The Killer in Me Read online

  Hennessy returns to the table. “Here you are.” He places a glass of wine in front of Tanya then sits down, a pint of lager safe in his hands.

  Somehow, I make myself speak to him. “Why do you want to do this, Mr. Hennessy?” I know the answer. Money. Always. But sometimes, with killers of this nature, it’s simply attention. The narcissist can’t resist indulging his own reflection.

  He lifts the pint to his mouth, takes a drink. Blue eyes flash at me. Meek. The right touch of sadness and regret. Perfectly measured. “My sister.” He says it quiet, and I think there’s some shame in him after all.

  “Your sister?”

  “The way things are, I’ll never see her again.”

  “That’s probably for the best. Don’t you think? Shouldn’t she be allowed to live her life in peace? To move on?”

  There’s a slight rise to his shoulders; the gray neck of his hoodie bunches. His hands stiffen round his drink. He looks down. “I don’t think it does anyone any good to live a lie.”

  “I doubt your sister believes she’s living a lie. Out of everyone, she knows exactly what happened. She was there. And if she’d wanted to contact you, she would have done so already, right?”

  He nods as if he was anticipating my response then says with a stubborn note of determination, “If Cara doesn’t want to see me, there’s nothing I can do about that. But she should know the truth.”

  A thick kind of anger closes round my neck. I feel it redden my face. I look to Tanya, but she’s avoiding my eyes, her face a pale slate of neutrality.

  “She already knows the truth,” I say. And the confidence stumbles on his face. “Mr. Hennessy, I believe you slaughtered your parents and almost managed to kill your sister.” He flinches but I continue. “I believe justice has been served and its only fault is that you are free to sit here, across from me, and discuss how you can rescind that sentence.”

  He slides a hand over his face, squeezes his eyes with his fingertips. Tanya gives me a look that could work as a slap in the mouth but I want him to know whose side I’m on. Always, victims first.

  Finally he speaks. “I get it. I was convicted. Now I’m guilty until proven innocent.” And when he looks at me again, there are tears watering in his eyes. “But I swear to you, I didn’t do it.” The last comes out between tight lips, an urgent rasping whisper.

  There’s a clatter of cutlery from behind the bar and I glance over in time to see the barman bend to collect whatever’s fallen to the wooden floor. When he straightens, he wipes a knife on the cloth at his shoulder then resumes wrapping the cutlery in a paper napkin.

  I turn to Tanya. The thin lines of her eyebrows are raised in an expression of hope and encouragement. I suspect she knows as well as I do what the answer will be. I sigh. “I’ll look at the footage. But that’s all.”

  “That’s great, Frankie.” She smiles her enthusiasm.

  Seán nods and for a moment, it looks like he might grip my hands. His slide across the table but he stops halfway. “Thank you.”

  Tanya is already retrieving more documents from her bag. More homework for me. “Here’s a summary of our approach. We’ve a new office in the city, off the quays.” She places a business card in front of me. “But it should be easy to touch base. As you know, I’m doing most of my work from home.”

  Home translates into my parents’ house on Conquer Hill in Clontarf. I picture my folks’ spare bedroom turned into an incident room. Justin, my brother, and Tanya are waiting to move into their new home. Justin, a real estate lawyer, is laid-back to the point of horizontal and has somehow managed to mistime the chain in the purchase of their new home and now he finds himself back at our parents’ at the age of thirty-seven. I wonder how my mum is coping with Tanya running a criminal review from their house.

  She passes me the documents. “You can keep those. They’re copies.”

  I take them, slide them into my bag, and she tells me that I can take my time with the report but perhaps it would be helpful to have it in the next month. My phone breaks through her instructions and I have never been more grateful for the interruption.

  “Excuse me.” I stand, move away to the back of the room. Press a finger over my ear. “Sheehan.”

  “Frankie, it’s Clancy. Looks like we’ll be seeing you tonight after all.” Jack Clancy, the assistant commissioner, my boss, friend, and in a lot of ways persecutor.

  “Trust me when I say the interruption is a welcome one,” I reply.

  The sound of the sea crashes down the line. The wind buffets against the speaker. He raises his voice. “Where are you?”

  “Near my folks’.” I check my watch. It’s seven forty-five. “What is it?”

  “We’ve two bodies. At the church. St. Catherine’s.”

  “Here?” I walk out of the pub, turn, face into the wind that’s sweeping in across the water. Clontarf is a suburb along the coast, a stone’s throw from Dublin’s center. Its name is synonymous with battles and victory. A streak of pride that once upon a time we rose up and conquered Vikings. Clontarf, the making of me, my home.

  “Yeah. This one’s a headliner; you’d better get down here,” Clancy says.

  I look down the street, back toward the city, where Dublin’s lights are just awakening in the distance, then out to sea, where the sun is low on the horizon, hidden behind thick clouds. The path of the promenade is picked out in amber streetlight. A few walkers are striding along the path, coats done up to the neck, arms beating steady rhythms along the seawall.

  “I’ll be fifteen minutes,” I say then hang up. I picture the church, St. Catherine’s, at the mouth of Clontarf, dark and brooding in her iron cage. I pocket my phone and head back into the pub.

  Tanya stands. “You have to go?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right.” She stands, one hand against the table, the other pitched against her hip. “I’ll call you tomorrow then?”

  I take a deep breath. “Sure.”

  She smiles. “Thank you.”

  I collect my coat from the back of the seat and face Seán Hennessy. I’m about to throw out the usual platitude—it was nice speaking with you, or meeting you—but I can’t. Instead I hear myself saying: “Enjoy your freedom, Mr. Hennessy.”

  And he frowns. “Thank you for your help, Detective.”

  Out on the street, I listen for sirens, search for blue lights. Already I’m at a run in my head. I should be disturbed by the drive in my blood, a sick kind of curiosity that all detectives house in the darkest corners of themselves. A little kick of excitement stitched up with a fearless kind of hope.

  * * *

  —

  I WALK DOWN the street. The wind, full of the stink of seaweed and salt, rushes at my face. The summer has been one rainfall after the next, and if not that, the days are so cold you couldn’t tell which arse-end of the year it is. I grip the edges of my coat together and quicken my pace. By the time I get to St. Catherine’s, my hands and face are numb. I shake out my fingers and peer in at the church. The building crouches beneath a few thick elms that creak in the turning air. It’s set well back from the road. Uniforms walk the grounds, marking out the scene with blue-and-white tape. There are three cars pulled up nearby. I spot Clancy’s among them. I duck under the tape and one of the officers approaches with the log-in book.

  “Evening, Detective Sheehan.”

  I sign the book. Add the time. “The coroner here?”

  “She’s inside. Forensics got here twenty minutes ago.”

  “Thanks.” I move toward the entrance. Large oak doors pushed back into the dim shadow of the church. I step inside, and the sound of my footsteps comes back to me from the arched ceiling. Clancy, a couple scene of crime officers, and a woman I recognize as the coroner have congregated at the center of the main aisle. I take out my torch, switch it on, cast the beam around the entrance. Mas
s leaflets stacked in a cardboard box to the right. A sprinkle of confetti, forgotten, beneath the first pew. A tower of wicker baskets leaning to a topple behind the door. There’s a box of foot protectors and plastic gloves nearby. I slip them on and walk slowly up the aisle.

  The woman’s body appears first, a foot, bare sole, milky white in the shadows She’s naked from the waist up, a pair of dark jeans belted around her hips. She’s on her front, arms bent, cheek turned. You could think her sleeping but for the injuries down her back and at her throat. Her eyes and mouth are open, the startle of death on her face. Beside her, a second victim, a man. Dead. Dead as can be. Days, by the looks of it. Death mottle over his hands, his face. He’s clothed, a priest. Black suit. The collar, white as angels shielding his throat. In his palm, a knife. Not gripped. Not grasped. But sleeping there in cold flesh. Cold metal, cold blade.

  CHAPTER 2

  LOOKING DOWN at the bodies, I feel a sinking sadness. It’s such a fucking shame. The magnitude. The finality of death. It comes at me, full blow.

  Clancy turns to me, offers a palm out to the woman at his side. “Frankie, you know Judith?” The coroner. A petite woman with a giant reputation. Officious. Serious, with a posture so straight it would make you wonder whether rigor mortis was contagious.

  “Good to see you again, Dr. Magee.”

  “I’m almost done here,” she replies. “Then scene of crime can take over.”

  I turn to the coroner. “The sooner the better.”

  “Agreed.”

  At the altar Keith Hickey, our lead scene of crime officer, is directing his team. Keith is eagle-eyed but big-mouthed. His voice booms down the church. “If it so much as looks out of place,” he tells his team, “you tag it, photograph it, and write it down.”

  Magee adds some notes to a clipboard in her hand. Signs it and hands it to a nearby officer then looks down at the victims. “Not that anyone would argue with this, but I’m ruling manner of death as homicide.” She waits to the side to answer any questions we might have, her face tight with answers she doesn’t want to give. Not yet, anyway, not until our victims are on the pathologist’s table. The autopsy is our only hope to get our victims to speak. All confessions out under the cut of her scalpel. The pathologist in Dublin’s mortuary at Whitehall, Dr. Abigail James, has a busy couple of days ahead.

  “Who found the bodies?” I ask.

  “A Mrs. Berry,” Clancy answers. “She’s outside with paramedics. Works in the parochial house. She came in to do the flowers.” He’s staring at the female victim’s back, stab wounds like a constellation of dark stars over her skin. Eleven knife wounds, a puddle of blood gathered in each one, small bursts of blood spatter speckled over the skin. He points. “Not much blood from them. They postmortem?”

  “I would agree with that,” the coroner says.

  I take a step back, survey the scene, look as the killer would want me to look. Let me see what you have to say. The slick mass of blood beneath the woman’s body. The man on his side, curled round his middle. Under the woman’s right arm, the blood is smeared across the floor, as if at some point she’d dragged her limbs inwards, folded herself up in preparation for a long sleep. Between the thick fall of her dark hair, her scalp gleams red, a tidemark of blood neat along her temple. Dried blood around her ear. There’s a deep, angry gash across her throat.

  “Is there a head wound?” I ask.

  “None visible,” Dr. Magee answers. “I’m confident cause of death was exsanguination: bled out from the throat wound.”

  “The male? He’s been dead longer.”

  “A few days. Maybe more,” Magee answers.

  “But the woman died here?”

  “Undoubtedly.” She points to the pews at my left. I turn, follow the arc of the victim’s blood across the pale, varnished wood, a stream of dark spots. Projection spatter. Arterial blood from where the killer slit her throat. There’s a lot of rage here.

  I look down at the knife in the priest’s open hand. Six-inch blade, inch and a half wide. Four deep indentations along the handle. “Is that the murder weapon?”

  “I can’t say,” she replies.

  I rephrase. “Could it be the murder weapon?”

  She tips her head, studies the knife as if there could be another possibility. “We can check for DNA. Compare the wound width and depth to the knife. If we can match those elements to the wounds on her back and neck, then you’ll be the first to know.”

  I hear the tartness in her voice and look back down at the body to hide my irritation but I can understand her caution. In her role, she owns this scene until she gives the nod, then it belongs to CSI and only then are detectives like us allowed to come sauntering through it. In her eyes, we are contaminants. Imprecise and careless. And her watchful eyes track my every movement to make sure I don’t so much as move a hair on the victims’ heads.

  I squat down to get a closer look at the weapon. The blade is pointing at the woman’s back. It’s sheathed in blood, a thin skin of brown and orange. But beneath the blood, along the blade, I can make out letters. A word.

  “There’s something carved into the blade,” I say, aiming the torch at the knife.

  Clancy bends over my shoulder. “Looks like a W and an E.”

  The tips of the deceased man’s fingers are bent inwards, the nail beds blue-black, the lines on his palm picked out in deep red.

  “Weapon. It says WEAPON,” I say. I crouch lower and hear Magee’s intake of breath. “It’s been inscribed onto the knife. Badly.” I get up and look back at Clancy.

  “Clearly this guy, whoever he is, doesn’t think we need an autopsy to tell us that this is the murder weapon,” Clancy says, and Magee shoots him a sharp look.

  “Time of death?” I ask.

  Magee looks down at her notes. “Rigor has begun in the jaw and neck of the female victim but it’s not advanced. I estimate her time of death to be in the last couple of hours.” She checks her watch. “Seeing as the bodies were discovered at seven, I’d make that between five and six P.M. this evening. It will be more difficult to estimate the male victim’s time of death.”

  I walk around the bodies to where the blood spatter crosses the church pews. It reaches right over the length of one of the benches. The blood, at first a congealed mess, fades into a fine sprinkle of droplets. I reach for my torch again. Shine it over the area and see that halfway through the spatter the pattern is interrupted.

  “We have a void in the blood spatter, here.” The void is well demarcated, about six inches in width, the edges defined apart from the end nearest to us, which is smeared as if an object has been dragged away.

  “Oh?” Dr. Magee turns and looks across the pews.

  Clancy waves at a tall, thin scene of crime officer. The SOCO approaches. Skinny face disappearing into the hood of her suit, hooked nose red at the tip and shining. The smell of menthol from the gel she’s smeared under it floats out around us.

  “Mark that up, will ye.” Clancy points toward the bench and the SOCO nods. Then, to me, “What do you think? Some item taken? Or a hand smear?”

  Dr. Magee has come to my side. “It’s too clean at the center to be the perp’s handprint. Whatever was there was removed after the victim was killed.”

  “Which means it would have her blood on it,” Clancy provides. Clearly on a roll. “An item the killer put down then remembered he needed and took with him?”

  I raise my hand, illuminate the bodies: the woman, the priest. There’s something about how the bodies are laid out that suggests a purposeful hand. That everything here is exactly how it should be in the killer’s eyes. The void doesn’t fit. “This killer’s too careful for the usual mistakes.”

  “He could have been disturbed? Hurried, maybe?” Clancy suggests.

  “It would have to be something like that.” I shine the torch over the floor around me. “
The blood spatter hasn’t extended this far. No chance of a footprint?”

  “No such fucking luck.” Clancy says. “We’ve had the black light out already. A few stray droplets near the exit on the east side of the church there but minimal. It’s like whoever this fecker is floated in like a bloody ghost.” He nods down at the blood spatter. “What do you think?”

  “I’d say her wallet. Or her bag was here. It’s about the right size and shape.”

  The hook-nosed SOCO reappears. “Excuse me,” she says apologetically, moving around me. More photos, more labels.

  “When was the last service?” I ask Clancy.

  “Mrs. Berry says the congregation left at one.”

  “Six hours.” I look down. “He’s worked hard on this,” I murmur. “Any ID on the victims?”

  “Nothing yet. Mrs. Berry didn’t get too close. Saw them from the altar there then left to get help.”

  I move the beam of the torch over the woman’s back. The stab wounds are clean. There’s no dragging from the blade along the edges that I can see. The knife stained with her blood placed in the male victim’s hand. Both victims early forties, maybe late thirties.

  And I see him. The killer. Moving over the bodies, flexing bloodied limbs into position. He stands back, surveys his work. I feel him behind me, as close as the skin on the back of my neck. He’s watching. Watching me seeing his handiwork, his breath still lingering in the stale church air.

  I look out over the church, beyond the bodies to the shining pews where, as a child, I sat, fidgeting against the hard wood, my polished shoes pressed into the maroon kneelers, counting the white flakes of dandruff on the shoulders of the men and women in front of me. The priest’s low drone, drugging my eyelids, lulling me into a bored stupor.

  Then a final look down at the victims. Down at this killer’s crime scene, and I’m thinking again of how the bodies have been positioned. How it must have taken some planning. These are the types of cases that keep detectives awake at night. Not only because of how appallingly terrible they are but because the first thought I have when I look at this scene is: There’s going to be more.