I sink back against the seat. “That’s what I’m doing.” And I realize that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m no longer hunting Seán Hennessy; I’m ruling him out.
CHAPTER 21
STEVE DRAINS THE LAST of his power drink. A sickly looking orange concoction that near on rots my teeth just looking at it.
“You need to ease up on the sugar addiction, Detective.”
He puts down the bottle quickly. Surprised to see me. He picks up a file, hands it to me. “All the letters that we found on Sheridan’s computer,” he says.
“Thanks.”
I go to the coffee machine, set down the file, and select an espresso. Outside the sky is closing over. Full dark clouds gather over the city. The moon a hidden orb of white in the evening sky. The day is seeping away, lights from the traffic below throw yellow beams across the window.
The office is quiet. Too quiet. The phones have died down. There is little exchange between staff members, no rumbles of excitement at the coffee machine. The team is edging on confusion. All working the scatter of this murder. The only cohesive element is the cluster of victims pressed to our case board. Helen’s just about visible behind the partition of her desk, pen tucked behind her ear, brows drawn together in concentration. Paul is the only one who seems happy with the change of pace. It’s the first time I’ve seen his back touch his chair since the case opened. He clicks slowly over his keyboard with one hand, a sandwich poised in the other, his mouth working contently. Out of everything, this alarms me the most.
I rap on the desk, capture their attention. “Let’s have a quick debrief.”
I see Paul give the sandwich a longing look and think he might cram the entire thing in his mouth before he comes over. With some reluctance, he wraps it up and leaves it on his desk. They gather, Ryan in the front row. Helen gets up from her desk, sits next to him, and Ryan leans away slightly. Baz folds his long limbs, hooks his foot over his knee. His laces have come undone but he doesn’t notice. He reaches for his notebook, balances it on his lap.
“The killer is ticking off a sequence of murders that fit the normal pattern of crime,” I say. “Victim, weapon, and killer. Now he’s come to the end of that pattern, we’ll likely have a cooling-off period before he attempts to kill again.”
I start at the middle of the case board. Work outwards, use the photos as a guide.
“Victim one: Alan Shine, forty-five years old. Electrician. Murdered by strangulation between the fourteenth and seventeenth of August. Body recovered next to his wife at St. Catherine’s, Clontarf Road, on Sunday the nineteenth of August. We believe he was killed elsewhere then dressed in priest’s vestments before being positioned in the church by the killer. Alan Shine was murdered as part of an elaborate display by the killer. In the killer’s eyes and in our case we have named him Weapon.
“Victim two: Geraldine Shine, forty-two years old. Online beauty salesperson. Worked from home. Stabbed to death in St. Catherine’s church on Clontarf Road on the nineteenth of August between the hours of two P.M. and six thirty P.M. She was stripped naked to the waist at the scene, laid prone next to her husband. The murder weapon was located in her husband’s hand, although we know that Alan Shine could not have killed his wife as he was already dead. There were eleven stab wounds inflicted on her back postmortem. These are significant. They mimic the injuries sustained by Bríd Hennessy on August 13, 1995. The killer has labeled Geraldine Shine, Victim.
“Victim three: Conor Sheridan, forty years old. Father of two and ex-husband of Jane Brennan. He’s been paying his bills with intermittent contract work over the last few years. An alcoholic but toxicology and witnesses say that he’s been sober for the last five months. We believe that Conor felt under threat. He’d been receiving hate mail from an unknown sender. At his home in Tallaght, we discovered his room was tightly bolted. It might’ve been he knew or suspected his life was in danger.
“Conor was murdered at an unknown location and brought to Clontarf beach, probably via boat, in the early hours of the twenty-second of August 2012. His body had been cleaned, dressed in a new suit, and posed against the seawall at Dollymount Avenue. The word KILLER was written in the sand at his feet, suggesting not only that our perp was determined to leave a message but that he understood the tides well enough to know his message would remain at Sheridan’s feet until his body was discovered.
“During postmortem the cause of death was found to be a gunshot through the heart. Conor was stored in refrigeration for at least five days before the killer moved him to the beach.
“We’ve been following a lot of leads to no avail, so now our primary objective is to find where Conor Sheridan and Alan Shine were murdered, where their bodies were kept. We do that, I’ve no doubt we’ll find this murderer. These types of killers can’t ever let go of their crimes. They store their kill kits, tokens from their victims; they revisit crime scenes. If we can find where he’s based, or where he murders his victims, we’ll have a nest of evidence at our disposal.”
Baz adds, “A reminder: We’re looking at fridges or locations large enough to store bodies for days at a time. We’re looking for the boat that may have transported Conor Sheridan’s body to shore.”
“Update on Robbie McDonagh?”
Ryan shifts on his seat. “He’s been quiet lately. Quality time with his ma, looks like. Hits the corner store most evenings for a six-pack. But all in all he’s been lying low.”
“No visits with Jimmy Lynch?”
“Nothing. Local gardaí are finding it very unusual that Robbie’s not at his local hangouts,” he adds.
Baz is the first to get up. He slots his notebook into his back pocket and catches my eye.
“Good work, everyone. Who’s on late tonight?” I ask. By late I mean through the night. Helen and Ryan put up their hands.
Steve returns to his desk, gathers up his coat, a worn black denim jacket. “Emer’s due in.” He looks pointedly at the clock, which shows five after nine. “I tried to clean up the CCTV footage with Sheridan at the shop but all I can get from the reflection in the shop window is a shadow. We’ve still not been able to get who he was calling but we ran through Jane Brennan’s records and as suspected, we discovered that she did receive a call from him around that time. The call lasted under thirty seconds and Jane says he was canceling a visit with the kids the following day.”
“Right, can’t you hold off until Emer gets here? Keep working on the footage?”
He removes a packet of gum from the top pocket of his jacket, pops one in his mouth, already shaking his narrow head. “No can do, Chief. Got band practice tonight.”
Baz follows me into my office, sits down at the desk, lowers the chair, and stretches out. It’s dark and stuffy, and I go to the window and push it open the couple of inches it allows. I stand there for a while, breathing in the cool air, the grime and sweat of the case thick on my skin and the taste of failure sour in my mouth. At the beginning of a case, it’s easy to keep energy high and convince yourself you’ve got the upper hand, and some cases work like that, under every rock you kick up, a microcosm of evidence, but not this one. Not this time. Clancy used to say that there’s a moment in every case when you know you’re not going to win. When you realize that all the shreds of evidence you’ve at your disposal are never going to stitch together. For some cases you know immediately. For others it can take months before that moment comes. And now I think I know what he meant by that.
Baz stifles a yawn with his hand. “What’s that you always say? The answers lie with the victims. Don’t forget them,” he says.
I sit down at the desk and move the mouse of my computer to wake the screen. I see two emails from Donna Hegarty. One about the case budget and the other asking me for a detailed report on what Jack Clancy has told me about his daughter and Seán Hennessy.
“That sounds like good advice.”
“W
ell, maybe we’ve lost focus a bit. Forgotten them. If we look at what links them . . .” He rubs a palm over his face as if to wake himself up. “Alan, he was dressed as the priest; he was also a lay minister. That says someone local, right?”
I move the cursor over the emails. Click delete. “We know it’s someone local.”
“But someone who went to Mass occasionally. And not just any Mass but the service at St. Catherine’s.”
I look round the computer at him. “Did we get a list of the congregation?”
Baz reaches forward, picks up the phone, puts it on speaker. “Helen, do we have a list of the congregation at St. Catherine’s?”
“No. Healy said he couldn’t possibly name everyone who attended services.”
I recall Mrs. Berry’s testimony that there’d been only twenty in the church that afternoon.
“Well, why is that not surprising,” Baz says, the eye roll clear in his voice. “Get on the phone to Healy. Tell him we want the names of the regulars at his Sunday service. If he doesn’t cough up, tell him to put the kettle on because I’ll be round within the hour.”
“It’s quite late.”
“Keep ringing until he answers,” Baz says firmly.
“Okay, also Emer’s just in and she says she’s got a rough view of the vehicle in the Sheridan footage.”
Baz puts down the phone and pulls himself out of the chair. He shakes out his hands and I can see a flash of satisfaction in his eyes at the thought of putting Healy out.
I smile at him. “Don’t be too smug.”
He spreads his hands in a show of innocence. “What?”
I shake my head and leave the office, Baz at my side, the bounce back in his step.
Emer is hunched over Steve’s desk again and I’m glad he’s not here to see the order she’s restored to it, files and notes neatly stacked. Not a sign of Coke can. It’s close to a violation.
“What have we got?” I try to keep my excitement in check. The image we’ll get, if any, might just be a passerby. Someone slowing to ask for directions maybe. It could be nothing, another stray lead to follow to a nothing end. Emer clicks on a tab and the screenshot appears, displaying a murky photo of shadow and light. I look down at the dark reflection of the vehicle and remind myself that cases often hinge on the smallest of offerings, even the shadow of a car.
“Steve attempted to resize it but it scrambled the image so it’s taken me a while to get back to where I was yesterday,” she grumbles.
I suppress a smile. She can’t have been in the office more than ten minutes.
“The vehicle is substantial enough,” she continues, “the height of the lights off the ground, not quite SUV territory, but comparable to a sedan model.” She clicks the cursor over the image, draws in the shape of the lights. “Considering the height of the vehicle, length, the angle, length of the hood, and position of the wheel hubs”—she adds more shape to the image—“the model of the vehicle reflected in the window is likely similar to—”
“It’s a Beemer,” Baz says from over my shoulder. Emer shoots him an irritated look that he’s jumped all over her discovery. “Sorry. Go on,” he murmurs.
She clicks another minimized tab on the computer and the screen unfolds, spreads out to reveal a blue BMW saloon car. “As I was saying, it’s similar to a vehicle in this series. It ran in variations of black, red, blue, gray, white, silver, and metallic versions of these colors so I reckon either a charcoal gray, blue, or black here.”
“The year?” I ask.
She pulls up two photos of the car. She hovers the cursor over the first photo. “This is the 2011 model, the trunk, there’s a lip on the edge, it’s a little stylized. But in the 2012 model”—she clicks on the other photo—“you can see they’ve smoothed out that ridge. The car in the CCTV appears to hold a similar shape at the rear. So I’d say, new. A 2012 BMW saloon in blue, black, or charcoal gray.”
I can see it, see that the trunk appears to slope downwards. I imagine streetlights skimming over the smooth paintwork as it moved down the road, out of sight, into the darkness.
My heart picks up. I can feel the plates of the case groan beneath my feet, begin to align. “David Brennan, Jane’s husband. He collected the kids in a car like that, the morning I spoke to her.”
She opens up the National Vehicle and Driver File, types in David Brennan’s name, address. Looks up his birth date, then enters that too. In a few seconds she has his car details.
“That’s a match. Similar car,” she says. She writes down the registration number and passes it to me.
“Expensive car for a crane driver.” Baz remarks.
“I think David Brennan likes to top up his income by other means. Thanks,” I say to Emer. “If David Brennan was the last person to see Conor Sheridan, he’s either involved in this somehow or at the least, he might’ve seen someone.”
“Can we check his working hours against the timeline for the Shine murders?” Baz asks.
Emer searches for Dublin Port, brings up the staff page, scrolls through the departments. “He’s in cargo, right?”
Cargo. The image of Dublin Port rises in my head. A dark, echoing landscape, the sounds of metal groaning against the crash of the Irish Sea. The busy turn of cranes, loading and unloading containers onto ferries, and the trundle of lorries waiting to move their containers aboard.
“Containers,” I murmur.
Baz and Emer glance at each other, a confused kind of worry widening their gazes.
“Containers,” I say again. “Could you hide a body in one? A fridge or freezer even?”
Baz gives a slow nod. “I guess, if you knew which ones weren’t in use.”
“And worked somewhere where you wouldn’t necessarily draw attention going to and from one.” I can see the excitement light in Baz’s eyes.
“What do we do about Brennan?”
“If we can get evidence first, find that crime scene, we’ll have a stronger interview. But fill the team in; I want a close eye on him. Contact me if there’s any movement. We need to find that container now.”
I return to my office, pull on the holster, and throw my coat over my shoulders.
Baz meets me on the floor. “What’s our move?”
* * *
—
THE BUSTLE AND BEEP of the port bleats out into the dark night. A few voices shout into the wind along the dock. The clunk and bang of hatches opening, the rattle of semitrucks easing closer to the dock.
Baz gets out of the passenger seat and walks to my side. “Jesus, it’s fucking freezing. Where to?”
We’re close. I can feel it. The answer to this case is a step away.
“Over there.” I point across the terminal to a chain-link fence.
Even from this distance, I can see it’s broken down in places, and beyond it is a scrapyard of sorts. Mounds of rusting metal pipes; an old digger, grass growing up around its runners. And windowless houses, old containers, gathered up against a high concrete wall. A mini-city of steel.
“How many are there, do you reckon? Seventy odd?” I open the back door of the car, remove a couple of stab vests, pass one to Baz. He shakes the cold from his fingers, then shrugs out of his jacket, hooking the vest over his head and securing the Velcro straps at his chest then he pulls his jacket back on quickly. I do the same, my coat uncomfortably tight over the extra bulk of the vest and the weight of the gun at my shoulder.
“We’ll be through it in no time,” he says, and jogs his body up and down on the spot, like an athlete ready to run.
I shove some plastic gloves in my pocket, should we strike it lucky. Determination to pick up this lead rises through me. Baz heaves a crowbar out of the trunk. “Let’s go find us a crime scene.”
We move forward into the darkness. There are rows of containers, stacked high like forgotten Lego bricks. I shine
the torch over the uneven ground. The wind screams through the narrow passages created by the containers. My feet catch on gravel and metal. But once we get in the thick of it, the wind drops, held back by the walls of metal around us. The safe sound of activity on the port becomes muffled, and we both stand for a moment to work out our movements.
“I’ll go this way.” Baz points the crowbar to the right. “Keep your radio on three.”
I turn the dial of my radio. “There’ll be a generator, for the freezer, listen for it.”
“If the wind bloody stays down. Hopefully we’ll make light work of this. It’s not the kind of night for a jaunt along the fucking seafront.” He walks away and in seconds he’s gone, invisible in the night.
I move on through the maze but I can hear Baz tapping the sides of a few of the containers, the clang of metal on metal. I keep my torch low, scan the sides, the levers that open the containers. Deep in the center, I see one, slightly off at a distance, long side facing out, not in line with the rest. I move toward it and slowly I pick up a track in the gravel, the suggestion of a path, the odd footprint in the mud beneath the gravel. And then there are footsteps, a skitter of stones behind me and the crunch of gravel. I stop. And the footsteps stop.
I turn off the torch, slide it into my pocket. Move slowly; my hand reaches for the Sig Sauer at my shoulder. My palm welcomes it. My breath settles. I wait. Ear cocked, hearing nothing but the persistent roar of the Irish Sea. Then a figure, tall and swift, crouched over, speeds ahead of me, disappears into the maze. And I chase after it. Through the network of containers further into the darkness.
CHAPTER 22
FREEZE! GARDAÍ.” But whoever it is does not stop. He goes deeper into the maze of containers.
“Harwood!” I shout.
My voice bounces back and in moments there is silence, broken only by the cold hiss of the wind beyond the walls of the containers, the distant drone of traffic and lorries easing away from the port toward the city. I try his radio but am met with static. I fight to control my breathing. Feel that old panic rise, feel it creeping around my chest; sweat gathers along my hairline. I turn the torch on again and move slowly after the shadowly figure.
The Killer in Me Page 24