‘Like Alice?’
She smiled.
‘There you go again, trying to get me to be indiscreet.’
‘Don’t you therapists ever swap stories of your patients?’
‘Only with other therapists,’ said Miranda. ‘That way we keep the craziness in house.’ And she and Fisher laughed together like the old friends they were. Once more I felt excluded, like I did when I was with Fitzgerald’s circle. It’s like I didn’t belong anywhere, just as Felix had told me that first night on the phone. I was the perpetual ghost at the feast.
Outside looking in.
I decided to try a different tack to stop myself drowning in self-pity.
‘Did you tell Alice her brother confessed to being the Marxman?’ I asked.
‘Fisher! You told her that?’
‘Sorry.’
Fisher looked as sheepish as a small boy caught stealing candy.
‘And there you were giving lectures on professional ethics to Saxon. You could do with a few reminders yourself. Don’t bother defending yourself.’
‘I wasn’t going to,’ he said. ‘All I was going to say is that I told Saxon and Fitzgerald in good faith. They want to know what happened too.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind really,’ said Miranda quietly. ‘Secrets can be corrosive, and I don’t want to have to be keeping his. Besides, if Lawrence told you that much, Saxon, then he must have told you that I did some other digging and found out it couldn’t have been him.’
‘Did you tell Felix you’d found out it couldn’t be him?’
‘No. I couldn’t. He must have had his reasons for saying such a bizarre thing to me, it might have been counterproductive to push him too far. My approach was to let him talk about it when he felt ready. He didn’t return to the subject again anyway.’
‘Did he ever confess to anything else?’
‘Any other murders, you mean? Absolutely not. Why would he?’
‘Wouldn’t someone who was the type to make false accusations against himself be more likely to make a number of fabricated confessions?’
‘I see what you mean. Not in Felix’s case, no.’
‘One set of murders is enough for anyone,’ said Fisher.
‘And did you ever tell Alice what he’d said?’
‘Absolutely not. One time I was in town shopping and I saw Alice at a café table outside and went over to say hello. She was reading a newspaper report about the Marxman, and we talked about it for a while. Saying how terrible it was. How no one was safe anymore. You know, the usual things. I tried to be casual about it, as if I was just asking out of curiosity. I said Felix had once mentioned it, and she said he would, he was obsessed by it.’
‘You still didn’t think that could prove he was involved?’ said Fisher.
‘I told you, he had at least one alibi that I could discover. Alice told me herself that he was out of the country at the time of the first shooting. I decided in the end that his obsession must be a sign of something else in him other than guilt. You’ve seen his work. The dislocation, this sense he had of people as an undifferentiated mass, his horror at the lack of individuality in modern society. A shooter like the Marxman – pardon the lingo, but I’ve been doing some reading on this in my spare time – would see human beings like that too. I decided that perhaps Felix simply sensed a sort of philosophical connection there and wanted to explore it, wanted to know why he expressed his alienation artistically whilst another with the same viewpoint turned to murder. But I’m only speculating. Psychoanalysts are always being accused of not seeing the wood for the trees, of reading too much meaning into simple things, of always thinking they must represent something else. Felix could have simply been interested in the Marxman because he was on the news so much. You can’t open a newspaper or turn on the television without seeing something else about it.’
‘And is that what you think now?’
‘No. Not now. Now I think he did know something, that he was trying to tell me what it was, that he wanted me to press him further, but I never gave him the chance. My therapist’s detachment must have seemed to him like disinterest. I let him down.’
‘That’s what Alice thinks about herself too,’ I said.
And Miranda was silent again as we returned to our dinner.
A short while later, she rose to go to the restroom.
‘What do you think of her?’ Fisher asked me as we watched her weave between tables to the door.
‘I think you make a lovely couple.’
‘Be serious, Saxon.’
‘I am serious. If Laura could see you now, I think she’d be a very worried lady.’
He didn’t deny it. All he said was: ‘Do I have to keep reminding you of the purely platonic nature of our relationship?’
‘Frankly, Fisher, yes. You do.’
Chapter Thirty
On the way out to the car from Nemo’s, I rang Fitzgerald at Dublin Castle again. I hadn’t heard from her since she called to say she couldn’t make it to dinner. The phone must have rung a half-dozen times before being picked up.
‘You still not finished yet?’ I said.
But it was Boland’s voice that answered.
‘Saxon, is that you? I’ve been trying to reach you. I thought you might want to know.’
Something about his voice – some edge of panic – made ice form like fur in my veins.
‘Boland, what is it? What’s the matter?’
‘Haven’t you heard? The Marxman’s shot another one.’
‘What? Where’s Grace?’
‘She’s at the hospital.’
‘She’s what?’
‘The hospital.’
It was like my head wasn’t working properly, I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. Fitzgerald had been shot? I just about managed to get out of him that she was down at St James’s before telling him I was on my way.
‘But Saxon—’
Impatiently, I pressed the cellphone into silence.
I didn’t have time.
I had to get to her, and quickly.
I dashed down the last steps to the Jeep, jumped in, reversed out into the street, ignoring the angry protests of other drivers, broke the first set of lights and was on my way.
A huge Victorian building near the river, St James’s Hospital was home to the main emergency department for Dublin city. I’d never been there but I knew that there was a large parking lot out front, and vehicles were lined up nose to tail along the road leading to it. I had to go slowly to avoid knocking anyone down, and going slowly was making me more anxious.
If anything was to happen to Fitzgerald . . .
All I could think of was how I’d told her that morning that she was starting to sound like Draker. I’d meant it to wound her, and it had. Now it sounded so childish.
In the end, I abandoned the Jeep in a side street and hurried round to the front entrance. At the edge of my sight I could see the police cars ranged about, lights flashing on top like some reassuring pulse, but my only thought was to make for the door.
To get inside.
I was halfway up the steps when I felt a hand grab hold of my sleeve, and I was turning angrily to shake off whoever it was who had grabbed me when I saw it was Patrick Walsh.
‘Hey, babe. I thought it was you. What’s the big rush?’
‘I need to see Grace,’ I said.
‘The Chief’s upstairs,’ he said, puzzled.
‘I know,’ I snapped. ‘That’s why I’m here. Boland called to tell me what had happened.’
‘Then he obviously didn’t tell you what was going on,’ said Walsh. ‘Did you think . . .?’ He trailed off. It must have been obvious from my face what I’d thought.
‘You mean she’s OK?’
‘She’s talking to someone, that’s all,’ he answered. ‘Christ, no wonder you looked so shocked. You thought something had happened to her?’
‘Boland said something about the Marxman . . . I guess I didn’t give him a chanc
e . . .’
I remembered his last words: But Saxon—
Just like me always to jump to the wrong conclusion.
‘Come on,’ Walsh said, ‘let’s find somewhere to sit down. I’ll explain.’
He led me back towards his own car, and I sat in the passenger seat with my legs sticking out while he stood leaning on the door, watching the hospital entrance in case he was needed. Relief had taken hold of me and I almost felt like I wanted to giggle.
‘She’s up there with Healy,’ Walsh said. ‘They brought the guy in about half an hour ago. He was shot down by the river this evening. He’d just finished a job near there – he’s some kind of magician, apparently, does tricks at children’s parties, pulling rabbits out of hats, you know – and had nipped into a bar called Mulligan’s on the way to the station. On the way out, according to witnesses, a figure in black stepped up close behind him, put his hand on his shoulder, and shot him.’
‘Was it the Marxman?’
‘Once again, we’re not sure yet. Certainly looks like it.’
‘But what are you all doing here? Why aren’t you at the scene?’
‘The guy’s not dead,’ said Walsh.
‘He’s alive?’
‘Unless the hospital food’s killed him since he arrived,’ said Walsh. ‘Sorry, bad joke. He’s going to be fine.’
‘Who is he? Did he say?’
‘He told the paramedics his name was Brook, told them where he lived, asked them to call his wife and tell her he wouldn’t be home for dinner. The things people think of when they’ve been shot. But the really interesting thing was what he told them after that. He said whoever shot him whispered something to him before he pulled the trigger.’
‘What did he whisper?’
‘I am the dead hand.’
‘Then he shot him? How did he manage to make it to hospital, let alone live this long afterwards, if he was shot in the back at point-blank range?’
‘He was only shot in the shoulder,’ said Walsh.
‘Then he mustn’t have meant to kill him,’ I said. ‘He couldn’t have missed at that range. Doesn’t matter if you’ve never picked up a gun before in your life, you’d still get it right if you were up that close. That must mean he wanted this victim to live.’
‘I know. That’s why the Chief’s up there interviewing him now. She wants to find out as much as she can about the attack. He’s in a lot of pain, though, or so he says. Doctors have him sedated. Maybe he’s just a bit freaked out by it all. Traumatised, isn’t that what they call it? It’s not every day you get shot on your way home from work.’
I looked back at the hospital. The windows were all lit up. In one of them, Fitzgerald was cooped up with a possible answer to the mystery.
Ten minutes ago I’d thought she was dead. Now I envied her. Sitting in Walsh’s passenger seat hearing everything at second hand was no substitute for being on the inside. I got to my feet and turned away from the hospital, not wanting to look any more.
‘What makes you think it was the Marxman this time then?’ I said.
‘There was a single shot, in the back, the victim was shot in the doorway as he came out of the bar, after which the shooter coolly picked up the shell. The MO’s all pointing in the right direction. More than that, the bullet looks the same.’
‘The surgeons got it out of him then?’
‘Didn’t need to. It went right through his shoulder and out the other side. It broke up a bit when it hit the wall but they could still see it was the same as the others.’
‘If it was the Marxman, that’s the first time he’s touched one of the victims,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘There might be something on Brook’s coat. Was he wearing a coat?’
‘He was in shirtsleeves. He’d been entertaining a small army of five-year-olds for the past hour and a half, he didn’t need a coat to keep him warm. The shirt’s been bagged up and taken away by forensics, but by the time the paramedics and doctors had done with him he’d been pawed over by a dozen different hands. They had to cut off his shirt to get at the wound and staunch the bleeding. If you ask me, forensics will be practically useless.’
‘It’s something all the same,’ I said.
But Walsh wasn’t listening. He was watching the steps of the hospital, where voices had been raised suddenly. I turned my head to look, and there was a small group of cops barring the way to a young man in a white coat who was trying to reach the door.
He had his hands raised like he was trying to show them he came in peace.
Angry voices drifted over.
‘I’m a doctor. I told you. I got a call telling me to come in.’
‘Do you usually bring a camera in to work with you, Doctor?’
‘I only brought it because . . . because one of the nurses is having a birthday party later . . . She asked me if I’d take some shots . . .’
‘Looks as though the press have found out about the latest victim,’ said Walsh with disgust. ‘I’d better go sort it out. You be OK here until I get back, babe?’
‘I’ll be fine.’
Fine as long as he stopped calling me babe, anyway. I watched as he ran over to the scuffle, then turned my back on it, uninterested.
The circus was taking over. It always did.
Didn’t mean I had to watch the show.
Instead I lit a cigar and cherished the familiar scent. A huge exhaustion had descended on me and suddenly all I wanted was to take a couple of pills and slip back into darkness, a proper dreamless oblivion this time, not the fitful, feverish state I’d been enduring lately, when I woke almost more wiped out than I’d been when I went to sleep.
What was it I always dreamed about these nights?
Dark water.
Drowning.
A lighthouse.
The turning beam red like blood.
Didn’t take Miranda Gray to figure out where that came from.
There wouldn’t be any sleep for a while yet tonight, that was for sure. My brain was trying to process all these new fragments of information. Put some order on them.
Find a shape.
Another shooting . . . a victim who had survived . . . If the Marxman wanted this victim to survive, then it was for a reason, and the only reason it could be, as far as I could see, was because he wanted him to pass on the message.
I am the dead hand.
The dead hand.
It was such a meaningless statement on the surface of it, but it must mean something. Was that what the Marxman had said to all the victims before they died? But no, he hadn’t been close enough to some of them to whisper anything.
This one alone then had been meant as a message.
But a message saying what?
I felt frustrated. All the anxiety I’d experienced earlier after taking the call from Boland had been channelled now into thinking about the Marxman, and wondering despairingly how any of this related to Felix Berg. I’d spent so long trying to make two sequences of events entwine themselves into a single thread, and now I could feel them separating again in my fingers.
I couldn’t see how Felix Berg and this magician could be connected.
I am the dead hand.
I stood and watched ambulances come and go, come and go, because the world didn’t stop for just one victim. It didn’t stop for a thousand. My thoughts were evaporating.
Thinking about all this was like trying to sculpt water, and I was relieved when the door finally opened and Fitzgerald emerged. Healy must have still been inside.
I saw her pause briefly at the top of the steps, savouring the air the way she did on my balcony sometimes after a long day, composing herself.
It was all I could do not to laugh out loud with the sheer pleasure of seeing her alive. It was torture not being able to walk over to her. I could still taste that sick feeling of panic I’d felt when I thought she was lying here dead, or dying. Fitzgerald dead was not something I could imagine imagining, and I didn’t want to try imagining it in case I f
ound that I could, in case I got that image fixed in my head somewhere, as permanently inscribed as something on a computer hard disk, where it’s there for ever even if you think you’ve erased it.
Whereas myself dead I imagined all the time.
A world without me didn’t seem so very different.
Didn’t seem so bad.
But a world without her . . .
She stepped down and listened as a young policeman came up to give her a message. Nodded. Then looked up and caught sight of me standing by Walsh’s car, waiting for her to see me. She smiled and meant it, before walking over, out of range of the other cops.
‘Hey,’ she said quietly, which said it all.
‘You have any luck in there?’
‘He doesn’t remember much. He had his back turned the whole time, we’re just trying to see if he can remember anything more about the voice. Could be the first real piece of evidence we’ve had about the killer. But what’s to remember about a whisper? He can’t even remember if it was a man or a woman, young or old; he can’t remember an accent.’
‘Better than nothing.’ I tried to be reassuring.
‘It’s certainly better than sorting out the autopsy reports down at the mortuary with Alastair Butler clucking like a mother hen over her chicks,’ she said. ‘But there’s bad news too, unfortunately. Healy thinks he knows what that stuff about the dead hand means. He says it comes from some old quote: The dead hand of history lies like a nightmare on the brains of the living.’
There’s profound.
‘What’s so bad about that?’ I said.
‘What’s bad is that it comes from Marx. And I don’t mean Groucho.’
‘Terrific,’ I said casually, thinking about the guy in Burke’s bookstore and then reminding myself that I couldn’t go round reading too much into the fact that someone who was looking at me had bought a book by Marx, especially since at the time we were both in a store that specialised in selling books by Marx, about Marx, inspired by Marx. You go to a cheese store to buy cheese, after all.
The Dark Eye (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 2) Page 20
