The Dead Tell Lies: an absolutely gripping mystery thriller

by J. F. Kirwan

  ‘Ploughman’s salad?’ he ventured.

  Matthews belched a confirmation. ‘With extra chips.’

  Greg pulled the paper cup closer to his nose, wondering why Finch put up with this guy. Maybe Matthews reminded her of the men she served with in the army, men who farted and fornicated with abandon because their lives were on the line every day. Whatever else Matthews was, he was real.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Matthews asked. He whipped out a chair and sat on it backwards, obviously a habit. Greg would have to ask a colleague what it meant, psychologically speaking.

  ‘This case is a definite match. The Reaper.’

  Matthews leaned over and snatched up the file. ‘Yep, that’s what we told ’em.’ He tossed the file back on the table, the papers and photos spilling out of the folder. He tilted his head forwards and peered out from bushy eyebrows to see which one Greg had in his hands.

  ‘Ah, The Desiccator. That one’s a no-brainer.’

  Greg stared at the file. It was?

  ‘Impress me,’ he said to Matthews.

  ‘Well, The Divine, obviously.’

  The Divine killed people in ways related to death scenes in the Bible. But which scene? Greg turned around to face Matthews. ‘Impress me some more.’

  Matthews belly-laughed. ‘You don’t see it, do you, Mister Smarty-Pants.’

  ‘I’ve only just started–’

  Matthews slapped his thighs. ‘Don’t embarrass yourself, it’s okay, I won’t tell Finch.’ He leaned closer, the onions no less strong than when he’d entered. ‘Our little secret,’ Matthews mock-whispered, tapping his nose with his finger. He drew back and stood up. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’

  ‘Nothing else?’ Greg asked. He wasn’t going to beg.

  ‘Nope,’ Matthews grinned. ‘Sod ’em, that’s what I say.’

  Greg nodded slowly. Sod ’em. Sodom. Sodom and Gomorrah, from Genesis. ‘Lot’s wife,’ he said. The woman who looked back at Sodom in the Old Testament and was turned into a pillar of salt. Desiccated.

  ‘There you go,’ Matthews said. ‘The rest, we didn’t have a clue about, so now it’s your turn to impress me.’ He opened the door.

  ‘Wait a minute, if you had a working theory on these two homicides, why wasn’t a new case file opened?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Then who closed it?’

  Matthews’ features hardened. ‘Who do you think?’ He left, the door closing behind him.

  Rickard. But he could see why. Two independent copycat murders. One-offs. No leads. No connection. No pattern.

  Greg checked the date of the killing. 10 March. Six months, more or less after Kate, but not on the nose like the first one.

  He got up and fetched another ristretto. Last one today. Promise.

  The other two homicide files were trickier. One was particularly gruesome and messy, but lacked any kind of distinctive signature that serial murders normally exhibit, signs that indicate planning and a predefined vision. He moved them back to the blue pile. However, the last…

  An elderly man, one Alfred Ellerton, suffered a heart attack and drowned in his bath. At first, Greg wondered why it had been referred to homicide at all, as this kind of unfortunate death did happen, and there was not much water in the lungs, suggesting that the heart stopped before true drowning could take place. But forensics had done a more thorough job than was often the case. The autopsy had found slight bruising around the clavicles, as if the man had been held underwater. It was light pressure, but due to the advanced age of the victim, bruises had appeared post-mortem. Because of questions over the cause of death, it had ended up in the grey zone between accidental death and homicide, and handed over to the Yard. No further evidence was found, so it became a cold case. It didn’t fit the MO of any known serial killer. But the date of Alfred’s murder – 13 July – was exactly three months before Kate’s. Too much of a coincidence for Greg’s liking. No one else was seeing this, because the killings were being treated as isolated incidents. But to Greg there was a link. More than that. The beginnings of a pattern. But to what end?

  Time to let his mind run wild.

  He planted his elbows on the table and leant his temples on his fists as he considered the five murders in chronological order: Alfred, Kate, the bully, the female night guard, and Fergus – as a chain of murders involving the same serial killer. Kate’s murder had been personal, and the killer apparently wanted to keep Greg alive and make him suffer. Hence the phone call interrupting his Russian Roulette. The bully and the night guard – practise runs? Fergus had somehow known about The Dreamer being dead, and so had been killed. Which left the old man, Alfred.

  There was no manual on serial killing, but it was rare to target very old people, because they were already fragile. Holding power over them wasn’t a challenge; they were close to death anyway. So, from a serial killer’s point of view, to put it bluntly, why bother?

  Yet he was forgetting a sixth murder: The Dreamer. This must have taken place before or around the same time as Kate’s. Probably before, as the frequency of the killings appeared stable. He reasoned it out. This first murder – The Dreamer – was a necessary starting point, to get rid of the competition. The question was, where was the body?

  He flicked back through all the other files. The oldest was a year and a half ago. They needed to go back further, at least three or even six months earlier. A killing, maybe nothing especially macabre about it, except it was the new serial killer dispatching The Dreamer. And the old man, Alfred; there might be a connection somewhere in his past, to something or someone he knew.

  Greg considered the enormity of it, and the novelty. A serial killer killing another serial killer. To gain their power? Like the primitive practice found in certain jungle tribes where warriors ate the hearts of their enemies. There was only one killer Greg knew who thought that way. He stared up at one of the photos on the wall. The Divine. He picked up his phone and called Collins back at Reedmoor.

  After an initial bureaucratic run-around, he got through. ‘The Divine – he’s definitely still in a coma?’

  ‘Yes, Greg. I check on him personally once a month. I even used the needle-in-the-eyelid trick once, to be absolutely sure. To tell you the truth, he’s wasting away. I’d give him another year, tops.’

  ‘No visitors?’

  ‘Absolutely none, Greg.’

  ‘Okay, thanks.’

  Greg hung up.

  Someone else, then. He tried to see inside this new killer’s mind. You start by killing a serial killer to gain their power. Then you kill, mimicking other serial killers’ methods, one by one, to become stronger… or because you like the idea, and it becomes a template, with its own internal driving force. This was classic copycat territory, lacking the imagination or self-confidence to tread your own path. But the old man’s murder didn’t fit the profile. Why not?

  Somehow it was all linked to him, Greg. His ex, Jennifer, had suggested it, and The Painter had seemed to confirm it via his sketch. But the old man’s death didn’t fit any of the cases Greg had worked on. It would be easy to discount it as an outlier, an unrelated event, yet Greg’s instinct howled at him that it was connected.

  He was missing something.

  He didn’t have enough pieces of the puzzle to work it out, and he knew why. He needed at least one more murder. That felt like tempting fate.

  He put the files in order and went to find Finch or Matthews, to give them the heads-up. They needed to go back a few months earlier than Kate’s murder, dig into Alfred Ellerton’s case, and look for one more murder victim – The Dreamer.

  Just as he spied Finch at the water cooler and walked up to her, one of the forensics experts arrived and addressed both of them. He vaguely knew her – Sarah was her name, though he couldn’t remember her surname, nor could he read it from her pass which had turned itself around. He recalled she’d worked on Kate’s autopsy.

  ‘You both need to come with me,’ Sarah said, her voi
ce not quite smooth, as if something had rattled her.

  Without waiting for a response, she walked towards the service elevator. The one used to carry bodies down to the morgue.

  17

  Greg and Finch exchanged a glance, then dutifully followed Sarah into the larger than normal lift. Inside, there was an awkward word-vacuum and lack of eye contact as the lift descended two floors at glacial speed with its three occupants.

  Sarah broke the silence, addressing Finch. ‘Do you carry a weapon?’

  ‘Always,’ Finch replied without hesitation.

  Not exactly an ice-breaker. Sarah was diminutive and very pretty, with flowing red hair and a smattering of freckles, but Greg had heard rumours that few pursued her, most dropping the attempt after a single date, saying she was stone cold and reckoning she preferred the company of dead people, hence her chosen profession.

  The doors opened and they stepped out. Greg and Finch knew the drill, and each donned a surgical mask, apron, gloves and shoe coverings before entering the autopsy room. The pungent, pickle-like odour of formaldehyde stung Greg’s nostrils like an invisible whip.

  Fergus’s corpse lay on the slab. It always amazed Greg how different dead people looked. Whether it was the initial slackness, the loss of muscle tension as if all the cells realised they no longer had to pull together, or the later rigor mortis that petrified people in an unnatural posture, Greg had seen enough corpses to appreciate an undertaker’s skill.

  He focused not on Fergus’s imploded face, but on the newly stitched incisions where Sarah had plied her trade. He recalled one of his favourite films, Wired, about John Belushi, and the way it starts as he, already dead from a cocktail of heroin and cocaine, gets to watch his own autopsy.

  ‘Cause of death?’ Finch asked.

  Greg did an about-take, glancing back at the crater where Fergus’s nose and eyes should have been. While technically there were no stupid questions…

  ‘Heart failure,’ Sarah said.

  As he’d thought. Massive trauma, the heart making an executive decision, giving Fergus a terminal escape from all that pain.

  ‘So why are we here?’ Finch asked, her tone borderline impatient.

  Sarah regarded her handiwork. ‘His heart gave out before the wounds were inflicted.’

  Greg stared at Sarah. What?

  ‘He was injected with a drug that works on the adrenal glands, the amygdala and the hypothalamus. It heightens paranoia and amplifies arrhythmia.’ She turned Fergus’s cratered face away from them and pointed to a small red spot on the back of his neck. The syringe’s entry point.

  Greg knew of such psychotropic drugs. Usually hallucinogenic, too. Fergus had been hearing ghosts…

  ‘I believe he was literally scared to death,’ Sarah said, folding her arms. ‘If his face was still there, we’d see it in his expression.’

  Greg wished she hadn’t said that, because his mind began sketching such a face.

  ‘So, not a sudden crime of anger,’ Finch said.

  Greg began running through various serial killers’ MOs. It fit several of their profiles, but not The Painter’s. The Torch, maybe, but he was dead. Ditto for The Surgeon.

  Finch stepped up to Fergus and inspected the red spot, her white-gloved fingers cradling Fergus’s head as she peered closer, prodding and teasing the skin around the mark.

  ‘No bruising, and it’s at the back of the neck, so not self-administered or done violently during a struggle.’

  Sarah folded her arms. ‘Agreed. We think something else was used first to paralyse him – something very fast-acting – but the fear-inducing drug has masked it. I can’t determine what it was.’

  ‘Do you have access to fear-inducing drugs?’ Finch suddenly asked Greg.

  Greg played it back. Neutral tone. No suspicion lurking behind the words. Just something she had to ask.

  ‘No, I’m a psychologist, not a psychiatrist.’ He said it as if it explained everything, because for him and quite a few psychologists, it did. A century-old source of enmity between the two disciplines. Psychiatrists were also medical doctors and generally preferred pharmacological solutions to behavioural problems. Psychologists were not usually medical doctors, so had no right to administer drugs. More to the point, many psychologists, including Greg, didn’t put too much faith in the chemical approach, as it didn’t always work, and often created new, longer-lasting problems.

  ‘Would Rickard have such access?’ Finch asked.

  That got not only his, but Sarah’s attention.

  ‘In theory,’ Greg said slowly. ‘Rickard is a qualified and practising psychiatrist. Certain drugs could induce psychosis if given in extreme doses. As for fast-paralysing drugs, I’ve never heard of one, and cannot think why you would ever need one, medically speaking.’

  Finch didn’t even nod. ‘Okay, well, if there’s nothing more,’ she said, getting ready to peel off her gloves.

  ‘Actually, there is,’ Sarah said. She walked over to a table with a pearl glass top and flicked a switch. X-rays of Fergus’s skull in three different planes sprang to life. Greg maintained a respectful distance while Finch closely followed Sarah’s finger-direction around the shattered facial bones.

  ‘A neat circular pattern,’ Finch said.

  ‘As well as even pressure in the hammer strikes,’ Sarah added.

  ‘Like a sculptor,’ Finch said.

  ‘Yes,’ Sarah agreed. Greg detected more than a hint of respect in her tone. He had the feeling that it was rare for anyone to impress Sarah.

  Finch turned to Greg. ‘This is your domain. Someone scared Fergus to death, but then did some very careful and premeditated sculpting of his face. Does that fit any known serial killer’s profile?’

  ‘No,’ Greg said absently, because the cogs in his head were suddenly spinning.

  ‘Then we’re looking at a new killer,’ Finch said.

  ‘No,’ Greg repeated.

  Now both Finch and Sarah stared at him. He said nothing while the cogs slowed, and then he weighed what he was thinking, pulling together the information, including the case files he’d just been reviewing, where one death was different. The cogs stopped, revealing a scary possibility.

  ‘Care to share?’ Finch said.

  ‘It doesn’t fit any single profile,’ he said, ‘because it doesn’t make sense, psycho-pathologically speaking. Instilling such fear in their victim, well, it would be a serial killer’s equivalent of an orgasm, so there would be no incentive to follow it up with something like this.’ He flicked a hand towards the X-rays. ‘And if there was another motive for caving in Fergus’s face, it wouldn’t have been so precise, because the victim was already dead, and would hold little interest for the killer.’

  ‘So,’ Finch began, ‘what you’re saying is…?’

  Greg folded his arms. He was about to say something that couldn’t be unsaid. Something that would put the investigation on a whole new trajectory. He took a breath.

  ‘There were two people involved in Fergus’s murder.’

  Finch’s eyes bored into his. ‘Just to be clear, you’re saying there are two serial killers out there, working together?’

  Greg nodded. ‘One scared Fergus to death, the other did the handiwork on his face. Two distinct MOs. Two killers.’

  ‘Okay,’ Finch said. ‘We need to update Donaldson and Matthews right away.’ Again, she made to leave.

  ‘There’s one more thing,’ Sarah said.

  That got a raised eyebrow from Finch. Greg wondered what else there could possibly be. He’d had enough revelations for one day.

  Sarah walked around the other side of the slab, putting it between Greg and her. Finch must have noticed as well, because she did a tennis-match one-two glance between them.

  ‘There’s a question you haven’t asked,’ Sarah said to Finch.

  A frown surfaced on Finch’s brow, then submerged. ‘Time of death,’ she said.

  Sarah nodded. She seemed to be summoning up courage.
>
  ‘My best estimate is that he died at 8pm, give or take a couple of hours.’

  Greg took a step forward. Sarah took a step back. He felt the blood rushing around his head.

  ‘That’s not possible, you must have made a mistake, I met Fergus at 8pm.’

  Sarah kept her eyes on him. ‘I’m aware of what you stated in your deposition, Mr Adams. However, my colleague, Dr Williams, has confirmed it.’

  Greg imagined the evidence board. With this new timestamp, Greg suddenly became suspect number one. There was no way around it. Christ, that was why Sarah had asked Finch if she carried a weapon.

  Finch reached into her jacket pocket with her left hand and did something. Greg guessed she had just activated an emergency code on her phone. She lined herself up with Sarah, the two of them facing Greg from the other side of Fergus’s corpse. Finch’s right hand was close to the holster at her waist. Fergus’s shattered and eyeless skull faced him too. Greg tried to take it all in, but his mind stopped working as he recalled The Painter’s sketch of him, alone, walking into the void.

  18

  It wasn’t a cell, Greg reminded himself. There was a single, narrow frosted window up near the ceiling, a couple of chairs and a table, a small, uncomfortable-looking sofa, and a locked door.

  Not a cell.

  He still couldn’t make sense of it. Even if the time of death was an hour out… He stopped beating his head against an imaginary wall. He’d even considered the remote possibility that Rickard’s Schism theory was true… But no, it just couldn’t be. He’d have to figure it out later, or Finch would. At least he wasn’t under arrest – yet.

  As the minutes ticked by, he considered the larger frame. What if someone was trying to implicate him for multiple murders? He recalled the dates of the potential copycat murders from the red pile. One, the bully boy, was a three-month anniversary of Kate’s murder, and he’d taken leave to visit the cemetery alone on that day. No alibi. The other date, the night-watch woman, he wasn’t sure about, but almost certainly he’d been alone at home as it occurred at night, the killer – or one of the killers – probably watching the webcam to make sure of it.