She got off on a plea of self-defence and diminished responsibility due to years of spousal abuse, and Fitzgerald and I had quietly cracked open a bottle of champagne to celebrate.
Those are the kinds of easy connections we like to make when it comes to women and violence, but there’s a block in our heads that seems to make us unable almost to think of women as being capable of other kinds of violence, of stalking, abducting, murdering, and enjoying it, rather than simply being its innocent victims; but it’s not like there aren’t plenty of examples.
The problem is that, faced with what is inexplicable, what is horrible, we are lost. A cultural conditioning kicks in which means we don’t pay such murders by women the same attention that we would if they were by men. These women just don’t fit our concept of what a killer is, what a woman is.
And even when we do find evidence of the same instincts and predilections in a woman, we dismiss them, make excuses – say she must have been under the spell of a domineering man, or deranged, unbalanced by her hormones; by how life has treated her as a woman – anything other than confront the reality of what this woman has done.
Anything other than admit that maybe women just do it for the same reasons men do.
Because they’re bored.
Because life doesn’t feel real, and reality is insufficient.
Because of a burning will inside them. Because killing heightens the deadened senses, shakes them up, makes the world itself sit up and take notice.
Because it just turns them on.
Everywhere, now, psychologists are studying male killers, trying to understand them better, find the formula for the disease that had wormed its way into their brains; and that made sense statistically, because in all arenas of law enforcement it’s men who pose the greatest threat.
Even so, it doesn’t mean women killers can be safely ignored.
A victim is a victim.
Dead is dead.
And it could be argued that women need to be studied more for the very reason that they are so elusive to understanding, so complex. Male killers are simple creatures, by and large. Not simple to catch, but simple in their motivations, however depraved.
Women killers are harder to fathom.
They are colder.
More dispassionate.
That was what struck me most that evening as I dug out books in my apartment – including one by Fisher; was there anything the man hadn’t written about? – and tried to read my way out of trouble. Struck me most because it matched so closely how I thought of Alice.
She just rang all the right bells.
Commonly these killers were careful women. Precise. Methodical. Quiet in their strategies.
Alice was in the right age range too. Most female killers didn’t start until after the age of twenty-five, and they continued for a much longer period than their male counterparts. Of course, there were huge differences too, which made the whole idea that Alice was the Marxman seem absurd. Women, for example, tended to kill within specific target groups. Lovers. Children. The old. They were unlikely to attack adult strangers, the very group most at risk from male serial killers – and the very group which had been targeted by the Marxman.
Female killers also tended to stay closer to home.
The Marxman roamed, predator-like.
The cooling-off period between killings was also much greater for female than male killers, which was part of the reason they went undetected for longer.
The Marxman was killing quickly.
Female killers took fewer chances.
The Marxman took plenty.
Women were also less likely to employ weapons to kill. Guns were only the fourth most frequent instrument of violent death used by women, behind lethal injection, suffocation and, every woman’s favourite, poisoning. And the statistics I found were for the United States, where guns were much more readily available. In Dublin, where guns were rarer than Confederate bumper stickers in Manhattan, the numbers must be correspondingly infinitesimal. But all this was just statistics. Number-crunching. I could’ve come up with a hundred reasons why the moon shouldn’t stay up in the sky, but the important point is, it still does.
And each time I nearly talked myself out of thinking bad thoughts about her, I kept remembering Paddy Nye’s words to me out in Howth: You don’t seriously buy that prim and proper act she puts on these days, do you?
Did I?
Chapter Thirty-Four
When I woke on the couch the next morning, surrounded by books, I almost felt ashamed of my thoughts the night before. How could I ever have believed Alice was involved in something like this? It was nonsensical . . . laughable . . . and yet there was no denying there was something not quite right about her. Maybe I should go round to see her. Within half an hour I was knocking at her door in the narrow cobbled lane.
I didn’t quite know what I intended to say to her, especially after what I’d said to Strange about the pictures in his gallery. It wasn’t as though I had any evidence against her. Even if she had taken those pictures – even if it was her in them – what of it? She was a damaged woman. Who could say what her behaviour really signified?
Fact was, I hardly knew her at all.
But I felt my doubts growing anew as the door remained unanswered.
Had she fled? I remembered seeing her packing that morning I went round to the house. She’d told me she was back, but that might have been another lie. But why should she run? It wasn’t as though the net was closing in on her. I wasn’t even sure there was a net.
It felt like there was nowhere left to turn for answers. Alice’s other friends remained vague notions in my head rather than real people. Some names she’d mentioned came back to me: Isobel, Maud. I guess I could have tracked them down given time, but time was something I didn’t have; and what excuse could I give for asking questions anyway? Why should they tell me anything? She’d probably warned them about me already.
Like she warned Strange.
The only one I could think of who might be able to help was Miranda Gray, and I called her on the number she’d left for me on my answering machine. I half expected her not to be available either, I was getting over-sensitive maybe, but she picked up almost instantly and said yes, coffee would be great. About eleven?
Her consulting rooms were in Merrion Square, so it wasn’t like she had far to come.
As it was, she was late arriving at the café, and came in flustered, trailing elaborate explanations for not being here sooner, as busy professional people often did.
‘There’s no need to explain, it’s not a problem,’ I said in reply, but mostly it was because I didn’t care to hear about her problems juggling her diary. ‘No Fisher today?’
‘He’s hanging round with the Dublin Metropolitan Police,’ she said. ‘He obviously finds them better company than me. No need to tell you that. You know Fisher. Any chance to get involved in a spot of murder. I’m sure you didn’t come here to talk about me anyway,’ she added. ‘What is it? You sounded troubled on the phone.’
‘I hope you’re not going to start psychoanalysing me,’ I said.
‘Merely making an observation. I’m right then?’
‘It’s Alice,’ I said.
‘If it’s Alice, let’s get the coffee first.’
She took her coffee black, espresso with an extra shot. And she took it with a sticky bun which she bit into greedily when it came. I hadn’t put her down as the sweet tooth sort; she’d skipped dessert last night – unless Fisher had been dessert. There I went again, speculating, interfering. I needed to remember all this was none of my business.
‘Have you seen Alice lately?’ I said when we were seated.
‘Not seen, no.’
‘I’ve been trying to contact her since the funeral. There’re a few things I need to clear up with her. But there’s never any answer to my calls, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone in the house.’
‘That’s odd. She called me – let me think no
w – two days ago to cancel our usual appointment.’
‘She’s back working already?’
‘That’s the sort of woman Alice is. Throws herself into her work. She’s difficult to read. I didn’t think anything of it. She’d cancelled before. Although . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s nothing. Only that she usually reschedules her sessions immediately when she has to cancel. This time she just said she’d be in touch when she was ready.’
‘What did you read into that?’
‘Nothing at the time,’ she said. ‘Now . . . well, I wonder now if she’s decided to end her sessions with me.’
‘Would it bother you if she did?’
‘Now you’re trying to psychoanalyse me. You should know better. Therapists ask awkward personal questions, we never answer them.’
‘Like cops.’
‘I never thought of it like that, but I can see the similarity, yes.’
‘How did she sound?’
‘Alice? I didn’t speak to her. Elaine, my secretary, did.’
‘Did she tell you what Alice said?’
‘To be honest, I wouldn’t trust Elaine to know what day it is. She’s new. And not very bright. I didn’t ask. She just said Alice had asked to pass this week and that she’d written it down in the appointments book. That’s about the limit of her competence, I’m afraid.’
‘Why did you hire her?’
‘I felt sorry for her. Her parents both killed themselves when she was young, she doesn’t have any family, she was new in town. I suppose I’m just a sucker for hard-luck stories. I ended up giving her the job. It’s not as if it’s very challenging work.’
‘I wonder if she’s OK,’ I said.
‘Elaine? She’s fine, just a little scatter-brained.’
‘I meant Alice.’
‘Oh, Alice. Well, I can make some calls if you like.’
I liked.
Miranda immediately took out her cellphone and started ringing round a few of Alice’s friends, whilst I ordered more coffee and eavesdropped. How she knew them I couldn’t guess, unless it was that she’d met them whilst digging into Felix’s secret life, first to satisfy herself he wasn’t the Marxman, then to satisfy herself that he really had killed himself.
Alternatively, maybe they were friends of hers too. Dublin’s a small town. In the concentric circles in which Miranda and Alice moved, everyone tended to know everyone else. They liked to keep an eye on one another, the better to keep them in their place.
Whatever the reason, it helped us discover fairly quickly what we needed to know. After the fifth or sixth call, I lost count, it was obvious that none of Alice’s friends had heard from her for two days at least. Some she’d even phoned to tell them she wouldn’t be around for a while, or to say she was with other friends, friends who likewise had been told another story, until the whole story curled back on itself like a serpent with its tail in its mouth.
‘Perhaps we should call the police,’ I said eventually, when she’d exhausted her list.
‘And tell them what?’ said Miranda. ‘Alice is a grown woman. She doesn’t have to answer to her friends for her movements.’
‘But if her vanishing is out of character . . .’
‘That’s just it,’ she said. ‘It isn’t. She often shoots off for days at a time, she’s a great one for travelling. She could have flown anywhere for a few days for some peace and quiet – London, Paris, Stockholm. She does it all the time. You know what the police are like. The first thing they’ll ask me is whether she’s done this before, then when I say yes—’
‘They’ll refuse to do anything.’ I sighed bitterly, knowing she was right. The police had very unimaginative minds sometimes. ‘All the same, there must be something we can do. She might have, I don’t know, fallen down the stairs, or anything.’
I still didn’t want to tell her what I really feared, that maybe Alice had more to hide about the Marxman than she was letting on, partly because it wouldn’t be right to encourage suspicions to fester when I had nothing but my own overexcited imagination to go on, but mainly, I think, because I didn’t want to look foolish. I didn’t feel confident enough yet to share my suspicions about Alice’s possible role in all of this.
I needed to make them seem less idiotic to myself first. But looking at the therapist’s face, I saw I didn’t need to raise any fears about Alice being implicated in the Marxman killings to make her see how urgent it was we find her. The suggestion about her falling down the stairs had been enough.
‘Do you really think she might have?’ she said.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t need to.
‘I know how we can find out,’ Miranda said firmly. ‘I have a key.’
That was unexpected.
‘Why?’ The question was out of me before I could stop it.
‘Alice gave me a spare last year, when she and Felix went to the States. She asked me to keep an eye on the place, make sure it hadn’t been burgled or the pipes hadn’t burst, send on the mail, that sort of thing.’
Miranda obviously believed in giving her clients the personal touch.
‘You still have it?’
‘I never got round to returning it.’
‘You have it here with you now?’
‘I think so. But,’ she looked slightly concerned, ‘do you really think we ought to let ourselves in? What if she’s there? What if she simply doesn’t want to answer the door? How will it look if we just waltz into her house?’
‘She’ll understand,’ I said, though in truth I didn’t know any more if Alice was the understanding sort. ‘She’ll realise you were concerned about her.’
‘But what about—’
‘It’s a risk we have to take, Miranda. How are you going to feel if you leave it now and find out later you could’ve helped?’
She was thinking, thinking.
Eventually: ‘You’re right.’ And she lifted her purse off the arm of the chair where she was sitting and began to rummage through it, cursing at the mess as she did so.
‘It’s not here.’
Finally in frustration she tipped the purse upside down, and the table was instantly covered with all the accumulated junk that women seem to carry about with them, though I can’t say I’d ever got into the habit. Spare change, ballpoint pens, receipts, credit card, car keys, phone numbers written down on scraps of paper and immediately screwed up, packets of disposable handkerchiefs, a tube of extra-strong mints, sugar lumps wrapped in paper picked up at various cafés and forgotten about till they melted: she seemed to have everything here.
Everything except the key.
‘It must be in here somewhere,’ she murmured as she sifted the mess with her fingers.
I was beginning to lose patience when she finally exclaimed in triumph, producing the key with a half-embarrassed flourish.
Quickly she swept the rest back into her purse and we got up, leaving the second espressos untouched, and made our way through the traffic and the roadworks to Temple Bar, me for the second time that morning.
There was no one in the lane, still no signs of life at any of the windows.
We knocked again, and when again there was no answer I looked through the letterbox, while Miranda smeared a space in the grime of the window on the ground floor and peered inside. It was clear we could’ve stood here all day and no one would come.
‘Miranda.’
‘Here, you do it.’
She handed me the key and I inserted it into the lock. A turn, a click, and the door was open. I pushed against a small pile of letters which had settled on the floor behind it.
The hallway was dark.
All was silence.
‘Alice?’ I called.
There was a faint echo of her name, then silence once more.
‘Alice? I’m here with Miranda Gray, are you there?’
There’s something unmistakable about a voice calling in an empty house.
‘She’s not here,�
�� I said to Miranda.
And I whispered even that.
Still I felt the need to keep calling Alice’s name as we quickly searched the ground-floor rooms, through to a long kitchen at the back with a vaulted glass ceiling, frozen hard with light. There was a knife on a chopping board and two upturned halves of a wrinkled apple and a bottle of wine; a radio was turned low playing music.
I switched it off.
We climbed the stairs to the first floor, where the sitting room opened out just as I remembered it, except that the table was now bare, all photographs gathered away.
‘What’s upstairs?’ I said.
‘A bedroom,’ said Miranda.
‘Just the one?’
She understood the look I gave her.
‘I never enquired as to their sleeping arrangements.’
‘I’m going up to look,’ I said.
‘I’m coming with you,’ Miranda replied. ‘I don’t want to be down here on my own.’
And I knew what she meant. There was something unsettling about the house now in its emptiness. Something eerie.
The place felt haunted. I had a sense of being watched and at the same time a sense of Miranda and me being the only things here alive.
Bare stairs gave way to bare floorboards, and here was a small landing and a door and another flight of bare steps to another landing, another door.
One glance at each other, then we began to climb that too, feeling like intruders, terrified of being caught, but also half hoping we were because at least it would lift the sense of dread which had descended on us.
At the top of the stairs, with no more flights to climb, I turned the handle of the door and entered another huge room, a bedroom this time, with one bed in the middle, a low futon with only a sheet laid across it, and floorboards painted black, and a Japanese hanging lantern-style light suspended from the ceiling. There was lots of photographic equipment here too, spotlights and cameras, all pointing at the bed.
But no Alice.
‘She’s gone,’ said Miranda.
The Dark Eye (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 2) Page 23
