The Celtic Cross Killer Read online

  Arcing around, Jameson traversed through three-hundred-and-sixty degrees seeking confirmation that nobody had witnessed the kill.

  His virgin kill.

  He reached into his raincoat pocket and reclaimed a silver Celtic cross pendant shorn of its chain. Placed it on Luppi’s motionless forehead. Lifeless eyes addressed an overcast sky vacant of stars.

  The killer stood over the body paralysed by an enormous wave of neural release. Affirmation realised of his ability to feed and satisfy those insidious cackling voices deep within him.

  Decades old voices calling from the past to berate him. Demanding action. And now delighting in retribution.

  Part II

  Palermo, Sicily

  1990

  11

  The sixty-mile drive to Ma Baker’s Diner at the intersection of Interstate 280 and 80 near Lake Hiawatha took a little over an hour. It had better be worth it, he thought, as he swung the black sedan into the parking lot and braked to a halt next to the entrance.

  He dragged on the door, stepped inside and glanced around. Just two other customers occupied the diner: an overweight trucker in a plaid shirt sat at the counter eating steak and fries with a fork in one hand, USA Today in the other, and a pock-faced man in a corner booth facing the door. The trucker looked to the door, seeing nothing of interest, returned his attention to the steak. A waitress flitted between the tables with a damp cloth and a bored, shoot-me-now expression.

  The driver of the black sedan joined the pock-faced man in the booth. Lowered into the seat opposite. Their eyes met.

  ‘More coffee?’

  ‘Great idea. Nothing wrong with the coffee here. Yeah, I’ll take a top up.’

  The driver ordered more coffee.

  ‘You receive my requisition?’

  ‘Course, I did. It’s why I’m here.’ The pock-faced man flicked a glance over the driver’s shoulder. ‘One minute. The waitress ... she’s on her way over. Order. Then we’ll talk.’

  The driver ordered. Sat back against the leatherette.

  ’How’s the quality?’

  ‘I did it. It’s the best money can buy. You won’t be disappointed?’

  ‘You know what I expect.’

  ‘Course, I do. It worked before, didn’t it?’

  ‘It sure did. Only…’

  ‘Only, nothing… Relax. It’ll work again. I don’t sell garbage. To my reckoning, it’s six years since we last did business. You haven’t been banged up in some Limey jail ever since, have you? Unless, I’m missing something?’ He raised a hand. ‘And before you say anything the answer is no, you ain’t. I would have read about it in the newspapers.’

  ‘I take your point. And the price?’

  He gazed past the driver. ‘Waitress is coming over. Button it a minute.’

  The waitress marched up and set the coffee on the table. Walked back to the counter.

  ‘Just like I said on the phone. Price is non-negotiable; one thousand five hundred in cash. Used bills. You bring it?’

  ‘I did. That’s a fifth more than before?’

  ‘Inflation. What more can I say. Christ’s sake, how’s a man supposed to make a living?’ said Counterfeit Charlie, his pockmarked face twisting into a sneer. ‘It’s a take it or leave it deal. I don’t need no shit.’

  Charlie pushed the forged passport over the table. The driver collected it, turned the pages with slow deliberation. Compared it to his previous fake passport languishing at the bottom of the Potomac, inside a concrete-filled biscuit tin. He had to admit, he couldn’t help but be impressed by the workmanship. The photograph—posted to Charlie a week before—had been seamlessly incorporated into the document.

  ‘It’s good … no … superb. Next time—should, I hasten to add, there be a next time—I’d like to choose my name.’

  ‘You got a problem hand it back.’

  The driver shrugged. ‘No problem … only … I’m not too sure Eamonn Malley is well … me…’ He hesitated. Thought what the hell. Injected a more conciliatory tone into his voice. ‘I guess I’ll get used to it. It’s not like it’s for a lifetime is it? Do you know something, Charlie, it’s liberating having an alter ego. I like it,’ he said.

  It was Charlie’s turn to shrug. ‘Whatever. Your business is your business. Discretion is my middle name. Your secret is safe with me.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ said the sedan driver, sliding a brown envelope across the table.

  ‘I’m counting on it.’ The driver leaned right. Caught the eye of the waitress. ‘The bill please, honey?’ said the newly christened Eamonn.

  Charlie snatched the envelope from the table and slid it into an inside pocket.

  ‘Thanks for the coffee. You’re a gent.’ Charlie winked, raised up, shuffled into his coat. ‘To be sure you are. You going anywhere nice?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I am. I’m taking a twin centre vacation.’

  ‘Sounds good. Where to?’

  ‘Italy, then Ireland. Coming back via the old country. Going to take it nice and easy. Enjoy myself,’ said Eamonn. ‘Thinking about visiting Rome, Florence, Pisa and Dublin. Chance I’ll take in Sicily. Going to hang loose. The plan is no-plan. I might even go hunting,’ he said, with a mischievous grin.

  ‘Hunting?’

  ‘Yeah, hunting… You got a problem with that?’

  ‘Me? No. You have yourself a good time. If you do need anything, you know where to find me,’ said Charlie, stepping out of the booth, heading for the door.

  12

  Exiting Ma Baker’s car park, he pressed hard on the accelerator. The tyres chirped. Blue tyre smoke rose behind the sedan; hung in the air. Dragging hard on the steering wheel, he pointed the car’s nose towards downtown Lake Hiawatha.

  The man calling himself Eamonn Malley—heady from the successful purchase of the forged passport—found himself in a boyish, impulsive mood. The football World Cup was less than a month away. A hedonistic month under the scorching Mediterranean sun was suddenly very real. The prospect of him being part of Ireland’s massive green army filled him with youthful elation. He would stopover in Dublin on the return leg to the States. There, he would take in the craic and celebrate, he hoped, his Sicilian success.

  Tonight, he’d allow himself a little relaxation time. He had completed his six-year house renovation project at huge financial and psychological cost.

  He entered reception. Stepped over to the desk. ‘You got a room for tonight, honey?’ Eamonn enquired of the receptionist; a wrinkled woman with dark piercing eyes reading a paperback. The Blue Star Motel was located within staggering distance of the towns’ many bars and restaurants, including the famously raucous O’Rourke’s.

  ‘Smoking rooms are thirty bucks. Non-smoking is twenty-eight,’ she said, not looking up. A cigarette hung limp from the corner of her mouth.

  ‘I’ll take smoking. And a continental breakfast sharp at nine,’ said Eamonn with a go-large order of sarcasm, fishing for a reaction.

  ‘And in the real world, honey?’

  ‘A smoking room will be fine. Forget the breakfast.’

  Handing over thirty dollars in crisp ten-dollar bills, Eamonn pondered why Anglo-Saxons were so damned anal? So strait-laced?

  ‘Room 5A on the ground floor is available. Park out front,’ said the receptionist, collecting the money from the counter, handing over a key, returning her attention to the paperback.

  His was a simple plan. He’d find a restaurant, order steak, expensive red wine and get drunk. End the night in O’Rourke’s. It was an opportunity to get reacquainted with a buxom redheaded barmaid called Roisin, whose company he and a close friend had enjoyed during a boys weekend the previous summer. That evening was memorable in a shallow and weird way.

  It had been a good day. Not only had he received his Aer Lingus flight tickets, and onward Alitalia tickets to Sicily, he’d also taken a call from a mutual friend. The friend had been eager to pass on gossip. His ex-wife had gone public. She intended to marry her lat
est beau. If she did, any residual feelings he had for her would evaporate. He prayed, she’d go through with it. It would represent the final nail in the coffin of their long defunct marriage.

  Bloated on steak and fries with Merlot coursing through his veins, Eamonn arrived at O’Rourke’s just after 10.30 p.m. The bar bounced. The atmosphere boisterous. Eamonn negotiated to the bar. Noted the huge imbalance of females to males. Beamed. If his advances with Roisin came to nothing, then there was every chance he’d score elsewhere.

  He chose a seat at the bar. Sat. Spun. Scanned the room for Roisin.

  A bronzed surfer-boy barman approached. Asked, ‘Can I get you something to drink?’

  ‘A double Jameson’s. No ice,’ Eamonn said, added, ‘Is Roisin working? Roisin, the girl with the long red hair?’

  Surfer-boy’s eyes ran past his shoulder. Gazed over the crowd.

  ‘Who’s asking?’ Roisin whispered. A firm breast pressed against his shoulder. He almost lost his balance on the stool. Clutched the bar rail.

  Eamonn swivelled around. ‘A good friend…’ Warm smiles of recognition were exchanged. ‘Remember me? We met last year?’

  ‘Course I do. How could I forget? How have you been?’ said Roisin, smiling a radiant smile, iridescent sea-blue eyes searing into him.

  ‘I’m peachy … just peachy. And you?’

  ‘I’m perfectly fine. All the better for seeing you, I hasten to add.’

  Roisin was five foot eleven of creamy white skin, curves and scarlet-red hair.

  She said, ‘You going to buy me a drink?’

  * * *

  Four hours later, exhausted and clutching his clothes and shoes against his chest, Eamonn stepped into the shared hallway and clicked the door in the frame of Roisin’s apartment. Glanced at his watch. If he drove fast, he would make the airport with time to spare.

  13

  Since qualifying for the World Cup finals, the Republic of Ireland had gone football crazy. FIFA had scheduled the tournament for June and the early part of July, in Italy. The competition would culminate—the Italians hoped—in a showpiece final at the impressive Stadio Olimpico on the 8th of July. On that day, the Italian captain would hold the cup aloft. Italy, would become the cup winners for a historic fourth time—or so the script read. Thousands of Irish fans planned to abscond from the rainy Emerald Isle and indulge in the craic for a whole month. Many considered it a once-in-a-lifetime Roman vacation. The authorities expected a huge contingent of Irish fans to travel.

  Eamonn built his plans around Ireland’s all important group match against the Netherlands at the new Stadio La Favorita. It was an impressive stadium built on the outskirts of Palermo; the capital city of the captivatingly beautiful island of Sicily. The island was a dark Mediterranean jewel. It was home to the Cosa Nostra and, as if by divine providence, also the home of Alfonso Annatto. Annatto was a distant descendant of thirties Brooklyn mobster, Joe Annatto.

  Securing information about the family Annatto was easy. The briefest of records check gave him everything he needed. It paid to have contacts. He’d established not only where Annatto lived but also his job, his wife’s name, the names of his three sons and two daughters, the identity of his brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles. Given the size, the extended family Annatto were evidently good catholics. The family numbered over one hundred and fifty across three generations. Eamonn planned with precision. His actions would be precise. Stirring up the hornet in his nest, was never a good idea.

  The overnight Aer Lingus flight from JFK began its descent into the blue grey of a misty morning into Rome’s busy Fiumicino airport. It arrived on schedule. Inside the plane, three hundred and fifty passengers shrugged off the effects of the eight and half hour flight with a mix of caffeine, alcohol and paracetamol. Throughout the cabin, prone bodies stirred and stretched. Irish tricolours were returned to hand luggage. Sicily remained a connection away.

  The connecting Alitalia flight from Rome to Palermo proved uneventful. As the travelling green army of good-natured Irish supporters neared their destination, they became increasingly rowdy.

  ‘Ireland! Ireland! Ireland!’ The chant rose and grew louder.

  The chief steward—an effeminate thirty something Italian—gestured without success for the fans to stop chanting. Spinning on his heels, he growled and stormed off to the sanctuary of the galley. A barrage of catcalls followed him along the aisle.

  At check-in, Eamonn requested a window seat on the connecting flight. From twenty-eight thousand feet, the craggy west coast of Italy—the top of the boot—unravelled before him. The white line edging the azure blue of the Mediterranean marked the meeting of land and ocean. A smiling Eamonn looked along the aisle. His grip firm on the half drunk Heinken. The exilir of possibility burned inside his veins.

  Soon, it would be time to make the acquaintance of Alfonso Annatto.

  14

  The queue at passport control was long. The Italians were a strange, contradictory nation, contemplated Eamonn. It was one of the hottest days of the year and only a solitary immigration officer manned passport control. The Italians cared little for authority. Rampant tax evasion, a huge black economy and regular political scandals characterised the country. In the south, the Mafioso ruled with a firm hand and brought terror to many villages, towns and cities. The threat of serious physical harm was never very far away. Yet, in complete contrast bureaucracy reigned supreme. Eamonn recollected an amusing quotation from Dante about Italy, he’d read in twelfth grade:

  ‘Abandon all hope those who enter here!’

  Eamonn’s geography teacher—herself of Italian descent—described how her parents had suffered a year-long delay in their attempts to emigrate to the US because their daughter’s birth certificate had expired and was printed on the wrong paper! Eamonn mused: did Italian bureaucracy create the anarchist tendencies in the people, or was it the other way around?

  The officious immigration officer demanded Eamonn’s passport with a scowl and raised palm. Accepted it from him with a flick of the wrist. Glared. Handed it back. ‘Buon giorno. And the purpose of your visit? Business? Pleasure?’ he said, in passable English. ‘Some other reason?’

  ‘Pleasure,’ said Eamonn. ‘I’m going to watch soccer.’

  ‘Your team?’ queried the official, a confused frown visible above sunglasses.

  ‘I’m supporting Ireland. Going to the match with the Dutch. Staying until June 25.’

  ‘Si. This is good.’ A hint of a smile. ‘The Dutch they are an excellent team. I wish the Irish every success against them. A win for the Irish would be favourable for Italy. Please, take the channel on the right. Enter and follow the corridor,’ said the officer, pointing towards a two metre square polythene tunnel.

  Eamonn entered the plastic-walled corridor. Exited into a concrete yard area. Halted in a fenced compound facing massed ranks of green, orange and white clad supporters. The colours gleamed under the early morning sun. The fenced yard area measured fifty metres by thirty metres. Two-metre-high mesh fencing topped with barbed wire around the perimeter. Sun faded signs confirmed the area was a re-purposed vehicle compound. Hundreds of Irish fans lounged on timber trestles in the shade offered by tin roofs. Given the early hour, they were in a subdued mood. At the far side—grouped around a break in the fence—stood a group of Vigili Urbani—the local police. Every few minutes another group of fans were called forward for registration, search and release to waiting buses.

  Eamonn sidled over to a group of five men. ‘Morning, gentlemen. How you guys doing?’ Eamonn approached a middle-aged man of nondescript appearance balanced on a timber trestle on one elbow, lighting a cigarette with a disposable gas lighter. He shared the table with four others.

  ‘I’ve been better. Those silly fecks over yonder ought to get a bloody move on. Travel agent never mentioned we would be treated like bloody cattle, so she didn’t,’ he said in a thick Irish accent. ‘Bunch of good-for-nothings, so they are. We’ve already been here for the
best part of an hour. So far they’ve only processed twenty people. I’m sorry, fella, you’ll have to join the queue. It’s a disgrace, so it is,’ he said. ‘I take it you’re here for the footy? By the way, would that be an American accent?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I’m from New York. I’ve come for the craic, the game and to support the motherland. My family came to America from Ireland in the 19th century,’ said Eamonn. ‘By the way, I’m Eamonn Malley. And you are?’

  ‘Patrick O'Leary. We need all the support we can get. Those Dutch, they’ll not be an easy touch. You can be sure of that.’ Hesitating, puffing on a cigarette, the Irishman continued, ‘Originally, I’m from Dublin, now living in Limerick.’ He offered his right hand to Eamonn. They shook hands. ‘Best join the queue, Eamonn. No doubt I’ll see you around.’

  ‘I hope so. I’ll buy you … and your friends a drink,’ said Eamonn. ‘Consider it an honour.’

  ‘Good man. I’ll hold you to it. I’m not one to turn the offer of a drink down,’ O’Leary chirped, with a wry smile.

  * * *

  One hour later, processed by the police, stepping out of the hotel lift, a fussy-haired Italian helped Eamonn to his room.

  Alone in the room, Eamonn dragged closed velvet-lined blackout curtains. All trace of glorious amber sunlight was scoured from the room and replaced by a cool, inert darkness. Eamonn sank onto the bed. Happy and exhausted, sleep came quickly.

  15