TORN (13 page)

Reilly guessed that O’Brien was rattled, not only by the murders, but by the intensifying media demands. To try to keep them at bay, at least temporarily, he’d scheduled a press conference, and she guessed he was hoping this meeting would give him something to help calm the situation and reassure the public that the authorities were in control.

‘One drowned in his own shite, another frozen in a block of ice, and now some poor creature strung up with his guts hanging out! What the hell is going on in this country? Is it gangs, huh? Is that what it’s all about? Are they trying to outdo each other by seeing which one can come up with the freakiest?’

‘We don’t think it’s gangs,’ Chris put in quietly. ‘With the exception of Crowe, the victims had no connection to gangland crime that we know of.’

Tony Coffey had rarely tackled national crime issues in his newspaper column, and Jennings, who had lived in leafy Killiney, was as far away from the city’s seedy underbelly as you could get.

‘Well I’m delighted you
are
thinking, Detective Delaney,’ O’Brien snapped. ‘But thinking alone won’t get this thing stopped.’

‘The victims are all middle-class professionals from the same social spectrum,’ Kennedy put in. ‘We’re working on a possible link, we suspect they knew each other … met up socially, members of the same golf club, that kind of thing.’

‘God bless us and save us,’ O’Brien muttered. ‘You think they might have been knocked off over a game of golf – from a sore loser or something?’ His eyes bulged. ‘Jesus, Kennedy, I’ve been in this job a long time and I’ve never,
ever
seen anything like this. It’s a spectacle of the most horrific order! And to think there are sick fuckers out there with minds like that. I mean, where the hell do they get these ideas?  Is it from the television, the internet—’

‘Actually, I think it might be deeper than that,’ Reilly said, speaking for the first time since the meeting began.

They all turned to look at her.

‘This isn’t some guy stealing ideas from a TV program,’ she continued. ‘There’s a real medieval brutality to the stagings and tortures employed. Old Testament, almost wrath-of-God-type stuff, with overtones of Christianity. The man in the tree ... well, it could be considered a crucifixion of sorts, couldn’t it?’ 

She’d been thinking about it all night, suspicious now, like the others, that the horrific and theatrical manner of the recent murders were just too similiar to be coincidental. With the discovery of the third victim, it seemed that there was some form of symbolism attached to the manner of each death. Given that their most recent victim was found in a church, she wondered if there was a biblical element.

‘My guess is that we’re dealing not with some low-life gang lord,’ she continued, ‘but someone with a classical education, who is being very definite about the message he wants to get across.’

‘What kind of message?’ Chris asked.

‘I’m not sure. Clearly there’s a personal element to the killings, with all the trouble he goes to. But perhaps with the ice, the sewer and now the tree, I wonder if we might be dealing with somebody environmentally sensitive?’

‘A tree-hugger? For the love of God, Steel, what kind of sick bastard loves trees enough that they’d hang some poor bugger alive on one and leave him for the birds to feed on?’

She sat back. ‘I don’t know, sir. It’s just a theory.’

‘Jesus, I hate this job sometimes. Right, enough talk, there’s no time for hanging around. You two,’ O’Brien stabbed a finger at the two detectives, ‘talk to Johnny Crowe’s wife, and see if she knows anything about golf buddies, or if he knew either of the other two victims. Steel, I take it you’ve got plenty to occupy yourself with from that tree yesterday?’

‘Yes, sir, but taking into account the harsh elements—’

‘I don’t want to hear it. Just work your mumbo-jumbo magic and find me something amongst it all that’ll help us find this madman, or at least figure out what he’s up to before he does it again. And seeing as Johnny Crowe’s killing looks to be connected to the other two under your remit, it makes sense for you to oversee that one too.’

Reilly winced. Her older colleague, Gorman, would no doubt go ballistic at the idea of her taking over one of his open files. But it was nothing personal, and in reality another file was no great bonus to Reilly, who now was likely slap-bang in the middle of a serial killer investigation.

‘Jesus Christ, I can’t keep up with criminals in this godforsaken country anymore,’ O’Brien was muttering. ‘And what am I going to say at the press conference later, huh? That a bunch of crusty hippies are responsible? They’ll eat me alive!’

‘Sir, the environmental angle was merely a theory. I wasn’t suggesting—’

‘I don’t want theories, Steel, I want answers. Now the whole lot of you, get the hell out of here and find me some.’

‘You don’t really think this is someone trying to make a political statement, do you?’ Chris asked her afterwards, when they were heading back to their respective offices.

‘I have no idea. Like I said, there’s a definite metaphorical overtone to the manner of death, and the posing of the bodies ... well, there’s something to that too, something we’re not seeing.’

‘God, I hate these mindfuck investigations,’ Kennedy grumbled. ‘Yeah, all the murders are weird, but is there actually anything in the evidence to connect them?’

‘Nothing other than Crowe’s phone number in Coffey’s pocket, and we’re still going through yesterday’s evidence. Of course I didn’t run Crowe’s location – that was Gorman’s.’ She bit her lip. ‘He won’t be happy, but now I’m going to have to go down to the factory and start afresh.’

As they were no longer running each case in isolation Reilly knew she needed to look at the entire investigation from a broader point of view. Although he was a competent investigator, she couldn’t take Jack Gorman’s crime scene findings on trust. It was only through immersing herself in the Crowe scene, essentially walking in the murderer’s shoes, that she’d be able to get a proper sense of it.

‘Good idea,’ Chris said. ‘We’re going to re-interview the wives, see if the three victims knew each other.’

Kennedy grimaced. ‘I don’t think O’Brien went for the golf club angle somehow.’

Reilly smiled. ‘It was loose, but you’re right: they’re each middle-aged, upper to middle class, and by all accounts well-respected professionals. It wouldn’t be at all surprising to find that they mixed in similar social circles or had some involvement with one another, however patchy.’

‘Well, to our killer, they’re very closely involved – with his plans at least,’ Chris said. ‘Could be that’s he’s punishing them for something.’

Reilly pictured afresh Tony Coffey’s sewage-steeped corpse, Crowe’s frozen form, and Dr Jennings with his innards spilling out on the tree.

She exhaled heavily. ‘If punishment is his motive, he sure has a unique way of dispensing it.’

It was a crisp, dry day, a touch of frost still clinging on the ground, the sky overhead the pale blue of coming winter.

Reilly switched on her torch and slowly pushed the door open.

Even with the uniformed officer waiting for her outside, the abandoned meat packing plant where John Crowe had been found was a creepy place.

Simply knowing that this was where a cop had died was disconcerting, but there was something more. The old building wore an air of sadness, as though the souls of all the animals who had been killed and dismembered there were haunting the place. The residue of killing lingered long after the blood stains have been washed away.

The building had been closed for ten years, and the pale concrete wore an air of decay, as though time itself were eating away at its fabric. Teenagers had daubed the gray concrete walls with graffiti in bold reds and blues, letters two meters tall proclaiming their various allegiances. The windows had all been smashed, relentless years of target practice leaving the edifice looking like a toothless old hag, weak and defenceless.

Reilly shoved against the broken door, and it yielded slowly, creaking loudly and scraping across the bare concrete floor. A chill raced up her spine and cobwebs brushed her face in moldering welcome.

She stepped inside what had once been the reception area. The filing cabinets had been ransacked long ago, the papers strewn across the floor like confetti from a distant wedding. There were still musty old office chairs at the desks, their seats ripped apart by sharp teeth and the stuffing evidently stolen by enterprising rats to line their nests.

Reilly found herself distracted, fascinated by the pictures on the walls.  One showed the plant when it was newly built, a concrete symbol of Ireland’s burgeoning economic prosperity. Another was of the plant’s founder, William Kelly, splendid in a dark suit. The pride in his eyes was touching, a sad contrast to the faded tones of the photograph now, tiny black dots of insects crushed between Kelly’s picture and the broken glass.

The early afternoon light streamed into the office from the broken windows, slanting beams that danced on the dust motes stirred up by Reilly’s feet.

She shook the cobwebs off her hair and flashed her torch around, looking for footprints in the dust, handprints on the counter, any signs of recent activity that might indicate the presence of Crowe’s killer. Nothing stirred, the thick dust yielded no clues. According to Gorman’s report, he was pretty certain the killer had not brought Crowe in this way, but Reilly wanted to approach it afresh, and tried to banish any preconceptions she might have picked up from her colleague’s initial sweep.

She crunched gingerly across broken glass towards the back of the room, her footsteps echoing loudly on the bare concrete floor as she approached another broken wooden door, leading from the office into the plant itself.

She hesitated a moment, listening. It was deathly quiet, but once her ears became attuned to the lack of noise she was able to pick out background sounds. From behind her there was the rumble of a car passing on the road outside. The wind could also be heard playing in the branches of the trees, whipping the last of the autumn leaves free to scatter them on the damp ground.  And finally one other noise, coming from inside the factory, a gentle cooing, which at first sounded creepy and a little out of kilter … 

Then Reilly smiled.

Of course. Pigeons in the rafters, chattering back and forth to one another.

She pushed through the door from the reception area, and stepped into the plant itself. It was a large open space, crammed with mysterious machinery, illuminated by a row of skylights high overhead. She gazed at the derelict machines, iron skeletons from another time, like the remains of ancient beasts.  She could only imagine what function they had served – hooks and blades and scoops for tearing, cutting and separating meat into neat little plastic-wrapped packages, ready for consumption.

The light streaming through from above illuminated parts of the plant, but left others in darkness so that strange levers, bars and blades seemed to appear suddenly out of pockets of deep shadow as Reilly progressed through the room. A cloud passed overhead and the plant was plunged into gloom, the machines once more hiding their secrets.  Then, just as suddenly, the cloud passed and the rusting hulks were again revealed.

Some of the equipment seemed to have been stripped down, the valuable parts carried away by scavengers to be sold as scrap metal, leaving a maze of half-dismembered machines, the floor strewn with the discarded debris.

The cooing was louder here. Reilly looked up, and saw thirty or more pigeons roosting in the vaulted metal rafters. They would have seen it all; would have seen how the murderer had managed to get Crowe, a seventeen-stone ex-cop, into a bath of freezing water.

Stepping over the discarded parts and broken glass, Reilly picked her way carefully to the back of the vast work space, past the skeletal machines, towards the industrial freezer room where the body had been found.

She was usually composed around murder scenes – it went with the job – but right now she felt uneasy. Beneath the dust the smell of death lingered in the air. This had been a place of blood and guts, of animals being sliced and diced, flesh separated from bone and gristle. Even ten or so years after the place had last seen a carcass, the scent of blood still lurked in the dark corners. But there was another smell too: heavy and alkaline, yet sweet …

Reilly stood still, every one of her senses alert. It was that smell again, she realize
d
the same one she’d come across in the church tower. Her heart galloped.

Not exactly tangible, but it was a connection …

She bent down and sniffed the ground, trying to pinpoint the smell’s exact location. Was it the wall … the ground? The scent was so pungent here it was impossible to tell exactly where it was strongest. Swabbing an area of the floor closest to the wall, she bagged the sample.

Moving on, Reilly made her way towards the rear of the building, her mind racing with this important find. 

The same smell at two different murder locations. It couldn’t be coincidence. She didn’t believe in coincidence. Crowe had been dumped in a bath of water and frozen to death in a heavy-duty freezer, Jennings strung up on a tree and left for dead and to the mercy of the elements. Her thoughts then turned to Tony Coffey, how the journalist had been kidnapped, bound, then dumped in the septic tank. It was all too weird …