A taxi arrived at around seven and picked up Picasso and an elderly woman. I followed them to the Shelbourne hotel, parked just outside in St Stephen’s Green and watched them go inside to the restaurant, to a nice table for two by the window. I went in by the side entrance, had a Powers whiskey in the Horseshoe Bar before choosing a quiet table in the corner, not far from theirs, and ordering a steak and a pint of beer. Hungry work this tailing business.
He looked heavier this close up, wore a pilot’s jacket with the zip down, cords and sneakers. His hair, blond of course, was bushy and needed a cut, and he had a baby’s face, chubby, as were his hands, small podgy nose and deep-set eyes. If he’d had a romper suit on, he’d have looked like a big toddler. And there was something in those eyes: dark, menacing and sinister. No there wasn’t. I’m only joking. He didn’t look any more menacing than the waiter who brought my sirloin: rare, just the way I like it. Blood on the knife, just the way Picasso likes it.
I couldn’t hear much of their conversation. He seemed to have other things on his mind – not getting caught, for one. She did most of the talking, rather like a mother advising her son to make something of his life was how it came across, for all he ever did was nod ‘Yes, Mother, no Mother.’ All very formal: a well-dressed old girl deferred to by her boy.
I kept wondering about how he’d targeted his women. He’d certainly targeted Gemma. Maybe he learnt their habits, where they worked, formed a pattern then rapped their doors. Knew exactly where to go. Whatever way he did it, he’d managed to outwit the likes of Chilly Winters for long enough. Smart. I like that. A bit of thinking impresses me, as opposed to some caped nut straight out of nineteenth-century Whitechapel, who strikes from the shadows then flees at the first sign of a screaming passer-by. Mind you, Jack the Ripper never got caught either, as all those films about him keep reminding us.
I paid my bill, saw his mother paying theirs and made a point of leaving first. A taxi took them back to the leafy avenue, where Picasso went inside for a minute or two then drove off.
He didn’t live in Dublin. I followed him to a farmhouse at the end of a long lane a couple of miles outside a village called Shantallagh. And there he stayed. I had a bed to go to myself. I was knackered. It had been a long day.
OK, you’re wondering why I didn’t go in and save Lucille, or call in Swagsy & Co to do as much themselves. That’s the good guy’s job. I’m the bad guy. You have to hate me in all this. I’m the guy you have to detest. You read about people like me in True Crime stories, not in please-love-my-character fiction. Remember that. It might give you some idea of what makes me the way I am.
Besides, if he’d already scalpeled her, there was nothing I could do about it. And if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t. Not until he got that laptop back. She was his only source of information as far as that was concerned. Once that changed, then he’d see to her.
Nah. He was smart. On form, she’d be dead. While she was of another use to him, he’d leave his scalpels in the drawer.
If you knew the one overriding reason I had for doing this, you might understand. But since I don’t give a fuck whether you understand or not, my reasons are my own.
But let me run this one by you. If you have a brother, look at him now. What would you do for him? Or, putting it another way, what would you not do for him?
Now place yourself, think yourself, if you can, into the basest level of humanity where all that exists is misery and deprivation. Then go lower. Seek out those depths. There you might find where I come from.
Now look again at your brother. Imagine him gone. Imagine him still down there. He’s nine years old and he’s terrified. Would you want to bring him back up, away from it all? Away to a place that is sweet and natural? A place where he wants to be? Yes? Then you love him as much as I loved Sean. We’re no different. I just have the mentality of those depths, that’s all. There was a time when I didn’t. And I didn’t instil that mentality in myself.
LUCILLE
‘Lucille?’
When Picasso came back, the fear of him made me pass out. He’d carried me back to my cell.
‘Yes?’
‘In your pocket I found a birth certificate accompanied by a note from a Sister Joseph.’
‘Lucille Kells is not my real name.’
‘You are connected to the Donavan riding stables?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your mother is Anne Donavan?’
‘That’s what it says.’
‘Then why were you living in a holiday home and not—’
‘They don’t know who I am. I didn’t tell them. I didn’t tell anyone about Clonkeelin.’
‘Kells carries with it a religious connotation, as in The Book of Kells.’
‘So?’
‘I myself have had some experience similar to that of your own. An old acquaintance of mine had formed the theory that abandoned children, those without known backgrounds, as opposed to you, with one, were named by the religious of the religious?’
‘I only know they named me Kells.’
‘Hmm, interesting, though perhaps not relevant.’
I didn’t understand what he was getting at.
‘Now: the laptop computer. Yours?’
‘No.’
‘Then whose?’
‘What will you give me?’
He laughed. ‘You are indeed a product of your upbringing. You have played this game before.’
‘Not voluntarily.’
‘Quite. Voluntarily connotes
