreciatively. ‘You look exhausted. I’d be happier if you’d go home to Sal and get some kip. I don’t want you running yourself into the ground because of me.’

  ‘There isn’t time,’ Foxy said.

  ‘That’s an order,’ Jo said. ‘Merrigan could do with missing a dinner. I’ll get him on the records. And I’ll ask him to find out about who’s paying the ESB in the warehouse where Crawley was found. I don’t want you staying up all night any more. You won’t do anyone any favours if you get sick, least of all me and Sal.’

  Jo was walking towards Dan’s office when her phone trilled to life with that ring-ding-a-ding Crazy Frog tone. ‘I’ll bloody well kill him,’ Jo muttered. Rory must have been fiddling with it.

  ‘Not quite sure how to put this,’ Hawthorne said when the call connected.

  ‘Not like you,’ Jo said, giving a thumbs-up to a colleague asking had she heard Dan’s page.

  ‘Before I go on, I want it understood that what I’m about to tell you is completely for your background information,’ the pathologist went on. ‘If you try and call me to court to relay this conversation, not only will I completely deny this conversation ever happened, I’ll –’

  ‘Understood,’ Jo interrupted.

  ‘The thing is, I’ve got a PhD student from the university who’s tech-ing here when we need a dig out,’ Hawthorne said. ‘You may have seen him when we were doing the Ri
ta Nulty autopsy. Decent fellow. Obliging. You don’t get that any more. They’re all too busy socializing . . . It’s just there’d be all kinds of ethical problems and permissions required if the student tried to do it by the book, you see . . .’

  ‘To do what?’ Jo asked.

  Hawthorne coughed. ‘The technician – his name is Walter, by the way – has been studying the effect death has . . . ahem . . . on semen.’

  Jo took a quick breath in. ‘You mean the killer didn’t use a condom?’

  Hawthorne gave a short hum.

  ‘This changes everything.’

  ‘The bill for the DNA database was only published in January,’ Hawthorne reminded her. ‘The odds of us having his profile on record are nil.’

  ‘I’m talking about the way our man thinks. In the States they call it the CSI effect . . . You know, the way popular culture has schooled the ordinary criminal in the advances of forensic science. Burglars wear gloves; joyriders burn stolen cars; rapists wear condoms. Nobody leaves a DNA sample. Unless . . .’

  ‘He wants to be caught?’ Hawthorne asked.

  ‘Not wants,’ Jo said. ‘He knows exactly how far behind we are. We’re looking for someone who not only knows the law here, he’s also confident we’re not going to trace him.’

  ‘There’s something else . . .’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Walter’s convinced that, in Rita Nulty’s case, the degeneration which would have been caused to the semen upon the release of certain chemicals had she been alive was not present . . .’ He paused and coughed self-consciously again. ‘And that the said same semen, if you will, had aged less than the time which had passed since death.’

  There was a pause as Jo worked this out. ‘You’re not saying our killer had sex with his victims after they died?’

  ‘I don’t know about the rest of them,’ he replied. ‘As you know, we are PM-ing Anto Crawley in the morning, but don’t start thinking about an exhumation order for Stuart Ball. It’s something I could never corroborate, even with this information in mind. It’s true that bruises can only appear if the blood is circulating. And certainly there was tearing in Rita’s perineal and genital area, but that in itself does not mean sex has not been consensual, especially given the victim’s profession – well, I don’t have to spell it out. It would never stand up in court. However, I thought it was something that might be of use to you.’

  Jo was too shocked to say anything.

  Hawthorne seemed to pick up on her reaction. ‘It’s a practice as old as civilization, by the way. It was widespread in Latin America and Ancient Greece,’ he said, trying to put her at ease. ‘Did you know that the Ancient Egyptians never entrusted the dead to embalmers before decomposition had set in? And in parts of India it was believed that a dead virgin would never rest in peace, so the men folk obliged, posthumously, of course. So you see, necrophilia is not that extraordinary.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, I appreciate it.’ Still reeling from the news, Jo made her way slowly towards Dan’s office. She was just about to knock on his door when Foxy called her on her mobile. He’d been flicking through another of Sal’s books on his way to the car when he’d seen it. If she was right about who the killer thought he was, there was something she should know, he said. Tomorrow – July 3 – was Doubting Thomas’s feast day.

  26

  A four-storey terraced house of fine-cut granite. Derelict – the once-grand French windows blocked up; the Regency door sealed over with sheets of chipboard.

  Entry is through a rusting iron grate set in the flagstones on the street. The location has been chosen because of what lies underneath the car park it overlooks – an ancient graveyard.

  Inside: dim, fragrant, bloody. A tabernacle in the centre of a makeshift altar, the burst of glinting brass spikes shooting from the point of intersection on the cross like an exploding meteorite.

  On the grimy wall behind, a life-sized crucifix, damaged in the places where the mutilated carving of Christ was once fixed but has since been chopped free. The carving now lies face down on the ground in front of the altar, head closest, feet furthest away, prostrate. Around it is an array of gleaming implements – an axe, knives, crowbar, hammer and chisel. Lined up on the altar, the wooden hand, claw-like, the foot complete with nail, the eye.

  A figure dressed in a hooded monk’s robe glides across the room. He chants as he prepares the noose, slung from an exposed beam in the ceiling. The words are not discernible, but the sound is hypnotic.

  And now he drags the Christ figure up, a dead weight carved from sacred yew. The neck in position, the weight drops and the wooden figure swings like a pendulum because of its outstretched arms. The rope holds.

  The killer pushes his hood from his face, raises a meat cleaver and delivers it to the chipping torso with a whocking noise. The fifth ceremony has begun.

  27

  It was only 5 p.m., but even so Sexton was dog-tired by the time he reached Anto Crawley’s missus’s doorstep. Shielding a fag under the flap of his jacket, he took a deep drag and lit up, then pressed his finger on the bell and jabbed impatiently. It was one thing trying to get through the day with the hangover from hell, but ever since Jo Birmingham had scared the living daylights out of him in the warehouse, his nerves were also shot.

  He squinted through the smoke the wind was blowing back into his face, making his eyes water. Anto Crawley’s former home was a corporation flat in Oliver Bond, near Christchurch cathedral in the Liberties. In the old days, Crawley would have had his bird shacked up in a sprawling mansion in salubrious Foxrock on the Southside, or Malahide on the Northside, the kind of place that boasted a rhododendron border and an Italian cyprus driveway. The barristers’ and builders’ wives would have invited her to their fondue parties out of curiosity then shot each other horrified looks behind her back at the sound of her accent or the sight of her table manners. But with the successes of the Criminal Assets Bureau, the gangsters were now flaunting their lack of ill-gotten gains, staying in corporation flats and concealing all property acquisitions under other people’s names.

  The irony for the locals was that, by having a scumbag like Crawley ensconced in the vicinity, the usual lawlessness and antisocial problems associated with the building complex stopped and the place ran like clockwork. The joyriders’ ramps were removed, the boarded-up flats filled. The prospect of prison didn’t deter scumbags, but having to answer to Anto Crawley – that made them think about the consequences.

  Sexton leaned sideways and shouted through the letterbox to open up. A bunch of kids who’d spotted him the second he’d entered the complex came for a gawk, all kitted out in their back-of-a-lorry designer trainers and hoodies.

  ‘Who are you?’ an obese youngster asked him.

  Sexton put him at ten and, with a lip on him like that, he could see his future like it was mapped in his palm, leading straight to the ‘A’ wing in Portlaoise – where they kept the likes of John Gilligan, suspected of ordering the murder of Veronica Guerin.

  ‘You’re a copper, aren’t you?’

  ‘Piss off,’ Sexton told him.

  ‘I could have you up for that,’ the kid said.

  Sexton looked at the boy’s burger-fed face. He had so many freckles they were joining. Sexton held his hand up in an Ali G salute. ‘Booyakasha,’ he said.

  The kid forked his fingers back, said ‘Respek’ with a grin and slouched off.

  Glenda George pulled the door open, rubbing sleep from her eyes and flattening her bed head. In the front room, Sexton could hear the TV on. She’d got up for Oprah, Dr Phil, then Richard and Judy, he reckoned.

  ‘Yeah?’ she asked.

  Sexton eyed her up and down. She was early thirties, with long, thin, jet-black hair and a body to die for, including tits too gravity-defying to be real. Dressed in a pink-velvet tracksuit top, denim mini and a pair of long black FMBs, she had enough make-up caked over her hard expression to convince him that he recognized her from a dodgy porno tape he a
nd the lads had seized in some raid a couple of years back.

  He put his foot on the step, inside the door.

  Something caught Glenda’s eye on an adjoining balcony, and she let out a roar over his shoulder. ‘What the fuck are you gawking at?’

  ‘He’s a copper, Glenda,’ a kid shouted up from the forecourt.

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ Glenda replied. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Can’t bear these nosey bastards knowing any of my business.’

  She turned and led him down the marble-effect hallway, the word ‘juicy’ inscribed on the arse of her skirt rising and falling with each click of her heels.

  They went into the front room, where a wall had been knocked through to give it an open-plan feel. It was untidy – clothes strewn about – but Sexton noticed the state-of-the-art fittings and fixtures: the Olsen and Bang & Olufsen stereo system; the gas fireplace set in the middle of the wall with its heap of pebbles; and the new windows. On paper, this place should have been worth a small fortune. In actuality, an address like this was worn like a badge of criminality.

  Glenda lowered herself into a shiny red-leather armchair, zipped off her boots and transferred her perfectly French-manicured toes into a pair of fluffy pink open-toe sandals. ‘You’ve got a fucking nerve,’ she told him. ‘How can I organize a wake with no body? Cheeky bitch in the morgue keeps hanging up on me. What are you holding on to Anto for?’

  ‘Leave it with me, I’ll sort it out,’ he said, offering Glenda his card.

  She kept up the indignation routine for a bit, but the bite was gone out of her bark. Sexton sighed and settled back in the chair. He kept picking up this sexy little siren vibe she was giving off through it. His tart radar could recognize one through frumpy clothes, a plummy accent and hobbies like flower-arranging and singing in the choir.

  ‘Yeah, well, last night should have been his bloody send-off,’ she said, stretching over to take the card, giving him a flash of her sizeable rack. ‘Two hundred people I had calling, and no Anto. You pigs are all the same.’