The Dark Eye (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 2) (8 page)

‘How many times do I have to say it? Felix would not have killed himself. Do the police not even care that there’s a killer out there being inspired by my brother’s work?’

‘As far as they’re concerned, it’s a public exhibition. Hundreds, thousands of people have been and gone through the door at Kilmainham since New Year’s Day, and the Marxman could’ve been any one of them, even assuming it isn’t just a coincidence.’

‘You don’t sound convinced.’

‘I don’t believe in coincidences,’ I said. ‘Felix was obsessed with what the Marxman was doing, we know that. Obsessed enough that he wouldn’t let it alone. At the end he said someone was trying to kill him. Between those two events isn’t it equally possible that he tried to find out who was using his photographs and why, and in the course of that discovered something so important that the Marxman’s only option was to neutralise the threat? He may have liked the idea of using Felix’s photographs as a template, but he wouldn’t like it if Felix turned the tables on him. The hunter would start to feel hunted.’

Though that still didn’t explain why he should have gone to all the trouble of staging such an elaborate crime scene. Or how he’d managed to leave no trace of what he’d done.

‘Is there anything you remember,’ I pressed, ‘that suggests Felix was being stalked or followed or harassed in any way? It needn’t be anything dramatic. Unexplained phone calls would do. Letters. Strangers hanging round the door. Anything.’

‘No,’ Alice said, ‘nothing – oh.’

She stopped.

‘What is it?’

‘There
was
something,’ she said, looking appalled. ‘I remember now. And when I say it was something, I mean it was nothing . . . at least, at the time I thought it was nothing, but, well, we
were
broken into about two, three weeks ago.’

‘Here?’

‘We were in Berlin for the launch of a retrospective of his work. When we got back here a few days later, a back window had been forced open, a few things were gone. Little things. Worthless things. A watch, money, some jewellery. We tried not to make too much of it. Lots of houses round here have been burgled.’

‘That was all that was taken?’

‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘That’s why it came back to me when you asked about Felix being harassed. He told me some photographs were missing. And a journal.’

Was I right then?
Had
the Marxman broken in looking for evidence of what Felix knew about him? More to the point, had he found it?

‘Did you report the break-in?’ I said.

‘For what it was worth. The police never catch anyone. We just got a locksmith in to fit us up with a better security system and tried to forget about it. But it was unnerving all the same. I tried to laugh it off, but I felt Felix knew more about it than he was telling me. I never suspected for a moment, though, that it had anything to do with the Marxman.’

‘Maybe it didn’t,’ I said, but I doubted my clumsy attempt at reassurance had worked. I wasn’t convincing myself, let alone Alice.

It was like someone wanted to know what Felix had known.

‘Do you still think it wasn’t Felix who called me that night?’ I asked Alice.

‘I can’t help hoping it wasn’t.’ She sighed. ‘Since our parents died, all we’d ever had was each other. I know I should have listened to him, believed him, I’ll never forgive myself for not being there for him, but I still hate to think of him shutting me out like that.’

‘He probably wanted to protect you from whatever danger he was mixed up in.’

‘I wouldn’t have wanted to be protected,’ she rebuked me. ‘I’m not thirteen years old any more. If he was in trouble, I would have wanted to share that burden with him.’

‘Even if it led to your death too?’

‘Even then. At least we’d be together.’

For the rest of that day I was holed up in my apartment, trying to write my piece on the Marxman for the next issue of the US crime magazine Felix had found so fascinating. The deadline was coming up fast and I needed to get down whatever fragments of fact, rumour and conjecture I could assemble at short notice into something vaguely resembling sense.

It wasn’t easy. I didn’t even know where to begin. Since I’d written my last piece, Felix had died, and that changed everything. Changed everything for me, that is.

And yet his death had nothing to do with the Marxman, according to the police, according to all the evidence, so it wasn’t something I felt comfortable writing about. I could mention the fact that there had been a killing and that it had been initially attributed to the Marxman, but beyond that what could I say? Should I mention Felix’s call to me that night?

Should I describe his photographs?

Should I say that Alice was still not convinced her brother took his own life?

The important thing, as in any investigation, was to strip away the leaves and leave the bare skeleton of the tree visible against the sky behind.

See it as it was.

Here that wasn’t possible. What I was confronting was more like a forest, and I couldn’t see which tree it was I was meant to be looking at. The branches tangled together like barbed wire.

In the end, I took the easy way out and concentrated only on sober facts, details, background, those things you use to fill in the gaps between real meaning, and left myself out of it; I still wasn’t ready to talk about that night at the pier, I still needed to take a step back from it. As a result, the piece felt faked, forced. I just knew that anyone who read it would know I was hiding what I really thought. It just died on the page, the words coagulating like blood, and I spent as much time on the balcony smoking cigars as I did at the keyboard.

At least the writing gave me the chance to pull together what I knew so far.

The downside was I realised what I knew wasn’t much. By the time I’d thrown something together and sent it down the phone line into the world, it was nearly midnight and the moon was bright as a new coin above the city.

Would Fitzgerald still be at Dublin Castle? I hadn’t heard from her since I called to tell her about the photographs and she’d been unenthusiastic in response. I didn’t know what she was doing now. She sometimes snatched sleep in her office when she was working late, but the Marxman investigation was a stagnant pool and I couldn’t see her doing that tonight. I thought of calling her at home, but what if she was in bed already? I couldn’t disturb her. No, I’d drop by her place. If the windows were dark, I’d just sit there a while and imagine her sleeping, then come home, or drive around all night, why not?

I didn’t feel like sleep.

I took the Jeep out and drove through moon-bright streets towards the sea.

Where Fitzgerald lived was right across the road from the strand, with a view over to Howth Head on the other side of the huge horseshoe of Dublin Bay, some soulless estate where the houses all looked alike and huddled together in horror of the world around them, where the cars in the driveways gleamed each Sunday like new and the men all played golf.

Hers were the only lights still on, and I’d pulled into the cul-de-sac before I noticed the car parked outside her door.

Sean Healy’s.

I thought about knocking but didn’t.
I
wouldn’t have minded going in and joining them, but it might only make things tense for her. Not because of our relationship. Healy was a good friend of Fitzgerald’s; they’d always had a close relationship, with none of the tensions and stand-offs she faced from some of the other men in the murder squad; he was older, and he didn’t feel threatened like they did. She didn’t need to keep anything hidden from him. Even so, I didn’t know who else might be there or what they were talking about.

If it was work, it might be awkward. Either Fitzgerald would have to compromise herself by talking business in front of me, and that’d look bad if it got back to the station; or else I’d wind up sitting in the garden whilst the grown-ups discussed grown-up things.

I’d understand; but I’d be irritated too.

So I reversed out again and made my way down alongside the strand before turning round and making the circuit again to see if he’d gone yet.

Then I made it again when he hadn’t.

The third time I was tired of driving, and just parked by the side of the road where it was darkest and I had a view of the house. I switched the radio to the first station I could find that was quiet enough, and waited. I was getting quite a talent for waiting.

The radio was playing Billie Holiday, and it made me melancholy.

It was meant to.

And then I started to feel sorry for myself, that someone was in there with her whilst I was outside in the night, in my car. It was absurd the way we virtually had to make appointments to see one another.

But then that was my fault. Fitzgerald often said we should get a place together, somewhere we could both feel comfortable, and I was the one who constantly put off making that commitment. Not because I had any doubts about my relationship with her; it was something more vague, indefinable than that. Maybe it just came down to the fact that I’d always preferred to live alone and couldn’t imagine now doing anything else, or maybe I was avoiding making a commitment to the city. There was always something standing between me and just accepting the fact I was here, even as the years merged into each other and I showed no sign of getting out or even knowing where I’d go if I did.

Buying a house with Fitzgerald would be one more obstacle removed to my becoming part of the city rather than a perpetual outsider, which was how it had always been.

How I liked it.

I wasn’t sure I was ready to give that part of me up. To stop resisting.

Fitzgerald reckoned I made too much of it. A house was just a house, she said, it meant no more or less than that. It’d be somewhere to spend more time together, and it didn’t make sense to keep two places going when Dublin was such an expensive town to get by in.

I knew she was right, and we’d even gone so far as to start looking for a place, but I was always finding excuses why each place wouldn’t do. It was too far out from town, there was nowhere for me to work, the street was too quiet, the neighbour’s dog was barking when we went viewing. I was betraying her in a way, because buying a house with me was bound to attract even more attention to our relationship, single her out as being different in the department again, but she was still willing to do it, still willing to face all that crap.

When it came down to it, however, I always pulled back. My attachment to my apartment was still too strong to break, and I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, with different views, different sounds, a different set of coordinates to map into my head.

Eventually we’d quietly let the project drop, though I knew from the times I stayed round here that she still picked up brochures from real estate agents now and then; I’d found them stuffed down the sides of cushions or filed casually amongst the household bills, like letters from a secret lover. I really hated myself for being so pathetic sometimes.

I must have dozed briefly as I sat there that night, thinking, listening to the music, for the next thing I remember Billie Holiday had gone, travelling lightly on her way, and all I could hear was the loud beep of a car alarm being disengaged and I looked over to see Sean Healy and another man I didn’t recognise walking back to the car.

Someone else connected with the murder squad, I guessed.

Young. Not bad looking. Definite swagger about him.

They’d obviously been at Fitzgerald’s for some kind of briefing, and she was now at the door, seeing them off. She watched them climb in and reverse out of the drive into the road just like I’d done a half-hour ago, before stepping inside and closing the door behind her.

I tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible as they drove past on the other side of the road, then followed their headlights in the wing mirror back towards town.

I was pretty sure they didn’t see me.

Soon as the road was clear, I turned on the engine again and pulled over to the space they’d just vacated, hopped out and went up to ring the doorbell.

Fitzgerald answered almost immediately.

‘Forgotten something?’ she began, then stopped when she saw me. ‘Saxon.’

‘Grace.’

‘I thought you were—’

‘Healy, I know. I saw him leaving just now. I was parked across the street for a while out of sight, waiting for them to go. Who was the other one?’

‘That was Patrick Walsh. I told you about him.’

The cop who’d been on the training course in the States with Healy, much to Seamus Dalton’s annoyance. That explained the swagger then.

I followed Fitzgerald through into the kitchen. There were files scattered across the table, three cups half filled with cold coffee and a half-eaten packet of biscuits, a radio tuned to the same station I’d been listening to murmuring low.

Results of an evening’s work.

‘Have you eaten?’ she said. ‘I could fix you something.’

‘I’m good,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about me. You’re always trying to get me to look after myself better.’

‘Someone’s got to do it.’

‘It’s you you should be worried about. You look all in.’

‘You think I’m bad, you should see Healy. He’s spending all hours on the Marxman case, plus we still have plenty of other cases to be dealing with. It’s not like normal everyday murders just stop happening because there’s a higher-profile case going on. He’s been on the go since six this morning, and then this afternoon Draker calls us all in to discuss some hare-brained scheme for a gun amnesty and he expects us to put in all the preparation for him on it. Like we haven’t got enough to do with the Marxman as it is.’

‘An amnesty?’

‘You know, criminals get to hand in their weapons without fear of having them DNA-tested. The press and TV get lots of nice pictures of guns being pulverised. Plenty of headlines about making the streets safer to walk. They had one in London recently, that’s where Draker got the idea. He’s certainly never had an idea of his own. Lasted a month and they got twenty thousand guns handed in, handguns, assault rifles, machine guns, air pistols, half a million rounds of ammunition, even a three-foot cannon, and all applauded by the usual array of do-gooders, community workers and probation officers.’

‘Why is he suddenly doing this now?’

‘There’s talk of the Commissioner retiring. Again. Draker seems to think if he can get a few good press cuttings about how he’s making the city safe, he’ll up his chances. Plus I think he wants to punish me for going over his head to get the case off the anti-terrorist boys. You know how much he would’ve loved to offload it on to them and let them take the flak.’

‘He doesn’t deserve to be Commissioner.’

‘I don’t care if he deserves it or not. I’m backing him all the way. Anything that gets him out of my personal space has to be a good thing.’

‘Then
you
can apply to become Assistant Commissioner.’

‘I wouldn’t get it if he had his way, which he would if he was Commissioner; and I’m not sure I’d want it. I’m not a political animal, never have been, and they’re the only kind who last long in those positions.’ And she was right about that. ‘What are you doing out here, anyway? Just want some company, or is there something on your mind?’

‘Just company.’

‘Then let’s have a drink. Beer?’

‘Sounds perfect.’

She lifted a bottle out of the fridge, popped the lid and handed it to me in what looked like one smooth action. She was well named. I never had that kind of poise. That balance.

‘A gun amnesty would certainly be a good way for the Marxman to dispose of the Glock if he starts getting cold feet,’ I observed as we walked through into the sitting room and sat down on the couch. ‘No questions asked. No ballistic or forensic tests. Convenient.’

‘I’ve thought of that already,’ she said. ‘And if Draker thinks I’m going to not put any Glock that comes in through testing, he can think again. There’ve been few enough breaks on the case as it is without letting a possible lead go just because he thinks it’ll look good on his CV. This isn’t Texas, after all; any old psychopath couldn’t just walk in off the street and pick up a gun so long as he has enough change in his back pocket.’

‘Any old psychopath couldn’t do that in Texas either,’ I said, putting the bottle down on the floor and tugging roughly at my stubborn boots in an effort to pull them off. ‘You’re just letting your patronising Old World prejudices show through there.’

‘The point is that there’re plenty of guns in the States and there aren’t here,’ said Fitzgerald, ‘so if I get something that looks like it’s even been in the same room as the Marxman, I’m putting it in for tests, Draker’s bullshit amnesty or not.’

‘Which is why the Marxman probably wouldn’t risk disposing of the gun that way. He’d suspect that’s what you’d do. In fact, if he hears about an amnesty he’ll probably start suspecting you’ve set it up deliberately to catch him. Screw these boots.’

‘Here, let me.’

She knelt down in front of me and pulled at the remaining boot until it slipped off.

‘What about you?’ she said as she laid the two of them side by side on the hearth, reminding me for a moment of Felix’s shoes perched at the edge of the pier in Howth.

The last thing I wanted to be reminded of here, now.

‘You mean, have I made any progress on connecting Felix to the Marxman? Not an inch,’ I said. ‘And I know, I know, you warned me. You’re probably right. The photographs probably mean nothing. I’m reading too much into everything as usual. But I’m still convinced there’s something and I intend to keep niggling at it until I find what it is. There. I’ve warned you in advance, so you can’t grouch later when I won’t let the subject drop.’

She smiled, but didn’t pursue the subject.

Didn’t want to get into a fight.

‘What does Alice think?’ she asked disingenuously.

‘To tell you the truth, it’s hard to know what Alice thinks about anything,’ I said. ‘She’s a hard woman to get to the heart of. She’s an enigma wrapped inside a riddle inside a . . . whatever it is that old proverb says.’

‘Sounds like someone I know.’

‘Maybe that’s why I like her,’ I said, ‘though I know she’s not being completely straight with me.’

‘You like her?’

‘Maybe liking’s putting it too strongly. Let’s say I recognise a fellow soul. A fellow secretive type. I think she just needs some time to come round. But to answer your question, she still thinks her brother didn’t kill himself. She’s not buying the autopsy report.’

‘Relatives of suicides often refuse to accept their loved ones killed themselves,’ she said. ‘They take it as a rejection of them, and most of the time they’re right. I remember when I was first in uniform, I was stationed out in Monkstown near the harbour and we were constantly being called out to pull the suicides from the water where they’d jumped. That was bad enough, but it was dealing with the families afterwards that was the real hard part. It was like opening up Pandora’s box. Every emotion comes spilling out. Anger. Disbelief. Denial.’

Tell me about it, I thought. I’d spent years blaming myself for what happened to Sydney. Though it wasn’t like Pandora’s box with my family. The emotions weren’t desperate to get out there. You could’ve unlocked the box and left the lid open and tried enticing them out with candy and threats and promises and they’d still have preferred staying right where they were in the corner, in the dark, hiding.

‘Look,’ Fitzgerald went on when I didn’t answer, ‘I’m not going to start nagging you again, you’re a big girl now, but you shouldn’t let feeling sorry for her, if that’s what it is, lead you into something you’d be better off staying out of. No one ever killed themself because their life was uncomplicated.’

‘I do feel sorry for her,’ I said. ‘I think she’s lost right now without her brother. Doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know what to think. I know how she feels. I tried calling her again earlier this evening, but I forgot she’s not at the house anymore. In the end I just left a message saying if there was anything I could do, to call me.’

‘Should I be worried?’

‘She’s not my type.’

‘What is your type?’

‘I like them taller.’

‘Everyone’s taller than you.’

‘Miaow,’ I said. ‘That hurt.’

‘Well, I’m just glad she’ll be off my back now,’ Fitzgerald went on. ‘She’s been bugging me all day, calling and asking when I was going to release Felix’s body. Healy’s been getting calls from her too. I don’t know what she thought we were going to do with it – lose it? I don’t get her. She tells you her brother was murdered and then she can’t get the body back from the police quickly enough, as if he was some ordinary car smash victim.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘The truth. That the body was not my jurisdiction. That only the coroner could release it.’

‘And is he going to?’

‘No reason not to now the death certificate’s been completed. It’s usually just a matter of procedure after the autopsy so long as there’s no ongoing police enquiry. It could be six months till the inquest, longer. It wouldn’t make sense to keep his body till then. She’ll have Felix back soon enough. And then I hope that’s the last I ever hear from her. I’m trying to let Dalton deal with her as much as I can. Seems he’s taken quite a shine to her.’

‘Like she doesn’t have enough problems.’

‘Anything that keeps her away from me, I’m not complaining. In fact,’ she said, ‘maybe I should send Walsh round to see her instead. I hear he’s quite the charmer where women are concerned.’

‘Now I’m the one who’s worried.’

‘You needn’t be. I never sleep with my inferiors,’ said Fitzgerald with dignity. She reached over and took a swig of beer, then swallowed it quickly as she started to laugh quietly. ‘Though, I don’t know how I forgot to tell you this, he did ask me out to dinner.’

‘Get away.’

‘Couple of days ago. Just came right out with it.’

‘Asking out his own Chief Superintendent. I’m in awe. That boy has some nerve. He’ll go far. Though not with you, I hope. What did you say?’

‘I told him his behaviour was entirely inappropriate and that if he crossed the line one more time I’d have him transferred to traffic duties. That cut him down to size, though privately I was quite impressed. Like you say, it takes some nerve to ask your boss out.’

‘Is that why you’ve never asked Draker out?’

‘That and the fact I wouldn’t want to spend the night with anyone who made the prospect of being hanged, drawn and quartered seem attractive by comparison.’

‘I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.’

She smiled and reached out and took the bottle from my lips again, and it felt good to see her so relaxed; and I was suddenly lightheaded with gladness that I’d come round, that I’d waited outside till Healy and Walsh had gone and not driven home and gone to bed alone. Or maybe it was just the taste of beer after missing dinner that was making me lightheaded.

Whatever it was, it couldn’t last.

Before she’d had time to take another drink, there was a ringing from the phone in the hall, and Fitzgerald swore under her breath as she put down the bottle and went to answer it.

I listened to her voice through the doorway.

‘Yes . . . yes,’ I heard her murmur. ‘Yes, I know it. I’ll be right there.’

‘Is that what I think it is?’ I said when she reappeared.

Fitzgerald nodded.

‘Seems that our friend the Marxman may have struck again,’ she said. ‘Struck for real this time, I mean. And this time there’re two dead.’