He prided himself in not mutilating his creatures, so he worked methodically, and carefully, prising the skin away from the flesh, feeling the cold tissues give way under his warm hands. He worked on, right the way down the body to the bony tail skeleton. The skin here needed to be sliced open and to be sewed back up when he was finished. With practice, he was now able to release the tail without damage to the structure. He continued, skinning up to the neck and the ears. Finally, the skin stretched away from the skull so that he could see the white membrane connecting the eye to the skull.
40
Anna woke early. The bedroom felt like her’s now. She had never been one of those women keen to create a home. Bedsits and student living would’ve suited her for another few years. Jon had pushed for them to get on the property ladder. To settle into the grown-up rhythm of chores and DIY. She liked this house though. It had character, a sort of homeliness that felt natural, not orchestrated out of some interior design magazine. She turned around in the bed and pulled the duvet up around herself.
Aisling Mackin was on her mind. CCTV showed Aisling, distinctive in her red coat, entering the bar at 9.48 p.m. and at no stage did she leave. This meant that she must have left via the rear doors, and to do so meant that whomever she was with had knowledge of the alarm system and the layout at the back of the building, away from the public areas. Fibres from Aisling’s coat had been found caught on the latch of a door to the rear of the building. The general public was not permitted into the back rooms, which housed the staff quarters, the kitchen and the cellars. Aisling had been led from the main bar into the back office. They had footage showing Aisling talking to two different men. One of them had been identified as a gaffer on the period drama. He remained in the bar until closing time and had left with his girlfriend, who had provided him with an alibi. The second man was seen chatting to Aisling at the bar, buying her a drink. He is then seen leaving, exiting through the front door. It was possible that he returned, coming in through the back way, and had been undetected by the security cameras.
She got up and showered before heading down to the kitchen for a quick cup of coffee. There was still no sign of the cat. She had taken to calling it Misty in her mind. She’d have to watch it, or she’d end up becoming some crazy cat lady. Still, it was nice to have him around; if it was a him.
She filled the kettle, took out a slice of bread to put in the toaster when looking out the back window, over the frost-covered lawn, something caught her eye. At first, she thought it was meat, something maybe Misty had killed and left for her as a gift. Cats did that sort of thing. Bring back their prey to the one who feeds them.
Anna opened the back door to have a better look. As she got closer, the icy grass crunching under her feet, she saw it was a slab of something. Something meaty, bigger than a bird, or even a rat. It was raw sinewy, almost like a lamb, but it was the tail that gave it away. Slick, white, mauve and salmon pink, the body lay stretched out for her to find. Her heart quickened and a wave of nausea rose up from the depths of her stomach. She heaved, spitting onto the icy ground. It was Misty, skinned and displayed, left for her to find.
She went back to the kitchen, sickened and shaky. It took a couple of goes before she could call up her contacts on the mobile.
‘Thomas, you better come over to my house and take a look at something.’
Thomas was there with twenty minutes. The roads were gritted but traffic was slow.
‘What’s the problem, Tonto? Can’t get the lid of your peanut butter jar?’
He swaggered in, all scrubbed faced, freshly shaved and smelling of lemons.
‘Out there, go look. I think he’s been here, the killer.’
‘What?’ he walked through the kitchen and out into the garden, Anna followed behind. ‘It’s a cat, I was feeding it. I think it’s from next door. It would call by and I would leave out some bits of chicken for it.’
‘Jesus.’ He bent down to look at it. ‘How do you know it’s the same cat you were feeding?’
‘Well, I don’t for sure. Hard to tell when it doesn’t have its fur. It hasn’t been around all week, and then this turns up. I assume it’s the same cat, either way it’s creepy as fuck. He’s sending me a message.’
‘Right, we’ll get it bagged and have the place checked over. You need to assess your security too. He could have come up that laneway at the back of the houses and climbed over the wall.’
‘The house is secure. He’s sending out a message, not threatening me as such.’
Thomas stood up.
‘We don’t know what that message is, so in the meantime we take precautions.’ He looked at her with concern. ‘The press conference, he’s probably saw you on that.’
Anna nodded. ‘Anyone could’ve followed me home from work. It isn’t hard to find out who’s working a case these days.’ She didn’t like the idea of the killer having been lurking around but she didn’t need her partner thinking she couldn’t handle herself either.
Thomas walked around the perimeter of the garden, looking for a gap in the hedging. ‘Looks like he knows a thing or two about skinning animals. The taxidermy angle again.’
‘Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.’ They stared at each other.
‘Are you ok?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine. Not happy about this psycho running around leaving a poor defenseless cat for me to find in this state.’ Her knees were still shaky but she wasn’t about to let Thomas see how badly it affected her. There was something obscene about being upset over the cat when three girls had been murdered.
He put his hand on her shoulder, ‘Right, let’s get the ball rolling on this. Talk to neighbours, see whose cat has gone AWOL and bring the techs in to take it in for testing. Who knows what it will throw up by way of information.’
41
This time there was a small Christmas tree standing in a bucket in Kathleen’s living room. It was twinkling, draped artfully in assorted coloured lights and decorated with strands of gold tinsel. A red and gold angel topped it off. Christmas cards cluttered the mantelpiece and Anna was suddenly embarrassed that she hadn’t thought to bring a gift or a card. Christmas was passing her by. She hadn’t given any thought to how she would spend it and she dreaded telling her dad she had no intentions of going home. She couldn’t afford to take the time off work – the case was consuming her every thought and this afternoon away to see Kathleen was as much of a break as she hoped to take.
‘Let me get your coat. Was the traffic bad?’ Kathleen asked busying herself around Anna. The tea tray was already set up, with mince pies on a festive holly and ivy patterned plate.
‘Yes, the traffic was busy. Everyone seems to be heading out of Belfast.’ Anna handed Kathleen her grey wool coat and sat down. She accepted the cup of hot tea and declined to take a mince pie. The trappings of Christmas were everywhere. She liked the idea of opting out of the festivities and drowning herself in work.
‘I hope you aren’t worrying about your figure, because the Maguires never get fat.’
Anna laughed and said, ’Good to know.’
‘So how have you been from when I was last here? I hope I didn’t upset you too much dragging up the past like this.’
‘There hasn’t been a day pass that I haven’t thought of you, or our Jamesie. It isn’t as if I put it behind me and forgot.’
‘You didn’t tell me how come I ended up being adopted in Wales. Did you leave Belfast after Jamesie died?’
‘No, but I made sure I got you out. Word on the street was that Sean had done a bunk after turning in our Jamesie. If they knew I was carrying his child I’d have been tarred and feathered at the very least.
‘Jamesie had a girl back then. Roisin, she was called. She worked in the solicitor’s office with him. A trainee solicitor in her father’s practice. Smart and gorgeous, tall with dark shiny hair. Our Jamesie was smitten all right. When Jamesie died, she was heartbroken, she came down to our house to pay her respects, like. Something i
n the way she looked at me made me sure that she knew I was pregnant. How she could tell, was beyond me – I was whippet thin, but on her way out the door she turned and said to me – right quiet like – if you need my help give me a call. She jotted down her number and was gone.
‘That night I prayed to God that Roisin would help me, and in the morning I went up the Ormeau Road, found a phone box and made the call. I felt that I could trust her.
‘She said she knew I’d phone, and that there were organisations across the water to help to get rid of a baby, but I told her I couldn’t murder an innocent baby, that there had to be another way. I didn’t want it going into one of the unwanted babies’ homes either. The thought of the nuns scared the life out of me. I was convinced they would know whose baby it was and tell on me. Roisin told me to give her a few days to think it over and she would get back in touch.
A week later she met me outside the school. I felt so sick and tired by this stage that I was sure I would faint, and then everyone would know my secret. Roisin took me into a café in the town. Bought me a Paris bun and a cup of tea. She had a plan. She had an aunt who lived in Wales who worked for the social services. She said if they got the baby to her they could get it adopted. Now all we had to worry about was hiding the pregnancy.
‘I knew that our Jamesie would have helped me if he could, and here in his place was this angel of mercy taking his place.’
Kathleen stopped and dragged on her electronic cigarette. ‘Terrible looking these things are, but they’re supposed to be better for me than the real things.’
‘So where was I? Oh yes, Roisin. Well, she concocted this plan I was to tell mummy and daddy, I’d been offered a job in Portaferry for the summer, minding two children and cleaning for a good Catholic family. Our family was still in the fog of grief that I don’t think they would’ve noticed what size I was or where I was going. I was neat enough and kept myself covered up.’
Anna stretched her legs out, ‘Did they fall for the story?’
‘Oh, aye they did, I finished school in June and I was on a ferry to Holyhead by 2 July. Roisin’s aunt, Linda, was there to meet me at the port. She took me in and let me stay with her until it was time for you to come. And funny enough, after it was all over, I did end up moving here, to Portaferry, and my sister Maura followed me. We wanted out of Belfast, as far from the trouble as we could get without leaving Ireland.
‘I’d never been out of Ireland before I had you. The green hills and valleys reminded me of Ireland but it all felt so different. The people talked all funny. I could scarcely make out what they were saying and they couldn’t understand me either. But they were nice people. Kind and gentle, and I felt that the baby would be all right brought up in such a place.
‘I sent letters home via Roisin, along with an envelope with my family’s address written on it. She put them in a new, Belfast addressed envelope and posted them so that the postmark made them think I was still in Northern Ireland. She was clever that way. I’d have been that stupid. I’d have given the game away.
‘Anyway, we didn’t have long to wait for you to arrive. 22 August. The skies were full of rain; it teemed down. Expect that’s why the place is so green, plenty of sunshine and rain. You came out with hardly a whimper. Me, I’d squealed enough for both of us,’ she smiled at the memory.
‘I didn’t get to see you, not properly. They cleaned you up and all I got to see was the top of your head; dark, thick hair. They said it was better that way. Would make it easier for me.
‘Last I heard, Linda said she had found a nice couple who’d been trying for a baby for years. The baby will be wanted and loved, I was told, and I held on to the thought for years.’
Anna woke with a start. She had fallen asleep on the sofa listening to the haunting melodies of Ben Howard. The music had lulled her into a shallow sleep plagued by dreams of barricades and burning buses. Kathleen’s story had replayed in her mind the whole way back from Portaferry. The trauma that Kathleen must have faced, finding herself pregnant to Sean and the desperate fear of being mixed up with him and his deadly game of acting as an informer. Where was he now, she wondered? It was tempting to do some digging and see if he was in the system. Except that all such inquiries were logged and she couldn’t be seen to be investigating him without a valid work reason. The thought of him becoming an informer bothered her. She couldn’t understand her feeling of disgust; that he was wrong to turn on his own community. To have betrayed the people he had grown up with, just to save his own neck. But then, who was she to judge a conflict she had only ever read about.
She thought of her own teenage years in Cardiff and a girl from her school that had got pregnant at sixteen. Rosalie Morgan had sex with her steady boyfriend of four months and found herself, six weeks later, in the toilets of St David’s shopping centre, peeing on a stick from a pregnancy testing kit she’d stolen from Boots. After much crying from Rosalie and gossiping among the girls at school, Rosa and her mum headed off to a private abortion clinic in Cyncoed. Within a week, Rosa was back at school, playing netball and by the end of term they had largely forgotten that it had all seemed like such a big drama.
Kathleen’s experience was so different. Anna was a product of this place. She was part of the pain, the suffering, the fear, and the disquiet. For once, Anna felt like she was beginning to get a hold of what it meant to be from here.
42
Anna unbuttoned her suit jacket and placed her hands on the table. The early morning wakeup call didn’t appear to have caught Finnegan on the hop. He was clean-shaven, wearing a crisp blue shirt, beneath a dark suit. His lawyer, Paul Murphy, was at his side again.
Nailing him hadn’t been easy. The problem was they were chasing after him, for the wrong crime. Digging around in the murky depths of Finnegan’s dealings had thrown up a few snifters of considerable interest, and now they had enough to haul him out of his comfy bed and into the station for full on questioning.
‘Mr Finnegan,’ Thomas began, ‘we would like to have a chat with you about some of your business associates and transactions.’
He looked to Murphy, as if he’d been taken by surprise. He probably assumed they would be questioning him about Esme and Grace again. Anna sat down, ‘We can trace you to deals done to secure a portion of a private equity portfolio. Toxic loans, following the 2008 property crash; can be pretty lucrative if you are buying them at the right rate. And it appears that your mate Aidan Anderson has been receiving kickbacks for providing access to all sorts sensitive information.’
Thomas opened a manila folder of bank statements, ‘You see Mr Finnegan, we need you to help us out. We aren’t used to looking through this kind of financial quagmire, but even to my culchie sensibilities, transfers to overseas accounts smell kind of dodgy. But you know, really, it’s not our problem. We are handing the whole shebang over to the UK’s National Crime Agency.
Anna leaned back, ‘I hear they’ve an algorithm set up for dealing with this kind of thing. Whole departments and ranks of computers designed to sniff out any financial misconduct.’
‘They sure have,’ Thomas said, ‘aye they’ve the right people to shift through the paperwork, crunch the numbers and spew out the guilty parties. Not the kind of boring police work I would want to be doing, but bad guys are bad guys.’
‘There’s a few points of interest for us. Esme Wells. Remember her? Your sister-in-law? Yeah, well Esme’s middle name was Rachel. One of the accounts, set up in the Isle of Man – nowhere exotic like the Cayman Islands or Switzerland. Bloody boring old, Isle of Man, land of Manx cats and TT racing. One of the Isle of Man accounts was set up in the name of Rachel Wells. Not exactly hard to work that one out – we could identify pretty quickly who Rachel Wells was. So, you get your wife-to-be’s little sister, to sign a few chits of paper?’
‘What did you tell her?’ Anna asked. ‘That it was an investment for her university fees? Or was she so enamored by you that she didn’t even question your motives?’
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Thomas took over, ‘She gets a generous pay-back for being your in-between person. We’ve been able to draw the dots together and do you know what the overall picture looks like?’
Finnegan looked like he was about to be sick. He looked to Murphy for guidance but even Murphy looked uncertain, ‘I will need to speak to my client alone.’
‘All in good time, Paul, all in good time.’
Anna picked up the thread, ‘I believe its five to ten years for this kind of fraud. Allowing for good behaviour you’ll be hitting your forties by the time you get out.’
Finnegan looked to Murphy again. ‘My client has been put under undue stress. We cannot be expected to answer these allegations without conference first.’
Anna smiled, ‘Well of course you will be given every opportunity to straighten up your story but before that we want to know who your fixer is. That one person who has acted as your go between. It has to be someone with political clout. Someone with friends in high places, and low gutters. And if we have to go up the chain of command at Stormont to find him or her, you can be certain we will.’
‘I have nothing further to say,’ Finnegan replied.
Thomas looked to Anna, ‘You have a half an hour to converse with your solicitor and then the boys from NCA are taking over.’
43
It was late afternoon, a little before four, when Anna headed out of the station. She drove up the Lisburn Road, hoping to grab something to eat from one of the many deli shops, when she noticed she had someone tailing her. A red Mazda 3. She’d been aware of it as she turned onto Balmoral Avenue and now as she pulled into a parking space on Lancefield Road, she watched as it pulled up on the opposite side of the road.
Little Bird: a serial killer thriller Page 27