When You Wake up and Scream

Conán pulled the first packed file towards him and began the task that was to take him a good three hours. Eventually, he had found the rest of his victims, minus two. He looked at the ten faces in front of him.

"That’s the rest of them but two. There’s two others, I don’t think that you’ve associated them with me yet."

"Let’s look at these first."

With Conán’s guidance regarding the photos, Detective McAfee was able to write the ten names down in order of their murders, along with the family’s details.

"I’m going to be making a lot of distressing visits over the next couple of days. I hope you’re happy, Connolly."

"Of course I’m not."

"At least there’s a shred of humanity left in you. You say there were two more?"

"Yes."

"Give us some details."

"My first killing, I was seventeen. It would have been bordering on four years ago now. It was a young girl who looked a little like Mary. She was a prostitute. I dragged her behind a bush and I strangled her. I left her there."

"I suspected this one, you know."

Detective McAfee pulled another file out of his drawer and showed the front picture to Conán. After a moment’s deliberation, Conán nodded.

"That’s her. That’s my first one."

Detective McAfee nodded and added the name at the top of the sheet of paper he was writing on.

"And what about the second person we haven’t got?"

"He was my second victim and I was eighteen. He was a lot older, looked in his forties. We got into a scrap in the pub and we were both turned out onto the street. I went off and he came up from behind me. I … I only meant to give him a few kicks, but once I started, I couldn’t stop myself. I strangled him and I ran away. I left his body there. I think his mate called him Joe or Joseph in the pub, I can’t remember well. It was a long time ago … a lot has happened since then. I was drunk as well."

Detective McAfee noticed that Conán was sobering up as they spoke, and the more he sobered up, the more terrified the young man looked. He seemed to be growing smaller and paler, and his eyes were widening. The detective didn’t have to look for long, as he had previously compiled a file of unsolved murders with similar trademarks in the cause of death and the randomness of the killings. There were no Joes, and only one Joseph. Conán nodded when he was shown the picture.

"That’s the guy," he signalled to all of the photos. "That’s them all. All twenty-three of them."

Detective McAfee allowed Conán to look at them in silence for a while, until he spoke again. He was going to perform his usual trick of making the guilty person come face to face with their crimes, and it was never pleasant for either of them. However, it usually guaranteed a truthful confession. He had never appealed to the conscience of a serial killer before, and he didn’t know how it would all pan out. Conán seemed to be slowly realising the extent of his crimes, however, and he thought it would be best to strike now, before the inevitable infamy got to his head.

"Conán, I’m going to ask you to look at this sheet of paper here, and I want you to loudly and clearly say the names of every single one of your victims, and how old they were. All right?"

"Why?"

"Because I want you to realise, before you make your confessions, that these were real living, breathing people with families, that’s why. They were not objects. They were not there to make you happy. You do not own them. They were people with their own lives, and I want you to acknowledge that. Please, go on ahead."

Conán watched Detective McAfee for a split second, and then he took a deep breath and reached for the slip of paper that Detective McAfee had slid across the table at him. He looked at it, then up at the detective’s face, and then he swallowed and looked back down at the paper again. The names swam in front of him, and his hands were trembling. He tried to speak, but found that he couldn’t. Swallowing again, he forced his voice out in a croak.

"E – Elizah McGuire, eighteen," he muttered. "Joseph McSorley, forty-eight. Francis Cooke, t - thirty-nine. P – Peter M – McGlinchey, thirty-seven. Paul Farrell, t – thirty-one. A – Andrew Meehan, twenty-nine. M – Mary O’Connell, eighteen. Oran R – Ross, s – seventeen … Jesus, seventeen. Simon Megarry, twenty-four. Jack Donnelly, twenty-seven. G – Gerald D – Doyle, twenty-two. Kevin Mooreland, twenty-three … oh, Jesus, I don’t think I can do this anymore …"

"You need to go on, Conán."

"I don’t want to."

"I must insist. Go on."

"Mark McCarthaigh," Conán whispered hoarsely. "Thirty. D – Daly Cormick, twenty-three … please don’t make me do this anymore! I can’t stand this!"

"It hurts when you realise, doesn’t it? Go on. They all deserve recognition."

"No."

"Conán."

Conán was visibly distressed, trembling, chewing on his bottom lip so hard that it had begun to bleed. He was trembling so hard by this point that his chair could be heard jumping against the floor.

"M – Moiragh Mc – McDonnell, nineteen," he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut momentarily. His hand gripped the paper so tightly that it was beginning to crease and rip at the side. Conán forced his eyes open again. "Billy B – Brady, forty-seven. Aidan McMahon, twenty-one. Colin Smyth, twenty-nine. Jim Brogan, thirty-seven … oh, God,"

"Conán."

"Matthew McDonald, twenty-six," Conán let out a chocked sob. "I can’t do it. I can’t bear it. Please, don’t make me, don’t make me say anymore,"

"It’s the very least you owe them, Connolly, to be able to say their names! The only thing that makes them human to you! Say them!"

"R – R – Raymond C – Currie, t – thirty-one. C – C – Cian M – Macgee, t – twenty-t – two. S – Samuel A – Adams, t – twenty-five."

Conán threw the paper down and slumped onto the desk, burying his head against his bare arms, his whole body shaking and trembling violently. Detective McAfee allowed him to lay there for a while, while he tidied up all of the documents that weren’t relevant to the case. When he had arranged everything so it was a little more organised, he leant his elbows on the table and watched Conán, who appeared to be sobbing. He was making no sound, but his hands were gripping his hair tightly and his shoulders were shaking quiet violently.

"Conán?"

Conán stiffened and stayed buried in his thoughts for another minute or so. When he finally lifted his head up, his eyes were red, but there was no other evidence of tears.

"Are you ready?"

"Let’s get this over with," Conán replied, his voice once more monotone, emotionless.

"I want you to tell me everything you remember about each of the murders."

"I’m not going to hold back."

"I don’t wish you to. Please, tell me everything."

"Well … it started when I seen that first girl, Elizah. She was walking towards me and I spotted her and I couldn’t believe how much like my mother she looked. I had only run away a few months before and I was still consumed by hatred for my mother and before I knew it I had grabbed her. I can’t remember how long I knew I was going to do it for. I beat her with a rock and she fell down and I pinned her down and strangled her and held on until I was sure she was dead. Then I just watched her for a while … it was a strangely beautiful thing. Then I realised what I had done, but strangely I didn’t feel anything over it. I just knew I was going to have to go before I got caught, so I left and ran off. I didn’t want to go, because I was enjoying looking at her. I guess I just pictured my mother. I could pretend she was my mother, pretend that I had killed her.

"Then there was my second victim. Joseph. I don’t know what happened there," Conán sighed, looking to the floor before dragging his eyes back up. "I never meant to kill him. I beat him up a bit and put him on the floor, and I put my hands around his throat because I thought I would just knock him unconscious, you know? Show him who was the boss. But once he started choking, once he started trying to get away and once I saw him getting scared, you know, truly terrified, I started to enjoy myself, and I didn’t want to let go. The next thing I knew – bang. He was dead, and there weren’t anything I could do about it. At first I was shocked, but then I got excited. After that wore away, I was terrified; I couldn’t believe that I’d killed again because I’d been having nightmares about the wee girl before. I was troubled after Joseph’s death. I didn’t know what to do with myself, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat … all I could do was drink. Drink was the only thing that made my problems go away when I was awake, but when I was asleep the alcohol just made the dreams worse. I tried to fight the urges, tried to stop them, but I just couldn’t. I knew it would all boil over one day. And I was right, because it did.

"I had this really vivid dream about this time in my childhood and it sent me over the edge. The next thing I knew, I was out on the street prowling and I spotted this homeless guy who was sitting there by himself. I went over and spoke to him and he must have realised that I was up to no good because he was uneasy. I’m sadistic. I started scaring him on purpose, and then when he was real scared and he tried to go I followed him and I stabbed him. When he was on the floor, I slit his throat, straight across the jugular – splat. Blood everywhere. I watched him die, and when I was sure he was all bled out, I ran off. I saw Naoise for the first time that night, and I was going to kill her too, but I never did. I don’t know why. Something just stopped me."

"Naoise saw you that night?"

"Yeah. She was walking somewhere, couldn’t sleep or something. I was drunk and I laughed and told her that she shouldn’t be out so late because it wasn’t safe. Then I walked away. I think I heard police sirens. I’m not sure. Like I said, I was real drunk. I was drunk at every killing, I think … I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything anymore. Anyway, yeah, I killed him, and then there was this thing with my rent and the flat and all, and I was thrown out until I could raise the two hundred Euros that I needed to get my rent back. I don’t know why, but I went back to my old house and I went in and all, and I had this flashback and I went upstairs and I fell asleep in the bathroom. Peter coming in woke me up. I hid behind the door and he came into the bathroom – I’d been asleep in the bath – and he didn’t know I was there because I was behind the door. I came from behind him and I threw my arm around him like this –" Conán demonstrated in a matter-of-fact way in thin air. "And I choked him until he went unconscious and then I knelt over him and pressed down on his throat until he was dead. I decided to go through his pockets to see if he could help me get my flat back, and what do you know? He was a drug dealer and he had tens of thousands on him. He must have been hiding it around the city or transporting it to someone. I robbed him, took all the money and half of a bottle of whiskey, and did a runner. I was happy that day, because I was a rich man."

"You didn’t let on that you were a rich man."

"Well, I couldn’t, could I? That would just be advertising what I had done," Conán’s voice was back to its flat and emotionless state, a contrast to when he had been reading out the names of the dead people. He seemed to have completely detached himself. "I kept it to myself. It was around this time that I was introduced to Mary, and I came up with a plan to kill her. I knew she would be harder to kill seems she had a caring family and would be reported missing quicker, not like all of these bums I’d been killing before. So I thought that I could get rid of the body by cutting her up and freezing the body, and smashing it up and throwing the parts somewhere. So I decided to try this out, and I found Steve."

"Steve?"

"That’s what I called him. I know his real name was Paul, but the skulls in my bedroom; they used to be proper heads. They were called Steve and Tom, and the third one was Aidan but that was his proper name."

"So you … you named the severed heads?"

"Only those three."

"OK."

"Anyway, I strangled him and put him in the bathtub, and I got really, really drunk because it was a lot more traumatic than I thought. There was a Hell of a lot of blood, as well, and it took a little while because it was the first time I had done it."

"And how did you do it? Can you remember?"

"Yeah," Conán’s voice became even more emotionless, if that was humanely possible, and then he did the strangest thing yet, which left Detective McAfee momentarily speechless. "Conán cut his legs off at the knee first, it was easier for him to do the joints first, you see, and then he cut the rest of them off at the thigh. He did the same sort of thing with the arms, first off at the elbow, then at the shoulder, and then he cut off the head, which was a really hard part. There was a lot of blood here, but there was more in the chest cavity. It seemed to have all congregated there. Anyway, Conán had to cut him open down the front and drain it all out and then he got roughly four pieces from that. The limbs were still a bit big, so he cut the hands and feet off, too."

"Conán?" Detective McAfee raised an eyebrow quizzically. "You are aware that you were speaking in the third person?"

Conán seemed to snap back to himself.

"Was I?"

"You were."

Detective McAfee had heard of these things happening among serial murderers, as a form of defence and distancing from the crimes, but he still hadn’t realised how strange it would have sounded. Conán paused for a minute, and then he shrugged.

"It was easier to talk about in that way, I guess. Anyway, I’d got to Steve, hadn’t I?"

"Steve, Peter, whatever."

"Right. So, the next one was … Andrew. My sixth victim. He deserved it."

"He … deserved it?"

"Yes. I was walking down the street, I was looking for a victim anyway, and I came round the corner and this bum looked like he was about to go for Naoise, and so I ran over and threw him on the floor and beat him up at little and choked him a bit. I can’t help it, once I get someone on the floor like that, I have to put my hands around their throat. It came from when I was little, I used to pretend I’d killed my mother. It’s my weak spot. Anyway, Naoise was there, wasn’t she? So I had to let him scuttle off, which was hard. Naoise went home and I went after him, and I found him and I scared him a little, and then I strangled him and left him where he died.

"Then there was …" Conán’s voice broke a little. "Mary, I guess. She was my seventh. God, I wish I’d never killed Mary."