The Rule Book (51 page)

‘I’ll talk to you in minute,’ Roche said, making no attempt to stop him.

McEvoy strode to the pavement and turned right, heading for the waiting media. He didn’t slow as he reached their lines instead ploughing straight into the crowd, stiffening and angling his shoulders so the reporters bounced back hard into their colleagues.

McEvoy was still smarting from Bishop’s words, his mind endlessly replaying scenarios of rebuke and revenge. He eased the car through several news teams and under some tape, parking 50 metres down the road.

The Fiesta was parked up a short alleyway next to a garage. There were no houses overlooking the spot. McCormack could have climbed out and transferred to another car without anybody seeing him except from the entrance to the road.

McEvoy stared in through the window. The seat was stained with blood, but otherwise looked empty. McCormack must have pre-selected this spot. Most probably left another car there, either his own or another, in case of an emergency.

He could feel himself starting to let go of Bishop, the puzzle of the case dulling the memory of the confrontation. He heard footsteps approaching and turned as Barney Plunkett reached the back of the car.

‘We’ve searched all the surrounding properties. There’s no sign of him and nobody saw him either,’ Plunkett said slightly manically. ‘The car is how we found it. It’s completely empty – no clothes or knife or anything else. We haven’t found anything dumped locally. He must have taken everything with him.’

‘He could be anywhere at this stage,’ McEvoy reflected sombrely.

‘He can’t have got far; someone would have spotted him. We’ll get him, don’t worry,’ Plunkett tried to reassure.

‘Come on, Barney, let’s get real. Everything else has been carefully planned; do you really think he won’t have planned an escape?’

McCormack closed over the garage doors and padlocked them together. His clothes and hands were covered in blood from the knife attack on Karen and her boyfriend. There were a few specks on his chin and cheek that he had failed to rub clean. He’d vented his fury and frustration on them, but he hadn’t lost control as with Shirley Hamilton. He’d been detached and controlled and they had gotten what they deserved.

He picked up two holdalls, one in each hand, and headed across the small yard, clumps of grass and shrubs growing through the ancient concrete, to the entrance to the derelict labourer’s cottage. The building had seen better days – the paint on its outer walls blistered and peeling, one end covered in ivy, the window frames black and rotten holding glass grey with grime and cobwebs, the roof missing a few slates, a small tree growing from the chimney pot. The yard was surrounded by overgrown hedges which screened the residence from view of the narrow, unpaved lane.

The cottage was located at the end of a thin peninsula that snaked out into a lough. Behind the garage thick reed beds extended into the dark water, a small motor boat tied to an old wooden pier. If they came for him then that would be his escape route.

But they wouldn’t come. Nobody knew where he was and the cottage was more than three quarters of a mile from another residence – a holiday home barely used for more than four weeks in a year. There was no reason for anyone to venture out along the narrow strip of land; the farmland had long since been abandoned to revert to untended bog and anglers favoured the far side of the lough where the river’s waters flowed in.

He could hold a party and no one would be aware of it. Even so, he would be keeping his head low, never straying beyond the cottage’s hedgerows for at least four weeks – he had more than enough provisions to last that long and plenty of patience.

He should have retreated to the hideaway straight after leaving the airport. He had been overconfident. McEvoy had somehow worked out his identity; had almost caught him. A few moments of delay and he would have had to fight his way out of Samantha’s apartment. He would learn from that lesson. Next time he would leave nothing to chance; the game would be played fully formed.

If he’d followed all of his own rules he would now be in Providence, Rhode Island, enjoying the conference and catching up with old friends. In a week’s time he would have returned and slipped back into his life, safe in his anonymity. He would have eventually been awarded the promotion he deserved and continued to have built a successful career; and he would still be half-living with Samantha, dividing his time between her apartment and his house. But then how would anybody know that he was The Raven? That he had written
The Rule Book
and proved its genius?

Perhaps it was better this way? Perhaps subconsciously he had intended it all along? He had ignored his own advice; he’d left a trail of misdirections and clues. He’d even invited the guards to his final slaying. He smiled to himself and entered the cottage, amused at his own follies. He’d nearly been caught, but he hadn’t. Now he was safe; he was certain of it.

He would spend a few weeks here, then move on; re-invent himself – bide his time and rise again. He’d done it before and he could do it again. He was, after all, the trickster. The Raven. The bringer of death. He’d spread his wings once more. Perhaps he would write a new book to be acted out to the world; a new puzzle to vex McEvoy or whoever replaced him.

In the meantime his fame would build as more and more details of
The Rule Book
murders became public. No doubt there was already an army of people working on feature articles, websites, television documentaries, and true crime books. By now his name would be known around the world; ‘Andrew McCormack’ exiting the lips of every newsreader on the planet;
The Rule Book
murders the topic of conversation in every home, café and pub. He started to light some candles that he’d stored in a kitchen drawer, bringing new light to the dusty old kitchen.

Epilogue

Friday, April 25
^th

It had just gone
three o’clock
in the afternoon, four days after McCormack was last seen at Karen’s squat. There had been thousands of suspected sightings from all four corners of the island, from across the
UK
and continental
Europe
. Following up on them all was a mammoth task. There was no trace of McCormack’s Mercedes – he’d either changed the plates or it was hidden somewhere. The small town of
Lucan
had been systematically searched by hundreds of gardai.

DNA
recovered from McCormack’s house matched the samples from Glencree and Rathmoylan and also those at Samantha Evans’ apartment and Karen’s squat. There had been few other breakthroughs though. They hadn’t found any of the victims’ belongings – Laura or Hennessey’s clothes, or McCormack’s disguises; the false hair and beard, the old woman’s outfit. They hadn’t discovered how he’d sourced the cyanide or where he’d acquired the sword; and they were still trying to piece together McCormack’s movements over the course of the previous week.

Elaine Jones estimated that Samantha Evans had died approximately 48 hours before she was found, probably some time on Saturday morning. She’d been tortured for at least three days, a bloodied razor blade lodged behind the bath taps. She’d lost a lot a blood from the hundreds of cuts and had died of a cardiac arrest bought about by severe stress and dehydration. There were two main hypotheses as to why McCormack had killed her. First, that she had somehow worked out that he was The Raven and he wanted her silenced permanently, or the quick deaths of the other victims had left him unsatisfied. The later was a hypothesis Kathy Jacobs thought possible given new information from Massachusett’s police.

They had been in contact and were sending a couple of people over early the following week. They suspected McCormack might have been responsible for three killings in the
Boston
area that they had so far been unable to solve. The murders had all occurred in the final eighteen months he’d been studying at Harvard. Each victim had been bound, gagged and tortured, one with razor blades. There was no apparent motive for the crimes or links between the victims. Cambridgeshire and other
UK
police forces were also examining their unsolved murder files in case he’d killed while he’d been a postdoctoral student.

If the links proved positive then
The Rule Book
had been written from experience by an already successful serial killer. Only this time he had overstretched himself, trying to kill seven people in seven days while leaving a trail of chapters. He’d become complacent, grooming one victim and picking another he’d a vendetta against. Even so, he’d nearly gotten away with it all. Until he was caught, for all intents and purposes he had got away with it.

Karen’s family, a rum bunch of chancers, were suing the gardai for failing to protect their daughter’s life. They would probably win, or it would be settled out of court. Her boyfriend was still in intensive care but was expected to live. He was lucky the paramedics had got to him so quickly. Five more minutes and he’d have been the tenth victim. Eleventh if you counted Grainne Malone’s unborn child.

After being involved in the interviews with McCormack’s family and friends, Kathy Jacobs had travelled back to
Scotland
and her young sons the previous evening. On the basis of the extra information she’d gleaned she was refining her profile and trying to help predict where he might be hiding and what his next moves might be. At the moment she felt he would lay low, try to slip out of
Ireland
and build a new life, then start a fresh wave of attacks, most probably in a scheme as elaborate as
The Rule Book.
She was checking in a couple of times a day, to see how things were developing, anxious that McCormack be caught before he could kill again.

The story continued to dominate the news globally, hundreds of journalists still covering developments, though a few had begun to move out, heading for the next big headline. Within a week or so it would no doubt be only the Irish media and the ‘real crime’ book writers who would be interested, the story falling dormant.

McEvoy scratched at his thinning hair then rubbed his temples, his plastic cigarette bobbing between his fingers. He was sitting by himself in a meeting room, the reports of various sightings laid out in front of him. He was utterly exhausted having worked 16 to 18-hour days all week. The door to the room opened and Tony Bishop entered.

He looked as McEvoy felt, dark bags under his eyes, his skin pale, red hair untidy. He’d spent most of the week trying to spin the story as positively as possible, with relatively good results. His basic line was that An Garda Síochána had done what any police force would have done in the circumstances, and they were dealing with a particularly clever and dangerous individual who had carefully masterminded a campaign of terror. The fact that McCormack had probably killed several times before and had not been identified helped, especially given the resources and experience of the
US
authorities compared to their Irish counterparts.

‘Ah, Colm. Have you seen Paul Roche?’ Bishop asked.

‘I think he might be with Johnny Cronin,’ McEvoy replied flatly.

Bishop nodded once and turned for the door. He took one pace and stopped, swivelling slowly. ‘Look, Colm, about last week, I … well, you know.’ He paused. ‘It was a difficult week.’

McEvoy nodded, unsure where Bishop was heading.

‘Difficult for all of us. Feelings were, well, feelings were running high. Tempers frayed. We were all under a lot of pressure.’ Bishop brushed at his cheek nervously. ‘At the start of things I said I’d look after you, protect you, let you get on with your job. That offer still stands.’

McEvoy looked down at the reports and back up to Bishop trying to decide how to react. At the beginning of the week Bishop couldn’t wait to drum him out of the force. ‘Does that mean I’ll still be on the case next week?’ he asked eventually.

‘Yes. Though Paul will be staying on as well. You seem to work well as a team.’

‘And I won’t be packed off to some backwater?’

‘No, no. Not while I’m still chief superintendent. I said I would protect you, didn’t I?’

‘Right.’ McEvoy did his best not to look confused, trying to get a handle on the conversation.

‘You did a good job identifying McCormack,’ Bishop said, pulling a tight smile.

‘Thanks.’

‘Well. Well, I guess I better be going.’ Bishop took another step to the door, again stopping, turning back. ‘I think you should be leaving as well, Colm. You look like you could do with a decent meal and a full night’s sleep.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’ll be better with a couple of days’ recuperation. Take the weekend off, come back Monday. Spend some time relaxing, eating; some family time with Gemma. We can cope for a couple of days without you. If anything turns up I’ll make sure someone calls you.’

McEvoy nodded, knowing that Bishop was right but unwilling to say it.

‘I mean it, Colm. I have a duty of care. That means I have to look after my staff; protect them from themselves if necessary. I’m ordering you to take a break. I’ll be back round in ten minutes, you’d better not be here when I return.’

McEvoy nodded as the door shut behind Bishop. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to fully read the man – one minute he was a tyrant, the next your best friend. He pushed his chair back and stood, gathering his oversized suit jacket. He’d take the rest of the day off – spend some time with Gemma and get an early night. He’d be fine in the morning.

McEvoy glanced sideways at Gemma walking carefully along the next row. Occasionally she stopped to read a gravestone before moving on. Another plane roared overhead coming in to land. He lowered himself to his haunches and removed a bunch of dying flowers from Maggie’s grave, replacing them with fresh, pink carnations, arranging them in the pot.

Gemma approached silently from behind and tugged on his arm. ‘Dad, I think we should go,’ she said. ‘I think you need to move on.’

Move on? McEvoy thought. Move on from Maggie or The Raven or just move on in general? How could he move on? From the moment he’d viewed Laura’s body, the sword sticking up through her mouth, The Raven had become an integral part of his life. Maggie and The Raven. They defined him – the first things he thought of when he woke, the things he daydreamed about, and consumed him when he tried to sleep, fuelling his insomnia; the things that gave him nightmares when he finally slept. Somehow they had merged together; become bound in some odd way. His inadequacies entwined; his inability to stop Maggie’s cancer, to stop the Raven’s killing spree; to stop death.

Moving on. How could he move on?

‘Dad! Come on, let’s go and buy a new suit,’ Gemma suggested. ‘Look at the state of you. It’s embarrassing.’ She lifted up the flap of his suit jacket and let it flop back. ‘You could fit two of you in this.’

‘Yeah,’ he conceded flatly, ‘let’s go and look at suits.’ That’ll move things along, he thought to himself sarcastically, sucking on his plastic substitute. Jesus, he needed to shake off this lethargy, to create a new focus to his life. He needed to make Gemma the sole centre of things; not forget Maggie or The Raven, but to put them in their place.

‘Come on,’ he tried to say more enthusiastically, taking Gemma’s hand, ‘there has to be something out there that fits better than this.’ He tugged the belt that held a few inches of excess trouser and pulled a tight smile. ‘And I’m sure they’ll have something nice for you as well. Heaven knows you deserve it.’

They started for the cemetery exit. Thirty metres away a black bird rose from a hawthorn tree and swept low over them.