The Dead (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Fitzgerald, and it hurt me that I couldn’t ease that hurt for her, not without danger, and I was satiated with danger by then. I may have shot Fagan in self-defence that night in the mountains, but even self-defence would not be much of a plea in a city where carrying a firearm was still a criminal offence. Here the law decreed that only criminals should be allowed to carry guns, whilst the cops and victims went unarmed. It was a dumbass rule, but I didn’t relish arguing it in front of a jury in a country which still looked down on Americans as trigger-happy desperadoes who shoot first and ask questions later, or better still just shoot and screw the questions.
    I wasn’t supposed to have a gun at all, but it isn’t hard to pick up a weapon in a city if you know where to look.
    Half-heartedly now, I got the picture of Fagan out of the satchel, and stared at that thin, smirking, superior face again, remembering that night, remembering the gasp from him as I spun away from his hand, pulled the gun from inside my coat and fired, remembering the exhilaration, the satisfaction, yes the pleasure, as he realised I was not for the taking like all the others.
    A single shot and Fagan slumped. A shot that shattered the silence, scattering birds through the branches in the trees; and then I was looking down at a man with half his face blown away. In that moment, Fagan entered my consciousness in a way he had never done when alive, and I knew that I would never be rid of him, not really. I may have dragged him into the trees and buried him so deep it was nearly light by the time I’d finished digging his grave, but I would never be free of him.
    Now I sat in my apartment, as the day darkened and died, staring again at the photograph of Fagan, and going over in my head one more time, always one more time, Elliott’s letter, trying to piece it all together, and I realised for the first time exactly what never being rid of him meant. Since he’d disappeared, Fagan had been a private nightmare of mine, and that was bad enough. Now somehow he’d slipped out of my head when I wasn’t paying attention and gone walkabout by himself. Wherever I went, I’d be stepping over his bones. Or worse yet, the bones of some woman who was living her life this minute thinking she was safe.
    It was late afternoon before I forced myself to leave the apartment again and go looking for bagels. I couldn’t exist on cigars for long. Couldn’t exist on bagels for long either, but it was all I could manage.
    The city looked just the same. I’d half expected it to have changed, just because I had. We’re all solipsists at heart. It was good to see it even so. By the time I got back there were two messages waiting.
    Always the way.
    The first one was from Fitzgerald. She’d run a check on Mullen, and guess what? Fagan’s son had been back in town about three months, basically bumming around after his job as a hospital porter went belly up in England thanks to his drinking.
    ‘Why don’t you follow it up?’ she said.
    I would. Job loss was a classic stressor that could tip a potential offender over the border into violence, and Mullen certainly had the ancestry for it.
    The other message was from Elliott.
    He’d called to let me know that I was a two-faced, conniving bitch, I’d pay for betraying him, nobody treated him like that. Oh, and I was ugly too. Now that hurt. On and on it went. He’d run out of tape if he wasn’t careful.
    Detective Sergeant Niall Boland, newly transferred from Serious Crime, had paid Elliott a visit after all. From such small pleasures is the wreckage of a day salvaged.

 
    Chapter Three
     
     
    The call came shortly before midnight. It would’ve roused me from sleep, if sleep had been possible. As it was, I was watching the baseball on cable and picked up the phone as soon as it started ringing.
    ‘We found her,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Do you want to come down?’
    ‘No,’ I said, ‘but I’m going to.’
    Five