by Alex Barclay
‘Hello?’ she said. ‘This is no way to treat a lady.’ She smiled at him, but the panic was rising in her chest. She started to think about the bar, the doors, the phone, the neighbours, the screams. She told herself she was being stupid. Then her eyes locked with his and she knew this was it. At the same time, her body went limp and she knew her arms, her fists, everything would be useless to her. Her legs had dissolved into shakes. She managed to shove her knee up, but it missed his groin, harmlessly connecting with his rigid thigh. He grabbed her throat now, pushing her head against the wall, kissing her again, clawing at her everywhere. With one final push, she freed herself, pulling at the door, running and staggering into the black of the lounge. The place she knew so well was suddenly foreign to her as she tripped over tables and stools, desperately trying to reach the bolted door. Duke was on her in seconds, pushing her effortlessly to the floor, her jaw smashing into the sticky blue carpet. The smell of smoke and beer filled her nostrils once more. She tried to wriggle free, but something inside her told her to lay still. She thought he might feel sorry for her, she was so small, he couldn’t want to hurt her. She was crying out in pain now, but too weak from alcohol and fear to do anything about his weight bearing down on top of her.
She felt the fabric of her shirt being ripped up her back, the breeze freezing the cold sweat. Then she felt something sharp. He wasn’t ripping her shirt, he was slicing through it with a knife.
‘Please,’ she sobbed.
‘Shut your fuckin’ mouth,’ he said. His voice was utterly chilling, stripped of the earlier warmth.
‘Please don’t,’ she tried again, her words mumbled through broken jaw and carpet.
‘I. Said. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.’
She saw the knife. It was so small, curved and vicious in his hand. It was a carpet cutter. Oh God. She remembered how quickly she had seen one cut through the same carpet she was lying on now. She started to wail. He covered her mouth, using his free hand to reach for her jeans. Her whole body started to convulse. He got up and stood over her. Fear rooted her to the floor. Then a desperate surge of energy and panic made her scramble on her side and she crawled uselessly away from him in one last attempt to survive. He let her go, let her get to the door, her hand clawing up the wood to the bolt, but in three strides he was there, dragging her back face down again on the carpet. He undid his jeans, pulling at himself, then, enraged, he grabbed at a beer bottle nearby and knelt down in front of her. Her screams were piercing. He smashed the bottle into the fireplace and then everything was quiet. Pain coursed through her, but she still hoped this would be enough for him. She didn’t care, he could leave her here, he could get away. Then she saw the knife again and she let out a scream that sent vibrations through his fingers. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, stuffing it into her mouth, holding it shut. He flipped her over, then slid the knife under her and used his weight on top to force it through the flesh beneath her ribs. He released it, then plunged it in again, making a second, then a third gaping wound. Then, as he was about to work on her left side, he heard a crunch. Outside.
‘Rach? Rach, honey? You there?’
Duke looked down at her. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ Her eyes were pleading. He reached for a stool.
Donnie flicked on the TV set and caught the closing minutes of the report.
‘…not believed to be connected to the other killings, all of which appear to have been committed during daylight hours.’ As he watched a body being taken from a bar on a stretcher covered in black, he heard someone pounding on the side door.
‘Donnie, open up, open up – I’m sorry man, goddammit, Donnie.’ His fists hammered on the wood until he heard the latch slide back and Donnie was in front of him.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Donnie. Duke was covered in blood, his T-shirt soaked through, his jeans splattered, his fly half undone. He stumbled into the kitchen, his chest heaving. Donnie grabbed a cloth from the sink and started to clean the smears from the door.
‘Why didn’t you go to the creek like normal?’ said Donnie.
‘I lost it, man, I lost it,’ said Duke. ‘Someone showed up. I was nearly leavin’ her alive in there.’
‘The girl on the TV.’
‘It was on TV already? Son of a bitch.’
‘What if Geoff was here?’
‘His car’s outside the Amazon,’ said Duke.
Donnie watched him stride towards the bathroom. ‘So I’m good for somethin’ then,’ he called after him.
‘You are, Donnie. I fucked up, before. I was mad. I ain’t goin’ it alone. That was crazy talk.’
TWENTY-THREE
‘Update on Katie Lawson,’ said O’Connor, standing in his familiar spot at the top of the conference room.
‘As you’ve heard, evidence has come back from the post-mortem – fragments of a snail shell – to indicate that Katie was murdered elsewhere and her body transported to the forest. The place we’re concentrating on is Mariner’s Strand, where we’ve found other samples of the, uh…Sandhill Snail. The Water Unit searched the area yesterday, along with the harbour, where they found one of Katie’s pink running shoes, which is being checked for fingerprints today. We think at this point that Katie paid a visit to her father’s grave on Church Road – a white rose was left there – and she may have moved across the road to the Mariner’s Strand area when she was attacked. She could have been lured there for some reason – whether this was an opportunistic crime or someone had been watching her movements, we don’t know. We know that the last call she tried to make on her mobile phone was to Frank Deegan.’ He nodded at Frank, who had a troubled expression on his face. ‘This could mean that she was aware she was in danger or that maybe she was calling in another crime. The fact that she rang Frank and not 999 is an interesting one, although she does know the Deegan family quite well.
‘Because of the three-week delay in finding the body, we don’t expect any new evidence to come to light from our search of Mariner’s Strand. Something to note is that Katie’s possible movements on that night would directly conflict with the witness statement of Mae Miller, so that’s something we’ll have to explore. As to the body being left in the forest, that could be for any number of reasons, including its secluded nature, its familiarity to the killer, convenience or it could have some deeper significance we’re as yet unaware of. The closest properties to the forest would obviously be the Lucchesis’ house and Millers’ Orchard. We need to keep thoroughly investigating the players involved here.’
The music thumped through the speakers, a tinny repeat melody over a booming bass. Duke looked up at the hairdresser. She wore low-rise jeans that pinched her extra pounds and pushed her pierced stomach over the waistband. Her black glitter halter top plunged low, revealing a chest with a bad reaction to fake tan. Her lips moved to the lyrics of the track. As she cut, the hair fell in wet clumps onto the open newspaper.
She reached down and wiped it onto the floor, leaving a police composite sketch exposed on the damp page.
‘That was awful, wasn’t it?’ she said, pointing at it with her comb. ‘That girl in Tipperary who disappeared.’
‘Awful,’ said Duke, looking down at a face meant to be his.
‘Some young girl came forward after weeks and told the guards. She was in that American diner when the guy was there. Imagine, she didn’t come forward because she thought she’d get in trouble at school. What a waste.’
She kept cutting. ‘God knows at this stage, that girl could have forgotten what the man looked like.’
‘Probably,’ said Duke. ‘But some faces stay with you for life, good or bad. I guess we’ll know if they catch him.’ The scissors moved close to his ears, snipping the hair tight to his head.
The den was quiet but for the slow hum of the fax machine. One after another, the pages slid out, floating to land in a pile on the floorboards below. Shaun walked over and stood confused, trying to focus on the smudged images from a stray upturned page. He bent
down, taking it in his hand, bringing it closer. It was a woman, her face peacefully untouched, but her body, desecrated, black ink for blood. Crude hand-drawn arrows pointed to ‘puncture wounds like claws’ to the torso, ‘three symmetrical lacerations to the area beneath the ribs’, ‘partial disembowelling’. An icy sensation pulsed through Shaun’s head. He fell to his knees, clawing through the pages, finding layer upon layer of blurred but vivid images that highlighted in white a handbag or a sideways shoe to make these dead women strangers seem so real. He slumped to the floor.
‘Oh, Jesus Christ,’ shouted Joe as he ran into the room. ‘Shaun, no.’
He stumbled to the ground, pulling his son towards him, prising his clenched fingers from the crumpled page.
‘That was my fax, that was just for me,’ he said uselessly.
‘Is that what happened to her, Dad?’ Shaun pleaded. ‘Is that what happened to Katie? Because that is fucked up. That is the most fucked up thing I’ve ever seen. That is so fucked up. Did some guy do that? Did some guy do that shit?’ He was choking, the words and sobs mangled horribly in his throat. Joe put his arms around him. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d been so close. He felt no different to his father. He released his hold and started to gather up the pages. He knew now he’d have to take another trip to Dublin.
Mae Miller opened the door as wide as it would go. She was dressed in a long silver evening gown, with a string of purple beads knotted halfway and falling to her waist. She wore black velvet gloves to her elbows and a thick pearl bracelet on her wrist. She had swept her grey hair from her face and secured it in a chignon.
‘Hello,’ she said, smiling broadly.
‘Oh, Mrs Miller,’ said Richie. ‘I didn’t mean to catch you on your way out.’ He looked at his watch. It was eleven-thirty a.m. and he’d just had breakfast.
‘Not at all,’ said Mae. ‘I’m just enjoying the performance. I didn’t know you were an opera buff.’
Richie looked away. ‘Eh, I was wondering if I could have a word with John.’
‘It’s the interval. He’s gone to the bar.’
‘Danaher’s?’ said Richie.
‘No. Here,’ she said, pointing upstairs.
‘Would you mind giving him a shout?’
‘My pleasure,’ said Mae, gliding away from him.
‘John? John?’ she called. ‘Look who I bumped into.’
Richie had stepped into the hall and was standing by the door. John lumbered down the stairs and frowned when he saw his mother.
‘Howiya, Richie,’ he said, abruptly.
‘Ah, John,’ said Mae. ‘Are you ready?’ She turned toward the kitchen door and held out her arm as if she was waiting to be escorted. She looked back over her shoulder to Richie. ‘We don’t want to miss the second half.’
‘That’s fair enough, Mrs Miller,’ said Richie, looking down at the floor.
Joe drove north through Dublin onto the Malahide Road. Before he hit the motorway to the airport, he took a left through the red iron gates of the Fire Training Centre, following a curved tree-lined drive. The sign to the mortuary guided him around a large field where half an aeroplane leant on its wing in the corner. When he saw the fake front of a nightclub painted onto a brick wall, it hit him – fire, training. He pulled up in front of four prefabs, the temporary home of the State Pathologist’s office. He hoped Dr McClatchie was sitting at her desk. She wasn’t. She was standing inside the door talking to her assistant.
‘Dr McClatchie, hi – my name is Joe Lucchesi, I’m an NYPD detective and, uh, I was wondering if you’d have a minute.’ He smiled.
She looked trapped, but she said, ‘OK, come into my office.’
‘It’s about the murder of Katie Lawson,’ he said.
‘Ah,’ she said, sitting down, gesturing for him to do the same. ‘NYPD? Why have you been drafted in?’
He weighed it up. ‘Uh, we haven’t,’ he said finally. He pulled out the fax and placed it on the desk between them with one of the more graphic photos on top. The name Tonya Ramer was printed above. She was laid out in the morgue, her face ghostly, but almost serene. The body had clearly been found within days of her murder. Between her legs was a mess of tissue and sharp black shards of what he knew was timber. The only other visible injuries were uneven lacerations on her knees and three slashes of similar length under each side of her rib cage. Lara looked down, then back up quickly, but she was using her fingers to spread out the other pages as she stared at him.
‘What are you playing at?’ she asked, bemused more than annoyed.
‘I wanted you to look at these photos and tell me if they are similar in any way to the injuries sustained to Katie Lawson.’
‘Are you mad?’ she asked in her clipped way, as if she was about to wave her hand and order someone to ‘have this man beheaded.’
He inhaled sharply and said, ‘Katie Lawson was my son’s girlfriend.’ She sat back and sighed. ‘And I know,’ he continued, ‘that my son is the number one suspect. I think the man who committed these murders,’ he pointed to the table, ‘could be the same man who killed Katie.’
She looked down reflexively, her eyes sweeping over the photos.
‘You know I couldn’t possibly discuss this with you. I’m actually amazed that you came in.’
‘You can’t blame a guy for trying. Believe me, I have a very real appreciation for what you’re trying to do over here – probably more than anyone else working on this case.’
‘Ah, but you’re not working on this case.’
‘You got me,’ he said. ‘But I’m dyin’, here.’ He flashed a look out at the morgue door. He smiled and leaned across the desk to drag the photos back into a pile.
‘I’m sorry for bothering you,’ he said, locking eyes with her. ‘But I hope my visit will go no further.’
‘Pardon?’ she said.
‘I can’t have the guards knowing I showed up here.’
She threw her eyes up to heaven. ‘Well, I’ve told you nothing.’
Ah, but you’ve told me everything, thought Joe. He was trained on gut reactions and reactions to gut reactions: flickers, twitches, shakes, gulps – cartoonish words for things that helped him differentiate an honest man from a liar. Her reaction to the photos had spoken volumes to him – the wounds were not the same. The one thing he couldn’t pinpoint, though, was the reason for the tiniest frown he caught on her face at the last second and her almost reluctant release of the photos.
‘Here’s my card if you need to get in contact with me.’ She stared at him. He ignored her expression, crossed out his New York number and wrote in his Irish mobile. He stood up to leave, but the motion was too quick on an empty stomach and he staggered to the side, grabbing onto the desk for support.
‘Are you OK?’ said Lara, moving towards him.
When he raised his head, tiny silver spots danced before his eyes.
‘Sit down,’ said Lara, pulling out the seat for him. ‘Are you OK?’
He managed a nod. He put his hand to the back of his neck and started rubbing it.
‘I just got a bit dizzy,’ he said. ‘I haven’t eaten.’ Suddenly he reached for her waste basket and retched violently, spitting saliva onto the crumpled papers and pencil parings inside. His face burned.
‘I knew I shouldn’t have bought wicker,’ she said.
‘Jesus, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know…’
‘Have you got a stomach bug?’ she asked. ‘You’re terribly pale.’
‘No. I just haven’t eaten and I’ve taken some painkillers and other stuff. And coffee.’
‘Do you mind me asking why you’re on painkillers? Or do all cops follow that diet?’
He snorted a laugh. ‘No to the first question and yes to the second. But I get a lot of jaw pain and pressure in my head. It can hurt to eat, so I guess that’s why I get light-headed…’
‘Do you mind if I have a look?’ she said, already reaching her hands out. He jerked his head back.
‘I’m the boss in my office,’ she said, ignoring his reluctance, pressing cold thumbs down the side of his nose and across his cheeks, then above both eyebrows. He held his breath. They avoided eye contact.
‘Sorry,’ he said, pushing her hand away. ‘I have to breathe.’
‘I never asked you to stop breathing,’ she said.
He flashed a glance at the wicker basket.
She laughed. ‘You should smell my world.’
She sat back against the edge of her desk.
‘Well, it’s not your sinuses,’ she said. ‘You say it’s sore to eat. Where?’
‘Here,’ he said, rubbing his fingers against the sharp ends of his sideburns. He shifted in his seat.
‘OK,’ she said and he took his hands down. She put two thumbs each side on the same spot.
‘Open and close your mouth,’ she said. ‘Can you feel anything?’
‘Like a crackle,’ he said.
‘Pain?’
‘No, but I’ve taken a lot to kill that.’
‘Oh, yes. Does your jaw ever lock? Do you ever hear it click?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you get pain in your neck or your cheeks?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you ever get diagnosed with toothache, earache or sinusitis?’
‘Yes, look I appreciate this, but I really have to get a move on.’
‘Have you ever suffered an injury to your face or jaw?’
Images of childhood fights flashed through his mind, a teenage car accident, a punch-up in a bar at his bachelor party, a door slammed against him in a raid, the explosion…
‘Uh-huh,’ he said.
She stepped back. ‘Good news or bad?’
‘Bad.’
She shook her head. ‘Pessimist?’
‘Worst Case Scenario Man.’
‘First of all, I’m not your GP, so what I’m giving you here is an educated guess. It could be one of two things: some form of facial neuralgia or possibly, TMJ dysfunction. The TMJ bit stands for Temporo-Mandibular Joint, the all-important joint that helps you open and close your jaw. And you’re American, you’ll understand the dysfunction part.’