Taboo (12 page)

It was another dreary Dublin winter’s day; the gunshot metal clouds hanging low, the air still and damp, a light drizzle coating the pavements and cars in a fine film of water.

As he climbed wearily from his car, Chris was wondering much the same thing as Reilly – where was this going? O’Brien was giving him and Kennedy hell over the slow rate of progress, and now the press, who up until then had been largely co-operative, were getting antsy, bemoaning their lack of a suspect on either the Clare Ryan killings or the Gerry Watson death. And Chris had a feeling that this afternoon might be when they started to turn up the heat.

He closed the car door, straightened his tie in the wing mirror, and buttoned his jacket. He always felt uncomfortable in a suit but this was no place to dress down.

Satisfied that he looked suitably grave, he began to walk slowly across the sodden grass of the cemetery, the drizzle forming a fine haze across the solemn location as he approached the mourners.

He hated being here by himself but Kennedy had cried off citing a mountain of paperwork as an excuse. He could have asked Reilly of course, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to suggest it. Chances were she wouldn’t be interested anyway; something like this was unlikely to give her anything that would help with the investigation. Although perhaps that was unfair; it wasn’t as if she was cold or unsympathetic, more that she was totally focused on finding the answers that would help bring this thing to a conclusion.

He stopped twenty meters from the service, content to remain at a distance.

Bernard and Gillian Ryan stood closest to the graveside, the rest of the family behind them. Two open graves lay in front of them, and alongside them, two coffins waiting to be lowered in.

Chris was off to one side, half-hidden behind a tree, simply there to observe and provide a dignified police presence. As he watched Clare and Justin’s parents, he was glad he had not been the one to deliver the news that their son was the other victim at the crime scene. He could only imagine what it must have been like for Bernard to have to identify his son, half of his head missing. Upon O’Brien’s advice they’d decided to spare the family’s anguish by not informing them of the sexual nature of the crime. Chris privately suspected this had less to do with compassion and much more with controlling the predictable media reaction to such a detail. And given the undeniably horrifying nature of that and the Watson case, he was greatly relieved.

The priest, head lowered, finished the prayers and said a quiet blessing over the coffins, before stepping back.

The mourners shuffled their feet, solemn beneath their black canopy of umbrellas, as the coffins were slowly lowered in, side by side.

Gillian Ryan was crying, her whole body shaking as she was racked by violent sobs. Bernard had his arm around her and held her close, his face a stoic mask, but nothing anyone could do or say would be able to assuage the grief of a mother burying her two children. Chris looked at their mute figures and wondered how anyone found the mental strength to carry on at a time like this.

He shifted slightly, uncomfortable no matter what he did. His legs ached constantly now, whether he was exhausted at the end of a long shift or just out of bed in the morning.

The fact that he didn’t get much sleep the night before didn’t help either. Chris swallowed, the message he’d found at home on his answering machine after work still repeating in his head.

‘It’s me, Melanie,’ his former girlfriend said, as if he wouldn’t recognise her voice. Still it had been such a long time since he’d heard it, and caught off guard, he’d found himself rooted to the spot. ‘I just… I’m not sure why I’m telling you this but I thought you
should know,’ she continued hesitantly. ‘Peter’s asked me to marry him and I’ve said yes. And … well, I’m pregnant.’ There was a brief pause, while Chris tried to figure out his reaction to the call, let alone the explanation for it. ‘That’s not the reason we’re getting married though, it’s just one of those things that happened….’

Chris walked over to the window and stared out, seeing nothing.

‘Well, I just thought you should know,’ she continued and the discomfort in her tone was almost palpable. ‘It’s silly really, but I suppose I just didn’t want you to hear it somewhere else. Anyway…. I’d better go. Hope you’re well.’

He’d stayed standing at the window for a long time afterwards, before going to the machine and resolutely deleting the message.

Now, trying to put the whole thing out of his mind, (what did it matter?) he looked around and immediately  saw them. Moving in like a troop of hyenas scenting a fresh carcass.

The press had arrived.

He stepped away, and hurried across the soft grass to intercept them.

‘Detective Chris Delaney,’ he said, holding up his badge. ‘Can we give the family a little peace and privacy, please?’

A flurry of questions came at him all at once:

‘Did they kill each other?’

‘Was it a suicide pact?’

‘Was anyone else involved?’

They were so loud and insistent that several of the mourners turned around to look at the commotion. Chris pushed through the reporters, trying to lead them away from the service. ‘If you’ll step over here, I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have.’

Reluctantly, almost like kids not wanting to stop playing a favourite game, the reporters followed him.

Once they were at a respectful distance, he turned back to face them. ‘OK, one question at a time.’

‘Is it true that Justin killed Clare then turned the gun on himself?’ It was Morag Doyle, a well-connected crime reporter from the
Irish News
.

‘The investigation is still
ongoing, but that is a strong possibility.’

A face he didn’t know thrust to the front of the group – a young guy with thick curly hair and an eager expression. ‘Isn’t it true that there may be someone else involved?
A third party who killed them both?’ Chris groaned inwardly. He really hoped they’d managed to keep a lid on that one.

‘We have no evidence of any third party, but we are still very much open to all possibilities.’

‘Is there any link between this and the recent campsite killing?’

What the hell? Where were they getting this stuff? Chris wondered. There was no way anyone could have made a link between those two cases, unless … He cursed whatever idiot in the department had been shooting his mouth off. There was always at least one uniform
who after a few drinks in the pub on a Saturday night would forget himself and was happy to gossip to all and sundry. ‘There are absolutely no similarities between the two crimes.’ The lie tripped off his tongue surprisingly easily.

‘What’s it like working with the new GFU? She’s quite a
looker, isn’t she?’

Chris finally smiled. It was the young guy again. ‘Exactly to whom are you referring?’ he shot back.

‘Reilly Steel. I’ve heard her methods can be unpredictable to say the least.’

‘And who might you be?’

‘Ronan Cassidy,
Clarion
.’

‘Well, Mr Cassidy, I’d have to say that the appearance of Ms Steel is neither here nor there, but her observations and her impressive record in the US are both hugely welcome on
a case of this type.’ But before Chris had even finished his sentence he’d lost his audience. The burial had, in the meantime, finished up, and the press hurried off to intercept the family before they left.

Morag Doyle patted Chris’s arm as she walked by. ‘Nice try, Delaney, but you’ll have to offer a lot more than platitudes if you want to keep the attention of this lot.’

The waves were perfect, breaking left to right about thirty yards offshore, sweeping across the bay. Reilly lay on her board, waiting for the next set, rocking gently with the swell of the ocean. Here it comes … She began to paddle hard, feeling the swell rise beneath her as she picked up speed and prepared to climb to her feet.

But something was wrong. No matter how hard she paddled she made no progress – the wave was growing and growing, looming over her, and she was stuck to her board, unable to climb to her feet, unable to ride with it.

She kicked harder, but still she made no progress. She looked up. A great wall of water, deep, dark green, was rising above her, the white curl of the breaker already starting to form as it bore down on her.

With a crash, the wave engulfed her, ripped her from her board, grabbed her and tumbled her over and over again, spinning and turning, desperate for air, choked and blinded by a roaring mountain of salt water and sand.

Reilly sat up in bed with a gasp, startled and disorientated. She stared around her apartment, unrecognizable in the darkness. The shrill ring of her phone broke through her nightmare. She grabbed it from the bedside table.

‘Reilly Steel.’

‘Reilly? Did I wake you?’ Chris Delaney’s calm tones brought her back to reality.

‘Chris. What time is it?’

‘Just after three. Sorry to wake you.’

She sat up and brushed her hair back out of her eyes, trying to push the images out of her mind, and focus on what he was saying.
Another disturbing dream. This wasn’t good.

‘It’s OK, I owe you one,’ she said, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. ‘Did you get something on one of the cases?’

‘Yes and no.’ He paused and she could hear the weariness in his tone. ‘We have another murder – and while I hate to jump the gun, this one looks weird enough to be our guy again.’

Reilly drove through the dark streets, her mind spinning, disorientated not only by the unfamiliarity of the wrong side of the road but also by the peculiarities of this case. She thought about everything they had on the murders so far. What was the thread, what was the killer thinking, trying to tell them? Or was there any point at all?

With the Freudian connection it seemed hard to imagine that there was not some other hidden message; the murders were all just too bizarre. But if the killer had struck again – and so soon – it meant they were still chasing, still simply reacting to the twisted whims of a madman.

It was easy to find the house. Four or five police cars lit up the night with their flashing blue lights, illuminating a small crowd of onlookers who, even at that time of night, had been drawn to the scene, hoping to catch a glimpse of something gruesome. No doubt the press wouldn’t be far behind.

Reilly parked behind the barrier of police cars, grabbed her bag from the back of her car, and then stopped to look around.

The house was small, at the end of a quiet residential street. This was an older area of the city, probably inhabited by a lot of retired people – there were gardens full of rose bushes, neat lawns and old-fashioned floral curtains. Number forty-seven stood alone at the end of the cul-de-sac, a redbrick cottage with a well-tended garden, a black wrought-iron gate, and a narrow concrete path leading between the flower beds to the open front door.

The uniforms parted like waves to let her through. Chris was waiting at the door. ‘Hey there,’ he said in greeting. ‘You were fast.’

She looked up at him and frowned. ‘You look tired.’

‘And why wouldn’t I be? It’s after four in the bloody morning.’

She followed him into the hallway, which was cool and quiet, almost serene after the melee outside. He pushed the door closed behind them, immediately shutting out the noise and the flashing blue lights. Two uniforms stood guard in front of a doorway.

‘We caught a break on this one,’ Chris began. ‘Unlike the last, the scene is almost completely undisturbed.’

Reilly smelled the air. ‘They’ve been dead a while though.’

He nodded. ‘Uniform came round to follow up a lead on a missing person, peered through the letterbox, caught a whiff of that stench and called it in.’ He led her toward the doorway. ‘Once they got inside they took one look and figured it was one of ours.’ Chris stopped at the door and nodded to the uniforms. They both reached up and covered their mouths with their hands, then one of them slowly pushed the door open.

The smell, already strong in the house, flowed out of the room like a wave. Fighting back the nausea, Reilly stepped forward slowly. A garish red light bathed the scene.

It was another bizarre tableau. The room was lit only by an electric fire, which produced stifling heat and had obviously contributed to the decomposition of the bodies. And decomposed they were, both bloated and sickly colored.

Reilly stood in the doorway, struggling not to gag from the stench. There were two people sitting at a table and despite the advanced state of decomposition, she could immediately see that one was elderly – a thin, frail, old woman with wispy silver hair. The other was also female, dressed in a white uniform
unifo
, well built, and from first impressions looked to be in her mid-forties though at this point it was hard to tell.

Chris stood in the doorway, a troubled look on his face. ‘According to the
neighbors the victims are—’

Reilly put up a hand to cut him off. ‘Give me a minute – let me just take a look without knowing anything, before the rest of them get here.’

He nodded. ‘OK. Should I …?’ He indicated the door.

‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

He closed the door behind him, leaving Reilly alone with the bodies. She slowly circled the scene, the red light of the fire making her own shadow dance on the opposite wall, her senses wide open, just taking everything in.

There were no signs of trauma on the older woman, no stabs or gunshot wounds, no weapons, nothing to suggest cause of death. She didn’t even look distressed. In fact, she had an almost peaceful expression, as though her death was a relief to her. Clad in her flower-print dress and white cardigan, she looked like a hundred other little old ladies that you’d see tottering around Dublin every day.

The younger woman was slumped over, leaning on the table, arms limp by her side, her dark hair draped across her face. The white clothes Reilly had noticed earlier looked on closer inspection to be a nurse’s uniform, and she wore sensible rubber-soled shoes and no jewelry.

Despite the decomposition, Reilly could see that this woman had been killed by a gunshot to the head, at close range – just like Justin Ryan. But this time there seemed to be another gunshot wound, on her foot. What was that all about?

She stepped back a little, looked around and sighed. Once again it seemed that these victims were no criminals, no drug-dealing lowlifes whose illegal activities helped bring about their own demise. Instead, they looked to be just normal people living normal lives who’d been deliberately sought out to play a part in this unspeakable horror. Chris was right; the mere ordinariness of the victims suggested that this was likely their killer again.

Keeping this in mind, she scanned the room, searching for anything that would tie it to the other scenes.
Anything obviously Freudian, or loosely related to Freud, anything at all.

After a few minutes more, her gaze fell on a nearby couch that was littered with photos. Reilly moved closer. They looked to be very old; black and white family scenes
from a long time ago. A father and a little girl walking along the street, another of the same people dressed up formally for a family portrait. Peering closer, Reilly noticed that several of the photos were damaged, torn, mutilated even. Had something or some
one
been removed from the photos – excised from the old lady’s life?

Leaving them for the moment, she glanced back at the older woman, then around the room. It was clearly the old lady’s house – everything from the lace curtains to the traditional dark wood furniture, fine china teapot and doilies on the table screamed old lady.

Reilly stepped over to the fireplace. A small collection of framed black-and-white photos were laid out on the mantelpiece – several were of the same family featured in the photos spread so artfully on the couch. So they had be related to the older woman, perhaps pictures of her family, her childhood.

‘Chris,’ Reilly called out and waited a moment before he re-entered. ‘I think I’ve found something.’

He stepped into the room and followed her gaze to the photos on the couch. ‘You mean these photos? What about them?’

‘Take a look, but remember not to touch.’

‘Of course.’ Raising an eyebrow, he walked over to the couch and ran his gaze across the array of photographs. ‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’

‘Well, what do you see?’

He shrugged. ‘Mostly old family shots – some of them seem very old, a couple are torn.’

‘Torn through age, or on purpose?’

He looked closer. ‘Now that you say it, I’d wager on purpose. You think they’re the old woman’s?’ he said, moving away. She knew he was finding it almost impossible to resist picking them up.

‘Looks like they could be of her childhood.’

‘Any idea why they’ve been torn like that?’

Reilly moved over to the mantelpiece and pointed to a family portrait. ‘Look – this is the complete family, but in all of these,’ she indicated the ones on the couch, ‘someone’s been removed.’

‘The mother,’ she and Chris said in unison, and Reilly looked at him as he continued. ‘The mother has been ripped out of the photos.’

‘Exactly.
It’s Freud again,’ she said. One of the pillars of Freud’s psychodynamic theory was that childhood had a profound effect on the things we do, the way we behaved as adults.’

‘Are you sure that isn’t too much of a leap? I mean, are we trying to make a Freud connection now? All this could very well be coincidence.’

‘I know.’ She sighed, having thought the very same thing. Perhaps she was just clutching at straws at this stage. Goodness knows, Daniel had cautioned her against that kind of thing, against trying to make the crime fit the circumstances rather than approaching it all with an open mind. It was a rookie mistake and she really should know better.

A troubled expression crossed Chris’s face. ‘Look, we’ll take this thing with the photos on board, but I wouldn’t automatically assume we’re dealing with the same guy just yet.’

She shook her head. ‘You’re right. It’s just … well, all this has really gotten under my skin and I don’t like being played.’

‘It’s getting to me too – and I don’t think I need to tell you what it’s doing to Kennedy.’

She gave a crooked smile. ‘Where is the miserable old bastard tonight anyway?’

‘Next door, interviewing some of the
neighbors. I might as well warn you, he isn’t exactly over the moon about having this profiler guy treading on our toes—’

‘It’s not like that,’ Reilly told him. ‘Daniel won’t be stepping on
anyone’s
toes. And despite what Kennedy – or anyone else might think,’ she added pointedly, ‘we’ve got a much better chance of catching this guy with him on board.’

‘Well, you know Kennedy, always suspicious of the touchy-feely stuff,’ Chris joked, and Reilly was heartened to think that he himself wasn’t nearly as dubious.
Which was important given that they all needed to work together on this.

He looked again at the photos. ‘And speaking of touchy-feely, let’s just assume for a moment that this thing with the missing mother
is
Freud related? Where does it get us?’

‘Absolutely nowhere,’ Reilly replied, feeling more disheartened by the minute.

A while later she and Chris stepped out into the cool night air, both relieved to be out of the stifling heat of the house. Karen Thompson was just arriving.

‘Good luck with that one,’ Chris said. The ME gave him a quizzical look and he nodded to the house ‘The fire was left on, turned up full – it’s like a sauna in there. It’ll really mess up your time of death.’

Karen shrugged. ‘Every case has its difficulties – that’s what makes the job so much fun, isn’t it?’ she added drily, shouldering her bag as she headed on in.

‘God help her husband is all I’ll say,’ Chris said under his breath.

Reilly looked at him. ‘Whose?’

‘Well, I know if I woke in the middle of the night to see Karen Thompson’s face beside me, I’d be more than a little worried about having my organs weighed, if you know what I mean.’

‘You should be so lucky,’
Reilly  said with a grin. ‘So what else do we know about the victims?’ she asked, wondering if Chris’s findings would concur with her first impressions.

He sat on the bonnet of his car and took out his notebook. ‘The old lady was Vera Miles, eighty-seven years old. She owns the house.’ He flipped a page. ‘The younger woman was her niece, Sarah Miles, forty-five.’ He jammed the notebook into the pocket of his jacket. ‘Sarah’s a nurse, she was reported missing about a week ago, didn’t show up for work at the hospital one day apparently.’

‘Husband, boyfriend?’

‘Single, no kids, lived alone. As a missing person investigation it was a real dead end. Then last night someone reported her car had been parked here,’ he indicated back over his shoulder, ‘for
a over a week, so the uniforms came around to check it out.’

Reilly looked up and down the street. It was quiet, residential, the kind of street she imagined where everyone kept to themselves. ‘Any of the
neighbors see anything suspicious?’

‘Nobody knows
nothing,’ Kennedy growled, walking up behind them. He propped himself on the car beside Chris and the suspension instantly groaned. ‘Mrs O’Shaughnessy across the road says the car has been there for days. Says she thought nothing of it, because Sarah had parked it there a few times before when she was away on holiday. It’s a quiet street and close to the airport, so that wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. In fact, I got all the usual guff about how these things didn’t happen around here, and you couldn’t meet a nicer more generous family who gave money to charity and everybody loved them, blah, blah, blah. It’s funny how these things only come out when somebody snuffs it.’

‘When did Sarah disappear?’ Reilly asked.

‘She was reported missing five days ago by a colleague,’ Kennedy told her.

‘So chances are whatever happened
here  was before then,’ she mused. ‘Maybe a week or so ago  … that would certainly explain the decomp.’

Kennedy looked at her. ‘Did you find anything useful inside?’

‘Team’s not here yet, so hard to know, but just out of interest …’ she glanced at Chris, who nodded, ‘I’m thinking there might be a clue, something related to the others.’

‘You’re joking.’ Kennedy stared from Reilly to Chris and back again. ‘You seriously think this is another one?’

‘Realistically, we can’t rule anything out,’ Chris said, quietly and Kennedy shook his head.