‘Because you don’t just write about what happened to your own family, but you write about his other crimes as well. In detail.’ He paused. ‘Was that hard?’
Eve nodded. She was biting her lip and her hands had slipped from her lap to between her thighs. She looked even more nervous now than when they’d started.
This was not the woman Jim had been expecting based on what he’d read of The Nothing Man thus far.
‘Eve and I,’ the female host said, ‘visited her childhood home earlier this week and spoke in some detail about that horrific night’ – the screen changed to the family photograph – ‘and her motivation for writing this book, which, really, is what has stayed with me. Because, Eve, to be honest, I read a lot of true crime, and I watch all the documentaries’ – footage now of Eve and a woman Jim realised was the host, walking with their backs to the camera – ‘and listen to the podcasts, and I’d never thought about these men, these serial killers, the way you talk about him, about the Nothing Man.’ The footage disappeared leaving the screen filled with the female host, looking hopefully at Eve. ‘Could you speak about that, for a moment? The “nothing” part?’
‘It’s just that …Well, we mythologise them, don’t we?’ Eve stopped to swallow, then started again. ‘These men. Ted Bundy. The Golden State Killer. The Canal Killer. We talk about them like they’re others, a different kind of being. A monster in a human costume. We look at their crimes and we just can’t figure out how they did it – but that’s only because we don’t have all the facts. Take the case of the Golden State Killer, for instance. They used to marvel at how he could get in and out of people’s homes without being attacked by their dogs. In fact, there was one occasion where, while he was actually physically attacking someone, the dog was just sitting there watching. It was like he had some kind of superpower, some dark magic that separated him from us. He could control these dogs. That’s what they thought, anyway. But when they caught the guy, he had a charge for shoplifting, and one of the items he’d shoplifted was a can of dog repellent. And so that was it. That’s all it was. He didn’t have any special powers. None of these men do.’ She was speaking louder now, looking stronger, gesticulating to punctuate her points. ‘We know their names because they got caught. These men, they’re not over-achievers or particularly successful in any other area of their lives. They’re boring, unremarkable failures. And that’s what I want to prove: that the Nothing Man is too. The Gardaí called him that because they didn’t have anything on him, but I call him that because that’s what he is: nothing. A nonentity. A loser. And I want to prove that by identifying him.’
The shot narrowed, cutting Eve out and focusing entirely on the female host, who was blinking. ‘Yes, that’s … That’s so true. Well, I’m afraid that’s all we have time for …’ She held up her copy of her book. ‘The Nothing Man is out now in all good bookshops. My full interview with Eve will air on Wednesday night on RTÉ One and trust me, you won’t want to miss that. Or this book.’
‘And Eve,’ the male host piped up as the shot went wide again, showing all three of them, ‘will be signing copies of her book in Eason O’Connell Street …’
The graphic with the dates and times came up on screen.
The interview was over.
Jim stopped the video and sat staring out the windscreen at the smooth waters of the River Lee. The grey sky was reflected in them. A canoe slid past filled with half a dozen rowers, their oars effortlessly slicing through the water with perfect synchronicity. Idly, Jim wondered if one of them was Katie. The college rowing club was around here somewhere, wasn’t it?
He would have to kill her. He’d have to kill Eve. She deserved it, after what she’d said about him. He’d make sure the last thought she ever had in this life was that she’d been wrong.
Because he was special. He wasn’t one of those ordinary idiots who sleepwalked through the orbits of this earth and called it living. He was smarter. Stronger. Superior. He would emerge from the shadows one last time to kill his most famous survivor, then disappear back into them once again. No one would see him. He wouldn’t be caught. He’d force everyone to marvel at him. They’d ask themselves, how could a normal, boring man – what was it Eve had said? – a loser do something like that? They couldn’t. That was the simple answer. The only answer. Only he could.
The Nothing Man.
They’d start to whisper those words again, because they’d fear that saying them aloud would summon him. He’d make sure of it. In the meantime, let Eve Black say whatever she wanted. Let her double-down, dig that hole she’d made deeper and deeper. It would just make the next chapter – the Nothing Man’s final one – all the sweeter.
There was much work to do. This wouldn’t be like those times before. He’d have to prepare for longer, take greater care.
He’d have to start now.
He already knew the two items at the top of his list: go to her event in the bookshop tomorrow night and, before then, read as much as he could of her book.
Puzzled, Prendergast called out, ‘Hello?’ two or three times. When he got no response, he rang the doorbell. He thinks he also called out the couple’s names. No one answered and, beyond, the house was utterly quiet. No voices, no radio, no television. It didn’t seem like anyone was even home.
He thought maybe the couple had walked somewhere local, perhaps to Mass or the shop, and accidentally left the door open on their way out. He reached out and pulled it closed, listening for the click of the lock, then pressed the same hand against it and pushed to check that he hadn’t made the same mistake. The envelope with the cheque was still in his pants pocket. He posted it through the letterbox. He turned around and, with his back to the door, tapped out a text message to Martin explaining about the door and the cheque, and pressed SEND.
Prendergast hadn’t even managed to put the phone back in his pocket before he heard the sound of a text message arriving on a Nokia phone. Three quick beats, two long pulses, three quick beats more. He had a Nokia himself and he looked down at the device in his hand, confused, because he hadn’t received a message. The sound had come from another phone. Martin’s phone, surely, going by the timing. But it had been too loud and clear, Prendergast thought, to have come from inside the house.
He typed another text message, this time consisting of just the word ‘TEST’, and sent that to Martin too. Just like before, this action was immediately followed by the text alert noise which, paying attention now, he sensed was coming from somewhere on the ground to his right. He scanned the area and quickly found the corresponding phone. It was lying on the ground between a terracotta plant pot and the front wall of the house, inches away from the frame of the garage door and two feet from the front of the Mondeo in the driveway.
When Prendergast bent down to get it, his peripheral vision picked up something monstrously wrong: Martin’s eyes, open and staring, in the darkness underneath the car.
The shock made him lose his balance and the fall had the unfortunate consequence of bringing him even closer to Martin’s body. And it was, without doubt, a body. Martin was dead. His face was a colour it shouldn’t have been and his head was twisted at an angle that didn’t make any sense. He had, somehow, been run over by his own car in his own driveway. Prendergast scrambled to his feet and called the emergency services even though he knew there was no emergency here. It was too late.