Killing the Shadows

TWENTY-ONE

Like police officers, fire fighters and journalists, Fiona had discovered that the fastest and most effective tool for putting emotional distance between herself and the terrible things her job forced her to confront was black humour. So when entering Jane Elias’s name on her meta search engine threw up a website called Laughing With the Dead Celebs, she couldn’t resist.

Jane Elias’s death had been in the public domain for less than a day, but already she merited her own cartoon tombstone. Fiona clicked on Jane’s name. The screen dissolved into a coffin-shaped frame. “Jane Elias killed somewhere around forty-seven people in her seven novels. Some would say it’s about time she discovered what it feels like. Not us, of course. If jokes about death offend you, don’t scroll down this page.”

Fiona, naturally, carried on scrolling. So far, there were only four contributions.

Why did Jane Elias have to die?

So she could finally get her hands on a good plot.

Do writers know when they start out how it’s going to end?

Jane Elias obviously didn’t!

What did St. Peter say to Jane Elias at the pearly gates?

“So, Jane, whodunnit?”

What was the motive for Jane Elias’s murder? Sales figures to die for.

Only the first was worth a smile, and a pretty thin one at that, Fiona decided, closing the site and heading for a more conventional tribute web page. The first site she checked out was one that had been created by a fan. It simply said, under that day’s date, “Jane Elias was found murdered today. This site is closed as a mark of respect.”

She had more luck with her second choice, also an act of devotion from one of Jane’s readers. The bare details of the murder were reported and below them were a series of boxes offering hyper links to other areas of the site. Offered a choice of Her Life, Photo Album, The Investigation, Condolence Book and Related Links, she opted for the photographic record first, curious to see what the site’s creator had been able to assemble, given Jane’s notorious camera-shyness.

First came the jacket photograph that had only ever appeared on her first novel. It was an unremarkable face, the sort it would be hard to describe in terms that would differentiate it from a million others. Mid-brown hair in a jaw-length bob, parted on the right; straight brows, dark eyes, an absolutely average nose and full lips that curved in a faint smile, giving nothing away. She was wearing an open-necked shirt, revealing a thin gold chain round her neck. Apart from the blonde highlights and a few more lines etched into the corners of her eyes, she looked exactly the same as she had on the night Fiona had met her.

Next came her high-school yearbook picture. The hair was longer here, hanging straight to the top of small breasts, but still with the same parting. At eighteen, Jane had worn unfashionably heavy-framed spectacles that made her eyes look unfocused. Her face too was fuller, almost plump. If all Fiona had had to go on was this, she doubted she’d have picked Jane out of a crowd.

A third photograph showed Jane accepting the first of her two Edgar awards at a Mystery Writers of America dinner. Her smile was broad and unselfconscious and she looked surprisingly elegant in a figure-hugging black dress that shimmered with sequins.

The final shot in the gallery showed a completely different side of Jane Elias. Taken at the finishing line of a charity half-marathon in Dublin, it revealed Jane in mid-stride, her running shorts and vest showing off the smooth planes of well-developed muscle that covered legs and arms. The camera had caught her in a candid moment, her expression exposing the blissed-out altered state of the athlete who has gone through the pain barrier. She looked more attractive here than anywhere else, Fiona noticed with detachment.

From studying the photographs, Fiona moved to the condolence book. If she’d been involved with the investigation, she’d have suggested the police take a look at the messages posted by fans. Given the tendency of psychopaths to attempt to insert themselves into the inquiry into their crimes, it was an obvious place for Jane’s killer to go. The dozen messages Fiona scrolled through seemed innocuous enough, but there was plenty of time for the strange and bizarre to show up. She book marked the page, resolving to return in a day or two to see if anything resembling Kit and Georgia’s letters showed up.

There was nothing else on the fan site that interested her, so, like a child saving its favourite part of the meal for the last, she directed her web browser to Murder Behind the Headlines. She typed in ‘Jane Elias’ in the search box and hit the return key. Queen of the serial killer thriller Jane Elias has finally found out what it’s like to suffer what she handed out to dozens of victims in her books. Unfortunately, she won’t be able to put her experiences to good commercial effect because the man or woman who abducted her made sure she wouldn’t live to tell the tale. Elias’s body was found on a back road in the early hours of the morning by a forestry worker whose truck ran into the body, strategically placed in the middle of the road just round a blind bend near the novelist’s estate in County Wicklow, Ireland. This shows striking similarities to one of the body dumps in Death on Arrival, Elias’s first novel which was turned into an Oscar-winning vehicle for the luscious Michelle Pfeiffer. And according to MBTH’s sources in the County Wicklow coroner’s office, Elias suffered injuries that have much in common with the description of what happened to the victims in that novel, only in her case they were postmortem, rather than while she was still alive. Maybe her killer was more squeamish than his victim. Here’s the template from the book:

The delayed sting of the razor cut. The blossoming of a burn from a smart to a roar of pain that spread inwards as the smell of barbecued flesh drifted outwards. The searing agony of flesh forced to accommodate more than it has room for. The sickening pain of a broken bone never allowed time to knit. The dull distress of a blow strategically aimed at the organs nestling beneath the skin.

Creepy, huh? Especially after the recent copycat murder of Copycat writer Drew Shand in Edinburgh, Scotland. Unlikely though it may sound, conspiracy theorists are already speculating that somebody is taking out serial killer thriller writers. Now that’s taking criticism a little too far. But the truth may lie in a different direction. MBTH can exclusively reveal that Jane Elias’s greatest secret was that for the last five years, she had been involved in an affair with undercover drugs cop Pierce Finnegan, one of the key figures in the Irish Republic’s police force, the Garda Siochana’s fight against drug dealers. Finnegan was instrumental in the cracking of a major heroin supply route last year, and the word is that there’s a price on his head from senior gangland figures still awaiting trial. He is reportedly liaising with Europol presently, and has high connections with the US drug enforcement authorities. Frankly, his affair with Elias was a far better kept secret than anything in the leaky Garda files. Elias met Finnegan when he was attending an International convention of criminal intelligence personnel at Quantico. Friends claim she was visiting the convention anonymously, under the wing of a software company in Florida who were pioneering a computer photo fit program. During the convention, she was able to sneak into several closed sessions, where she heard Finnegan speak. Later, friends introduced them and the two immediately formed a close personal bond. Not even his Garda bosses knew about the affair. As a result, Elias moved to Ireland, where Finnegan was a regular visitor to her high-security compound in County Wicklow, though among locals, it’s doubtful if even Elias’s security staff knew his true identity. Elias often had secret liaisons with her lover when he was on the road. She would check into the same hotel and the two would share clandestine nights of love. So, no mystery about where her plot lines came from. Now speculation is rife that whoever killed Elias was either taking revenge on Finnegan or sending him a warning to back off and compromise his trial evidence. The death of Drew Shand could have provided the killer with the perfect blueprint for a killing that would send the desired message to Finnegan without necessarily being connected to any of the Garda agent’s cases. Of course, that would only work if the affair remained a secret. Sorry, Pierce. Sorry, Mr. Murderer. We just blew your cover.

REMEMBER YOU READ IT FIRST ON MURDER BEHIND THE HEADLINES

Fiona took a deep breath. This was dynamite if it was true. Having a lover who was an undercover drugs investigator provided a far more credible motive for so violent a murder than the notion that a serial killer was targeting writers. Knowing how law enforcement agencies worked against their own, Fiona seriously doubted that the relationship was a secret to Finnegan’s bosses, but the pair had certainly done a good job of keeping it out of the public eye.

She couldn’t help feeling relief. Although her logical self had been reluctant to accept the possibility of a murderer who wanted to rid the world of thriller writers, her emotional self had known nothing but the gnaw of fear ever since she’d read the newspaper headline. Fiona knew far too much about the relentless capabilities of serial offenders; the notion that Kit might be a name on a hit list had been rattling round her head for the past hour and she was selfishly grateful that there was a logical explanation for Jane’s death that could not touch her own lover.

She closed down the computer and made her way downstairs. Kit was back in the kitchen, tipping couscous into a pan of boiling water. He looked round and forced a crooked smile. “Ten minutes,” he said.

“Did you manage any work?” Fiona asked, topping up his glass and refilling her own.

“Nothing like other people’s tragedies to get the words flowing,” he said, a sharp edge to his voice. “It’s like a defence mechanism. My brain uses writing to block out the static. As long as I’m staring at the screen and getting stuff down, I can’t be thinking about the hell Jane had to go through before this bastard let her die.”

“That’s the trouble with having an imagination,” Fiona said. “Especially one like yours. You don’t even have to try to come up with a hundred harrowing scenarios.” She crossed the room and he turned to accept her hug. “Her injuries were postmortem. She wasn’t tortured.”

“I suppose we should be grateful for that,” Kit mumbled into her hair. He pulled away gently. “So what did you dig up?”

“Bottom line? You shouldn’t be worried on your own account.” She sat down at the table and outlined her researches in detail.

“You know what I think about those muckrakers,” Kit protested. “How can you be sure they’ve got it right about her relationship with the undercover guard? Maybe they were just mates. Maybe he was just a contact that she milked for ideas and deep background.”

Fiona shrugged. “I can’t be certain. But they’ve obviously got some very high-level sources and they exploit them to the hilt. So unless we hear otherwise, I’d take what they say at face value.”

“Easier said than done,” he muttered.

“One thing that might help set your mind at rest when you’re ringing round to see if anybody else has had threatening letters, see if anybody knows whether Jane had one. If she didn’t, then it’s even more evidence to support my theory that people who write death threats aren’t the ones who kill.”

“Maybe I should just ring the local police and ask them.”

“Yeah, right. Like they’re going to tell you.”

“They might tell Steve.”

Fiona acknowledged the sense of his statement with a dip of her head.

“And I’m meeting him tomorrow night anyway,” Kit continued, taking the roasting dish of vegetables out of the oven and tipping them into the couscous. He placed the food on the table with a flourish and sat down facing Fiona. “I’m going to ask Steve if he can find out about whether Jane got any death threat letters,” he said. “If she didn’t, then you’re probably right, and Georgia and I are in the clear. And in the meantime, I promise to be careful without being paranoid. Will that do you?”

Fiona smiled. “That’ll do me fine. But if somebody does come after you with a knife, no heroics. Just leg it.”

“What? You don’t want me to stand my ground and be a man?” Kit teased.

“God, no. I’m far too busy to take time off to organize a funeral.” Fiona tasted her dinner. “Mmm. Wonderful. Take care of yourself, darling, I could never afford to replace you in the kitchen.”

Kit pretended to look hurt. “Only in the kitchen?”

“If I don’t eat every day, I die,” she said. “I’d miss shagging you, but it wouldn’t kill me.”

“You think not?” he said dangerously.

“Let’s not put it to the test.”

He grinned. “Right answer, Doctor. So, do you fancy a quiet night in?”

“Kit, we’ve never had a quiet night in. Why would we start now?” She raised her eyebrows provocatively. “But I wouldn’t say no to fucking your brains out.”

“You talked me into it, you smooth bastard.” Kit’s grin promised to take no prisoners.

Jane Elias would soon be cold in earth. Neither of them had forgotten that for a moment. Keeping the ghosts at bay was the most important thing they could do for each other, and they knew it. It was, as so often in the past, their unspoken contract.