The Dead (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 1)

by Ingrid Black

  ‘Is that where you’re from, then – New York?’

  ‘No.’ I opened the box and started sorting through the papers inside. ‘That’s just a souvenir. I’m from Boston.’

  ‘What brought you all the way from Boston to Dublin, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘I don’t mind you asking. Everyone asks me that question.’

  Was he waiting for an answer?

  He could wait.

  ‘I suppose,’ he tried again, ‘you must be one of those Irish Americans we’re always hearing about.’

  ‘Not me. I’m one of those American Americans you never hear about. My grandparents came from this side of the Atlantic, if that’s what you mean. One from County This, the other from County That. They all thought of themselves as Irish.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘I was born in Boston, raised there, went to college there. I pledged allegiance each morning to the flag. American is what I am. All that Irish American, Italian American, Whatever American stuff doesn’t really interest me. I guess it must’ve skipped a generation. Is this all there was?’ I said to change the subject, gesturing at the boxes he’d brought round from Dublin Castle.

  ‘It’s all I could find at short notice. There may be more. I’ll check with records again once I’ve another free minute. They’ve been working me pretty hard since I transferred.’

  ‘You came from Serious Crime, that right?’

  He nodded once more.

  ‘About a month ago. Didn’t get on with my superior, I was going nowhere, I needed a change, Fitzger— the Chief Super was looking for new blood.’

  ‘And now you’re lugging boxes up six flights of stairs for some interfering outsider.’

  ‘Ours is not to reason why, isn’t that what they say? Ours is but to do and die? And I won’t always be the department dogsbody. They say it’s only till I find my feet in Murder. Besides, you’re not just any interfering outsider. From what I hear, you used to be FBI.’

  ‘Seven years. Not that long. I’ve spent longer out of it than in, but yeah, that’s what I did. Plus I used to know Ed Fagan, knew him well, that’s why I’ve been roped into looking through this lot.’

  As if they could’ve stopped me.

  ‘Looking for clues,’ he said. I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic.

  ‘Looking for patterns,’ I said. ‘There’s always patterns, always connections. It’s only a question of sorting out what’s important from what’s not. Let’s hope it’s here.’

  I mustn’t have sounded very hopeful, because he immediately asked: ‘Is this not what you wanted? I brought copies of everything that was there.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘Just wondering where to start is all. What about you? What’ve they got you doing?’

  ‘Me?’ said Boland. ‘I’m tagging along with the Chief Super in half an hour to talk to the man who found the body.’

  ‘The dog-walker.’

  ‘That’s the boy. Stephens, you call him. Matt Stephens.’

  ‘I thought he was already interviewed.’

  ‘He was taken down last night to make a formal statement. Now it turns out that he hangs out with some group who patrol the streets round there at nights trying to reform prostitutes, bring them back to Jesus, only he didn’t mention that in his statement. A uniform came through with the information a couple of hours ago. He recognised the name, put two and two together. The Chief Super wants to follow it up straightaway.’

  ‘Sounds promising.’

  ‘Detective Dalton reckons they just like hanging round red-light districts,’ Boland said. ‘He thinks they get off on it.’

  ‘He’s probably right. They could bring anybody back to Jesus if they wanted. Gamblers, shoplifters, even lawyers if they fancied a real challenge.’ Boland smiled at that. Cops always appreciated a joke at the expense of the enemy. ‘But it’s hookers every time. Next best thing to picking one up, maybe. Cheaper too.’

  ‘They even have an office in one of the streets backing on to the canal,’ Boland said. ‘Registered charity, if you can credit it. That’s where he’s arranged to be interviewed again. I think he was hoping there’d be safety in numbers. What’re they called now?’

  He struggled for a name.

  ‘The Blessed Order of Mary,’ I helped him out. ‘I’ve heard of them.’

  As I spoke, a thought flashed into my mind. Blessed Order of Mary . . . Mary Lynch . . . I wondered if that was significant.

  Another hidden message, like the bottle?

  I’d bring it up with Fitzgerald next time we spoke.

  ‘You’d better be on your way,’ was all I said to Boland. ‘You don’t want to be late.’

  Once Boland had gone, I sat down with the boxes and started going through them, slowly, methodically, file by file, page by page.

  Basically I was looking for any evidence there might be of Mary Lynch’s killer having struck before. Premeditated, ritualistic murder was rarely the first act. Rather it was the culmination of a process which might have taken years to come into shape, moving inexorably through increasing levels of brutality, audacity, cunning, to its final flowering. Mary Lynch’s killer was unlikely to be any different. He’d be in here somewhere, I was sure of it, refining the fantasy, rehearsing for Mary, waiting his chance. I started with murders all the same. It seemed the obvious place.

  Only three prostitutes, I soon learned, had been murdered since Ed Fagan’s day (only three? What was I saying? Three was a universe), and two of those could be quickly discounted.

  The first, Susan Levy, had died, along with her two-year old son, in a fire at her high-rise on the Northside of the city. Petrol had been poured through the letterbox and set alight. Police suspected a grudge attack over an unpaid loan. The other, Jo Philpott, was found stabbed to death a couple of years after Fagan’s own disappearance, in a laneway off Benburb Street just across the river from the Guinness brewery. This was another red-light district, where only the most desperate prostitutes worked, even more desperate than those who worked the Grand Canal, and Jo was the most desperate of all. She was forty-two and eight months pregnant when she bled to death. The woman’s boyfriend/pimp went missing shortly after the crime, and on discovery, confessed. He’d done it, he said, because she’d been cheating on him. She’d had sex with other men scores of times a day to feed his drug habit, and then he lost it when she slept with one for free.

  Her blood was found on his clothing which, criminal genius that he was, he’d stuffed in a refuse bin next door; his fingerprints matched those on the knife found at the scene. He was now in Mountjoy doing a ten-year stretch, having pleaded temporary insanity, diminished responsibility, deprived childhood, you name it, but was expected to be released soon when, no doubt, he’d find some other Jo Philpott to finance his prodigious chemical intake.

  It was the third murder which stood out, that of one Monica Lee, whose naked body had been found in the Dublin mountains two years ago, three weeks after going missing. Finding her was an act of pure chance. She’d been thrown down the side of a deep vale that was used by locals for dumping, and was already in an advanced state of decomposition due to bad weather. There had been gnawing of the body by rats too, which meant identification was only possible by dental records.

  What was more, the physical environment had been torn up by three weeks of heavy rain and the usual comings and goings from the dump. Tyre tracks were too numerous to distinguish, and those of three weeks back had long since been obliterated.

  Ambrose Lynch’s autopsy report was appended to the case notes. I skipped through the pages of details to the conclusions at the end. Death had been by massive brain haemorrhaging caused by indeterminate frontal blunt-force injury, possibly with a brick. Fragments of stone had been taken from the wound and sent for analysis, though no conclusive evidence as to its nature had been found. She was probably raped too, Lynch thought – two separate traces of semen were found inside her, no match on records, and there was so
me internal damage – but the poor state of the remains was so bad that he couldn’t say for sure.

  Cautious as ever, that was Lynch.

  And maybe he was right to be cautious. Monica was known to have rough sex with clients without a condom if they paid extra; she made no secret of it. Proving that she was raped would be virtually impossible, even when it did come accompanied by a brick to the forehead.

  There were, of course, some obvious differences between this killing and that of Mary Lynch last night and Fagan’s own victims.

  The body was concealed, for one thing, not left in the open to be found. Monica Lee was naked, not dressed – her clothes were never found. There was the probable rape. Method of death, crucially, was different too, and this killer had used restraints on both the victim’s hands and ankles, and a gag. Plus there was no note left with the body, no religious angle. The only possible hint there was the absence of a crucifix which, the dead woman’s friends assured police, Monica Lee had always worn; but that was a long shot. If the crucifix was all that was taken, it might’ve suggested a significance for the killer, but everything Monica had on her that night was taken, so whatever symbolism there might’ve been was hidden.

  No witnesses saw Monica get into the car that took her away on the night of her death. No witnesses saw her body dumped. No witnesses saw her in between, however long that might be. Fitzgerald’s hunch had been that Monica had a prearranged meeting that night with a regular client rather than being picked up at random on the street. Perhaps a client by the name of Gus who she’d mentioned to some of her friends. Other girls working that night certainly recalled her taking a call just before her disappearance, and laughing familiarly.

  Efforts to trace the mysterious Gus proved fruitless, however, and the investigation was, reluctantly, wound down. A note and extension number on the cover of the report indicated that the case was now being dealt with by a DS Donal O’Malley, and I made a note to contact him later and see if there was any information he could add.

  When it said that an unsolved case like this was being handled by a lone officer, that usually meant the officer in question was responsible for keeping the file updated with any new evidence which might, but rarely did, come in, and that he was expected to get the file out occasionally and blow off the cobwebs, see if anything had been missed previously; also to call the various witnesses and relatives to give the impression that something was being done. But to all intents it meant the investigation was closed and police didn’t expect to make further progress. Still, there was something about this one that made me want to know more.

  The deaths of five other prostitutes in the same time period took me less time to get through. They didn’t seem relevant to any investigation into Mary Lynch’s murder.

  One had fallen from the bridge, knocked her head and drowned in the canal. Autopsy showed excess alcohol and the presence of four different stimulant narcotics, including LSD and Ecstasy. Two had overdosed in the same crack house off the South Circular Road, not far from where Mary had lived, four months apart, but each was considered a clear case of accidental death. Another had suffocated on a plastic supermarket bag filled with glue. It would’ve been put down as accidental too had she not left a suicide note. The last to die had been knocked down and killed not far from the city centre at the corner of Fitzwilliam Street and Merrion Square. Eight women, eight dead women, just names now, eight women reduced to ghosts in the pages of a few meagre case reports. And only remembered now because Mary Lynch had gone into the darkness to join them.

  It was only when I laid Monica Lee’s photograph on the table, wanting on a sudden impulse to check if she looked anything like the picture I’d seen of Mary Lynch in the Post, whether that might be a connection, that I realised it was getting dark already.

  Out the window, lights were coming on over the city. The sky was streaked with black clouds. More rain. I checked the time. Four thirty. Fisher hadn’t called back, and Mort Tillman certainly hadn’t been in touch. I wondered if Fisher had managed to speak to Tillman yet, and if he had, why he hadn’t called to tell me. I rang Fisher’s number in London again but there was no answer.

  What time was Tillman’s seminar?

  Four o’clock, wasn’t it?

  I could be down there before it was over if I hurried. And once that thought was planted in my head, there was no uprooting it.

  What I had left of good sense told me I should wait till I heard from Fisher – but I told what I had left of good sense to go to hell.

  Chapter Seven

  Trinity College rose above the traffic that flowed round its base like an ancient sacred rock out of some fast-flowing dirty river, seemingly untouched by the surrounding noise and chaos. It had been here for over four hundred years and it wasn’t looking bad for its age.

  Certainly better than I did for mine most days.

  I walked through tall gates into the cobbled courtyard within.

  On the far side, a queue of tourists still waited, late as it was, to get into the library to see the Book of Kells, an eighth-century illuminated manuscript in Latin, stolen from Scotland, some said, by Irish monks and which the Irish showed few signs of handing back. And why should they? It was obviously doing good business, though I’d never been to see it myself. I was waiting for the paperback to come out.

  It didn’t take long to find the Psychology building, nor, once inside, to climb the stairs and find the room I was looking for; but once there, my nerve almost failed me. The door had one of those glass panels in it patterned with squares, like the sort of paper on which children do their math homework, and through it I could see Mort Tillman sitting by the window, head framed by darkening sky, legs crossed, hands folded, listening intently as one of the students, an anxious, fidgety young man in John Lennon glasses, made some point.

  Mort looked just as I remembered, with that same air of distracted, shabby grandeur, that same seemingly permanent frown, above all that same inexplicable fondness for overlarge grey corduroys and bright waistcoats, the latter his one concession to style. It was as though he’d once seen a 1940s print showing a caricature of the standard eccentric college professor and the image had become imprinted in his head, unerasable except by invasive surgery.

  His hair was still too long for a man of his age as well, though closer to grey now than the silver he always used to be so proud of, and the goatee looked rather worn. He was the middle son of a grand New England family of attorneys who’d expected better of him and made sure he never forgot it. Grandfather in the Senate; summer house on Martha’s Vineyard; winter ski lodge in Vermont – why wouldn’t they have expected better? Tillman had courage in his own way to defy them. It was just a pity that he couldn’t have defied them that bit more by not sharing their own assessment of his shortcomings.

  A glance up from Tillman showed that he’d seen me as I pushed open the door and entered as unobtrusively as I could manage, but if he was surprised by my appearance he wasn’t showing it. Did that mean Fisher had managed to contact him? Or had he been expecting me to come round ever since he arrived in Dublin?

  A couple of other people near the back of the room looked up too, but most of the other twenty or so students who’d turned up for Tillman’s seminar were too engrossed in the dialogue that was going on between him and the fidgety young student to take any notice of me.

  Theirs was an argument I’d heard many times before. If something was acidic, the relevant test would always show it to be acidic; it couldn’t be mistaken for, or pretend to be, anything else. But if an actual or potential offender knew the parameters of a profiler’s tests, he could subtly change his own behaviour to buck the test, escaping detection to carry on killing.

  ‘You can even download VICAP forms from the Internet now,’ the student insisted, referring to the FBI’s Violent Crime and Apprehension Program analysis reports. ‘I’ve done it myself. You know what the police are looking for. And once you know, you can beat it.’

 
; ‘In theory, maybe,’ Tillman said when he got the chance. ‘I’ve never claimed that profiling is faultless, I’ve never even used the word science. Offender profiling is a technique, that’s all, an application of psychological principles to the realm of criminology. It’s still up to the police to determine how to use the application of those principles in the solving of a crime.’

  ‘But how can they apply the principles at all if the principles can’t be relied on?’

  ‘It’s more complex than that, Tim,’ Tillman replied. ‘An offender may know the principles involved, but he still won’t alter his behaviour in the most part because what he’s doing has its own compulsion. He is working out, usually, an elaborate ritualistic fantasy of his own, perfecting it each time to make it right. Not only is it not possible for him to change his behaviour, he also wouldn’t want to because that wouldn’t satisfy the urge.’

  ‘But he could, if he chose to.’

  ‘Sure he could, if he wanted to make an abstract academic point about profiling,’ Tillman agreed. ‘But most murderers aren’t interested in playing those sorts of fussy intellectual games. They’re obeying a more primitive instinct. You can’t get away from sex.’

  ‘Tim manages it most weekends,’ another student piped up.

  Everyone laughed, though Tim didn’t even seem to have heard the mocking. He was listening too intently as Tillman continued.

  ‘Even if our hypothetical murderer wanted to buck the profile,’ Tillman said, ‘every contact leaves a trace. Every physical contact leaves a trace – that’s the principle of forensics. But every contact leaves a psychological trace too. We may only be at the start of finding out how to interpret that trace, but we need to keep at it. Even if it’s only knowing if the killer was in a hurry, if there was excess violence, whether he’s organised or disorganised. It all adds up to building a rounder picture of the offender. We can’t hide the way we are in our actions. We can change aspects, but how we behave still has an inner logic of its own that can be mapped.’