THE FAMILY LIAISON officer will visit tomorrow to take me through Tracy Ward’s case again. She has suggested that we have the meeting at my family’s house so that they too might be prepared for what will take place. It’s an opportunity for me to reconnect with them, and I’m dreading it.
In the meantime, I’ve taken to bedding down on my sofa, working the Black Widow site, putting out feelers in other chat rooms, and staring at Amy Keegan’s and Eleanor Costello’s files, hoping that something, anything, new will reach out to me. More weeks have churned by, our witnesses and follow-ups as scarce as warm days. We are packed into a dark hole with not a chink of light to show us the way out.
Nothing has been said, but I can sense from Clancy that the commissioner is beginning to question whether the case warrants further resources. Meaning, of course, money. I sigh, tuck my feet beneath me, and check my phone. There’ve been no more silent calls. Steve remains vigilant on Cell Site, but nothing’s come through on Peter Costello’s phone.
I stare out across the mess of my flat. Dishes stacked in the sink. My coat still slung over the chair where I dropped it last night.
However, despite the chaos, the bonsai is shaping up. It’s not as difficult as I imagined, stifling life in one area of the tree and encouraging it in another. Its foliage is a rich deep green that stands defiant against the freezing gray December skyline.
It’s one of those days where the sun never really showed up behind the cloud and it felt dark before it even lightened. It’s barely four, but the lamp at my elbow has been on since two this afternoon. The TV is flickering on mute. There is a weatherman waving his hand, fanlike, over Dublin, and with a flick of his fingers a snowflake icon appears. The temperature is predicted as below freezing over the next couple of nights, rising slightly by midafternoon. Wrapped up in a blanket as I am, I can’t help but shiver.
I scroll through my contacts and dial Baz’s number.
He picks up first ring. “Hello?”
“It’s me. Anything?” He’s been working slowly through Eleanor Costello’s psych files, which by now we can assume that Burke has adjusted somewhat, if only to cover his own professional mistakes.
“I thought you were at your folks’?”
“Not until tomorrow.”
“I can hear the joy in your voice.” He laughs. “Family, huh?”
“You know yourself.”
“Yeah.” There is a shuffle of paper and I imagine that he’s turning open Burke’s notes. “So far, not much in the notes, as we suspected. It would be easier if we had his appointment diary so that we could ensure all the appointments are indeed accounted for here. It’s so difficult to know whether he got rid of stuff.”
I get up, uncurl my legs, and reach out of the sofa. Tucking the phone under my chin, I fill the kettle for tea.
“Can’t you get the diary?”
“The warrant didn’t cover it. The judge said he couldn’t sign it off as it would compromise the confidentiality of other patients.”
“You must have something that could help us.”
“There’s nothing about her fucking parents here, for starters. I mean, unless this shrink went to a different school of thought than the rest of them, that’s gotta mean something. Mine never fucking shut up about my parents.”
The corner of my mouth lifts into a smile. “Maybe you’re more messed up than most people.”
“Very funny. There’s no mention of abuse in her childhood either.”
“Well, that could be accurate. And if it’s not, it’s a lot to disclose to a person. She might not have felt able to tell him.”
“You’re probably right. I’m not a fan of this guy, that’s all. I think he’ll stick it to us every chance he gets.”
“He’ll have met his match in you then. Any other news?”
A sharp, short sigh comes down the line. “The final autopsies are through on both cases.”
“Anything new?”
“Not that I can see. Could do with another pair of eyes, though.”
“Anything on Lorcan Murphy?”
“Spoke to him directly. He remembered the night. Said some of the students who were underperforming were collecting course work. Amy was one. He gave me a few names. They checked out.”
The kettle boils, clicks to a stop. Steam rises over my face.
“Right. I guess they were the same department.”
“Like I said.”
“I can almost see the gloat on your face.”
“Brilliance is a burden, Sheehan, not a gift.”
My lips twitch into a smile. “I wouldn’t know.”
He laughs. “Helen’s come back with Peter’s job prospects at the hands of Doyle.”
“The company he was applying to for work?”
“Yes,” he says. “And here’s the shocker. He got an interview, but they said he never showed.”
“A lack of focus on his part could indicate he had other things on his mind. Like killing his wife.”
“Or that he was killing his wife. The interview was for 19 October.”
“We need to find him.”
“Lookit, I’m nearly done here. How’s about I hunt down our dear Abigail and instead of a courier, dodgy as you like, I’ll come over with both autopsy reports?”
Stirring the pot of tea, I carry it to the table. The local newsreader is looking grave, his mouth drawn downwards as he reports on something that’s happening in the background.
In the corner of the TV there is a ticker that reads: “Live Events.” There are blue lights parked all across Ha’penny Bridge; crowds of onlookers hold out their phones, snap at something in the water.
“Frankie?”
“Yeah, that sounds good. Do that.” I hang up and reach for the remote. I’ve barely upped the volume on the TV when my mobile rings again.
“Sheehan,” I answer.
“Frankie, it’s Clancy.”
I can see Clancy on the TV, a tall, gray-haired man striding away from the crowds, his hand cupped over the end of the phone. Gardaí are pushing people back from the edge of the bridge, putting up metal grilles to contain the gathering crowds. The tide is out, dragging the Liffey with it, showing up the green-stained walls of the concrete channel. To the left of the screen, there are two divers clambering up the steps that ascend from the river onto the street. Their heads are bent, dry suits gleaming with dark, filthy Liffey water.
“What’s happening, Jack?”
“Another fucking body.”
There is fear at the back of my throat, bitter, tart, sticky. A mouthful of tea, a pathetic tonic.
“Female?”
He turns around, appears to look over the bridge. “Impossible to be sure but, from clothing alone, appears male.”
I need a while to process this. So much death. So much that we’ve failed on.
“It looks like suicide,” Jack continues.
I’m surprised he can tell from where he’s standing.
“What makes you say that?”
“His clothes, they look weighted down. The old ‘stuff your pockets with rocks and drop yourself into a river’ job.”
“Right. You want me to come down?”
“Not yet. Keep your phone on, though. I’ll wait for the coroner. If she suspects foul play—”
“I’ll be there.” I can hear the weakness in my own voice as I speak. A wave of depression washes over me, sinks its teeth into the back of my neck.
Baz arrives within a half hour. “Sorry, traffic was murder.” He smirks at the joke.
“There’s a body being pulled from the Liffey as we speak. Clancy may call,” I say.
“Let’s get down to it then.” He sits and passes the reports to me. “You’re definitely going to want to see these. I almost missed Eleanor’s toxicology revelations due to the presence of Prussian blue on the skin postmortem, but this is bigger. A definite lead.”
I open Eleanor’s tox labs. The final result is a surprise but not completely. Systemic doses of the compound potassium hexacyanoferrate, or Prussian blue.
“This couldn’t be from her arm?” I look up.
Baz shakes his head. “According to Abigail, there is no way the small amount that decorated the skin wound on Eleanor’s arm could account for these results.”
I flick to Amy’s report, recalling what Abigail had told me about the paint in Amy’s mouth. “There’s nothing present in Amy’s blood.”
“We’ve got an MO of sorts, I think. The killer’s trying to tell us something.”
“Eleanor was ingesting the blue compound then? Intentionally? Regularly?”
“It seems so. I mean, it is or was so. The tests don’t lie. It’s anyone’s guess why, though.”
I go back, read through the full autopsy report again. The scars in the lower abdomen, which at first glance had seemed consistent with an appendectomy, had turned out to be old stab wounds. The recent fracture of the left wrist was explained as a closed fracture, the result of a severe crushing injury. She had suffered significant infection in one of the carpals, which had slowed healing.
The venous structure within the esophagus was distended, varicosities swelled all along its passage. A common finding with asphyxiation, but there was significant scar tissue found alongside. Scar tissue that had been allowed to build up over years, years of frequent convulsive contractions of the smooth muscle that confirmed Eleanor was bulimic.
Baz is lifting each page I study and leave down, slowly digesting the information after I’ve read it.
“Prussian blue. Our little friend just keeps coming back,” he murmurs.
There’s a graph at the base of the report, a study guide that shows common uses for the pigment, outlines how much would be expected to be found in the blood if the person had been a painter. Eleanor’s blood shows three hundred milligrams approximately. Much more than a painter would expect to ingest just by using it.
Baz is flicking over his iPad; the screen is a white glow on his face. After a while he passes it to me.
“Check this out. Our friend Chagall was fond of that Prussian blue too.”
I read through the article, soak up the information. Prussian blue is a deep, rich pigment used to create vibrant blues in painting. Involved in a revolution of sorts in the Japanese art scene, notably a print by Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. The history of the pigment is layered with interesting anecdotes, from its accidental discovery through the mixture of blood iron and potash to the launch of the first telegraph of importance. I look up at Baz.
“It says here that it can be used to treat exposure to certain types of radiation?”
He shakes his head. “There’s nothing in her medical history that would suggest she’s been exposed to radiation, though.” He taps the report. “Abigail’s already run the tests.”
“Spared no expense,” I say drily.
“In fairness, she’s done a pretty thorough job; they’re not the usual tox reports. She simply noted a strange reaction on the bloods. Again at first she thought cyanide, but then, remembering Amy’s results, she narrowed her search.”
“Would there have been symptoms? Digesting this much of any chemical regularly can’t be a good thing, surely?”
He blows air through his lips. “Agreed. But I can’t see any side effects listed here.”
“If it’s drip-fed slowly, if the body is able to break it down, maybe you wouldn’t notice anything?”
“Abigail reckons you’d have to swallow almost this amount a day for it to show up postmortem in these quantities. So whatever Eleanor Costello was up to, she would’ve known about the fact she’d ingested Prussian blue. This is deliberate.”
Fury gathers in me. I am angry at myself for being unable to see the path this investigation is taking, angry at Eleanor Costello for being so fucking complicated. I fight the urge to throw the report, the file, across the room. Another cryptic factor to decipher. I’m angry at Eleanor, at Amy, at Tracy, at myself. I’m angry because we’re rudderless.
“You okay?”
I run a hand through my hair. “Yeah. It’s all so fucked up. It feels like we’re piling mystery on top of mystery.”
“I know. But we have a picture. It’s not a clear one, but it’s something.”
I get up, flick the kettle back on.
“If I wasn’t heading home for this bloody meeting tomorrow, I wouldn’t be feeling so het up about it.”
He looks up through his eyelashes. “You could make a day of it. If you’re up to it, talk to Keegan, maybe a few of the neighbors?”
I put out two mugs, add tea bags, pour the steaming water. “I dunno. Eamon Keegan is very similar to Priscilla Fagan in that way. He won’t want a visit unless we have new information—namely, the name of his daughter’s killer.”
Baz pulls out a large notepad from beneath the coffee table. Clicks his pen.
“May I?” he asks, and when I nod, he opens it up.
At the top he writes, “Sequence.”
“We’re saying that Peter Costello and Amy Keegan met online, on some unknown site on the Dark Web, possibly Black Widow?”
I place the mugs of tea between us and sit across from him, curl my legs beneath me on the floor. I nod in reply. “A work in progress, but for the moment that’s what we’re going on.”
He makes bullet points as he speaks.
“Right. Priscilla hasn’t seen her brother for, now, twelve weeks. He’s been ill. She’s tried to call but didn’t appear to worry about him until his wife’s death. His phone was in the same areas around Dublin frequently, along with Amy Keegan’s. There is strong evidence that they were having an affair. Amy has an argument with her father on the phone where she confesses to having an affair with the husband of one of her lecturers. Two days later, Eleanor Costello is found hanged in her home. Still no sign of Peter.
“The killer then takes Amy to an unknown location, where he films and brutally murders her, streaming the entire thing live onto the internet. The killer takes Amy Keegan’s body, in a vehicle not yet discovered, to her hometown of Clontarf—”
I hold up a hand. “He could live in Clontarf, remember. He may not have had to travel far. The house where he killed her could be anywhere.”
Baz nods. “Okay. He waits until darkness to stake Amy’s remains in the center of the town’s annual Halloween bonfire. Hours later her body is discovered by her father’s work colleague, Tom Quinn. So far so good?”
My eyes are closed. I’m listening. Listening for the answers that lie somewhere in the midst of the story. I nod and wave my hand. Continue.
“Interviews with both Priscilla Fagan and Tom Quinn corroborate the supposed sequence of events, however Priscilla insists on Peter’s innocence. Costello’s neighbor Neil Doyle has implied that Peter could get frustrated with his wife but also suggests that he may be a victim of abuse. Priscilla has a clear dislike of Eleanor Costello and may be sympathizing with her brother’s frustrations with his wife.
“We know Peter Costello was likely depressed from his continued unemployment, and a daylight lamp in his office implies that this time of year was particularly difficult for him.” He stops, sighs, turns over a page in his notepad.
Wrapping my hands around my tea, I fill in the remaining blanks.
“Peter is Irish-Italian, self-made in finance but unemployed for the past four years. No children; culturally, that may have significance and may be a further source of disappointment for him. To help bridge his time, he has become something of an amateur art historian and occasionally enjoyed painting. A well-known artist’s pigment was placed by the killer on both bodies. The bristle of a paintbrush was found caught in a wound postmortem on Peter’s deceased wife’s left arm.
“According to his sister, he’d been suffering from ill health for at least a year. This appears to have weakened him sufficiently in that his neighbor also seemed to comment on it. He seems to have had little professional contact or done any networking over the last year, seeing that the only reference listed on his CV is his neighbor Neil Doyle.” I take a sip from my mug, enjoy the strong bitter taste of the tea, then sigh. “And we still have no idea where he is.”
My mobile flashes and vibrates across the coffee table toward us. I am almost grateful for the interruption.
“Hello, Sheehan.”
“Frankie, it’s Jack.”
I straighten. “What’s happening?”
“They’ve only pulled fucking Costello from the bloody Liffey,” he says. Eloquent as ever.