Little Bird: a serial killer thriller

by Sharon Dempsey

  He was near the river when he smelt it. A fox den, that pungent musky odour of their urine. The burrow was deep into the ground with the first couple of feet of the main entrance enlarged and dug into an oval shape to allow the fox to bolt out if it needed to. He reached into his satchel and pulled out his leather falconry gloves for protection, along with the plastic bag of raw meat. If the fox was at home he could entice it out with some fresh meat and be ready to strangle it with his length of wire.

  He remembered his first fox, caught in the Glens while staying with Maude. He found it wounded, most likely hit by a car. The sinews of its left rear leg were exposed, raw and gristly. He could remember the saliva gathering in his mouth. The beautiful anticipation. He bundled the creature in his coat, being careful to cover its snout so that it couldn’t bite him. He carried it back across the field and when he reached the outhouse he laid it down. The stupid beast had looked at him with something close to longing, begging for water, or relief from its pain. He smiled and watched it, its heart visibly pumping beneath the orange coat and listened to it whimpering. Low and snivelling.

  When Maude found him, lost in the pleasure of the kill, she stopped in her tracks, absolutely still. He felt the horror of what was to come wash through him. She would punish him; beat him even, just as his father would.

  She raised her arms and he before he could take the first strike, he ducked down, holding his head in his hands for protection. But no, she didn’t hit him. Maude took him in her arms, and cradled him; carrying him home where she bathed him, washing away the blood. All the while singing hymns to him in her beautiful voice.

  ‘Veiled in darkness, Lord we pray,

  Take us back before we stray.’

  He could still remember the words and the haunting, sombre melody.

  28

  The next day, after work, Anna pulled into the narrow driveway running up the side of her rented house and was shocked to see Jon sitting on the front step.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, none too pleased.

  He rummaged in his rucksack and pulled out a clutch of envelopes, ‘Delivering your post.’ He grinned, almost disarming her with his good looks.

  ‘I said to forward my mail, not hand deliver it. You better come in.’

  He followed her up the narrow hallway through to the living room.

  ‘I’m serious Jon, what are you doing here? Is my dad ok?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah he’s doing ok. I wanted to see you. We should talk.’

  Anna sighed. She had spent the day trawling through CCTV footage, trying to identify anything that could possibly put Rory Finnegan in the vicinity of Grace’s murder. Lara had supplied him with an alibi – they had been attending a charity dinner and CCTV proved she wasn’t covering for him. She had a headache and she suspected Richard was pissed off with her for raking over the Brogan case file. The last thing she needed was a heart to heart with Jon.

  ‘Come on, I’ll buy you dinner,’ she said keen to put off the inevitable.

  They headed over to the Lisburn Road and chose a small Italian restaurant decked out with early Christmas lights.

  ‘So, how have you been?’ Jon asked, lifting his eyes from the menu to look directly at Anna.

  ‘Busy.’

  ‘Nothing new then. Still using work to hide behind.’

  Anna wanted to tell him to fuck off with his amateur psychology, but she was hungry, and didn’t have the energy required to fight. She could still recognise Jon as being attractive. His hair, shorter than he normally wore it, was starting to turn grey at the sides. He was clean-shaven and as always, dressed casually in a preppy style, which she often playfully mocked him for. His eyes, intensely dark and prone to looking melancholy, until he smiled, were what first attracted her to him when they had first met in Cardiff’s Yard Bar on St Mary Street. They had both been out with their respective group of friends, drinking and enjoying the live band, Roosevelt. The tall good-looking guy in a brown jacket had asked to buy her a drink and for once she didn’t decline and shoot him down with a withering look. They talked and before she could convince herself it was a bad idea, they had agreed to move on to somewhere quieter. They’d dated casually for six months, gradually spending longer and longer together before, almost without a discussion, he moved in.

  ‘I thought we agreed, no visits.’

  ‘I think you’ll find I didn’t agree anything.’ They placed their orders and resumed the conversation.

  ‘So, Anna, are you going to tell me what’s really going on with you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You run off to this place,’ he looked around, as if to say this dump, ‘Barely three months after your mother dies. Never mind that we had even skirted marriage. I did think that was where we were headed. It feels like you’re running away.’

  ‘I never promised you anything Jon.’

  ‘No. That’s true you never did.’ His tone was sad and resigned.

  The food arrived, allowing Anna a few minutes to avoid conversation as she began eating.

  ‘So, you are staying here then?’ Jon asked.

  ‘Looks that way,’ Anna replied sipping her mineral water. ‘Why did you come Jon?’

  ‘Call it concern. Call it courtesy,’ he hesitated, taking a drink from his glass before saying, ‘I am seeing someone at work. Nothing serious, its early days but I wanted to see where I stood with you before taking it further.’

  Anna couldn’t blame him. The writing had been on the wall for some time, but she hadn’t felt strongly enough to end it either. She had sort of hoped it would fizzle out naturally. The coward’s way out of a relationship.

  ‘How gallant of you.’ She hated herself for sounding so bitchy. He didn’t deserve it.

  ‘You’ve no business getting snarly with me Anna. If you wanted me, we wouldn’t be sitting here. We’d be back home building a life together. Instead you decide to go off and find yourself. How’s that working out for you, by the way?’

  She was stung by his comment. Somehow, she had always believed he understood her; that he got her need to do this, to try to find out more about where she came from.

  Jon looked at her with something close to pity. ‘I was there, when your mother was dying, I was there for you. Don’t forget that it was you who ran out on me, on our life together. Did you expect me to wait until you’d figured out whatever is going on in your head? Because I can tell you, there’s no figuring out what you went through. What you did.’

  Anna froze. How much did he know? How much had he worked out? She spoke but barely trusted her voice not to give her away, ‘I don’t know what you mean. I’m doing just fine.’ Images flashed through her mind, the quick sharp thrust of the screwdriver in that dank shed. The pain shooting through her breast, the metal taste of fear.

  Then later, with Camille, the smell of death on her skin, like lilacs and over-bloomed lilies. The bones of her face protruding, making her look so different. The heartbreaking sound of her father crying,

  ‘You got what you came for, permission to move on.’ Anna got up and grabbed her bag and coat, not caring about the dinner she’d been served moments ago. ‘Where are you staying tonight?’

  ‘I’ve booked a room in a hotel near the airport.’

  ‘Good. I’ll get my dad to call you to arrange packing up my stuff at the house.’

  Outside in the rain, Anna tried to compose herself. It was churlish to take offence, to be hurt, after all, she lay no claim to him, had made him no promises to stay faithful herself. Somehow, she still felt the sting of betrayal. It was easier leaving him, if she could think of him waiting for her. So that part of her life was over. Two years spent playing house and pretending to be grown up. It hadn’t suited her, not enough anyhow. Anna had reverted to type. If home life is messing with your peace of mind, throw yourself into work. The hopelessness of remaining in a relationship with Jon seemed clearer now that she was away from him. She was overcome with relief. It was done.


  29

  Declan was past making excuses for his wife. The months had slipped into years and here they were together but apart. Izzy had her own life.

  He recognised that he had messed up; that he had been going through the motions of family life and turning his head from what he had known for the longest time. That she had someone else to love, to turn to. The pain of that knowledge had burned low for so long and was now extinguished, drowned out by the pain of losing Esme and quenched by finding Anna. The need to know who Izzy was sharing her life with and how long it had been going on, what they did – he felt he was over it. He was past caring.

  What frightened him was how he felt about Anna. Her skin, so translucent and pale, all the more so against her dark hair. Her lack of self-consciousness when she undressed, the way she didn’t mind if he watched her. He wouldn’t be enough for her, but it was partly the fact that she didn’t need him, yet wanted him, which aroused him so much. And that voice; sounding like poetry, folk songs, honey and cream.

  Somehow it was easier to be naked in front of her than Izzy. Anna had never known him before the car bomb; she had never known who he had been. The first time he had been with her he had carefully avoided letting her see his broken body, his ragged scars and the tightened atrophied muscles. She had shushed him and had taken over, her hands trailing where he hadn’t been touched in years. Years. God, he could have cried with the pleasure of her mere touch, if it hadn’t been for his self-consciousness and his sheer embarrassment.

  He waited for her to say, ‘It isn’t that bad’ or ‘you don’t need to be embarrassed with me.’ But she didn’t. Instead, she reached out and touched him; her kisses raining down on him like a benediction offering solace. He knew that somewhere in the shadows of love you find fear. The knowledge that if you surrender to it, you can only get hurt. Anna wasn’t some fantasy he had dreamt up to the pass the hours lying in a hospital bed. She was skin and flesh and bone with that moon shaped scar on her breast. He couldn’t wish away how he felt, even if he wanted to.

  The first year after the bomb had been about being alive. In spite of the horror of his damaged body and the loss he had experienced, he could appreciate a deep respect for life and he was determined not to abuse what was left to him by being bitter and full of anger and regret. He could sense that there was nothing to gain in anger; it was wasted energy that he didn’t have to give. The perpetrators weren’t even on his radar. That was for others to worry about. He needed to focus all of his strength and abilities on recovering and trying to make the best of what was left of him. Through the pain, the agonies of skin grafts, rehabilitation, and infections, he had held fast to his determination to not be the one who made this bad situation worse. He could see that for Izzy, and the girls, life could get back to some sort of normality, provided he allowed them to. If he acted like some crazed King Lear, full of the injustice of his life, they would suffer along with him. So, he buried whatever bile of emotion threatened to rise to the surface, and after a while it became easier to act the role of someone who had resigned himself to a lesser life.

  He could see now that in doing this he had given Izzy permission to move on without him. By keeping her out of his head and his torment, he had cut her free. He hadn’t counted on her abandoning him. She had outgrown him. He had closed the door on any hope of tenderness for fear it would be pity. When they had first married, he enjoyed the idea of them being a tight unit. A team, as clichéd as that sounds. When the girls came along he felt relegated to the sidelines. He was the protector, not the nurturer and that was fine. He understood his role and his part in it all. He was prepared to work hard, to provide for them and to be whatever they needed him to be.

  When the house was being remodelled to accommodate his reduced state and his need for a wheelchair they had argued over pathetic details like handrails and bath chairs. He had sensed Izzy’s frustration of having her choice of designs and her inherent good taste reduced to the practicalities of the disabled. The builder would arrive with brochures of grab bars and hand rails, expecting decisions to be made and all Izzy could do was to sigh. At times, he wanted call her out on it. To make her feel small and guilty for showing such disdain for practicalities. He couldn’t of course.

  To have a woman like Anna want him and enjoy his company was more than he could have ever hoped for. He didn’t think he could have borne the past two months without her to lean on. She accepted so much of him without question. His grief and his disbelief at losing Esme had been so awful yet amongst the trauma and pain was this need to rise up and grab what pleasure he could find and Anna had offered him that glimpse of tenderness.

  30

  ‘They’re at it again,’ Richard said as he dashed through the office. ‘Riots on the lower Newtownards Road. I’m heading out there but stay put.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ Anna said grabbing her jacket.

  ‘No stay here, that’s an order. The roads are gridlocked so you’ll not manage to get home for hours and there’s no way I’m letting you anywhere near it without an armoured jeep.’

  She saw Holly and Russell share a complicit look. Richard had been emphatic about Anna not accompanying him but she wasn’t about to sit around waiting to be told she could have his permission. Thomas was off supposedly chasing up IT reports but Anna knew he’d had a meeting with his divorce mediator.

  She gave McKay a five-minute head start to get out of the building before she grabbed her keys and left. Richard was right. The traffic was slow. Five o’clock rush hour was bad enough on a normal day. It was Halloween, a big event in Belfast. As Anna drove by the houses in the more up-market end of East Belfast, she could see carved pumpkins glimmering on doorsteps and kids dressed up in elaborate costumes to go trick or treating, were passing by on the streets.

  Another vigil had been announced to commemorate Esme and Grace’s deaths and it appeared that the riot had broken out as the vigil had begun to disperse. Community leaders were calling on the people of Belfast to come out in droves and pray for the swift incarceration of the perpetrator. Social media pages had been set up to register interest in the event. Thousands had signed a petition to put pressure on the PSNI to do more, causing Richard to seethe for two days and give everyone an extra hard time. Politicians, keen to be with the swell of public opinion, were taking the opportunity to ask what the police were doing and could the case be handled better?

  Aidan Anderson had told the press, ‘dark deeds need to be met with light and that the spotlight of justice must be strong and uncompromising.’ He was quick to suggest that perhaps the PSNI were out of their depth and that perhaps now was the time to have stronger cross border links with the Garda Síochána. Anna could sense the tide was turning and that they needed to assure the public and the politicians, that they were making progress. But progress wasn’t enough, they needed an arrest.

  Not for the first time, Anna thought how divergent Belfast was as a city. Those with jobs and money seemed to live in a bubble of harmony and normality while only a few streets away those with no prospects clung to the old violence and bigotry. They had been trying for a week to contain the outbreak of rioting plaguing East Belfast, close to a notorious interface. Talks with community leaders had broken down and they were calling for the head of the PSNI to resign with the second murder victim barely buried. Belfast people liked to deal their own type of justice and if the police weren’t coming up with the goods they had decided to show their anger. The report had come in that one hundred youths, some aged as young as twelve, had been involved in fierce clashes.

  Additional police had been deployed in the east of the city the previous night in an effort to quell tensions after officers were pelted with petrol bombs and bottles. The homes of petrified residents caught in the middle of the disorder had also been targeted with two cars set alit. Missiles raining down on them had damaged attending fire engines. There were skirmishes between rival groups in the vicinity of the nationalist enclave of the Short Strand,
with much of the violence appearing to have been pre-arranged on social media. The most recent trouble involved sustained attacks on police officers by loyalist gangs, hell bent on voicing their discord and frustration that a killer was at large. They failed to see the irony of their outrage when Belfast had more convicted killers at large thanks to the Good Friday Agreement than any other UK city. But this was a new type of murder. Belfast was used to its blood being spilt for political reasons.

  Loyalist community representatives had met earlier in the day to discuss the powder keg situation, with further discussions between political representatives and the police due to take place in the coming days. The talks had obviously broken down and the power hold over the young of the community had failed to contain their lust for street violence. It seemed to be any excuse to take to the streets with a make-do balaclava and half a brick to lob at any moving target.

  Anna knew that summer riots around contentious parades and flags were common and were even known as ‘recreational rioting’, as if it was a perfectly normal occurrence for teenagers to take to the streets for entertainment. To come out on the dark, cold wet nights was something else. That showed commitment and anger.

  The rain pissed down as the car crawled through the traffic. At the junction of Bloomfield Avenue, a road known for its upmarket boutiques, she turned on to the Newtownards Road and heard the first thunder clap of violence. Sirens cried out in the distance as a blaze of indigo and amber fireworks rose up against the petrol blue evening sky. Since it was Halloween, the shops were full of fireworks – the riot weapon of choice.

  Anna drove on through Belfast’s bleak rain soaked streets. The orange glow of the street lights glinting off the black roads. She saw a shopping trolley filled with bits of wood and set alight as it rolled across the road and stopped at a cable wall. The siren of an ambulance whirled close by and she watched as a hooded figure stretched his arm back to hurl a petrol bomb into the crowd. Smoke rose up from the crowd along with a cheer of ‘Yeeeooo.’ The battle cry of victory.