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  He knew all of the open case files, and could take an educated guess at the one coming in.

  But something just didn’t fit.

  It wasn’t coming together in any sort of recognisable pattern he’d seen before.

  “Ritual killings,” he said aloud, and shook his head.

  “My father used to say that if you stare too long at something you stop seeing the truth of it. For all his failings, there is some truth in that, Dan.”

  Grunting, Mannelli shifted the weight of reports off his chair and sat himself down behind the desk to read through them again; as if by staring at the words for long enough an answer would begin the slow meandering dance from the paper and into his eyes.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bill Stern watched the pathologist’s careless artistry, fascinated and simultaneously sickened by the way the man’s hands moved through the cold stew of organ and sinew inside the nine-inch slash that cut through Father Joseph D’Angelo slight pot-belly.

  Pulling and probing with all the consummate skills of a fish-gutter.

  “I think I preferred looking at him in stockings,” he said. “What’s it they say, Doc? We’re all the same colour inside?”

  “Mmmm…” Ellery mused, tutting as something else failed to add up to his professional expectation.

  “Notice how they never say we look like a cold bowl of Hungarian goulash?”

  Flecks of the dead padre’s blood slicked off Ellery’s surgical gloves, splashing a film of thin crimson over the kidney tray on the trolley, as he swapped the thick bladed scalpel he had been probing with for a more precisely edged blade.

  “So, what do you reckon, Doc?”

  “Hard to say,” the pathologist hedged, slicing through another rasher of fatty tissue to expose the motorway of abandoned veins. “For sure. It certainly looks like he died before the first of the knife wounds were inflicted, see here?” he said, pointing at the rough circle of severed veins and arteries with the scarlet-tainted tip of the scalpel. “Not much evidence of bleeding. If the wounds are fresh this would suggest a cardio-vascular failure. In fact, I think I would go so far as to suggest that this major wound, here,” he ran the scalpel blade the length of the cut from the dead padre’s groin to his neck, “was inflicted somewhere in the region of ten to fifteen hours after the time of death. However, the obvious lack of muscle deterioration would rule out the likelihood of any greater length of time.”

  The pathologist prodded at the fatty tissue of the stomach wall. “The muscle still hasn’t tightened too badly. Yet, that said, there are signs of several bunched clusters of corded sinew to go against it being much less than ten hours, give or take the effects of cold and that sort of thing.” Ellery paused, scratching at his bearded cheek.

  “So what you’re saying is it wasn’t the knife that killed him? Right?”

  “I’d have to say no. Asphyxiation. The damage to his thorax is extreme, distending of the atlas and axis, and discoloration of internal tissue suggests some sort of struggle. Look at the slight bruising around his mouth and nose. Most probably from the attacker’s knuckles pressing down against the face whilst he struggled.”

  “Number Nine, then?” Stern asked, although he already knew the answer.

  “Almost certainly,” Ellery conceded, dropping his scalpel into the kidney tray. “Even without the Trinity tattoo on the left cheek I’d be given to believe that this was our man again.”

  “Shit.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Ellery agreed. “Look, you don’t have to stop around while I sew him up. It’ll only take a few minutes. Why don’t you go through to reception and grab a coffee. I’ll come through when I’ve finished up and we can go grab something stronger. This kind of thing always makes me want a drink, just to get the taste of death out of my mouth.”

  “Just point me in the direction of the kettle, Doc. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The telephone rang.

  Once. Twice. Three times.

  Mannelli didn’t move, so Gabriel answered it. He listened for a moment, then said: “Right,” and hung up. Holding a half-eaten bagel, he walked across to the street map, took out a flat-topped pin and marked off a spot over on Lexington, near the Lincoln Tunnel.

  The padre’s cramped apartment.

  “D’Angelo’s one of his,” he said without looking around. “Number Nine.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Two more calls came in within the hour.

  The first from a distraught Port Authority official who had had the misfortune to find his secretary stripped naked and laid out across his desk with a steel bar buried fist deep in her anus. The second, from a man who had tried to get into his neighbour’s apartment. He’d knocked twice more, then opened the mailbox and noticed the smell.

  An hour later, as Dan Mannelli faced down a barrage of leading questions from the pariahs of the press and Bill Stern picked up the phone to answer a call from Brendon Ellery, Jack Delgado parked behind an abandoned Pontiac Bonneville on the Riverside, breathed deeply on the Hudson’s nearly fresh Christmas air, and walked in on The Trinity’s tenth victim.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The CNN camera eye focused on a new face in the crowd. A woman, tall and striking with stark winter-grey eyes, the sharp rise of a carved nose and the square curves of a stubborn jaw, all white against the backdrop of straight black hair. A few other familiar faces mixed in with the pack of piranhas. Lomas scribbling something in his pad.

  “Well, that is comforting to know, Lieutenant Mannelli. I’m sure we’ll all sleep so much sounder in our beds tonight knowing that you are on the case. But, tell me, just how long do you plan to wait this thing out? It may have escaped your notice but out there in the real world people are busy dying. How many more people have to get carved up before you get up off your Italian ass and get down to finding this Monster?”

  Her eyes met his, locked, unwavering. Mannelli bristled, rising to the bait: “Obviously I would rather no one got carved up, as you so eloquently put it, miss. And you are right; my job is no more difficult than catching a very dangerous man.” Mannelli said simply. His gaze went to the camera. Without a smile he spoke directly to it. “We live in a media society, we’ve all seen the films, Silence of The Lambs, Seven, and Kiss the Girls, sociopaths are the modern disease. We take murderers and put their faces on tee-shirts. We glorify them. Turn them into fucking heroes but the truth, the ugly truth, is that we don’t need films to embroider their sicknesses, men like The Trinity Killer are more frightening than anything Hollywood can dream up because they are real…”

  He paused to let the weight of his words sink into the silent crowd; picking the moment to take up an uncapped biro to punctuate his final statement.

  “They are real… Hell, they are frightening. Think about it for a moment. A man devoid of care or compassion. Oblivious to feelings of guilt and conscience, the things that keep normal people in line. A thrill seeker busy chasing down the highest high, no matter what the cost. Always ready, shit, eager to face the rapidly escalating risks involved in what he is doing. He doesn’t care. There is no guilt. Read my lips. No remorse, nothing. My job is no more difficult than catching him. He’s prepared to die for the thrill. I’m prepared to die to making sure he doesn’t get it.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Brendon Ellery, Manhattan District’s Chief Coroner, tapped out the all too familiar set of numbers, listening to the jangle of the bell at the other end of the line.

  He was alone in the mortuary, the last assistant long gone for an overdue lunch. Midway through the fourth bleat the ringing abruptly died and Bill Stern’s cigar-husked baritone answered:

  “Stern, homicide?”

  “Could I speak with Lieutenant Mannelli?”

  “Sorry, the boss is tied up with the scavengers at the minute, can I take a message?”

  “This is Brendon Ellery —”

  “Hey, what’s up Doc?” Stern
cut across him, trying to sound like Bugs Bunny but managing something close to Pee Wee Herman. “Miss me that much you just had to call?”

  “Very good, detective. Look, can you tell Mannelli I think we might have a bigger problem on our hands than any of us bargained for.” He heard the voice on the other end of the open line suck in a sharp steamboat whistle of breath and imagined it shaking its head. “Have you got the Scott girl’s file in front of you?”

  There was a muffled rifle of papers, followed by a: “Yup, found her.”

  “Good. You see she suffered a severe amount of cranial trauma, fractured skull, manubrium and sternum caved in, costal cartilage torn, universal lesions, discoloration and damage to the spinal vertebra, yes? That’s not counting the knife wounds.”

  The answer had come to him after Stern had left to answer the call to Riverside. It seemed so bloody obvious now, that he wondered how he could have missed it for so long. Looking at things head on… It’s like the Chinese finger puzzles, the harder you pull at the idea the less chance you have of finding what you are looking for… You just end up trapped and pulling against yourself.

  “Now, that rings familiar with what we know about the Matther girl and to a lesser extent Caroline Öberg, am I right?”

  “I guess,” Stern conceded uncertainly.

  “Good. But you’ll notice that the other files show either a marked absence or severely lessened degree of physical damage. The cause of death throughout appears to be asphyxiation as opposed to haemorrhaging or penetrations, yes? And the tattoos are present on all bodies,” Ellery paused, waiting for the coin to drop and the sobering effect of his words to set in.

  “I’m not sure I see where you are going with this, Doc?”

  “Think about it then. What would be the worst case scenario you could dream up for this Trinity Killer of yours?”

  Stern didn’t need to think too hard. “More than one,” he said sombrely.

  “Yes. That’s where I am going, detective. If I am right, and I have a very strong suspicion that I am, the nine bodies brought in so far have been killed by different people. Similar, if not identical murders, but almost definitely the work of different men. The bitterest irony being that they have been telling us this from the start, with their Holy Trinity. Father D’Angelo’s body just helped to confirm things. It’s like one of the killers has, and I know it is a bad word under the circumstances, but it’s like one of the Trinity has an element of style, panache, call it what you will. He has a penchant for killing and takes a certain amount of pride in what he’s doing. The remainder of the Trinity is simply churning out results to a set formula. Quicker, and more brutal. Definitely got a taste for the macabre if you consider the mutilations. I just can’t decide if they are working in concert, knowingly, or independently.”

  Stern was silent for a moment.

  “You don’t think he might have been hurried or something? You know, disturbed or caught in the act, so to speak?”

  Ellery exhaled a laboured breath and shook his head, not that Stern could appreciate the gesture down the phone line. “It’s possible of course, anything is possible, but not likely I’m afraid. The more I think about it, the surer I am we have to face up to an ugly reality.”

  Across the city, Bill Stern said: “Thanks Doc,” biting down the frustration until the phone was back in its cradle. Then he punched the concrete wall.

  “Shitshitshitshitshit.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Delgado noticed three things as he moved up the steps to the high-rise apartment overlooking the Hudson.

  The first, that he was way, way out of shape and needed to do something about it. The second, that if he didn’t deal with the first one real soon, The Job would kill him before he had the chance to set matters right. And third, that there was a God-awful stink hanging in the air around him; and he didn’t like any one of them all that much.

  One way or another, Jack Delgado had spent too much of his life in death rooms, in hospitals, houses and crime scenes, and he knew well enough the special attar that clung to them like lovers. That smell; faeces, urine and decay crawled down the twisting stairwell, happy to greet him as he walked in.

  All of a sudden he really didn’t want to be the one that opened the door; he’d been that person for all of his twenty-four years on the force and now he wanted nothing more from his life than to let other people do the door opening and the cleaning up.

  He heard quiet, muffled sobbing coming from somewhere above and took it as a sign that the neighbour had stuck around and was maybe a little more than just a neighbour. Wheezing slightly and short of breath, Delgado rounded the final twist of stair and peered along the short corridor.

  In the corner, beyond the second of two doors, hunched a dirty looking man — boy, he amended. Hair clung to his damp scalp in lank ringlets, framing his pinched features, and Delgado saw, when he looked up, the black circles around the boy’s gaunt — harrowed — eyes and the streaks of cried out tears.

  Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his wallet and flipped it open to show the boy his ID.

  “Delgado, NYPD,” he deliberately substituted the final word, homicide. It wouldn’t help the kid to know who had drawn the departmental short straw.

  The boy sniffed, wiping a hand across his wet cheek as he tried to pull himself together. He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet.

  Jesus, Delgado thought, he’s only a kid. And then he thought, I don’t want to do this… I really don’t want to do this.

  But he did it anyway.

  Stooping, he levered the mailbox open with his fingers and, putting his cheek against the burnished bronze of the flap, put his eye to it.

  The smell was there.

  Waiting beyond the door was another room where death had danced her merry jig.

  There was only one thing left for Jack Delgado to do, and that was open the door.

  Well, here goes nothing…

  He tried the handle.

  Locked.

  Putting his shoulder against the wood he rocked back on the balls of his feet. Slammed his shoulder blade against the door. The wood groaned inwards, slightly, but otherwise didn’t give an inch. The lock held firm and his shoulder screamed out its agony as a bright flare of pain hammered through the bone.

  Reaching back inside his pocket Delgado pulled out his .38 special, aimed at the lock and fired a single shot; mingling cordite with the stagnant aroma of death. Putting his shoulder to the door this time, the wood around the lock mechanism splintered sharply as it gave way, and the door swung in on itself.

  The smell…

  Holding an off-white handkerchief over his mouth and nose, Delgado edged his way in.

  Inside wasn’t the charnel house the stench threatened. Indeed, at first sight nothing was amiss. Only the fetid smell gave way to the lie. Oddly, Delgado found himself drawing conclusions about the woman he knew was here somewhere. Nothing was out of place. No laundry rested on the backs of chairs in the bedroom. No deodorant sprays lay topless on the counters in the bathroom. No lather-soaked disposable razors rest in the sink trough. No empty fast-food trays in the kitchen.

  Turning his back on the kitchen, he moved through to the lounge again. Still, nothing looked out of place, but the smell was strongest in here. This was the death room.

  He looked around again.

  The blinds were twisted shut on the view, clogging the afternoon sun. The furniture, a new looking leather set, two two-seater couches and a bucket seat were lined up against the back wall, a coffee table sat in front of the sofa. A large flat-screen TV and sleek-lined Nicam video dominated one corner, the loops of its co-axial aerial cable looping back across the floor, a desk and Apple Macintosh Powerbook, another.

  Behind him, Delgado heard the boy enter the room.

  He was crying again; low, moaning sobs stifled by the hand he held across his face.

  Turning, Delgado made a shrugging gesture, as if to say: your guess is as good as mine…<
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  And he screamed.

  Delgado swung fully around, eyes darting left and right, looking.

  What the —?

  All too quickly he saw why.

  A leg, twisted impossibly out of shape by the double-sided press of the wall and the back of the sofa stood awkwardly on a shattered ankle. As far as Delgado could tell, it wasn’t attached to a body. A caked puddle of muddy brown stained the white carpet around the bare foot. Dried blood clung in a twisting street map of meshed lines across the discoloured skin.

  Three seats down, a second leg hug likewise, impossibly twisted, a full seven feet away from the first.

  Chapter Twenty

  Gabriel stood beneath the bushy canopy of the wistful old willow beside Celine’s graveside, sucking smoke from his thin brown-skinned roll-up. Her name, Charlotte Annuci, lettered in gold on the grey marble. He wore a long black raincoat that slicked off the steady city rain and a wide-brimmed black felt fedora that obscured most of his face.

  Wisps of smoky cloud drifted across his shadowy features, diffusing into the heavy air like lacy ghosts.

  Why didn’t you believe me..? I tried to tell you… I tried…

  St. Vincent’s was a gritty little cemetery backing onto Riverside Park. Chain-linked wire fences bordered the sodden grass. Behind the fences white-walled Neo-Gothic structures climbed towards the grey sky, casting their pale shadows over the desolate tombstones.

  Across from the regimented rows of lacklustre graves a thick column of grey-black smoke billowed free of the crematorium’s bulbous chimney, staining the dull sky.