I stumbled off the couch to the door and pressed the button.
‘Fitzgerald,’ crackled a voice from the street below.
‘Grace?’
‘How many other Fitzgeralds do you know? Can I come up?’
‘Of course you can come up,’ I said. ‘But where’s your key?’
‘I wanted to check you were awake first.’
‘I am now,’ I said, pondering the logic of waking someone up to find out if they were asleep, and buzzed her in.
By the time I’d found my own key and unlocked the door, the elevator door across the landing was already opening.
‘You look like shit,’ she said to me brightly as she stepped out.
And a good morning to you too, Chief Superintendent.
‘Yeah, well, I didn’t exactly have a great night,’ I said.
‘You’re not the only one.’
But I couldn’t help noticing, as she shuffled out of her coat, how great she looked however little sleep she must have got. Even with her long black hair tied up tight under control she couldn’t disguise that great figure of hers, those dark eyes, the way she moved.
‘I hear Dalton gave you a hard time,’ she said.
‘How’d you find out?’
‘The officer who took you down—’
‘Simpson.’
‘Simpson, yeah. He’s a friend of Boland, apparently.’ She meant Sergeant Niall Boland, who worked alongside her in the murder squad, albeit at a fairly low level and destined to stay that way by all accounts. ‘He called Boland from the station to tell him what had happened. Seems he felt bad about it. He’d heard you arguing and suspected Dalton had crossed the line but couldn’t say anything till he was sure he wasn’t around.’
‘Crossing the line’s what he’s best at.’
‘Dalton’s been having some problems,’ agreed Fitzgerald tentatively. ‘Things are changing too much and he doesn’t like it. He’s convinced we’re freezing him out. Ever since the US trip it’s been building up. Last night it just came to a head maybe.’
The US trip, I’d forgotten about that. After years of arguing and pitching and begging Fitzgerald had finally persuaded the head of the murder squad, Assistant Commissioner Brian Draker – a man who considered his real job to be playing golf with the Commissioner whilst simultaneously blowing off whichever time-serving paper-pusher happened to be clogging up the department of justice that month – to find the money to send some of the team on a new FBI-run training programme in the States.
A ten-week residency, the course was designed to train police officers in a series of situations from crime scene analysis to terrorism to serial murder. Sending officers there was meant to make the Dublin police department look more professional, not that that’d be too difficult, since they still had to contend with a public image of ramshackle incompetence and one of the lowest clear-up rates this side of Moscow; but cheap as the course was, it had still been a battle for Fitzgerald to squeeze the money out of Draker.
Short of drawing lots, which was worse, there was no way of satisfying all the officers who wanted to take advantage of the course that the two places which were eventually agreed on had been fairly picked. Fitzgerald, as head of investigation, was the one left to choose, and she’d passed over Dalton in favour of Sean Healy, who was, like Dalton, one of the most experienced of the squad but an altogether steadier, less prickly character. The second place had gone to Patrick Walsh, a young, ambitious police officer who’d been considered a good investment in the future since everyone in the DMP accepted he was going places.
Including him.
They were good choices.
That Fitzgerald had left herself off the list – and I knew better than anyone how painful that decision had been for her – didn’t make Dalton’s fury any less incendiary or his paranoia any less intense, and he’d made no secret of either, spinning against Fitzgerald where he could in the department, stirring up disaffection amongst some of the other officers.
I could understand the reaction, I knew what it was like to be snubbed, but it had still been childish; it was time he got over the bruising it had caused to his delicate male ego, and I told her so. The hesitation before she answered was brief, but she did hesitate.
‘Do you want me to pull him up on this?’ she said.
Was she kidding? Nothing would make me happier than to see Dalton’s balls nailed to the wall and him taking his rightful place in the unemployment line where I wouldn’t have to deal any more with his sorry excuse for an attitude.
On the other hand – and shit, how I hated using those words – I knew how much Fitzgerald still needed him. He’d been in the murder squad nearly longer than anyone, had been there even before Fitzgerald was put in charge of all day-to-day murder enquiries, and she didn’t have enough of that kind of experience around to throw it away. Dalton may have been an asshole, but he was an asshole who was good at his job. That made a difference.
‘Forget it,’ I forced myself to say eventually, and tried to suppress the annoyance I felt when I saw the relief in Fitzgerald’s face. That was what happened when you belonged to an institution, when you were a part of it day in, day out. FBI, Dublin Metropolitan Police, Boy Scouts: didn’t matter, you just ended up wanting a quiet life, no trouble, which meant you cut corners, made compromises. I’d have probably done the same in her place.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t hate it when I saw it happening.
To hide my annoyance, I made my way through to the kitchen and started looking for coffee. Checked my appearance in the mirror briefly as I passed to see if Fitzgerald was right. I didn’t look too bad, considering. It was only next to her I looked like shit.
But then most people did.
Still, I straightened my hair best I could. Made an effort.
‘You want some breakfast?’ I shot back.
‘Breakfast? Do you know what time it is?’
I checked the window. The light was harsh and the noise of the traffic was rising up, horns blaring angrily. It could’ve been any time of day.
‘Surprise me,’ I said.
‘It’s gone three,’ she said, regarding me critically with those dark eyes of hers. ‘You must’ve been taking sleeping pills again.’
‘Just a couple.’
‘Why do you keep taking those things?’
‘To help me sleep. That’s what they do. That’s why they’re called sleeping pills.’
‘You’d sleep better,’ said Fitzgerald, ‘if you had a healthier lifestyle—’
‘Dined on organic yoghurt and did yoga, I know,’ I interrupted her.
‘You know I’m right.’
‘Any fool can be right,’ I said, opening the fridge door and kneeling down to take a look inside. ‘The trick is knowing when it’s better to be wrong. Christ, I really need to get something for the fridge.’
‘What, apart from the six bottles of Bud and the out-of-date microwave curry?’ she said. ‘Here, I already anticipated that you’d have a problem.’
I looked up, and there she was handing me a paper bag and a carton of orange, cold, like it was straight from the fridge.
Which it was. Just not mine.
She must’ve picked it up on her way round. She knew me too well. A few months ago she’d turned up with one of those machines that squeeze juice for you, but I’d never got round to working out how to use it. Life’s too short for clearing up orange peel was what I reckoned. If I lived up a mountain, sure, but what was the point of being thirty seconds from a hundred different stores if you still behaved like some survivalist in North Dakota, hunting and gathering your own food and drinking water from streams?
Drink the water from streams round here, anyhow, and you’d most likely wind up in hospital having your stomach pumped. And that’s just the way I liked it. I’d never been one for roughing it. I popped opened the orange and poured a glass, forgetting about coffee for now. Reached into the bag and took a bite straight out of a croissant
.
‘Are you going to tell me about last night?’ she said.
‘There’s not much to tell,’ I said, but I told her all the same.
About the call Felix had made to me.
About what he’d said about someone trying to kill him.
How I’d gone out there and waited and waited and got tired of waiting and then found him lying dead in the water.
She didn’t interrupt; but when I finished she shook her head.
‘Dammit, Saxon, the risks you take. He could’ve been anyone.’
‘He wasn’t.’
‘You could’ve been killed.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Not this time, no. But what about next time, and the time after that?’
‘He said someone was trying to kill him.’
‘And it seems like he was right. But just out of curiosity you walk out of here anyway whilst there’s a killer running round the city taking pot shots at people?’
‘There was something about what he said. About the way he said it. It intrigued me. Now? I don’t know.’ I stopped. My reasons for going to the lighthouse suddenly sounded weak even to me. I felt foolish. But then I’d been right. He did have something to say.
And now he’d never get the chance to say it.
‘I guess there’s no doubt,’ I said, ‘that it was Felix Berg in the water?’
‘It was Felix all right,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘His sister came down to the mortuary to identify the body this morning. He lived with her, apparently, somewhere in Temple Bar.’
‘How did she look?’
Fitzgerald considered the question.
‘Kind of blank,’ she said eventually. ‘Cold. Face like a mask. Ice queen type. Not that I should complain. Anything’s better than crying.’
It sounded callous, but I knew what she meant. I’d been in the same position when I was in the FBI and people came in to ID bodies. You find yourself just wishing they wouldn’t make a scene because that makes things more difficult for you. It doesn’t matter how many times it’s happened or how much of that crap they give you about trauma counselling and the seven stages of grieving and how to guide victims’ families through the gates, you still don’t know how the hell you’re supposed to help someone who’s suffering like that. You just find yourself wishing they’d wait until they’re home before breaking down. So that it’s not your problem.
‘You get to talk to her?’ I said.
‘Briefly. She wasn’t exactly in the mood for answering questions. All she said was that she left the house shortly after ten last night and didn’t even know her brother was gone until the police turned up first thing.’
‘Must’ve been a shock.’
‘If it was, she wasn’t giving anything away. The only thing she couldn’t understand, she said, was what he was doing out there.’ Fitzgerald paused, like she was wondering whether to tell me the next part. ‘She was also asking about you,’ she said at last.
‘That’s understandable,’ I said. ‘I found her brother’s body.
I was who he went out there to meet. It’s only natural she’d want to talk to me. I’d want to talk to me too. I guess I should go see her. Find the right words. You know how good I am at that. Not.’
I sensed a resistance in her to the suggestion.
‘You don’t think I should go,’ I said.
‘I just don’t want you getting involved,’ she said.
‘I don’t intend getting involved,’ I said.
‘Famous last words.’
Chapter Six
I meant what I said to Fitzgerald. I was only going to speak to Alice, I wasn’t going to get involved. In retrospect I should have realised the dangers, like an alcoholic thinking one little drink won’t hurt. One thing always leads to another.
All I can say is my intentions were pure.
Makes a change.
As soon as Fitzgerald had gone, I showered and changed. It didn’t seem right to go and see a dead man’s sister in the same clothes you were wearing when you found his body. Especially after spending the hours since sleeping in them.
Then it was down the stairs and out. Melt into the crowd. The only way to live.
The streets were full of people, drifting in and out of stores, laden down with bags. What did they buy so much of?
Nothing that they needed, that much was for sure. It was just stuff to fill some emptiness inside them. Though what did I have to be so condescending about? We all need something to fill the emptiness. We all disappear into something.
With me, whether in the FBI or afterwards trying to scratch a career out of writing, it had always been work. Maybe that’s why I’d been so keen to go round and see this Alice: to cover some emptiness of my own. The same emptiness that made me take refuge in sleeping pills. Still, I put it from my mind. Whatever. There’s no point immersing yourself in something in order to stop self-doubt coming if you let it creep in anyway. Besides, the city made it hard for me to feel down for long.
It’s strange I have such a desire to live surrounded by people, thousands of people, when the truth is that I can’t say I care for them much. What I need is the noise they make, the confusion, the carnival of aromas, that strange crackle like static against the skin that reminds you you’re alive almost without you having to put in any of the effort. Dublin’s a small city compared to places I’d lived before, and if it was ethnic diversity you wanted, the city as a global melting pot, then you’d be better off in Idaho. But things were getting better, the city was opening up slowly, and there was still that undeniable static when you walked. The trick was to make sure you kept the right distance. That was a necessity which had caused enough problems for me in my personal life – someone was always wanting me to give away more of myself, and I’m just not the revealing type – but when it came to forging a relationship with a city, it worked just fine. We understood one another. We didn’t get in each other’s way. It worked just fine with Fitzgerald too. She understood my need for reticence. She didn’t mistake what others saw as my apparent aloofness for a lack of caring.
I felt a little better as I made my way down through town. That was what mattered. Like I’d been kick-started into life again. Like I’d been gifted a day, or what was left of it.
By the time I’d reached Temple Bar, I felt almost human again. A couple of centuries ago, Temple Bar was the centre for the city’s lowlife, prostitutes and drunks and villains, and some might say it hadn’t changed much except the villains now wore better labels on their clothes. Neglected and crumbling for decades, the area had since been turned over by the planners into affecting some pseudo-bohemian feel, like Covent Garden or Tribeca. The warehouses had been converted into expensive apartments for pretentious twenty and thirty-somethings; the alleyways were filled with faux-ethnic shops, exotic restaurants, bars, galleries, small theatres, left-field cultural centres. Every artist in the city seemed to have at least one foot in the district, though the irony was that one toe was about all most could afford these days, few of the people who’d made the district what it was in the past years now being able to afford to live there. It was never really my scene. Even though I’d made my living as a writer since leaving the FBI and coming (fleeing?) to Dublin, I’d never felt comfortable in those circles, still regarded them with suspicion – and the suspicion was mutual. Politics didn’t help. Self-styled intellectuals in Dublin make your average New York liberal look like Howard Stern.
I’d always felt more comfortable with cops anyway, which no doubt explained how I’d fished up with Fitzgerald.
Like calling to like.
Felix Berg’s place was right in the heart of Temple Bar and hard enough to find for those who didn’t know what they were looking for. Maybe he liked it that way. Or had liked, I corrected myself. I had to weave through a maze of lanes before finding the low archway that led through a tunnel into the narrow cobbled street where Fitzgerald had told me he’d lived; and even then the door didn’t have a nameplate on
like the other doors, just a number nine and a buzzer.
It was a tall house, three or four storeys, it was hard to tell from the ground floor, and it looked empty. I don’t know what I’d expected. Berg had been a pretty successful photographer, from what Fitzgerald had told me earlier whilst I got ready, but he clearly didn’t feel the need to put his wealth on show to prove it.
This was more the kind of place where you came to hide away.
I rang the bell.
No answer.
Rang again.
The same no answer.
That wasn’t so surprising. If the press hadn’t found out yet that it was Berg who’d been shot last night, they soon would. The DMP leaked worse than a beggar’s tin roof. There was more chance of keeping a secret by broadcasting it on the nine o’clock news.
I suddenly realised that I should’ve called ahead to let his sister know I was coming, know who I was at least. It was just another example of how useless I was at doing the right thing, saying the right words. I shouldn’t have come, I thought, and remembered as I did so that those were the same words I’d said to myself last night at the lighthouse. Feeling my earlier positive mood start to dissipate, I stepped back and glanced up at the empty windows one last time to make sure no one was looking out, before turning to go—
Then I stopped.
There was a woman standing in the archway, staring at me. Dark hair pulled almost painfully tight into her scalp. Face drawn, hands clasping the collar of her coat nervously. There was something birdlike and fragile about her. Something . . . breakable. It unnerved me.
How long had she been there?
‘Alice?’ I said.
Chapter Seven
‘You were there,’ were her first words to me. There was the same trace of an accent there, but again it escaped me. ‘Last night. The police told me. Can I ask you something?’
‘Of course. That’s why I’m here.’
‘Were you sleeping with Felix?’
‘No,’ I said, and nearly laughed with surprise. It was the last question I’d expected. ‘I’d never met your brother before. I didn’t even know what he looked like.’
The Dark Eye (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 2) Page 3
