If I Never See You Again

by Niamh O'Connor

  Jo took a sharp breath in. ‘So our killer is honouring his enemies like we thought.’

  ‘Thought you’d be pleased,’ Foxy said.

  ‘It also explains why Rita’s body was the only one sexually interfered with,’ she said slowly. ‘I must’ve missed something with the other three victims. Foxy, can you think of any more of Christ’s enemies?’

  ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.

  ‘Our killer paid tribute to King Herod with Rita. I want to know which of Christ’s enemies Stuart Ball, Anto Crawley and Father Walsh represented in his mind.’

  ‘Judas – he was the main one,’ Merrigan said, picking up his bread. ‘Can I have a slice of ham with this?’

  ‘The Pharisees – according to one of Sal’s books, they were the moral equivalent of priests and the ones who judged Christ,’ Foxy said.

  ‘Father Walsh would fit that bill,’ Jo said. ‘The killer will have left us a sign if so. Can you check out any biblical references to them, Foxy? We’ll need to study the crime-scene photographs and see what symbol our man left there.’

  ‘Any chance of a cuppa?’ Merrigan asked.

  ‘You asked me to look into necrophilia, and I’ve got that list of desecrations you wanted,’ Foxy continued. ‘A couple of graves were robbed, but the bodies were left intact . . . Also, I spoke to a psychologist and a leading expert in the area, who says the research suggests that 90 per cent of necrophiles are male, so no surprises there but, interestingly, half of those who actually killed so as to take ownership of the victim’s body are gay. Oh yeah, and it’s mostly morticians who offend.’

  Merrigan sat down at the kitchen table and took a mouthful of bread. ‘Great, our man’s a faggot as well as everything else,’ he said.

  ‘It’s all to do with fear of rejection,’ Foxy went on. ‘Most necrophiliacs are either trying to control someone who previously resisted them, or to reunite with someone who’s died, or to overcome isolation.’

  Jo filled the kettle and switched it on.

  ‘Previous serial killers with this particular attraction to the dead – Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer,’ Foxy said. ‘But most famous of all . . . Jack the Ripper.’

  ‘You know any of Christ’s other enemies?’ Jo asked him.

  ‘Pontius Pilate,’ Foxy said, sitting down beside Merrigan. ‘Though he did appeal to people to come to their senses after they chose Christ over Barabas.’

  Jo clicked her fingers. ‘I’ll bet that’s who Crawley represented. We need to look for the symbol in the warehouse near Crawley’s body – didn’t Pilate wash his hands? It has to be there somewhere. I’ll check the scene-of-crime photos tomorrow. Can you get me the names of the others? And a detailed description of the scene where Stuart Ball was found.’

  Foxy looked up at Jo, his face worried. ‘We also need to talk about Mac. Am I the only one who thinks he’s in this thing up to his neck?’

  ‘Steady,’ Merrigan said. ‘He’s one of us.’

  ‘He’s a bad one, and you know it,’ Foxy said sharply.

  ‘I’ll worry about Mac,’ Jo said. ‘We can keep him in custody till next week now, don’t forget!’

  ‘Mac could have got his hands on the cocaine we found at Rita Nulty’s crime scene,’ Foxy said cautiously. ‘He could have taken some from our batch and brought it there.’

  ‘I agree,’ Jo said as the doorbell rang. She sighed. ‘If that’s a bloody reporter, I won’t be responsible for my actions.’

  ‘It’s probably just Sexton,’ Foxy said as she got up.

  The door opened before Jo got to it. Dan appeared in the entrance with two suitcases hanging from either hand and his key in one.

  ‘You said Friday,’ Jo said.

  Dan looked at his watch. ‘Sorry, I’m an hour early. Tomorrow’s not good for me.’ He looked up and saw the heads peering from the kitchen. ‘Am I interrupting?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re just finished,’ Jo said.

  ‘Any developments?’ Dan asked.

  Foxy and Merrigan avoided his eye and Jo shook her head. Dan turned and headed up the stairs.

  ‘How about my cup of tea?’ Merrigan asked, as he stood up. Foxy gave him a shove in the back to keep going.

  ‘Thanks, lads,’ Jo said. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m bloody gasping,’ Merrigan told Jo as he passed her in the hall.

  Behind his back, Foxy patted Jo’s arm. It was his way of telling her not to lose heart.

  After they’d gone, she stood with her back to the door trying to think. She was more certain than ever the killer was going to crucify his next victim. What she needed to do next was work out who.

  42

  11.10 p.m., and Rory and Harry were asleep, the TV was on mute and a Sinéad O’Connor album was playing low on the stereo. Jo was on the couch, legs tucked under her chin. She was studying a Dublin city centre street map. Her mobile and car keys sat on the coffee table in front of her, her shoes were on the shagpile rug directly underneath. She was taking regular deep breaths, trying to inhale the smell of nicotine from the jumper she had retrieved for that specific purpose from the laundry basket.

  Dan arrived, bringing a fresh soapy smell; his hair was still wet. He’d gone straight to the spare room to unpack after Foxy and Merrigan left and then must have taken a shower.

  Jo did a double take. He had changed his clothes and was wearing a Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt open to the third button, Wranglers, a cowboy belt and black winklepickers. Mid-life-crisis clothes, she thought, also noticing a chain glinting around his neck. She’d never seen him wear jewellery before.

  ‘You going somewhere?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah, heading out for a couple of late pints.’

  ‘A club?’ she asked, appalled. Him heading out on the tiles wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of her theory that the killer was going to strike again in under an hour.

  He shrugged and sat down beside her on the couch, glancing at the map. ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.

  ‘Doesn’t it strike you as strange that all the bodies were found in ‘C’ District?’ she said, picking up a pen and marking the spot on the street where Rita had been found. ‘In the building where we had our hostage-training exercise, remember?’ Jo crossed another street. ‘This is where Stuart Ball was found, but look.’ She pointed. ‘If it had been on any of these adjoining streets, it would have been the Bridewell’s jurisdiction. We’ve got every one of them.’

  Dan gave a short hum.

  ‘We need to get Anto Crawley’s surveillance records from the NSU,’ she told him. ‘I’m hitting a brick wall with NBCI on the subject . . .’

  Dan stood up dismissively.

  ‘Think about it, Dan. Somebody like Crawley sleeps with a bulletproof jacket under his PJs. He’s always prepared. He’s not going to let any Joe Soap near him to kill him. Rita, too – she had the Skids pimping her. How did the killer get past them, carrying the tools he needed to hurt her like that? Rita and Anto Crawley have to have trusted whoever killed them, or at the very least known them. That’s why we need that list of Crawley’s associates.’

  ‘I’m not arguing with your theory, Jo. But you know how tight that information is kept.’

  ‘And you know whose head is going to roll if we don’t find the killer soon,’ Jo said. ‘Mine will be splashed all over the Mail tomorrow morning as it is.’

  ‘I can’t get you out of the hole you’ve dug yourself into,’ Dan said, sighing.

  ‘You won’t have to,’ Jo answered. ‘I’m going to find him.’

  Dan’s mobile bleeped with an incoming text. He glanced at his watch. ‘Stupid of me to forget. It’s all going to change completely any second, isn’t it? You’re going to be proved right and everyone else wrong when a mutilated body shows up – oh yeah, crucified . . .’

  Jo stared at his watch. It was new too, and looked like a fake Tag. She really wanted to know what he’d done with her dad’s old leather-strapped one . . .

  ‘You real
ly think I’d say anything if I wasn’t sure?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m just asking if you’re out of your depth, Jo.’

  ‘I wasn’t until the second you asked me,’ she said.

  He sighed, walked to the curtain and pulled it slightly aside to see out.

  ‘Here’s my lift.’

  ‘Ask him to wait a few minutes, I need to talk to you.’

  Dan shook his head. ‘It’s not a cab.’

  He pulled on a jacket – a windbreaker, shiny on the outside, fleece lining. He looked all wrong in it.

  ‘So how is this living-separately thing going to work when you get back tonight?’ Jo asked. ‘Is Jeanie planning to stay too? Is that what this is about? Think the green-eyed monster will do the trick?’ She stood up and began plumping the scatter cushions. ‘Because two can play at that game . . .’

  He lunged and grabbed her by the wrist, dragging her over to the window. She was stunned. In all the big, ugly rows they’d had over the years, he’d never resorted to force. If the boys hadn’t been asleep, Jo would have screamed at him to let go. Instead she whacked him repeatedly with her free arm. Dan pulled the curtain aside to show her that the car waiting was being driven by one of his rugby mates. Then he let go.

  Jo stared at him staring back at her. She knew they were both thinking the same thing – how had it come to this? They’d both been to domestics, seen how septic a relationship becomes when it turns nasty, how much damage it does to the kids.

  After a long pause, he said, ‘You want to know where I went during the Phoenix Park investigation? The Quality Hotel, Pearse Street. Room 112. And yes, to save you the trouble of a follow-up call, it was a double room.’

  43

  11.32 p.m. Jo moved the street map she was studying off her lap and went to the window, which someone had just rapped. She pulled back a curtain, to see Gavin Sexton standing there with a bottle of red wine in one hand and two wine glasses in the other. He’d changed out of his work clothes and into his civvies – a denim jacket and chinos. His hair was gelled into a spiky style. He lobbed his head in the direction of the front door.

  Jo went to the hall and pulled it open. ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Down the station,’ he said sheepishly. ‘Letting Mac go.’

  Jo presumed he was joking. ‘You don’t have the authority,’ she ribbed.

  ‘I know, so I used your name, said you’d ordered it.’ He held her stare.

  ‘You what?’

  When he didn’t blink, Jo headed down the hall for the phone.

  ‘Can you just listen to me for a second?’ he asked, following and pressing a finger on the hang-up button.

  Jo glared at him.

  He took his hand off the phone, twisted the cap off the bottle and started to fill a glass. ‘I can’t do this without a drink.’ He held it out to Jo. She ignored him and started to dial again. He placed the empty glass beside the phone. ‘I let him out so I could follow him. I thought if he’s our man, and Jo’s right about today, he’s going to lead us straight to the next victim,’ Sexton continued, pouring another and taking a big mouthful. He swallowed hard. ‘And there’s something else I haven’t told you about the case.’

  Jo hung up. She looked towards the bedrooms and then pointed into the sitting room. He walked in and sat on the couch.

  ‘Go on then,’ she said, remaining standing.

  Sexton didn’t look at her. ‘It’s got to do with Ryan Freeman’s little girl. Her name is Katie. She was taken by the Skids, a couple of months back. It’s the crime that links all our killings.’

  Jo sat down slowly, keeping her eyes on him as he kept talking.

  ‘I don’t know what they did to her. I’ve been trying to help the Freemans to find out. Whatever it was has messed her up really bad . . . She’s only a kid, Jo. I mean, can you imagine something like that happening to either of yours? How scared you’d be? . . . I know you’d go to any lengths to help her recover. Well, as you already know, Ryan and I go way back, and he asked me to help.’

  ‘Tell me everything,’ she said.

  ‘Anto Crawley ordered Katie’s abduction, no question,’ Sexton explained, speaking between big gulps of wine. ‘And he made sure Ryan knew it too.’ He told her about the CCTV footage. ‘And it looks like Rita Nulty was chief babysitter while they were holding on to Katie. Stuart Ball probably helped cart her off, and I suspect Father Reg found out what happened, I’m not sure how yet.’

  Jo sighed. ‘And all this time I’ve been running around like a blue-arsed fly, and people have been dropping dead left, right and centre . . .’

  ‘You think this has been easy for me?’ Sexton said, leaning forward, his face even more lined and tired than usual. ‘I promised Ryan I’d stay quiet for Katie’s sake. If we went tramping in there making arrests, we’d no chance of anyone in the Skids telling us what they did to her. We’re still trying to bring her back, Jo. She hasn’t talked properly since this thing happened.’

  Jo sucked air through her teeth. ‘She’s still sick?’

  He nodded. ‘She’s in Crumlin at the moment.’

  ‘So why are you telling me now?’

  ‘I was always going to tell you, Jo. But yesterday, I found out that Ryan’s wife, Angie, was being blackmailed by Anto Crawley before he died. I’ve spoken to her. She said her only part in it was to give Crawley advance warning on what Ryan was going to print about the Skids. Crawley would use her tip-offs to get his act together before the stories appeared in print. If Ryan was about to publish the fact that Crawley has a container of hash sitting in Dublin port, Angie tips Crawley off, and it’s too late – the container’s empty. The story dies. I believed her, and so did Ryan. Anyone would have done the same to save their family.’

  ‘Believed her?’ Jo pushed. ‘Why the past tense?’

  He took a swig from the bottle.

  Jo took the bottle out of his hand and put it down on the table. ‘Now tell me what happened when you released Mac. And then how long you spent doing yourself up since you tailed him?’

  ‘I just thought that, if I followed him, we’d get to the bottom of it, finally. But he went straight home.’

  Jo grabbed her keys and phone.

  Sexton jumped up too. ‘You can’t just go barging in on Katie. She’s in a bad way. She can’t cope with any more trauma.’

  ‘We’ve got it all wrong,’ Jo said. Her hand shook as she dialled Dan’s number. ‘Mac isn’t the killer. He’s next.’

  Friday

  44

  12.29 a.m. The first thing Jo saw when Sexton kicked Mac’s door in was two bare size-twelve feet hanging limp at that grotesque angle that instantly suggests suicide – big toes touching. They dangled from the far side of a mezzanine, which was obscuring the top half of the body.

  Sexton clamped his hands on Jo’s shoulders like he was going to use them to vault over. Jo spread her arms to block him from rushing to Mac’s aid, pointing to the heavy pool of blood congealing under the body.

  ‘Out,’ she told him over her shoulder, speaking over the racket the TV and stereo were making. ‘In the same direction you came in, close as possible to your original footsteps, and we’ll need your shoes.’

  The way Sexton exhaled behind her suggested that he realized he was in some part to blame for Mac’s death.

  ‘Make the calls,’ she reminded him tersely.

  She braced herself, then moved stiffly across the open-plan apartment, registering the strange words scrawled on the walls. Foxy was right, she thought, staring at the white, distressed-leather couch running the line of the apartment walls and the paintings on the wall – Guggi, Graham Knuttel. No civil servant’s salary had paid for this place. The hairs on the back of her neck lifted as she got closer to the body. Mac’s apartment was also in ‘C’ district.

  She was standing by Mac’s feet, just beyond the pool of sticky blood. She could have turned and looked up, but she wanted to delay it for as long as possible, as she had a mental image of wha
t she would see. She pulled a face as a bad smell – like soggy stems of flowers left in stagnant water – hit her. Her gaze moved to an overturned aquarium and the dead fish scattered about.

  ‘It’s not like you to lose your temper,’ she told the killer, voice shaking.

  She took her pad and pen out of her bag and noted the precise spelling of the strange words on the walls then turned and looked round slowly. Mac had been nailed to the balcony that ran round the apartment. His arms were fully extended, bound at the wrists to the chunky wooden rail that formed the balcony’s barrier, and his hands had also been secured to the wood with metal spikes. Blood had run from the wounds down to his elbows before dripping on to the cream carpet, and his head was drooping sideways, so that his chin touched his chest. A crown of thorns sat on his forehead. Bar his Y-fronts, he was naked. And, yes, there was the signature wound, left of the breastbone, Jo observed, trying to concentrate on anything other than the chill she felt in the pit of her stomach. Not revulsion. It was fear.

  She headed for the clear glass stairs connected to a side wall and climbed to the gallery floor, taking in the silver coins scattered about. ‘Judas,’ she whispered.

  The noise was making her so jumpy she couldn’t help looking over her shoulder. ‘Come on, Jo, the killer’s gone, keep it together,’ she told herself. ‘This is what you’re trained for. You need to see things the way he did.’

  She looked at Mac’s unmade bed. It was low, a Japanese crate job, dressed with black satin sheets, the kind single men like and women don’t.

  Then slowly, concentrating on her breathing, she looked across at the back of Mac’s head and torso, which were close enough to touch. She noted the marks and welts on his back, suggesting he’d been whipped.

  As long as she was rationalizing, processing, she could do this, Jo told herself. She moved closer so she was looking down on the top of Mac’s head. The crown was made of hawthorn branches and the spikes had torn open wounds in his scalp. She swallowed her rising sense of panic and looked at the rope wound several times around his wrists. It was blue and thin – the sort used for a washing line. They might strike lucky if they could analyse it down to a year of manufacture, she thought. If only there was more time . . .