You'll Get Yours, page 29
She moved to the LILY FEAGINS portion of the whiteboard.
“The thumb in her mouth takes on a different meaning when considering her girl group background. It could be seen as a deliberate attempt to infantilize or mock her, stripping away the perceived maturity and independence associated with her public persona. The killer may hold resentment or a twisted obsession with the victim's past fame, seeking to humiliate her even in death.”
Though Lyons tried to maintain a composed facade, subtle hints of his infatuation were beginning to slip through. He adjusted his quiff. His forefinger kept moving to his mustache, smoothing it down again and again. His eyes were following Bridget's every gesture before the whiteboard, his gaze seeking to capture her attention.
But Bridget’s attention was now focused on UNDERWEAR.
“Now we move on to Regina Steps and the underwear. The fact that the victim was dressed in provocative underwear that wasn't hers suggests a deliberate attempt to deceive investigators and misdirect attention. The killer may have wanted to create a false narrative, possibly implicating someone close to the victim, to further complicate the investigation. It's a calculated move, designed to play with our assumptions and lead us astray.”
D’Arcy raised her hand. Bridget nodded at her to speak.
“We’ve since discovered,” D’Arcy said, “that the underwear definitely didn’t belong to anyone beforehand. It was new.”
Bridget’s eyes widened.
“Interesting,” she said. “In that case, I still maintain that it is probably still a diversionary tactic.”
“Ma’am.”
“New underwear is a bit more interesting if the victim was murdered because she was Lily Feagins. The fact that the victim was found in new, provocative underwear could indicate a desire to recreate a specific image or role from her girl group days. The killer might be trying to recreate a persona associated with the victim's past, either as a form of perverse homage or a twisted attempt to distort and tarnish her legacy.”
Although Bridget was writing on the board, her eyes swept around the room often, making equal eye contact with them all as she spoke. Lyons subtly shifted his position again and again, elbow on the desk, fist resting on his cheek, sitting back in the chair. She didn’t seem to notice.
Bridget paused, allowing them to absorb all the information, to make their notes. Then her marker pointed at NO SEXUAL ABUSE.
“As for the absence of sexual assault to Regina Steps, it's possible that the killer's motivations lie elsewhere. Their focus would seem to be on control, power, and manipulation rather than sexual gratification. This could indicate a different form of psychological satisfaction they derive from their actions. If she was murdered as Lily Feagins, it remains possible that the killer's motives would be rooted in power and control, though now we can add revenge. Their focus on the victim's past as a member of a girl group might suggest a deep-seated connection to her fame and the emotions associated with it. We then would have to delve into Lily Feagins’ past relationships, the group's history, and any potential conflicts or resentments that may have persisted over the years.”
Bridget took a deep breath, and to Lyons’ dismay, her eyes were settling on Hawkins, perhaps because she was looking particularly troubled by all the profiler was saying.
“In conclusion, I think you have a killer who is methodical, organized, and undoubtedly enjoys the power they have exerted over their victim, whether it be Regina Steps or Lily Feagins. If she was killed as Lily Feagins, then perhaps your investigation will lead you through some dark corridors of the entertainment industry. If she was killed as Regina Steps, this aspect of the investigation won’t, of course, be necessary. But either way, you are dealing with a remarkably disturbed individual.”
Cahill raised his hand again.
“Pardon, miss, but I always thought profilers give details like white, male, 20-30 years old, lives near the victim, owns a, erm...ferret, things like that.”
There was gentle laughter.
Bridget’s eyes grew wide.
“A ferret?” she asked.
“There’s evidence a ferret might be involved,” D’Arcy explained.
“I see. Yes, to answer your question, DC Cahill, I am still in the process of compiling that report of what characteristics your perpetration is likely to have, which will no doubt facilitate you as you go through the suspects. I’m afraid it takes rather longer than shorter. I’ll have it to DI McLaughlin before the end of the week.”
D’Arcy asked, “What do you think the chances are that this killer will strike again? With all the unconventional aspects of the murder, the constables were jumping to the conclusion that this might be a serial killer.”
Bridget grimaced.
“The problem is, we don’t know if the killer wanted to target Regina Steps or Lily Feagins. I’m afraid I’ll have to conduct further research.”
“What is the likelihood, but?” Fern asked.
“All I can say is 50/50 right now,” Bridget said with a little shake of the head. “I’m sure you understand?”
There were nods all around.
She smiled. “Any other questions?”
Now there were shakes of the head. Lyons wouldn’t dare chance, “What’s your phone number? Instagram? Facebook?”
“Excellent,” Bridget said. She addressed DI McLaughlin. “I am always available if you need further assistance, if something new presents itself in the investigation. Sure, I’m just up the road in Belfast.”
“Ah, so a bit more than two for the price of one, then?”
Bridget laughed, and Lyons loved the sound of it. “Yes. I get cheaper the more you utilize me.”
They all laughed and got up from their chairs. Bridget began to collect her papers and folders as the team filed out, thanking the profiler for her time and insight. Lyons passed by her last, aware of McLaughlin’s watchful eyes on his back.
“Er, that was brilliant, thanks,” he said, reddening as his voice cracked.
“You’re most welcome, DC Lyons,” Bridget replied, flashing him that wonderful but, his heart sank, professional smile.
He could only hope their paths would cross again.
As Lyons headed back to his desk on legs that were surprisingly weak, Cahill was saying to Hawkins, “So many days have passed, but. I don’t think it could be a serial killer. Could it?”
Hawkins gave a mock squeal of shock, punching him lightly on the arm. “Don’t jink it, Hens!” she said with a laugh.
Lyons plopped down on his chair and looked down at his hands. His palms were wet and his fingers were trembling slightly. The last thing they wanted was a serial killer. Upstairs would go mad, the press would be rabid. But if that meant seeing Bridget Oakes again—and they’d have to—he was all for it.
Bring it on, you mad bastard, he said to the killer in his mind. We’re ready for you.
CHAPTER 32
DEAR LORD, she thought as her disquiet crystallized into sudden panic. Something’s not right. This isn’t natural, so it’s no—
The hulking man with the shaved head grabbed her roughly by the shoulder. Margaret jolted back and tried to scream.
Glass shattered at her feet. Her mouth was open as if she were yelling, but she wasn’t. She couldn’t seem to. Handbag swinging from her elbow, she tried to lash out as best she could with her tiny fists. She couldn’t get her fists to do what they wanted. His chest was like a wall of iron.
One huge hand latched onto her bony wrists and clamped them together, the other shoved her hard in the back. She tried to dig her heels in, but it was no use. He was much bigger and stronger than she was. And younger. And her body wasn’t able to follow the commands of her leaden mind. He pushed her thrashing body over the shards of glass across the grimy floor toward the darkness.
From somewhere deep in her brain, she felt a tiny spark of panic trying to break through. She thought she was hunkering down, struggling to hold her ground. He tugged her forward. She tried to scream, maybe thinking spasms of pain were wracking her creaking joints, though she felt nothing.
His lips were tight, his eyes glaring. No, that wasn’t a glare, her brain struggled to warn her. Those eyes were glinting with perverse pleasure. The sick bastard was enjoying this! Her high heels scraped across the floor.
Her brain, dulled with what she thought was alcohol, struggled to make sense of what was going on, what had happened to put her here. Some small part of her brain feared what he would do to her, where he was taking her. The place was like a labyrinth. But in a darkened corner of her panicked mind, maybe she knew exactly where. It was the last place she wanted to go. She whimpered as she gouged at the palms of her own hands with her frosted pink nails.
Margaret only had twenty minutes left to live. Had she known, she might’ve behaved herself that night. But..somewhere in the depths of her mind, a tiny sliver of reason shot to what was left of her consciousness...she had behaved herself! Three sips of a gin and tonic, that’s all she had. The way she felt, though, it was as if she’d downed the whole bottle in one go. It seemed a lifetime ago, but surely it had only been...
Her head lolled as she fought to thrust screams out of her mouth. The dingy corridor she was being led down spun, the walls alternately closing in and receding. The floor beneath her was tilting this way and that underneath the high heels that dragged along it. How could he heave her down the corridor, she wondered, the weight of me now? Her body felt so heavy, so incredibly heavy...
The bouncy bass beat attacked her aching head, like spikes driven into her skull, as she tried to compel her feet to kick out at him. He dragged her toward her destiny.
“Oi!” a woman to her right roared. “That’s assault, so it is! Leave that woman be! You big bully, you! Pick on someone your own size, you lummox, you!”
“And your own age!” called another woman. “Sure, she’d old enough to be your mammy, so she is!”
Deep within her, a glimmer of hope arose through the fogginess. They were coming to her aid! It gave her renewed strength. She tried to kick, tried to knee the bastard in the crotch, but her legs were like jelly.
Somewhere in the fug, she heard things she couldn’t make sense of, a hissed, “But...it’s her!” and a startled, “Oh...!” then a sneering, “In that case, aye, toss her out in the gutter where she belongs!”
She deflated. She wailed like a trapped animal.
Her eyes weren’t working properly. She was only able to see a tiny pinprick of what she was trying to look at, and even that was blurry, billowing clouds forming around the edges. The light, dim as it was, sliced into her eyeballs, far too bright, all the colors far too full of color. Attacking her eyes. Those eyes strained to make out the counter of a coat check, a sneering face, the front door looming like a guillotine.
The bouncer’s lips were flapping. She knew he was speaking to her, but couldn’t comprehend what his words meant.
“I told you before it was your final warning,” he was growling down at her as her goggled eyes tried but failed to make out more features of his face, alive from the lights of the disco ball. “But you wouldn’t listen. So bladdered you were knocking people off the dance floor, spewing all over that girl’s shoes, puffing our fags right and left, and everyone here half your age. I’m not ageist, no I’m not, but what are you doing here? What would your wains say? Why aren’t you at home? Or have you no home to go to?” He snorted his contempt. “You’re a disgrace to your sex!”
“Aye, that she is!” she heard a woman call from somewhere.
A steely outrage forced its way through the fog. No, no I’m not! she thought in some forgotten cavern of her mind. Someone, something’s made me this way...
She couldn’t believe it, but now she was dimly aware of an urge welling up from her depths. She was hungering for the feel of a man’s touch. At a time like this? Was she going mad? Where did this come from? She perched unsteadily on her high heels, those arms that weighed so much seeking to wrap around as much of the doorman’s massive shoulders as they could.
She tried to say, “I want you,” but her tongue felt too big for her mouth and it weighed a ton. Her teeth were huge clunky things like rows of tombstones lodged into her top and bottom gums. It was too difficult to make her thoughts known. She tried again. “I want you.” She thought she said it, but his face was stretched with laughter.
“Can’t even speak. You’re disgusting. Slurring like a common alkie.”
Still shocked at what she was doing, she felt as if they belonged to someone else her pouted lips seeking his mouth but landing on stubble.
“Get your filthy paws off of me!” he growled, pushing her away. “A kiss from those lips and I’ll be down the STD clinic!”
He wrenched the door open. She jerked away at the sight of the icy rain plunging down, but now he was pushing her out into the deluge. She fought against him. Her ears were ringing from laughs, cheers and jeering coming from she didn’t know where.
She heard as if from miles away but at the same time right in her eardrum, “I’ll help you toss that filthy slag out onto the street if you want. Look at the state of my shoes, would you?”
“Mutton! Mutton dressed as lamb!” taunted someone else.
She gave a pitiful wail as out she was tossed onto Ferryquay Street like a common slapper.
“It’s...it’s not me!” she whimpered, each word a trial to exit her mouth, as the door slammed in her face.
She wavered back and forth for a moment, not sure where she was. Her tortured eyes thought they made out the shuttered Starbucks. She had some dim recollection as if from a memory of childhood it was on the corner of the square called the Diamond. She shook her head, tried to clear her vision but couldn’t. She couldn’t make out the building that used to be Austins across the street, the war memorial in the square looming above her, the rain pinging off the winged victory woman at the top holding up a laurel wreath to commemorate fallen soldiers of the world wars. Couldn’t comprehend what all these odd things might be.
She had no clue her hair hung down her face like seaweed, mascara trickled like black tears down her cheeks.
Even if she had survived the next few minutes, she wouldn’t have been aware when she woke up the next morning of anything that happened next. For someone in her state, it was going to be a long, precarious walk down the precipitous slope of Shipquay Street, especially as weak as her legs were. It was difficult enough on a sunny day to make your way down, but in the rain at night when off your head on God knew what? Treacherous.
She clutched the sides of buildings as she staggered her way down, past the Craft Village and the Donegal Gift Shop. toward the city walls and the Guildhall that rose beyond them.
She wasn’t even aware she was seeking refuge under the arch of Shipquay Gate.
Drenched, she careened on unsteady heels across the sopping cobblestones to the other side of the street. Pressing herself against the bricks and mortar, whimpering, she lurched past the darkened butchers and the mobile phone shop and then a thought forced itself to the surface: she didn’t know where she was going. She looked down, surprised to see through her damaged eyes the shape of her handbag still hanging from her elbow. She tried to open it, but her fingers wouldn’t work.
Something kept repeating itself in her mind. A name. Frank. Frank.
She had a vague notion she knew who he was and he could help her. How, but...?
And somehow now she became aware she was at Shipquay Gate. She had no recollection of how she’d gotten there. She had a hazy feeling there might be a terrible pain shooting up from her knee, from her right hand. The city walls were towering over her, and they filled her with a free-flowing horror.
And it was there, huddled in the damp darkness, her brain struggling to understand what it was that was sloshing through her veins and making her feel like this, that through her cloudy, tiny pinprick of sight she made out the figure that had materialized through the torrents. The figure approaching her. The light, stealthy steps and the hoodie should have put up her guard. There was a lamppost on the corner, but vandals had thrown a brick at it and broken the bulb. The street was shrouded in darkness, the arch even more so. She couldn’t make out who this person might be, but somewhere in her deranged mind she wondered if she had conjured up this Frank with some type of magical thinking, manifested him somehow, to come to her aide and whisk her away from this misery.
She forced her jaw down, forced that ton-weight of tongue to move correctly through those tombstone teeth.
“Frank?” she managed to croak out.
If she’d been thinking clearly, maybe she’d be thinking she should have stayed at home with whoever this Frank was. If she had, she wouldn’t have gone out tonight. They’d be at home cozy, warm and dry, curled up in front of the telly together. As the man—even with her distorted sight she could tell now it was a man—came closer, a sliver of hope rose within her.
“Is...is that you, Frank?”
She struggled to make her eyes work as a unit. All she saw was darkness under his hoodie. No. Darkness and two glinting eyes, pursed, thin, evil lips.
Some tiny portion of her mind knew something was happening, and it was important. But it seemed the rest of her didn’t care, wanted the path of least resistance, go with the flow, whatever was rushing through her veins forcing her to ride the rapids out, slide along when she should be trying to slow down, should be trying to grasp at the reeds of common sense as they flew by. Her deranged brain, her heavy limbs wouldn’t let her.
“Is it...?”
He moved closer.
“It is...are you...Frank?”
Through her goggled eyes, she seemed to make out something that might have been a smile began to play at the corners of the man’s mouth. She attempted a smile of her own, one of relief, but her lips wouldn’t move. Then she started, thinking maybe she heard something like an excited, high-pitched giggle from beneath the hoodie.
“Frank?” the man finally said. “Now that you mention it, I am about to be, aye. Very.”
