The Dead (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  Elliott wouldn’t believe me when I said that Ed Fagan was dead – why should he? – but I didn’t have that luxury. Only the dead can haunt the quick, and I had been haunted by Fagan from the last moment I saw him. Fagan was as dead as he’d ever be, and I knew it because I’d killed him myself five years ago. He wasn’t coming back.

  The First Letter

  Of convicted murderers, it seems, one can say almost anything, make any preposterous, half-baked claim or allegation and we are expected to take it on the chin. Do we not bleed too?

  That is not to say I have not been fascinated by the extracts from the book by your correspondent Nick Elliott, which you have lately serialised; but let me make a few points.

  One, Julie Feeney was not sexually assaulted prior to her strangulation, as stated. The apparent sexual assault was a misdiagnosis stemming from the pathologist’s misreading of the rather obvious signs of Julie’s hazardous occupation, as subsequently admitted by the police.

  Two, Sylvia Judge was nineteen years old, not twenty, when she died. Three, I did not pick her up on Baggot Street Bridge, but in Lad Lane. Four, there were not thirty-seven stab wounds on the body of Tara Cox, but thirty-six. Nor, five, was she the only one of the victims to be stabbed. There were thirteen post-mortem stab wounds on the body of Maddy Holt, one for each of Christ and the Apostles. Six, I could not have used the Ford to take Liana Cassidy and subsequently Maddy on their last journeys, because I had exchanged it two weeks earlier for a Volvo, for reasons of safety. Seven, the tyre tracks found at the scene of Liana’s killing were also never identified as mine. They probably were mine, but the results were inconclusive. It’s a minor quibble, perhaps, but it’s better to stick to the facts.

  To continue. Eight, the waistcoat I wore on the first day of my trial at the Central Criminal Court was not scarlet but cherry. Nine, the scriptural instruction to kill prostitutes which was found underlined in my King James Bible comes from Deuteronomy, not Leviticus. And ten, my late wife did not die of cancer. In fact, she took her own life when her suffering from the disease became unbearable.

  I could go on adding to the catalogue of amateurish errors, but you get the idea; and whilst it would obviously have been difficult for Mr Elliott to check his facts with me, there are numerous public records which he could have consulted to guard against error. It was unprofessional of him not to do so and I would be grateful if you published these corrections.

  Worse still, however, is Nick Elliott’s effort to make a case for me as the most likely suspect in the murder of Helen Cranmore, whose body was left in the grounds of the Dublin Metropolitan Police headquarters at Dublin Castle a year before Julie Feeney’s death. His theory is that I left her body there in order to taunt the murder squad, which is all very well, except that I did not kill this unfortunate woman, as anyone with the most basic understanding of my method, not to mention so-called criminal psychology, would have recognised immediately.

  He then compounds his mistake by absolving me of blame for the abduction of Sally Tyrrell, who disappeared whilst walking home from a Christmas party in Dublin city centre nine years ago and whose body, despite an extensive search, was never found. I must confess that I did indeed kill Sally, and as a sign of goodwill I am even willing to reveal the location of her remains – so long only as you print this epistle of mine.

  Meanwhile, despite my hopes of eking out the remainder of my days in quiet retirement, I realise now that I must be about my Father’s business again. For it is written: ‘I have seen the ungodly in great power and flourishing like a green bay tree.’ And in that tree’s shadow, all that is righteous and precious and holy is corrupted and defiled. So the tree must fall. Five deaths I shall offer up, one for each of those which came before. And I give you seven days in which to find me; one day for each of the seven months I spent in prison. After that, I shall disappear once more, finally this time, my work done.

  The seven days will begin with Mary on the feast day of St Agericus. I have been watching her now for some time. She will suffice. Pray for her soul.

  Chapter Two

  I jumped when the phone rang and checked the number before picking it up.

  ‘Fitzgerald,’ I said. ‘You read it?’

  Detective Chief Superintendent Grace Fitzgerald was senior investigating officer of the murder squad division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and one of the first people I’d really befriended on coming to Dublin.

  One of the only ones, come to that.

  She’d contacted me over the book I was writing on Ed Fagan and one thing led to another. Now she stayed over sometimes, and when she didn’t I missed her. I’d faxed her Elliott’s letter as soon as I’d read the two neat, closely-typed pages that it comprised, hurrying back to my apartment on the seventh floor of a converted Victorian warehouse off St Stephen’s Green, desperate to be somewhere familiar. Now I was pacing up and down on the terrace outside my window, smoking a Cuban cigar, one of my few indulgences, and watching the half-hearted bustle of passersby below impatiently shrugging off the rain.

  I’d promised Elliott I wouldn’t show it to anyone, but a promise to Elliott wasn’t like a promise that needed to be kept. It was more like a convenient lie. I didn’t feel bad about it. He’d have done the same thing to me, and with less reason.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘where’d you get it?’

  Straight to the point as always. That’s my girl.

  ‘From Nick Elliott himself.’

  A snort. I knew how she felt.

  ‘Apparently it arrived at the office a couple of days ago,’ I said. ‘Elliott cornered me this morning over breakfast, wants me to authenticate it so that they can run it in the paper. Also, I don’t know, I guess they want me to write some charming me-and-my-favourite-serial-killer pieces about Fagan, to give it the ring of authority. Elliott mentioned something about that.’

  ‘They’re definitely going to publish it then?’

  ‘That’s the impression I got. They’re still talking in ifs and maybes, but that’s all for show. It’s going in.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Fitzgerald, which just about summed it up. ‘They’ll print anything so long as they can pretend it’s in the public interest. I think they even fool themselves sometimes. You think it’s genuine?’

  ‘You mean do I think it’s Fagan? It couldn’t be.’

  ‘You sound pretty sure.’

  ‘I am sure,’ I said steadily. ‘Fagan’s dead.’

  ‘Missing’s what it says on his file.’

  ‘Dead. Look, whatever. I know this isn’t him. I know Fagan, I spent enough time with him to know what he was like. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty here that could be from Fagan. That buttoned-up, pedantic let me make a few points tone. But it doesn’t fit.’

  ‘Fagan wrote something for the Post once before, didn’t he, proclaiming his innocence?’ Fitzgerald said.

  ‘That was when the attention was at its height,’ I recalled. ‘It was the usual thing – denouncing the media campaign against him, the police for harassing him, accusing them both of putting the courts up to lock him away on a fake charge. Of course he got the Post to publish it, you know what suckers they are for that liberal knock-the-police crap. But it’s not Fagan. This is an admittance of guilt, for one thing, and Fagan wasn’t the confessing type. Wasn’t the explaining type either. There was certainly none of this corny I have seen the ungodly in great power routine. And look at that reference to convicted murderers. Fagan was never convicted of so much as littering. Why would he get a detail like that wrong?’

  ‘OK, I’ll buy that. So who did write it?’

  ‘Could be anyone. There’s not exactly a shortage of cranks out there who might’ve got turned on enough by Elliott’s book to want to muscle in on the action, just for the thrill. It sure reads like the sort of letter that was written one-handed. Happens all the time. Fagan had a son too. Jack,’ I added. ‘I wouldn’t put it past him. Fagan brought him up alone after the mother died. Starte
d out as a straight-A student too, but somewhere along the line he went wrong. He dropped out of college, drifted from job to job, basically fell apart; spent some time in prison on car theft charges. He went on TV not long after Fagan went missing. Didn’t go so far as to say that his father deserved a medal, but made it pretty clear the women got what was coming.’

  ‘Nice guy.’

  ‘To be carnally minded is death,’ I reminded her. ‘Word of the Lord. Who are we to argue? Maybe that’s a double meaning there in the part about my Father’s business.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘The son? He took his mother’s maiden name. Mullen. Hung around Dublin for a while spending Fagan’s money. Fagan had sold up and left everything to Jack a few weeks before he disappeared, almost like he knew he wasn’t going to be around much longer. When the money ran out, he left for England. It might be worth checking out where he is now. Buckley too.’

  ‘Buckley?’

  ‘Conor Buckley, you remember. Fagan’s defence lawyer. Sharp suit, sharp mind, sharp tongue, not so sharp in the legal ethics department.’

  ‘Christ, yes. How could I have forgotten him?’

  ‘Hell, it could be Elliott himself for all I know,’ I said, throwing down what was left of the cigar and stamping out the glowing tip on the wet stone. ‘Some sick PR stunt. He wouldn’t recognise a professional principle if it was behind bars at the zoo with a sign ten feet high telling him what it was, and this is certainly going to do wonders for sales of his book, wherever it came from. He sure was jumpy when we met this morning too, but then he’s always jumpy round me.’

  Fitzgerald laughed. ‘You have that effect on some people.’

  ‘Not enough to scare them off for good, unfortunately. But Elliott? I don’t know. I’d say Elliott loves himself too much to hold his own book up to public ridicule. That stuff about Helen Cranmore is bang on the money; blaming Fagan for her death was ridiculous, and if Elliott really knew that, why would he include it in his book only a few weeks ago?’

  ‘Maybe he’s being clever.’

  ‘This is Nick Elliott we’re talking about, remember?’

  Before she could say anything more, a voice entered the background on her end of the line, muffled, complaining.

  ‘Five minutes,’ Fitzgerald said to it. ‘Yes, Dalton, you already said. You’ll just have to wait.’ Seamus Dalton then, the least house-trained detective in the DMP murder squad’s history. ‘Sorry about that, Saxon,’ she said to me once he’d gone. ‘I can’t talk long. There was a shooting this morning on the Northside, I think Dalton wants to head over there soon as he can to rough up some suspects. We were supposed to be at the scene half an hour ago.’

  ‘Rushed off your feet?’

  ‘Rushed enough not to want some crank letter coming through the fax machine, that’s for sure.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘You do agree this is just a hoax, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘I never said it was a hoax.’

  ‘But I thought—’

  ‘I said it wasn’t Fagan. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a real bad feeling that whoever wrote this is going to do what he says he’ll do.’

  ‘You think he’s going to kill five women? Come on.’

  ‘OK, so you’re not convinced. But you know how it is, Grace, you get a feel for this sort of thing. I just . . . I don’t know. It’s not Fagan, but it’s someone who wants us to think he’s Fagan, and that means he’ll take on Fagan’s mission, Fagan’s handiwork. Can’t you at least get the original from Elliott, have it analysed for fingerprints, DNA, whatever? It must have come in an envelope. You could maybe get something that way. Also, start tracking down people who used to know Fagan, friends, colleagues, anyone like that, and see what they’re up to.’

  She sighed. ‘Want me to solve the Lindbergh baby mystery whilst I’m at it?’

  ‘I’m being pushy again,’ I said.

  ‘Not pushy, just unrealistic. I’ll not get authorisation to do anything, not today, and definitely not if the Assistant Commissioner thinks I’ve got nothing but some nut’s word to go on – and before you say anything, I meant the letter, not you. There’s no way I can siphon off resources to follow this up.’

  ‘So we just wait until some woman gets killed?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ she said. ‘I’ll pass the word around, see if anyone has any idea what this is all about. Will that do? And you know something?’ she added. ‘I can probably spare Boland for an hour or two. I’ll get him to make some enquiries.’

  ‘Boland?’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Niall Boland. He’s just joined us from Serious Crime. He’s following me round, getting the hang of things, settling in. I’ll have him go down to records and dig out the file on Sally Tyrrell. Then maybe send him over to the Post to try and get his hands on the original, see where it was posted at least. You think Elliott will let us have it without a warrant?’

  ‘Not a chance. You didn’t see the excitement on his face this morning. He thinks this is his big break. He’s probably got plans for a second edition of his book, co-written by the subject. He’s not going to let this one go,’ I said, ‘even if you do put the fear of God into him.’

  ‘Let’s put it into him anyway, just for the heck of it.’ She was about to sign off when an idea suddenly came to her. ‘By the way, Saxon, when is the feast day of St Agericus?’

  ‘I looked that up,’ I said. ‘It’s today.’

  Afterwards, I stood and stared at my reflection in the glass for what felt like an age. ‘Thumbelina with attitude’ my mother used to call me when I was a kid. Now the rain had made my short hair spikier and darker than usual – it needed cutting; my corduroy jacket hung off my shoulders like I’d shrunk somehow without noticing; and my face had thinned out till I’d swear I could see the shadow of my bones. I didn’t look after myself enough at the best of times; Fitzgerald kept telling me, so it must be true. But now it was like I was disappearing, almost like I’d known what was coming and my body had huddled in on itself to escape.

  I had to pull myself together. Whatever Fitzgerald said, this Thumbelina was going to need all the attitude she could muster in the coming days.

  *****************

  For the rest of the day it rained on and off and I stayed indoors, in hiding was how it felt, trying to get some take on the questions that sang crazily through me.

  No matter how many times I read it, the letter refused to make sense. Why would someone suddenly want to blame Fagan for the disappearance of Sally Tyrrell? It was absurd. And even if he had been responsible, how could the author of the letter know it, given that Fagan wasn’t in a position to be telling anyone his secrets any more? Could he have confessed at one time to whoever wrote this letter?

  Could he have had an accomplice?

  I shook my head to stop myself. Fagan had nothing to do with Sally’s disappearance, I felt sure of that. I’d looked into her case when I was writing my book and quickly discounted any connection. Fagan always left his dead to be found; why would he have changed his MO that one time? Sally wasn’t a prostitute either, but a former secretary with the police. No. The most likely explanation was that it was the author of this letter who’d abducted and murdered her. But then why was he adding the killing on to Fagan’s tally rather than claiming the credit for himself?

  In the end, I did what I’d been avoiding doing ever since speaking to Nick Elliott at the café. I went to the safe in my office at the back of the apartment, dug out the satchel in which I kept my files on Ed Fagan and carried it over to the table for the first time in five years.

  Here was the unfinished manuscript of my book, together with my research notes: old newspaper clippings, tapes and transcripts of interviews with Fagan, his son, colleagues, neighbours, police, as well as friends and family of the five victims. There were crime scene reports too that Fitzgerald had let me see, evidence inventories, witness statements, all of which I’d copied and filed away
together with photographs of the various scenes that I’d taken myself.

  There was even a shot of Fagan somewhere, another of him with his freaky son. I didn’t want to look at those just yet. I didn’t feel ready. I certainly didn’t feel ready for putting a tape on and hearing his voice. He was real enough to me right now.

  Too real.

  I hadn’t looked at the notes in years, not since I’d put the book, metaphorically speaking, out with the trash. They remained out of sight, if never quite out of mind. I don’t even know why I kept them. Fagan wasn’t a subject I relished thinking about, and I didn’t need notes to remember. It was forgetting that was the difficulty. Somehow there they still were, a presence always at my back as I wrote; but since it was increasingly rare these days for me to write anything, that wasn’t such a bind.

  I’d been delighted when I got the contract for the book about Fagan. I’d only been in Dublin three months, and Fagan was something of a cause célèbre. Others, hungry as Nick Elliott, would have leaped at the chance to write about him, and they might have been better at it too. I, though, had a measure of fame behind me by that point, and at such times you stumble into opportunities as easily as a drunk into lampposts.

  That fame came from my first book. I’d been lucky. I’d started out studying archaeology of all things at Boston University, though my boredom with prehistoric Aegean civilisation and the micromorphology of terrestrial sediments quickly started to outpace even my boredom with myself, which was some achievement on its part. Eventually I’d risen to the goading of an old boyfriend and, to both our surprises, found myself accepted on a training programme by the FBI in New York.

  In one fell swoop, I ditched boyfriend, Boston and boredom. It was what I’d always wanted, though I’d been reluctant to admit it even to myself. I was always fearful of failure. Three years’ training, four in the field as a special agent in New York state, and I was part of the team, a small part, that uncovered the serial killer Paul Nado, aka The White Monk.