TORN (28 page)

‘Let’s see what else he’s got.’ She hit the play button again and the white sheet of paper dissolved into video footage.

‘That’s Coffey,’ Kennedy pointed out, quickly recognizing the man on screen.

The journalist was sitting at a small table, his feet bound to the legs of the chair. He was writing something and occasionally he looked up towards the camera. Reilly was busy studying the background, trying to figure out where Coffey was being held while the footage was filmed.

It was clear he’d suffered.  There was a streak of blood down one cheek, his hair was dishevelled and his clothes dirty. Although sadly for him, Reilly thought, shuddering at the memory of Coffey bobbing about in putrefying sewage, they were about to get a whole lot dirtier.

After about a minute or so Coffey looked up. ‘I’ve finished.’

The screen flickered in what looked to be a sharp edit.  In the next shot Coffey was holding up a sheaf of papers. He looked directly at the camera. 

‘This is my confession,’ he said, his voice cracking. He looked to be on the verge of tears, fearful and psychologically weakened by his experience, dark circles beneath his eyes as he stared uncertainly towards the camera. He paused to catch his breath and wiped his face, trying to compose himself.

‘Although I was brought here against my will, what I have written here is the truth – nothing has been added or changed.’  He set the papers back down on the table, and slowly signed each page with a trembling hand.  ‘There …’ He held them out to the unseen person behind the camera and the image faded to black.

Chris turned to look at Reilly. ‘You didn’t get anything else in the package – some papers, Coffey’s confession?’

Reilly shook her head.  ‘Just the disk.’

They both looked back towards the screen as more typed words flashed into view. These read:

Inferno Eighth Circle:  Bolgia 2: Flatterers drown in their own excrement

Tony Coffey - the dam unblocked

‘Well, there’s certainly no question now that Reuben’s correct,’ Reilly stated. ‘Our killer is indeed re-enacting the punishments from Dante’s
Inferno
.’

‘Flatterers?’ Chris queried. ‘How was Coffey a flatterer?’

‘He used words to flatter some and exploit others,’ Reilly explained. ‘The excrement represents the words he produced.’

‘Or again, journalists are full of shit,’ Kennedy said flatly.

The white sheet on the screen faded away, and was once again replaced by more video footage, this time of ex-cop John Crowe.

He was a giant of a man , the kind you’d want on your side in a fight, Reilly noted, and definitely the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to cross. His face was hard, with short-cropped gray hair and flinty pale blue eyes. But however tough Crowe might have been, right then he was a prisoner, entirely at someone else’s whim, at someone else’s mercy, and he knew it.

He was looking around, analyzing, assessing, but there was a hint of fear in his pale eyes, the realization that his fate was out of his hands. In the narrow focus of the video it was also difficult to make out where he was – the background was dark and featureless.

Crowe was sitting on a chair, his hands couldn’t be seen, but from the way his arms disappeared behind his back, it was clear that they were also secured firmly.

Unlike Tony Coffey, though, Crowe’s face showed no sign of defeat.  He may have realized that he was in a tight spot, but he was determined not to show it.  He was defiant, staring straight into the camera. ‘This sick fucker is making me talk,’ he growled.

‘That’s Crowe for you,’ Kennedy commented. ‘He wouldn’t kowtow to anyone.’

‘He wants me to make a confession,’ Crowe continued in his coarse Northside Dublin accent. ‘I’ve got nothin’ to hide, nothin’ to be ashamed of.  I did what I did, that’s the way it was; everyone who was smart did the same. You did what you were told, kept your mouth shut, no questions asked, then the perks and the promotions came along.’  He paused for a minute, as though thinking. ‘The guy—’

There was another sudden sharp change, as yet again the footage was edited and when the video resumed, Crowe was still talking.

‘I didn’t think anything of it; it wasn’t unusual for someone to make a request like that. You lose a bit of evidence, misplace a file, can’t remember a name …’ Crowe stopped, and shrugged.  ‘I wasn’t totally happy about it,’ he admitted, ‘Guy was a nasty piece of work, an arrogant little fucker, if you asked me, but the top brass turned the heat up, so I did what I was told – and a week later ten grand in cash turned up in my locker.

‘So he
was
taking kickbacks,’ Kennedy said, his tone filled with disdain. ‘Stupid bastard …’

‘Hold on …’ Reilly paused the video. ‘What’s that – on Crowe’s shoulder?’ When the others looked confused, she pointed at the screen. ‘There on the jacket, on the right-hand side.’ She wasn’t sure at first if it was just the shadows in the barn, but was almost certain she could make out a distinctive light-colored mark on the cop’s dark jacket.

Chris screwed up his eyes. ‘Looks like it’s just dust of some kind. That horse feed,maybe?’

‘I don’t think so.  It looks very powdery and too light in color – not something you’d get in a farmhouse or barn.’ Had Crowe brushed up against something when being moved to the site, in the unsub’s van perhaps? 

It could be nothing, but she’d get the tech guys to zoom in on the footage later, see if they could ascertain what the mark was. If they could do that, perhaps they might also be able to work out where it had come from – and thus add another piece of physical evidence to the pile.

Kennedy looked thoughtful. ‘Listening to that, whatever Crowe did – destroyed evidence or whatever –  it sounds as though somebody higher up in the force was in on it too.’

‘Look, let’s not jump to conclusions,’ Chris said. ‘The last thing we want is O’Brien and the suits getting even more involved in this.’

Reilly shared Kennedy’s concerns. ‘But what if one of them is on the killer’s list?  We have to say something.’

‘I don’t think so.’

She looked at him with interest. ‘You sound pretty certain. What makes you say that?’

‘I may be wrong, but this guy is so careful, I don’t think he’d tip us off before he got to someone – he’s too determined to administer his own form of justice. Either he didn’t pick up on it, or else he didn’t know what Crowe was referring to.’

‘Why don’t we just keep watching?’ suggested Kennedy. ‘Maybe we’ll find out?’

Reilly resumed ‘Play’.

There was another quick edit before the footage continued with Crowe still talking. ‘You didn’t usually ask those questions, but in this case, I was pretty sure where the money had come from.’

Again the footage jumped abruptly.

‘Damnit!’ Kennedy exclaimed.

‘It stood to reason,’ Crowe went on. ‘I knew who his father was, so it didn’t take much to add two and two together and come up with four.’

‘Whose father?’ Chris asked. ‘Bloody hell, none of this is making any sense.’

There was another quick cut, and when they saw Crowe again, he looked more downcast.  ‘Of course it made a difference. If I’d presented all the evidence there’s little doubt the fucker would have got what was coming to him.’  He looked directly at the camera.  ‘Most of the time what we did was neither here nor there, but in this case, yeah, it made a big difference …’

The screen faded, and yet another title card appeared:

Ninth Circle: Round Two: Traitors

Betrayers of community ties encased in ice

John Crowe - the dam unblocked

Reilly recalled a recent reading of the
Inferno
in which traitors were mentioned. A dishonest policeman would certainly fall under the description of a betrayer of community ties.

Once again the punishment was designed to fit the crime.

Kennedy grunted in frustration. ‘This guy really knows how to leave his audience hanging.’

‘He’s certainly a tease,’ Chris agreed.  ‘Knows just when to lead us on, then makes a cut just at the pay-off.’

The picture morphed into a shot of Alan Fitzpatrick’s face.

Looking at the background, the politician was in the barn where they had found him, which led Reilly to assume that Crowe and Coffey’s footage had been recorded there too. This was good; it meant that they had information on a primary crime scene for at least three murders.

Like the others Fitzpatrick was bound to a chair. A streak of black pitch ran down his face, the skin at the edges of the pitch appearing red and angry.

Reilly grimaced.  This one seemed more brutal – there was no doubt, Fitzpatrick looked scared, much more so than the other two had been. He blinked at the camera, clearly in pain from the burns on his face.  ‘I’ll say whatever you want …’ He blinked, gave a little sob.  ‘Please don’t hurt me again.’

There was another edit, and when the picture returned, Fitzpatrick looked more composed, the black pitch had been removed from his face, and the tar cleared off it. ‘We’d been friends for a long time—’

‘Friends with who?’ Kennedy muttered, irritation evident in his voice. ‘Who the hell are these guys talking about?’

‘It certainly sounds as though they’re all referring to one person in particular,’ Chris agreed.

‘To be honest, he owed me.’ Despite the circumstances, Fitzpatrick was still  unable to keep a faint note of pride out of his voice. ‘Lots of people owe me …’ 

He glanced up at the camera, as if quickly remembering where he was and what he was supposed to be doing.  ‘All it took was a quick phone call to be sure that we got the result we wanted.’  He gazed at the camera lens, gave a wan smile. ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine.  That’s the way it works, isn’t it?’

He was obviously discussing his abilities to wheel and deal, bend the rules, make things happen, Reilly mused.

‘It was almost a formality getting early release approved …’

Early release. They had to be talking about a prisoner … perhaps the perpetrator Reuben was referring to?

Once more the screen went black, but was soon filled with another caption card.

Eighth Circle:  Bolgia 5:

Barrators Immersed in Boiling Pitch

Alan Fitzpatrick - the dam unblocked once more

Again the screen went dark and all that could be heard was the sound of heavy, ragged breathing. Then Fitzpatrick’s voice cut in.

‘When you do these things, you never think about the consequences, how it might affect someone else … I’m sorry.’  Fitzpatrick was sobbing, tripping over his words in fear and remorse.  ‘You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?  Please don’t kill me …’

A final caption appeared:

Two more to go until the Dam is fully unblocked

And true justice will be served …

The screen went black for a long time. Finally, the recording was finished.

Reilly gave a deep sigh – she was unsure how to feel.  They now knew for sure that were dealing with the same killer, one with a Dante fixation. They also had a better sense of the perp’s motive – he was a vigilante, someone who had been failed by the system and was dishing out his own form of justice in his own unique way. And clearly his chosen victims had somehow helped bring about this injustice.

The light mark she’d noticed on the ex-cop’s jacket deserved further investigation, but that could well turn out to be nothing. She felt deep frustration . The killer was, as Kennedy had observed, a tease – a clever, motivated, meticulous tease. She glanced across at the detectives. Their faces seemed to be registering the same emotions as her own.

‘Thoughts?’

Kennedy scowled.  ‘He’s a clever little fucker.’

‘Let’s include that in our next press conference, why don’t we?’ Chris said drily.

‘Might as well – nothing else we’re doing is getting us any closer to finding him.’  Kennedy stood up and stomped over to the far side of the room where the coffee pot stood steaming. ‘He holds all the cards, doesn’t he?’ He poured himself a cup and looked over at the others. ‘You lot want any?’

Both Chris and Reilly nodded, and Kennedy kept talking while he poured.  ‘So he tells us it’s all about justice – well, we’d kind of figured out that much.  He tells us there are two more to come – but how do we know who they are, or how to stop him?’

‘I hate to say it,’ Chris admitted, ‘but Knight is right. Until this guy fucks up, we’re still just pissing in the wind.’

Kennedy scowled. ‘And from where I’m standing, the wind is blowing straight towards us.’

By the time Reilly got home it was after eight, and she felt exhausted – worn out but at the same time wired too. She warmed some leftover pasta in the microwave, found a half-bottle of wine in the fridge, then collapsed in front of the TV to chill out …