Frank stared ahead for a moment, gathering his strength. "Do it."
Through the windscreen, they watched Joe climb out of a parked car at the end of the street and start walking towards the house. Another officer appeared from the opposite direction, moving slower, while three more edged forward from their hiding places. An unmarked Armed Response Unit van waited a short distance away.
Joe arrived at the house first. They heard him knock on the front door.
Silence.
"One more knock," said Frank. "If he doesn't answer, get rid of the door and go in." His words crackled through to Joe's earpiece.
There was a slight pause followed by a second knock.
Another silence.
"Go!"
Frank and Elizabeth couldn't see what was happening, but they heard the crash as Joe drew his weapon, stepped back, and kicked open the door, while the remaining officers surged into the house. They heard muffled shouts. Elizabeth reached for the door handle.
"Wait until it's clear," said Frank, grabbing her arm.
“Get the chief!'' Panicked voices crackled through on the radio.
She shrugged him off and climbed out, before running across the road into the house, closely followed by Frank. Inside was dark, but a flashlight picked a path through the gloom ahead of them.
"Joe?" said Frank.
Joe was holding the flashlight. He pointed the light at the floor, where a pair of stepladders lay in a pool of blood. Then he swept the light upwards. A man's body hung from a loop of electric flex attached to a hook. His feet were bare, his right wrist was slashed, and a crucifix dangled from his left hand. It was Harold Preston.
***
Later, Elizabeth retreated to the front steps and watched the cars crawl by as drivers, allowed on the road again, slowed to see what was happening. She stepped back as an officer in a white jumpsuit appeared in the doorway and made his way to the van, carrying a box. It had been one box after another, taken away to be catalogued, analysed, and stored. There were three boxes of photographs: images of Amber Foley, Orla Delaney, Kyla Novak, and many more, each taken secretly as they were followed and watched.
Another box contained the missing feet of the unidentified woman in the churchyard, as perfectly preserved as her hands. The box was gift-wrapped, ready to be sent. Brendan Mahon's name and address were written on the front.
"Is that it?" Elizabeth asked Frank as he appeared beside her. "It's all over?"
"Isn't this what we wanted?" Frank said. "Preston warned us in his profile that the killer might kill himself if he was cornered."
"Excuse me," said Charles Kennedy. They both turned around as the city pathologist emerged from the darkness behind them.
"Is there any doubt that it was suicide?" asked Elizabeth.
"You know I can't determine a cause of death prior to an autopsy."
"You're not in court now, Charles. Give us your best guess."
"Off the record, it looks like he killed himself within the last few hours."
"I spoke to him two hours ago," said Elizabeth.
"Did you? I'll know an exact time once I've completed the autopsy."
"Are you going to do it now?"
"Yes, I don't have much choice. I wish I had an assistant." He looked at Elizabeth hopefully.
"Don't look at me," she protested. "I've had enough of the dead."
Chapter Thirty-Three
"I've gone over it countless times, but the pieces still don't fit," Elizabeth said to Williams as they sat at the bar in his hotel, drowning their sorrows.
"I can't believe it," he kept repeating.
"You're the one who suspected Preston in the first place."
"I suppose I was hoping that you would prove me wrong."
"There are so many loose ends."
"Like what?" He downed the last of his whiskey and nodded at the barman for another.
"Oh, I don't know," she said bitterly. I suppose I want all the pieces to fit neatly together."
"Just because it doesn’t fit perfectly, doesn’t mean it isn’t true."
However, she wasn’t going to settle for an unsatisfactory conclusion. "Come on," she said, jumping off the stool. "We're going."
"Where?"
"You'll see."
Elizabeth’s car screeched to a halt outside Barrett's Car Rentals. She wanted to be sure that they got there before it shut for the evening. They ran through the rain to the door and pushed inside.
"Can I help?" asked a middle-aged man in a cheap, navy suit.
"Mr. Barrett?" Elizabeth asked. "We spoke earlier on the phone about the car rental."
"For the London gentleman. I remember."
"I need to look at the registration form that Mr. Preston filled out when your car was dropped off to him at the airport."
"Now?" Irritation flashed across his face, but he quickly brought it under control.
"Please."
He went to the safety of his filing cabinet and eventually handed a single sheet to her.
"That's not Preston’s signature," she said immediately.
"Are you certain?" asked Williams.
"It's signed Harold Preston. His full name was James Harold Preston. He always signed himself J.H. Preston. He never signed himself Harold. Never. This is a fake."
"Jesus Christ." Williams leaned against the counter.
"Who took the car to the airport that day?" Elizabeth asked.
"Kevin Dwyer," Bennett replied. "He called in sick this morning, but I can give you his phone number if you want to talk to him."
"His address too, please."
Elizabeth checked the address; it was a street near the river where Amber Foley was killed. "Preston was murdered. The killer even hinted at it to me on the phone. I asked him if he wanted me to say I was sorry, but he said it was too late. It was too late because Preston was already dead. Don't you see?"
"Not really, no."
Elizabeth continued speaking before Williams could raise a counter-argument and knock her off her stride. Her thoughts were crowding her brain so fast that her words were too slow to keep up. "Preston was right-handed. If he wanted to cut his wrist, surely he would have held the knife in his right hand and cut his left wrist, but it was his right wrist that was slashed."
"What about the hands in Preston's room?"
"They were sent to him, it's obvious now, the same way the other package was ready to be sent to Brendan Mahon. The box wasn't sitting there that night waiting to be wrapped; Preston had already unwrapped it. That was the package that made him rush to the courier firm."
“Why didn’t he tell us?'' Williams asked.
“I don’t know.''
"We failed him." Williams' voice was empty at the realisation. "What should we do?"
"I'll drop you at the Station. Find Frank. Tell him to send someone around to talk to Kevin Dwyer so we can get a description of the man he met at the airport."
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to stop off at my apartment. Then I'll head over to the morgue to get a set of Preston's fingerprints from Charles Kennedy, so we can run them against the prints found in Kyla Novak's flat. I won't be long. I'll see you back at the Station."
The lift was broken when she arrived at her apartment building. She didn't know if she could manage the stairs. One step at a time, she made it to her door. As soon as she reached the top of the stairs, she saw it. A gift-wrapped box sat outside her door. She knew immediately what it was. Carefully, she unlocked the door, stepped over the box and went inside. She called the caretaker seventeen floors below. He answered on the second ring.
"Steve, there's a box outside my door."
"I brought it up," he said. "It's been sitting in my office for the past few days, but you haven't been home, so I thought I'd drop it up."
"Okay, thanks."
She walked to the door and picked up the box, before carrying it to the table, where she gently laid it down. She knew she should have left it for
the police, but she couldn't wait that long; she had to know what it was. Carefully, she cut off the wrapping and placed it to one side, the same way that Preston had. Then she opened the box.
She stifled a scream when she saw what was inside, remembering that the dead couldn't hurt anyone; she'd learned that after killing Campbell.
***
The air in the autopsy room was sterile, but there was no sign of Charles Kennedy. A lab assistant told Elizabeth that he was in his office on the second floor, writing up the autopsy report on Harold Preston.
She found him sitting at his desk, the only light coming from a lamp angled towards the page on which he was writing. He smiled when she walked in. "I have the fingerprints you requested," he said. She'd phoned earlier to say that she'd pick them up. "If you don’t mind waiting a few minutes, I'll be done with the autopsy report. You can bring them both back to the Station with you."
She sat in the chair opposite his desk and sighed wearily. "I should call the family."
"Whose family?"
"Preston's. Telling them what happened is the least I can do. Although it'd help if I actually knew the whole truth. Maybe you can help me."
He glanced up from his writing and frowned. "What do you mean?"
"You know exactly what I mean."
He grinned over the top of his glasses; his face contorted by the light from the desk lamp, like some shadow inside him was coming through. He didn't have to pretend any longer. "Finally," he said. "I was starting to think you'd never figure it out. This calls for a drink." He reached inside his desk drawer.
"Stop," Elizabeth said, pulling the gun from her pocket and pointing it at him. She'd taken the gun from the safe in her bedroom, where it had lain, hidden, for ten years. She hadn't used it since the night she'd killed Ross Campbell. It was part of her, and she hadn't been able to bring herself to get rid of it. She manoeuvred around the table without taking her eyes off him. She opened the drawer. It was empty except for a bottle of whiskey and two glasses.
"Happy now?" Charles asked. He lifted out the glasses and the bottle, twisted open the cap and poured two generous measures, while she sat down again. He slid a glass across the desk towards her. "I thought we’d be having this conversation sooner. I had great faith in you, as I told you on the phone. Even Preston worked it out before you. He wanted to solve the mystery all by himself, which is why he didn’t tell you about his little gift and why he went to the house alone. I left the door open, and he walked in, just like you did now."
"I won't end up like Preston," she said.
"Poor old Preston didn't think he'd end up like Preston either. I had such trouble making his murder look like a suicide, but there was something dramatically satisfying about the way he hung there that made the effort worthwhile."
"He didn't have a gun."
"True enough." He shrugged and lifted his glass to his lips. "Drink up. I hate drinking alone. This is probably the last chance I'll get."
She reached for the glass and took a sip, grateful for the whiskey's sharpness. She drained the glass and let him refill it.
"Tell me how you finally worked it out," he said, leaning back in his chair.
"Everything came together when I opened the box," she said quietly. "I recognised your wife straight away."
"Dear old Kay," said Charles. "She started to notice things. She even followed me one night. I had to kill her, she left me no choice."
Elizabeth stared at him and realised for the first time how little she knew him. Patiently, she put together the missing pieces for him. "The Hebrew letters Gimel and Kaf: the third and eleventh letters in the Hebrew alphabet, which correspond to the letters C and K. Preston warned us that the answer would be so simple we'd never even consider it. He was right; C and K: Charles Kennedy, your initials."
"Now you know," he said.
"Why did you do it?"
"Why does anyone do anything?" he asked wearily.
"Ego-mania and an easily wounded sense of self-esteem are classic traits of a serial killer. You're right, I should have realised it was you all along."
"If you must know, I did it because I was bored. I was bored with myself, with this city, with my job, with everything. Life is beyond tedious for a pathologist in a city this size. I'm lucky if I get an unusual case once a year."
"Why did you make the riddles point to you?"
"Because it doesn't matter anymore. I don't have anything to lose. I'm dying. Cancer. I'll be dead by the New Year. I decided to go out with a bang."
"Why did you pretend to be Ross Campbell?"
"I wanted some of the attention he'd gotten all those years ago. Besides, it was fun tormenting you."
"How did you find Darcy Egan?"
"I met him when he came into the mortuary to identify the body of one of his junkie friends. He was just another twist in the tale."
"Why did you send the letters to Brendan Mahon?"
"I bump into him in the pubs around the city occasionally. It turns out we were seeing the same prostitute: Kyla Novak. It was easy to swipe one of his beer bottles and place it at the scene."
"Why frame Preston? Where did he come into it?"
"He was supposed to be a diversion to allow me time to finish the game. I'd heard from a colleague in London that he was coming to Cork. It was easy, but I never anticipated that he'd beat everyone to proving it was me. He figured out the Hebrew initials and asked to meet me. I told him to meet me at the house I'd rented in his name. He turned up, alone. He said he wanted to be sure that the killer wasn't setting me up like he'd done with Brendan Mahon."
"How did you manage to overpower Preston? He's younger and fitter than you."
"That was easy," Charles smirked. "I congratulated him on being clever enough to find me and then offered him a celebratory whiskey, which of course I drugged." He laughed as she looked at her glass. "The only difference is that what I put in Preston's drink made him sleepy and more manageable. Yours is quite a different cocktail."
"It can't be poison; you've been drinking it too."
"I'm dying anyway," he laughed. "And I don't care who I take with me; in fact, the more the merrier."
Elizabeth wasn't listening; she was struggling to think, trying to remember how much she'd had to drink, how many times he'd refilled her glass. She knew he was telling the truth by the poison she could sense in her veins. He kept talking, trying to stop her remembering what to do.
"You were supposed to be the last victim," he said. "You should have been at the house; you should have tracked me down; that was my plan from the beginning. Then Preston blundered in, and I had to let him take your place, but there's no reason why I can't add you to my list now, just like Campbell's on your list. You see, Elizabeth, I know all about your dirty little secret. Don't worry, I won't judge you too harshly. Everyone has secrets. We killers have to stick together. Besides, we don't have anywhere left to go." He put back his head and drained the last of his whiskey. "Cheers."
Elizabeth struggled to her feet. The poison was infecting and occupying her blood, like a ghost haunting her veins, even the whiskey was afraid of it. She stumbled. The gun fell from her numb fingers to the floor. She knelt to retrieve it and had to pull herself upright using the table. Charles didn't try to stop her.
She made it to the door and pulled it open, forcing herself to keep walking as she leaned against the wall for support. One step at a time. Searing hot pain stabbed at her stomach. By the time it passed, her head was spinning, and the ground was sliding away. Sweat trickled into her eyes.
The next thrust of pain came too quickly. She had to keep moving, she had to get help. A window loomed ahead of her. She couldn't make it. If only she could find her phone. Another pain twisted her insides. She couldn't cry out, she couldn't stretch out her hands to save herself as she missed her footing and fell. The stairs unravelled beneath her.
Epilogue
Charles Kennedy was dead by the time Frank and the others arrived. Elizabeth was
n't far from death either. She had Ken Williams to thank for being found in time. The description that Barrett's driver had given of the man at the airport matched Charles Kennedy, and Williams remembered that she was going to the mortuary to pick up Preston's fingerprints.
Charles Kennedy's secret life was excavated at various locations around the city. Responsibility for Campbell's death was quickly blamed on him too.
Two days later, Elizabeth opened her eyes. Frank was at her side.
"Where's my gun?" she whispered.
"I dealt with it," he said. "No one knows."
He said nothing else, but his expression told her that he understood everything about Ross Campbell, about what she'd done. He understood and accepted. His hand closed over hers and she knew that she was forgiven.
INSINCERE (Detective Elizabeth Ireland, Book 2) is available to preorder now. Click here.
The call comes from a distressed woman. Someone is trying to murder her. It’s too dangerous to disclose more over the phone. She wants to meet at midnight near the lighthouse.
Reluctantly, Detective Elizabeth Ireland agrees. But is it a trap?
Soon, Elizabeth is plunged into the dark heart of apparently motiveless murders that grip Cork City.
Four times, the killer known as The Shooter has struck, and four times the Murder Unit has hit a dead end.
Wherever the track leads, Elizabeth is determined that this time the shooter will not escape. And she's prepared to step into the line of fire if that's what it takes.
INSINCERE (Detective Elizabeth Ireland, Book 2) is available to preorder now. Click here.
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Tear Drop: Serial Killer Thriller (Detective Elizabeth Ireland Crime Thriller Series Book 1) Page 16