‘Asking questions doesn’t count as bothering in my book,’ I said. ‘Don’t you want to know how Felix died?’
‘I know how he died. He committed suicide. The police told me exactly how it happened. I spoke to the detective in charge. And Alice knows it too.’
‘Is that another thing you know without her needing to tell you?’
‘That was something she told me. Not in so many words. In those exact words. She doesn’t think for one moment Felix was murdered. I mean, at first we all did. Thought it was the Marxman. But not anymore. Now we know the truth. I spoke to her last night on the telephone and she told me she was ready to put all her initial doubts about his death behind her.’
I was about to protest when I realised there was no point. If he was lying to me, he wasn’t going to suddenly stop because I got antsy. And if Alice had been lying to me or lying to Strange, then either way she must have her reasons.
I sipped at my coffee.
It was good.
He was right about that, at least.
I sat down next to him on a low wall.
He gazed out across the square like it was his.
‘Did you at least know that Felix was obsessed by the Marxman?’ I tried asking.
‘Felix?’
‘Yeah, Felix. Alice showed me a thick file of cuttings he’d taken from the newspapers about the case. He’d been following it from the start.’
‘I’m not going to call you a liar,’ Strange said with a thin smile. ‘If you say that Alice showed you a file of cuttings, then she showed you a file of cuttings. All I’m saying is that this is the first I’ve heard about it. He never shared any such obsession with me.’
‘Would he have done?’
‘Felix was my friend. He was more than a friend. We were both strangers here, we weren’t from here, so we knew what it was like not to fit in.’
‘You’re not from Dublin?’
‘I was born in South Africa,’ said Strange, ‘and sent here to school. You never really fit in. That’s why Felix and I understood one another so well. Why we connected. I admit we hadn’t seen as much of one another lately as in the past. He was following more of his own path, he didn’t need my guidance as much as he once had. And he’d not been well. Alice told me she’d mentioned that much to you. So if he did have this obsession which you claim, then he wouldn’t necessarily have told me about it anyway.’
‘Why did he call me that night if he didn’t know something?’
‘I don’t know, I really don’t,’ he said, shaking his head sadly. ‘Felix was complex. I admit that. I don’t know what was going through his head at the end. I am just sorry I couldn’t have been of more help to him in easing whatever pressures he felt were bearing down on him.’
‘What about the break-in?’ I pressed.
‘What about it?’
‘Seems to me that the burglar was looking for something. He left plenty of valuables lying about the place, camera equipment, the safe was untouched. All he took was a few worthless pieces to make it look like a bona fide job – and some photographs and a journal. Doesn’t that prove someone had it in for Felix?’
There was a silence.
‘I have the journal,’ said Strange at last. ‘It was never stolen. Felix gave it to me for safekeeping. The photographs too. He asked me to look after them.’
‘Why?’ I said, trying and probably failing to hide my disappointment.
‘I suppose the break-in made him realise that they were vulnerable, that they might be stolen, and he didn’t want that to happen.’
‘What was so precious about them that he feared losing them?’
‘I don’t know, I didn’t ask.’
‘You didn’t ask?’
‘If a friend asks for help, you don’t ask why, you either help or you don’t.’
‘I’d ask why.’
‘Well, I didn’t.’
And Fitzgerald thought Alice was tough work.
‘So where’s the stuff now?’ I said, knowing already what his answer would be.
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.’
Yeah, that was the one.
‘If that journal has something to do with why he died, which could explain why—’
‘You’re back to this again. You know, I’m beginning to think that it’s you who has the obsession. What could his journal have to do with his death? He killed himself.’
‘Alice doesn’t think so, whatever she might have told you. Don’t you think you owe it to her and Felix to explore every avenue before chalking his death up to a simple suicide?’
‘Alice is under terrible strain right now. As her friend, I do not believe that keeping investigating this matter is what is best for her. Especially when I’ve already told you that she has said not one word to me or any of her friends to make me think she disbelieves the police’s version of what happened in Howth.’
‘She told me that she did.’
‘I only have your word for that.’
And I could see how pointless it was asking him any more questions.
I drained the last of the coffee, crushed the paper cup and threw it in a perfect arc towards a nearby garbage can.
I missed.
Strange looked suitably disapproving.
‘OK, one more thing and then I’ll be out of your hair. Did Felix ever tell you anything, anything at all, that even suggested he might’ve been afraid?’
‘Nothing that I can remember,’ said Strange stiffly.
‘You saw no sign he was anxious?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t just mean the last few weeks.’
‘I told you. Nothing. At least . . .’
‘What?’
‘I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s just . . . I feel foolish even bringing this up, and you’re probably going to react entirely the wrong way, but Felix did once tell me that he used to share a house with a murderer.’
‘And that’s what you call nothing?’
‘Wait a moment now. Don’t be getting carried away here. It was just idle talk, he never told me more than that. It was a conversation we had years ago when I first met him, and I mean years. He simply told me he used to share a house with a murderer. He wouldn’t tell me any more about it. I don’t know where it was or when. I don’t know anything.’
‘Was the murderer ever caught?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Did he tell the police?’
‘I don’t know! I can see now that I shouldn’t have told you. It has nothing to do with Felix’s death. It was all a long time ago. Long forgotten.’
‘In my experience, murder is rarely forgotten.’
‘All the same,’ he replied, ‘I’m not letting you see the journal or the photographs, if that’s what you’re angling at. I can’t. Felix gave them to me under strict instruction. They’re safer where they are. You give me any reason to think that Felix’s death was anything more than an unfortunate tragedy, and I’ll hand them over to the police. Until then, I will keep my word.’
‘And if something was to happen to them in the meantime?’
‘Happen? Like what?’
‘If there was a fire, or if they were stolen. It happens. It might look suspicious if you had possession of them and suddenly they were gone. And say Felix was killed for the secrets contained in the journal, in the photographs? Who might be next?’
Strange looked momentarily disconcerted; the possibility had clearly never occurred to him before that keeping Felix’s secrets might be a dangerous business, although if he was telling the truth about never doubting that Felix had taken his own life, why should it have? But he still shook his head firmly. Felix’s secrets were staying exactly where they were.
‘Your choice,’ I said.
Chapter Eighteen
Strange may not have been for giving way, but it would still make me a whole lot easier in my mind if I knew where he was keeping Felix’s possessions. And I had a hunch I could
find out. I’d instilled a measure of doubt in his head. Now all I had to do was wait.
Sure enough, about a half-hour after Strange and I had parted company at the door of his gallery, he was on the move again, still wrapped in that distinctive fur coat of his. He went to the end of the lane, turned left into Crown Alley and then through the tunnel at the bottom and over the Ha’penny Bridge to the other side of the river. He didn’t look round once as he walked. He wasn’t expecting to be followed.
Along Bachelor’s Walk and then he crossed the busy junction at the bridge and made his way, still following the river, down towards the Custom House.
Strange lived out along the coast somewhere on the other side of town, I’d already checked that out, so I knew he wasn’t going home, and I doubted he’d be crossing over to the northside for any reasons of pleasure. The northside would hold few attractions for a man like Strange. He didn’t look like the sort who liked roughing it.
So where was he going?
I must admit I rather enjoyed following him through the streets, keeping him in sight, keeping my distance. I was out of practice; there hadn’t been much opportunity for this sort of thing since I left the FBI; and there was no denying I missed it. I felt my senses growing more alert, my eyes sharper. Maybe I’d missed my vocation. Maybe I should’ve been a stalker.
That ridiculous fur coat of his made it simple, not to mention a total self-absorption which made him not even consider the possibility he might be being followed or watched.
He turned aside before we reached the Custom House and followed the curve of the road round to the left towards the police station on the corner.
Surely he wasn’t going there?
No, he passed by, and turned up the next busy street.
Now I knew where he was going.
Soon he disappeared into a gloomy subway under the railway bridge and up the steps inside to the high-vaulted concourse of Dublin’s Central Station, where hundreds of passengers waited alongside piles of luggage, listening to the crackling announcements, squinting up at the board showing arrivals and departures, enduring the endless waiting, waiting, waiting that was the inevitable lot of the practised traveller.
I didn’t have to worry Strange would notice me here.
I stood by a long board showing timetables whilst he strode down towards the row of lockers that lined one wall near the entrance to the platforms.
There was a line of people queuing here for the gates to open on to the platform, but I could see him through the gaps between bodies, delving into his pocket for a key.
He slotted it into the hole and opened the door. I was too far away to see what he could see. I only saw him reach in, touching the things inside as if reassuring himself they were still safe, still there, then he closed the door again and twisted the key to lock it shut.
A brief glance round, then he turned and walked back the way he’d come, down the steps, and out. I followed to make sure he really had gone, then hurried back up to the station.
There was the one he’d unlocked.
I tried the handle out of habit, but of course it didn’t move. It wouldn’t have been difficult to prise it open – as Fitzgerald frequently reminds me, I have a greater range of anti-social skills than I have any right to feel proud of – but there was no point taking a risk right now. I had my answer. The rest could wait. To everything there is a season.
*******************
‘Sure I know Strange,’ said Burke when I told him what I’d been up to. ‘Know of him, anyway. Started out as a painter – watercolours, I think - but he never made it.’
‘A failed artist.’
‘The only thing worse than a failed artist,’ agreed Burke, ‘is a successful one. That’s why he turned to being a dealer, and now he’s swimming in money. Drowning in it. Least that’s what I hear. We ain’t exactly moving in the same social circles, you know. Though Vincent Strange, now, he has friends in high and low places. I see his picture all the time in the social diaries at the weekend. You know the way it goes, glass of shitty white wine in one hand, couple of well-dressed women with more tits than brain cells in the other.’
‘You don’t like him.’
‘Well spotted. You should be a detective.’
‘I’m too old. I’d never pass the medical.’ I stretched out a hand to stroke the cat that had hopped up on to my lap as soon as I sat down, despite all my best efforts to push the brute out of my way with my foot. The damn thing wouldn’t take no for an answer and I figured it was bad form to drink a man’s whiskey and then kick his cat, so I usually let it have its own way. ‘What was that reference to low places all about, anyway?’
‘There’ve always been rumours about Strange,’ Burke said.
‘A faint whiff of scandal?’
‘More like a stink,’ he said. ‘You remember Freddie Sheehy?’
‘Some gangster shot a couple of years back by his own boys. They’d stolen some painting from a big house out in the wilds somewhere and he tried to double-cross them.’
‘The very one,’ said Burke. ‘It turned out that Strange had had more than a few business dealings with Sheehy. They were all above board so far as anything’s above board with a man like Sheehy, but still it didn’t look good. Especially when a picture appeared after Sheehy’s death in the newspapers of him and Strange out at dinner with the good old boys, playing at the Godfather, brandy and cigars, the whole caboodle. I’m surprised you don’t remember.’
‘I don’t follow the local news.’
‘Unless it’s something gruesome like last night’s little entertainment. Well, the upshot was,’ said Burke, ‘that it was all hushed up nicely, no questions asked.’
‘Is this where the friends in high places come in?’
‘Strange went to school with Grace’s friend the Assistant Commissioner.’
‘Draker? No shit.’
‘Expensive place out by Howth where the children of the ruling classes get shielded from the likes of you and me. Then, when they grow up and take their rightful place at the top of the tree, they spend the rest of their lives making sure no one else climbs up and none of them fall down. Strange’s certainly had a few helping hands keeping him on his branch.’
‘You’re not going to start giving me some speech about the workers, I hope.’
‘I’ll spare you this one time, girl, since I’m in a good mood. Save it up for a rainy day.’ Then he said, almost as an afterthought: ‘He collects guns too, you know.’
Talk about leaving the best till last.
‘Isn’t that slightly – how shall I put this? – illegal in Dublin?’
‘Nothing’s illegal if you know the right people, and I’d say we already established Strange’s credentials there. Let’s just say he gets the necessary permits, or no one ever gets round to asking. I mean, I’m not talking Uzis or Kalashnikovs here,’ he added.
‘What kind are you talking about?’
‘Antiques. I’m no expert in that kind of medieval shit. World War Two guns, is what I heard, stuff going right back to the Civil War. Winchesters, duelling pistols, Remingtons, I dunno. I get some of the magazines coming through here sometimes, you should see the squirrels who come in here looking for them. They should wear badges: I Got No Penis, Let Me Look At Pictures Of Guns Instead. Me, I saw enough of them in the army.’
‘Penises or guns?’
‘Both.’
I was thinking. Wondering first if Fitzgerald had thought of checking the mailing lists of US gun magazines coming into Dublin. Finding someone with a fixation on weapons was a possible angle for the Marxman. But mostly I was just wondering about Vincent Strange.
About the gun Fitzgerald’s divers had pulled that morning from the water near where Felix had died. An old pistol from the war, Fitzgerald had said they were looking for, and that’s just what it seemed to be. It was being tested right now for Felix’s prints.
Felix was afraid in the days before he died. Afraid enough to go look
ing for a gun to protect himself with? Alice said he didn’t have one, and that he wouldn’t have known how to shoot straight with one even if he did, but there was plenty else he had kept back from her; why not this too? And where was Felix more likely to get some quote old pistol from the war unquote than from a man who collected them and who’d been one of his closest friends?
I was thinking about all that when my cellphone went off, startling Hare and making him skitter like some frightened mouse off my lap and into the back room. Just when it seemed as if he was settling in for a long session. Thank God for technology.
The call came from Niall Boland, I discovered when I answered it. I’d called him earlier before heading for Strange’s, figuring he might be as good a source of information about the shooting at the church as I was likely to get at short notice, but the phone had gone unanswered. I hadn’t heard from Fitzgerald since she left her house last night either, and I could feel myself getting slowly more uptight with being out of the loop.
This must be how a drug addict feels when he’s running low on supplies.
‘I got your message,’ he said now. ‘You wanted me?’
‘Just checking if you were free for breakfast.’
‘Sorry. I had the phone switched off. Probably just as well. I’m supposed to be on a diet. Cassie says I could do with losing a few pounds.’
More like a few hundred pounds, I couldn’t help thinking.
Boland was what you could call the solid type.
‘Cassie’s your new girlfriend, right? What’s she like?’
‘She’s not my ex-wife. That’s good enough for me. Listen,’ he said, ‘if you want to talk, you can always come out jogging with us if you like.’
‘You and Cassie?’ I said, trying to imagine Boland jogging.
‘No, me and Walsh,’ Boland said. ‘He’s in training for the Dublin marathon. Reckons he can set a new record for the DMP. He’s got me out training with him. I get to ride a bike and work the stopwatch, he does all the hard work.’
‘Sounds like a good arrangement.’
‘I’m meeting him in half an hour down by the quays. You’re welcome to tag along.’
The Dark Eye (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 2) Page 11
