The Dead (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 1)

by Ingrid Black

  Fitzgerald had handed me a copy of the letter that morning as I arrived in the crime team room, less than an hour after she’d been having breakfast in my apartment. I’d read the single closely typewritten sheet half a dozen times since then and despair gnawed at me each time. A name, that’s all there was. A less common name than before, maybe, but he wasn’t making this easy.

  The only possible lead I could see was that phrase about a man that hath joy of his children. Could it be a hidden message about Jack Mullen carrying on his father’s work? But even that was stretching it.

  At least, I tried to console myself, Tillman had come down strongly against the idea of it being Fagan we were looking for, that was something; but it wouldn’t be enough to convince Draker, and he’d made that plain in his opening remarks to the meeting.

  He reminded me of Nick Elliott. I’d heard him being interviewed early that morning on one of the talk radio shows about his special relationship with Ed Fagan.

  Did I say being interviewed? Addressing the nation was more like it. All of a sudden Elliott wasn’t just some second division crime reporter guzzling for scraps from the same trough as the rest. All of a sudden he was an expert, an authority, and boy did he wallow in it.

  I’d switched off, disgusted, not least with myself. It was my fault Elliott and Draker could throw Fagan’s name about so easily, and only I could make them stop. What’s more, I was going to have to do it soon. If only I wasn’t so afraid of what might happen when I did.

  My eyes sought out Fitzgerald. There she was at Draker’s side whilst he spouted inanities. She was leaning back against the desk, one hand either side of her body, grasping the edge, legs stretched out, feet crossed. She was looking at her shoes the whole time he spoke. Draker turned to her occasionally, for affirmation or support, but her shoes were just too damn fascinating each time. I liked her style.

  She made contempt look like concentration.

  ‘It came in this morning’s mail to Nick Elliott at the Post,’ Draker was explaining right now about the latest letter. I hadn’t been listening, I realised, but I hadn’t missed much. ‘Same postmark, same typeface, same paper. The editor had it sent round to us straight away.’

  At last, they were learning cooperation.

  ‘Are they publishing it, sir?’ said Lawlor.

  ‘They’ve promised to hold it over for one day. That gives us twenty-four hours to track down this Nikola. We’ve already been in contact with Vice and the various welfare agencies to find anyone with a record of prostitution over the past few years with that name. So far, nothing.’

  ‘For all we know, she might be dead already,’ Dalton piped up matter-of-factly.

  He was sketching spirals on the copy of the killer’s letter on his knee. The page was covered with them. He didn’t even raise his head as he spoke. I knew what was eating him. He was still unhappy because he’d had to go back and redo all his interviews with Mary Lynch’s family and friends in an effort to try and track down her mysterious admirer Gus. He hadn’t had any luck, but it was the having to do it at all which bothered Dalton more than the failure.

  ‘Probably is dead,’ he added when he could be sure he’d got the attention of the room. ‘My little namesake yesterday was dead before the Post even hit the streets. No reason to think this one’ll be any different.’

  ‘She might be dead,’ said Fitzgerald firmly, raising her head for the first time since she’d taken her perch and glaring at Dalton. ‘But don’t assume anyone is dead until they are confirmed dead by the city pathologist. He’s the only one round here legally qualified to certify who’s dead and who isn’t. Besides, I spoke to Mort Tillman about half an hour ago . . .’

  There was a low groan in the room at the sound of the profiler’s name, and Draker smiled indulgently, making his own contemptuous opinion plain. So much for official appreciation of Mort’s efforts. I wondered if Draker had even read Tillman’s profile yet. Or if he ever would.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Fitzgerald, raising her voice. ‘You catch this offender all by your clever selves, then you’ll earn the right to turn up your noses at other methods. Till then we take expert advice where we can get it. And what Tillman says is that he won’t kill this Nikola, whoever she is, before her name appears in the Post. He’s seeking applause, validation. He needs to make it seem as if there’s some two-way game going on here in which we’re all equal players, hunter and hunted, quarry and prey. So he’ll wait.’

  ‘Like he did with Mary D?’ said Dalton.

  ‘We didn’t have prior warning about Mary Dalton because the Post kept it to themselves. The killer didn’t expect that. How could he? You don’t have to go along with it, but Tillman’s theory is he’ll wait this time to make sure everyone knows what he’s playing at before striking. Meanwhile, we do our job. That means all of you calling in all your contacts to see if you can get a lead on this Nikola. She’s out there somewhere. It might be someone with the nickname Nikola, the middle name Nikola. We know this guy has already murdered two women with surnames connecting them to this investigation, so bear that in mind too. And don’t just expect the obvious. He wants to play a game against you, wants to show he’s better than you. Don’t prove him right.’

  ‘Well, whatever the psychologist says,’ said Draker, seizing his chance to wrestle back control from Fitzgerald, and managing to make psychologist sound like it was something equivalent to snake-charmer, and equally as useful to the investigation, ‘it’s not going to help us trudge through the evidence any quicker. What about that? Have we got anything at all on the latest victim since yesterday?’

  There followed the most depressing part of the meeting.

  So far, the investigation into Mary Dalton’s death had been as fruitless as that into Mary Lynch’s. Door-to-doors had failed to uncover a single person who had heard or seen anything unusual on the night she died, much less a witness who had observed her with a possible suspect, or even noticed her at all. We were dealing with the same ghost who came and went without leaving a trace.

  Mary Dalton herself was almost as invisible. Hers was a familiar story, mapped out now in retrospect in little more than a list of summonses, court appearances, short stints in Mountjoy Prison, all for relatively minor offences linked to her need to feed her drug habit. She’d even worked as a lap dancer for a time at one of the clubs that were springing up around the city, though she’d been sacked when her pretty obvious status as an addict started putting off the punters, bless their high standards. It certainly didn’t take long to summarise her career.

  And that was it, was it, the sum total of a life? It seemed so.

  Then it all ended, as Lynch’s latest autopsy showed, with multiple stab wounds to the body followed by a single expert stroke to sever the jugular, leading to massive and fatal blood loss – exactly like Tara Cox.

  As for her boyfriend/pimp, if he knew anything about what had happened to Mary, he wasn’t telling; and according to Sean Healy, who took the man’s statement detailing when and where he last saw Mary alive, he didn’t seem too troubled by it.

  His alibi wasn’t convincing either, but I doubted that he was the killer. Whoever wrote those letters and killed these women was methodical, attentive, intelligent, like Tillman’s profile said. Mary Dalton’s boyfriend, by contrast, was as unstable as a homemade explosive. He had a conviction dating back seven years for attacking a barmaid with a broken bottle; another time he’d been hauled in for an assault on a previous girlfriend, though she’d been too frightened to press charges. Violence was encoded in his being; he couldn’t hide it.

  ‘What about the print on the knife?’ someone asked eventually.

  ‘It’s being run against the files this morning,’ said Draker.

  ‘And the cord round her neck, sir?’

  ‘Same sort that was used to strangle Mary Lynch,’ he said. ‘Standard garden twine, available all over. That’s a dead loss. We’ll never trace it back to a particular batch.’


  Draker didn’t bother asking how I was getting on, and that suited me fine. I wasn’t here to earn his respect or approval.

  Downstairs, I picked up my cellphone from reception – Lynch had dropped it off that morning, having found it on the back seat of his car after I leapt out at the market – and switched it on to find a message waiting from Lawrence Fisher.

  I called him back at once. Fisher was a busy man. He never just called to pass the time of day. Never just called me, that is.

  It was hard to figure out where he was when I finally got through, but it sounded hollow, echoing, noisy. There was a murmur of crowds. And was that a tannoy in the background?

  ‘I heard you teamed up with Tillman again,’ he said when he recognised who it was. He sounded amused.

  ‘I wouldn’t exactly call it teaming up,’ I said. ‘And how come you’re so knowledgeable, anyway? You boys been talking about me behind my back?’

  ‘Would you mind if we did?’

  ‘What is it they say?’ I answered. ‘It’s not when people talk about you that you should worry, it’s when they stop talking about you.’

  ‘You didn’t hear what we said.’

  ‘Same difference. But you didn’t call to tell me that. Not when you could be opening a supermarket somewhere.’

  ‘I have never opened a supermarket in my life,’ said Fisher, pretending to be offended. ‘They couldn’t pay me enough, for one thing. No, I just wanted to let you know that I may have something for you off the computer records.’ A pause. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘I’m here,’ I said. ‘Stunned, but here.’

  ‘Why stunned? You’re not saying you didn’t expect me to find anything, are you? Because if you are, why the hell did you get me to put in all the details in the first place?’

  ‘Just fishing,’ I said. ‘And a good job I did too if you’ve come up with something. Are you going to tell me what it is, or do I have to come over there and beat it out of you?’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said quickly. ‘From anyone else, I’d take that threat as rhetorical. From you, I know you mean it.’

  ‘You’d better believe it.’

  ‘But I’m still not telling you right away. Not over the phone. I’ll tell you when I see you. I’m on my way over now.’

  ‘You’re coming to Dublin?’

  ‘That’s where you are, isn’t it?’ Fisher replied. ‘Where else would I be coming over to?’

  ‘No need to be smart,’ I said. ‘I was surprised, that’s all. At least that explains what all the noise is behind you. You’re at the airport. What time’s your flight?’

  ‘Five minutes. I’ll be there within the hour.’

  ‘You don’t give people much warning.’

  ‘That’s what happens when you have your mobile switched off. I’ve been trying to get you for the last hour. You wouldn’t . . .’

  ‘Pick you up? Of course I’ll pick you up. Is that what all the secrecy’s about then, Fisher – making sure you get a free lift out of me in return for your information?’

  Fisher laughed.

  ‘Well, where’s the fun of claiming expenses for taxis if you actually take the taxis?’

  Chapter Seventeen

  I set off straight away. This time of morning, I’d be lucky to make it across town and find a parking space before Fisher’s plane landed. It only took an hour to fly from London.

  It was ten minutes alone before I got down Dame Street and crossed the river. Roadworks, according to the notices, though I couldn’t see any sign of work going on. I switched on the radio briefly to catch the traffic update, vainly hoping, like thousands of others, that I’d find the one secret road in the city where cars ran as free as wild stallions. Instead I found myself happening upon a discussion of the Night Hunter case. Their phrase, not mine.

  Some feminist was blaming the murders on provocative images of women in the media and the low economic value placed on women’s work; another guest had concluded that the slippage in sexual morality since the sixties had made the murders inevitable. The killer would have been proud of that analysis. He had seen the ungodly flourishing like a green bay tree too. It was always the same story. No matter what happened, those with an axe to grind invariably decided it proved they’d been right all along. Fancy that. I held on until a caller asked the radio panellists what they thought of his theory that the murders were the work of an inner circle of top judges and politicians before realising I preferred the sound of angry horns outside.

  I made it to the airport with fifteen minutes to spare, reflecting, as I climbed out of my Jeep in the short-stay car park and crossed to the terminal, on the irony of modern travel: you can be halfway round the world in the same time it takes to get out of the city at rush hour.

  Airports always make me restless like that. The world seems so close at hand. All I had to do was get on a plane and I could be back home in Boston in time for dinner if I wanted. Filling up on Mexican food at the Border café, drinking in the Gargoyle— No. Best not get started on that again.

  The arrivals board said Fisher’s plane was on schedule, so I simply grabbed a coffee from the nearest kiosk, found a seat and waited.

  Twenty minutes and three coffees later, Lawrence Fisher emerged through the doors, clutching a briefcase and glancing round for me. What about that? He had put on weight. His hair was thinning out slightly too, and there was more grey in his beard than I remembered, but he still looked good, still looked attractive enough in that rumpled, abstracted way of his, still carried himself with that air of confidence which only came from years of being indispensable.

  He smiled when he saw me and quickened his step.

  ‘Saxon, you’re here.’

  He didn’t bother with a handshake. I appreciated that. I hate that sort of starchy formality.

  ‘You’re observant as ever, Fisher. Good flight?’

  ‘As good as any flight can be considering that you’re flying thousands of feet above the ground, vulnerable to being sent plunging earthwards by a stray bird in the engine, terrorist bombs, pilot error, ice on the wings, passengers with air rage . . .’

  ‘Everyone has to go some time.’

  ‘I’d rather go with my feet on solid ground,’ said Fisher. ‘Better still, with my feet on a mattress and me fast asleep.’

  ‘Stop whining. You’re here in one piece. You need to pick up any bags before we go?’

  ‘It’s all here.’ He held up the briefcase. ‘I’m flying back tonight at ten. Just in and out this time, as the bishop said to the actress.’

  We made our way through the crowds of fortunate people waiting for flights out of the city, and soon were easing into the familiar traffic to start the slow crawl back into town. There was nothing I could do to quicken up the journey, so I cut to the chase and asked Fisher to fill me in on what he’d found.

  ‘I was hoping we could have breakfast first.’

  ‘With this traffic, you’ll be lucky to get breakfast before nightfall,’ I said. ‘You might as well use the time constructively. I never was one for small talk.’

  ‘That’s an understatement,’ said Fisher.

  ‘Then what have you got to lose?’

  So Fisher told me that he’d fed the details of the killing of Mary Lynch and the discovery of the body of the woman in the churchyard into Scotland Yard’s computer database, as I’d asked him to do, and last night he’d been rewarded with a tentative match. A prostitute by the name of Ellen Shaw had been working a night shift behind King’s Cross station in London in January when she’d been approached on foot by a punter with an Irish accent who offered her £100 – well above her usual rate, King’s Cross being about as classy a pitch in the vice hierarchy as the Grand Canal – if she’d come back to his bedsit.

  ‘She agreed?’

  ‘It was late,’ Fisher explained, ‘she hadn’t had a punter for a while, it was snowing, cold, the money was good. And you know how it is with these women. When they’re desperate, they take
risks. So she walked round with him towards Camden, not far, to some old house that had been hacked up into bedsits. They climbed the stairs to the second floor, he unlocked the door, she stepped in. Next thing she felt was a cloth over her mouth and nose and she blacked out.’

  ‘Chloroform?’

  ‘Something like that. When she came to, she found herself tied by the hands and ankles and gagged; she was naked and lying on a filthy mattress in the middle of the room, and the walls were plastered with religious prints, pictures of the Crucifixion, quotations from the Bible.’

  ‘Nice decor.’

  ‘Totally freaked her out, as you can imagine,’ said Fisher. ‘She didn’t even know how long she’d been unconscious – it was still dark outside the window, but was it two hours, twenty-four? – and her head was aching from whatever it was he’d knocked her out with. She was drifting in and out of sleep, shivering with fear, cold. Remember it was winter. Then he came in.’

  ‘The Irish entry for the world psychopath games?’

  ‘The very one. He had a Bible with him and he started reading out loud from it; some bull about angels and sin and death, whispering to start with, getting louder, getting excited. Then he raped her, and, whilst he was raping her, he started to strangle her as well.’

  ‘And they say romance is dead.’

  I watched the normal world go on outside the windscreen and wondered, not for the first time, how normal it really was.

  ‘Did he use a ligature?’ I asked.

  ‘A tie,’ Fisher explained. ‘She blacked out pretty quickly, but he simply brought her round and started again, the same routine. It happened a few times, she didn’t remember exactly how many, then she felt the cloth over her mouth like before and she was out cold again. Glad to be out too, as she put it. When she woke next time, she was untied, though still naked. She got up, tried the door, it was unlocked, so she ran out down the stairs to the floor below, where she knocked at a door until someone answered and they called the police. One lucky woman.’