Had he been trying to tell me the place was somehow significant?
Had he wanted to show me something?
‘I found something else too,’ Boland said before I left.
He showed me the file he’d uncovered in the archives.
A fifteen-year-old girl by the name of Lucy Toner had gone missing from her street in Howth one hot August around the same time Berg was living there. The police at first had treated her disappearance as a straightforward missing persons case, and even told the family she’d probably run away (those were less sophisticated days), and it was only when a dog was seen digging furiously at the bottom of the girl’s own garden three days later that they finally realised the truth lay closer to home. Lucy had been sexually assaulted and strangled, though the actual cause of death was asphyxiation brought on by her mouth being filled with earth.
Not a pleasant way to die.
‘And this was where?’ I said.
‘Just round the corner from the Bergs’ house,’ said Boland.
‘Was anyone ever picked up for it?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes,’ said Boland. ‘A man by the name of Isaac Little. He was – is – a paedophile who’d recently finished a prison sentence for touching up little girls. He lived about three doors down from Lucy. When his house was searched, police found he’d set up a little den on the second floor so that he could look down into a children’s playground nearby. He used to go up there and play with himself while he watched them. There were stains everywhere. On the carpet, walls, furniture.’
‘I get the picture. What happened to him?’
‘He confessed eventually, though retracted the confession the day before he was due in court. He’s protested his innocence ever since.’
‘What about Lucy Toner’s family? They still live in the area?’
‘No. The whole thing was a mess. The family owned some kind of general store near the sea front. The father was a musician of sorts, he died of cancer about a year before the daughter was killed. The mother was in and out of mental institutions her whole life, and after the murder just seemed to go totally to pieces. She finally drowned herself a couple of days before Isaac Little’s trial was due to begin. Off the pier in Howth, no less.’
‘Killing yourself there must be a Howth tradition.’
‘A younger daughter went totally off the rails herself, ended up in care. An elder brother dropped off the map.’
The usual unhappy fallout of a senseless murder. I’d seen it happen a thousand times.
But did it have anything to do with what was happening now? Had Felix suspected Little was innocent, that someone in the house at the time was the real killer?
Was that what he meant about sharing a house with a murderer?
If so, then it didn’t take much guessing where I had to start.
Apart from Alice, there was only one member of that household still alive.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I decided to take the train rather than the Jeep. It seemed I hardly ever took it out of its parking space now. The streets were clogged with traffic these days, like a storm drain in a back yard with leaves in fall. Was it getting worse or was I just getting less tolerant? All I knew was that by the time I got out to the harbour my nerves would be strung so tight the wind coming off the water might make me snap like a frozen blade of grass.
I got to the station in good time for the next train north, fished change out of my pocket for a ticket, then climbed the stairs through the flow of people coming the other way until I emerged at the top into a warm wind.
A train was turning the corner, and I climbed in the first door that presented itself, found a seat by the window and sat back for the journey, staring out of the dirty window, ignoring the other passengers. I wanted to think, and anyway I hate starting conversations with strangers, because when they hear my accent they always want to know more about me, where I’m from, what I’m doing here. I have no answer to that last one.
People always want to know stuff, that’s the problem, and I have no desire to tell them. Why are they so interested in my life when it isn’t even that interesting to me?
The train moved slowly through the city. Looking out, I saw overgrown railway sidings with out-of-service engines standing idle and rusting, stretches of trackside scrub giving way to grey yards and gardens marked by lonely, pathetic trees; chimneys, churches; lock-up garages scrawled with unimaginative graffiti; bridges black with smoke. The spaces all strewn with litter and stray scrags of dogs and children, all equally bored, with nothing to do, until gradually the grubby outskirts of the city, as bleak as any of the downtown projects I’d been in back home, began to fall behind, not keeping up in more ways than one, and the train came in sight of the sea and I saw the grey water slapping listlessly at the edges of the land where the city came to soak its feet.
The light was metallic and uninviting on the water.
Then there we were.
The end of the line.
Howth.
I climbed out and began to make my way along the harbour road, walking a way before realising I didn’t know where the hell I was going. I’d been thinking of the last time I’d been here, the night that Felix died. Now I shook my head, told myself to concentrate.
I took out the scrap of paper on which I’d written down the address Boland had given me, then looked around till I found a map near the harbourmaster’s office.
It was one of those maps they put up to point tourists in the direction of whichever attraction will be most pleased to take their money. Castle this way, boat trips out to the island that way, and when you’re done the tea shops are over there.
Now beat it back to wherever you came from, suckers. And don’t have a nice day now.
But at least it gave the names of the roads and I was able to get a rough idea of the right direction. I glanced back and saw the houses rising up . . . what was it now? Church Street, that was it, and then winding on further up the side of Howth Hill. Somewhere in one of those narrow lanes was where I’d find Paddy Nye. I crossed the road and began to climb.
It didn’t take long to find the place I was looking for, though it would be easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it.
Nye Photographics read the sign across the front, and in the window sat a range of cameras in front of pictures of gap-toothed kids in technicolour.
A bell chinged as I pushed the door and went inside. There was a woman standing behind the counter. Small, pretty. The wife, presumably. She smiled when she saw me, but the smile vanished faster than a snowflake landing on a furnace when she realised I wasn’t there to buy anything.
‘You want to speak to Paddy?’ A sigh. ‘Very well. Wait here.’
She ducked out of a doorway at the back of the shop and I could hear her footsteps receding down a corridor. Left alone, I could hear only the ticking of a clock that I couldn’t see and a murmur of slightly raised voices. Cameras stared at me from behind glass.
A few moments later she was back, and she had Paddy Nye with her.
At least I presumed it was Nye. Tall, curly-haired, with a kind of vigorous, hearty look about him, the hiking type, checked shirt and jeans with a belt.
He stared at me with little interest.
‘Can I help you?’
‘That’s a question only you can answer. My name’s Saxon,’ I said.
‘If you’re trying to sell something . . .’
‘Nothing like that. I want to talk about Felix Berg.’
There was no hint of emotion in his voice as he replied.
‘I have nothing to say about Felix,’ he said.
‘Not even though he died down there in the harbour about a week ago?’
‘What does that have to do with me? Felix and I lost contact a long time ago.’
‘You don’t care what happened to him?’
‘As a matter of fact, no. Should I?’
‘You were friends.’
‘And like I told you, that was
a long time ago.’
His eyes shifted and he looked back over my shoulder suddenly as the outline of a man appeared on the other side of the glass, looking in, his hand reaching for the door handle.
Nye Photographics did have some customers then.
A glance passed between Nye and the woman, then he said to me: ‘Come through. We can talk more freely out here.’
He led me through the same doorway at the back of the store and down a narrow tiled corridor to another door leading out into the garden. Because the house was built on the hill, the garden was almost precipitous, dropping down in steps towards another house below. We were flying above it, almost looking down the chimney. The view ahead was entirely of the sea, dazzlingly blue once the water left the land and flecked with white this morning, with the harbour and the boats like a child’s toys, and beyond that – Ireland’s Eye, clear, bright.
There were a couple of chairs here. Evidently he’d been sitting reading when I called. A cup of coffee sat by the chair on the stone flagstones; I could smell the heat rising from it.
A book lay open on the ground next to it.
He didn’t ask me to sit down.
‘That’s some view,’ I said.
‘I’m glad you like it.’
‘That’s Ireland’s Eye, isn’t it?’
He turned and regarded the island briefly. In this light it looked almost close enough to have tossed a stone on to it.
‘I tried to get hold of a copy of your book,’ I lied, ‘but . . .’ I tailed off.
‘You couldn’t find it. I’m not surprised. It wasn’t exactly a bestseller.’
‘You like it out there?’
He nodded. ‘Ireland’s Eye is the only reason I still hang around this dump. If it wasn’t for that place, I’d have been gone years ago.’
‘It must mean a lot to you.’
‘Not just to me. My wife’ – and here he nodded back towards the house – ‘feels the same way. It’s a patch of wildness right on the edge of the city. An escape from all this noise. It couldn’t be much closer without touching the land, and yet when you’re there you could be a thousand miles from civilisation. If you call a city civilisation. I like that contrast. I like the fact that it’s there, just waiting to be explored. Your own and yet belonging to everyone. We have a boat. We often go out there. Even spend a few nights out there sometimes.’
He stopped, looking a little embarrassed.
‘What did you say your name was again?’
‘Saxon.’
‘Well, Saxon, I don’t want to be rude, but I really have no interest in getting involved in anything to do with Felix Berg. I was friends with him a long time ago. It’s not a part of my life I want to revisit.’
‘I don’t want to cause you any trouble,’ I said. ‘It’s just Felix’s sister asked me to find out why he killed himself, and I discovered that you were his friend, that you shared a house together here in Howth some years back. I thought maybe—’
‘That I might know something about his life now? I haven’t seen Felix for ten years, longer. That is, I haven’t seen him in the flesh. I’ve seen his picture.’
‘You didn’t stay in touch?’
‘I didn’t stay in touch with him. He stayed in touch with me. If you can call it that.’
‘Stayed in touch how?’
He gave a small, embarrassed laugh.
‘For years after I stopped being part of Felix’s circle, I used to get stuff sent to me. Catalogues of his latest exhibitions, newspaper clippings about his success, photographs of him meeting various important people at functions in the city.’
‘You think it was coming from Felix?’
‘I know it came from Felix. That was Felix’s style. He liked to make people feel small. Remind them that they didn’t have his talent, his success. Put them down. That’s what he was doing by sending me all that crap. Trying to destroy my confidence. Even when I published my first and so far only book of photographs he sent me a copy of a bad review that appeared in one of the art journals. Just in case I hadn’t seen it.’
‘Did you ever confront him about it?’
‘What would’ve been the point? Felix liked to play games. Liked to be cruel. If I’d let him know that he was getting to me, it would simply have made him worse. It was better to stay quiet, wait and hope he got tired of it, let it stop of its own accord.’
‘And did it – stop?’
‘Not entirely. I didn’t get messages every week, no, but they still came intermittently. I learned to recognise the packages and throw them out without looking inside.’
‘Is that why you didn’t go to the funeral?’
‘What makes you think I got an invite?’
‘Did you?’
‘I did,’ he conceded. ‘I read about what happened to Felix in the paper, next thing I get an invite to his funeral. I didn’t bother answering it.’
‘You didn’t feel the need to speak to Alice even?’
I meant nothing by the remark, but he snapped back instantly.
‘So you know about me and Alice. Big deal. That was ancient history too. It all happened way before I met my wife, and I haven’t seen her for years either.’
‘I wasn’t trying to . . . do you mean you and Alice were lovers?’
‘Isn’t that what you were getting at?’
‘No,’ I said honestly. ‘I thought she was Paul Vaughan’s girlfriend.’
He pulled a face like he pitied me for knowing so little.
‘Yeah, she was Paul’s girlfriend. And mine. And Christ knows who else’s. She’d have moved us all into the house if there’d been enough room. Had us all waiting our turn. I can see you’re surprised. You don’t seriously buy that prim and proper act she puts on these days, do you? I remember what she was like. I think she screwed just about every man who was vaguely connected to the art scene in Dublin in those days. Including Felix himself, I shouldn’t wonder. Oh. I can see that part isn’t news to you, anyway.’
Was my face so easy to read?
‘You sound bitter.’
‘Things didn’t end well between Alice and me. I was in love with her. I wanted her for myself. I didn’t like the fact that her bedroom was busier than Grand Central Station during rush hour. In the end I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to get out before I went as crazy as Paul, before she had me eating out of her hand the way he did.’
He gazed towards Ireland’s Eye, eyes screwed tight in a frown, like he was remembering and didn’t like what he remembered.
‘But I still don’t see what any of this has got to do with what happened to Felix. He killed himself, didn’t he? I don’t know why and I don’t care. It’s nothing to me.’
‘Alice still thinks he was murdered,’ I said.
Nye laughed.
‘She would think that. Alice always had a flair for the melodramatic. Simple things were never good enough for her.’
‘That’s what Gina said too.’
‘Who’s Gina?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Does Alice think I did it then?’
Where did that come from?
‘She never mentioned you,’ I said.
‘Really?’
‘Not a word.’
I couldn’t say for sure, but he looked almost disappointed.
‘So where’d you get my name?’
‘I was rooting around and it came up. I’m just trying to find out as much as I can about Felix, so that I know him a bit better. Finding out who he used to live with is part of it.’
‘It’s not about that crazy story he used to tell, is it?’ he asked.
‘Crazy story?’
‘About one of us being a murderer. He always used to tell us that, have us looking askance at one another. Alice was the same. She had a million stories. Like the time she told me she was being stalked. I learned to stop believing them after a while. If anyone was a murderer it was her and Felix. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that they�
�d bumped off the old dear who brought them up so that they could get their hands on the inheritance.’
‘I was thinking more of Lucy Toner.’
‘Who?’ he said quickly.
‘The young girl who lived round the corner,’ I said. ‘She was murdered.’
A nod.
‘I remember it now. Some pervert went to jail for it, isn’t that right?’
‘He says he’s innocent.’
‘Don’t they all?’
He wasn’t wrong there.
‘It’s just another piece of old history,’ he said. ‘Felix, Alice, now this girl. I don’t know what lies and fables Alice has been feeding you, but I don’t care. I left all that behind me a long time ago. This is my life. The shop. My wife, Tricia. My young son. Nothing else counts.’
And his gaze wandered out again towards Ireland’s Eye like a drowning man clinging on to a rock. And Ireland’s Eye shimmered mysteriously in the bright light and ignored him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lawrence Fisher rang as I was on the way back to town to ask if I wanted to meet for dinner.
‘What happened to Miranda? You two have a lovers’ tiff ?’
‘Don’t start that again. Besides, she’s going to be there too,’ Fisher said. ‘And I already called Grace and she says she can make it. What do you say?’
‘How can I say no?’
Any chance to pick Miranda Gray’s brains about Felix, after all.
We arranged to meet at some restaurant called Nemo’s. I hadn’t heard of it, but Fisher gave me directions. He had no idea what the food would be like since Miranda had booked the table, but he had high hopes. The booking was for nine. That left plenty of time for calling in on Burke. I stopped on the way to pick up doughnuts and a couple of cartons of bad coffee.
‘You not got a home to go to?’
‘Is that how you greet all your customers?’
‘Most of them, yeah.’
‘No wonder you never sell any books.’
I passed him the coffee and he looked at it like it was poisoned, which, once I tasted it, I realised mightn’t be far off the mark. The doughnuts got a better reception. He picked one out and devoured it in two bites, then reached for another, brushing the sugar on to his pants.
The Dark Eye (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 2) Page 18
