by Ingrid Black
“Wait here. I’ll just get someone to look after Jake.”
The badge hadn’t phased him at all.
I heard the little boy asking what was wrong as his father led him up the path to the front door, and Fleming making some excuse about having to talk to friends of the boy’s mother, and then their voices faded as they went indoors.
A couple of minutes later, Fleming reappeared.
“What do you want?” he said cagily.
“Don’t play games,” said Fitzgerald. “It’s predictable, it’s tedious and it only wastes your time and ours. You know what we’ve come here to talk about.”
Fleming considered her words.
It didn’t take long for him to see sense.
“I knew it was only a matter of time before I heard from you,” he said. He was about to say more when he changed his mind. “Can we go somewhere quieter?”
“If that’s what you want,” said Fitzgerald.
“I don’t want to stand on the street like a lemon, that’s for sure,” said Fleming. “You’ve already made me the chief topic of conversation round here for the next month as it is. If Jake’s mother gets to hear that the police have been knocking on the door, she’ll let me see even less of him than she does already.”
“In that case, climb in the back. Healy?”
“There’s a park not far from here,” said Healy. “We can go there.”
Fitzgerald walked round to the other side of the car and held the door open for Fleming. He manoeuvred in next to me, his piercing eyes holding mine dispassionately for a second before Fitzgerald made her way back round to her own door and got back in, forcing him to fumble quickly with his belt before Healy could pull out from the kerb again.
He was in a car with what he thought were three police officers.
He didn’t want to make things worse by forgetting his seatbelt.
“How did you find out about me?” he said as we drove.
“Your mobile number was in Marsha Reed’s phone records,” Fitzgerald told him, turning round in her seat so that she could look directly at him where he sat in the seat behind Healy. “In fact, you were the last person she called before she died.”
That didn’t throw him either.
“I thought I might be,” he said. “I mean, I knew I had to be one of the last people she spoke to, because of the time. I heard on the news afterwards that she died around midnight.”
“Why didn’t you come forward and tell the police you heard from her that night?”
“What would’ve been the point? I didn’t know anything.”
“You weren’t worried it might look suspicious if you kept quiet?”
“Suspicious in what way?”
“Someone killed Marsha,” said Fitzgerald. “If I was in your shoes, I wouldn’t want to give the police any more reason than necessary to suspect me of being the one who did.”
“I wasn’t worried about that,” Fleming said dismissively.
“Why not?”
“She called me at work,” he said, as though the answer was obvious. “I was there until after three o’clock in the morning. Scores of people must’ve seen me there. I knew no one could say I killed her.”
He had a point. It was certainly a better alibi than Victor Solomon’s forgiving fiancé.
“What would I want to kill her for, anyway?” he added.
“Why would anyone?” said Fitzgerald.
“I thought that’s what you were supposed to find out,” Fleming replied testily.
“All in good time,” said Fitzgerald. “This’ll do.”
She was talking to Healy, telling him to stop the car again.
Outside was a playground. Children played on slides and swings. We could hear them laughing through the open windows. Inside the car it was hot.
Fleming was wiping the palms of his hands on his jeans. “I should’ve brought Jake,” he said sardonically, gazing out at the playground. “Made a day of it.”
“How did you know Marsha Reed?”
“You mean, how did a badly paid shop worker get to know someone like Marsha with her own Porsche and little black book filled with the numbers of important people?”
“That’s not what I meant at all,” said Fitzgerald. “What I meant is, were you one of her whip and leather crowd? Money doesn’t come into it. Well? Is that how you met her?”
“Christ, no.” He actually sounded shocked by the suggestion. “That’s not my scene at all. I met her because she used to come into the cafe some nights. We got talking.”
“Were you lovers?”
“I wanted us to be,” said Fleming. “I’m not going to deny it.”
“She wasn’t interested?”
“She only wanted us to be friends,” he said, injecting all the sarcasm he could into the last word. “Isn’t that what women always say when they don’t fancy you? I suppose she was getting her pleasure in other ways.”
“Did you know about that side of her life?”
“It wasn’t a secret. She used to tell me stories of the men she met at the club she belonged to,” he recalled. “The way she talked about it, it sounded like a meat market.”
“You didn’t approve?”
“I didn’t understand. There’s a difference. I wasn’t judging her. She was a nice girl. I cared about her. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. I told her it was dangerous.”
“What did she say to that?”
“That she was a big girl, and she knew what she was doing. She told me it was just a bit of fun,” Fleming said, “and that I should come along one night and see for myself. I never did, before you ask. The only time I ever saw Marsha was in the cafe. She came in two, three times a week, usually late at night, to use the computers. She said she didn’t have one at home. We used to have a coffee together, talk for a while. I hoped one night it might turn into something else. But it never did. I was a shoulder to cry on, that’s all.”
“What about the night she died?” said Grace. “Why did she call?”
Fleming took a deep breath, as if this was the part he’d been dreading.
“She was upset,” he said. “She’d been seeing Victor fucking Solomon.”
“She told you that?”
“It was no secret. He’d told Marsha he could help her make it as an actress. I told her it was the oldest story in the book, but she wouldn’t listen. She’d started sleeping with him, and then, of course, when he got what he wanted he dumped her. Or rather, he stopped sleeping with her as often as he had before. He still used to call her up for sex when he felt horny and there was nothing better on offer, and she always used to oblige.”
“She still thought he could help out her career?”
“That’s what she said it was,” Fleming said, avoiding Fitzgerald’s eye. “She even tried to say he might be able to help me.”
“How could he have helped you?”
“Even barmen can have ambitions, you know. I write plays. I had one put on last year at the Dublin Fringe Festival. I’m working on a new one now. I just work at the cafe to pay the rent. Marsha reckoned if she could make the right connections, we could both get something out of it. We used to talk about the future all the time, about her starring in a play of mine. Then again,” he said thickly, “maybe she just wanted to sleep with Solomon. She slept with plenty of others as well as him. It was only me she didn’t want to go to bed with.”
He didn’t try to hide the bitterness in his voice.
“You say she was upset about Solomon the night she died?”
“She said she’d met him earlier that evening, and that he’d demanded she give back some necklace he’d given her. Said now they weren’t together anymore, that she should return it. He wanted to give it to his fiancé as a wedding present. It was expensive, though what’s money to a man like him? I also got the impression that she’d been asking him to get back together, begging him by the sound of it, and he’d turned nasty. It was hard to get much sense out of her
, she was crying so much.”
It certainly didn’t sound much like the taxi driver’s description of Marsha that night.
He’d said she was giddy and excitable.
“What did she want you to do?” said Healy. “Go to Solomon’s house and rough him up on her behalf?”
“Nothing like that. And believe me, I offered. That only made her cry more. She just wanted me to come round to her place. She said she needed someone to talk to.”
“But you didn’t go.”
“I was working, I told you, I couldn’t get away.” Fleming sounded defensive now. “It was going to be another three hours before I finished work, and I couldn’t just drop everything and run round because she summoned me. I didn’t want to lose my job. And I was tired of her thinking I could just be dangled like some puppet she could play with.”
“You sound angry,” said Fitzgerald.
“I was angry. I am angry. I’m angry with her because she had to die like that. Marsha could’ve been with me instead of all these creeps she threw herself at, instead of Solomon. She would’ve been safe with me, but no, she wasn’t interested. I didn’t turn her on, because I wouldn’t hurt her like those other sick bastards did. And don’t bother looking at me like that, as if you think I killed her out of jealousy because she rejected me. You’re not listening. I spent the whole night at the cafe. You can check up on me on the CCTV.”
“Then you have nothing to fear, do you?”
“Did I say I was afraid?” he shot back. “Are you deaf? I don’t care what you think you know about me. I’m the one who has to live with the knowledge that if I’d gone round to Marsha’s house when she called that night, she might still be alive. Do you have any idea what that’s like? I was afraid that night alright. Afraid of losing my job. And because of that, Marsha was the one who ended up losing her life. It’s all my fault.”
“Then why,” said Fitzgerald coldly, “didn’t you come immediately and tell us all this when you heard what had happened to Marsha? If you cared for her so much, didn’t you want to help put her killer away for what he’d taken from you?”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Fleming. “I don’t intend to let him get away with anything. I have plenty of plans for him.”
Chapter Twenty
It was after midnight by the time I picked up my Jeep from Dublin Castle and returned, alone, to my building, turning off the street and down the short ramp into the underground car park that was shared between the residents of this building and the adjoining one.
I never liked coming down here. During the day was not so bad, but after dark it was a claustrophobic, dank, eerie place. Couple of times, I’d even heard rats running around. Rats are creatures I just can’t stomach. There must be something primeval in the fear, something that goes right back to the time when we lived in huts and rats meant death.
There was also a stale smell down here that suggested the winos used it to sleep.
And worse.
It was supposed to be patrolled. That was why we paid our service charges, right? But I’d never seen anyone else down here the times I came except fellow residents with whom to pass on the same complaints. And tonight there was no one there at all, and all the lights but one over by the door leading to the elevator looked like they were broken.
The headlights skittered across the walls as I turned into my usual space and switched off the engine. Then I saw – what?
Something had moved. I’d caught a glimpse of it shifting slightly in the rear view mirror, but when I turned it was gone. Probably one of the bums, I told myself sternly. Get a grip. But I felt nervous as I climbed out. I paused a moment with the door open under my hand in case I needed to get back in again and lock the doors behind me.
Nothing happened.
I reassured myself there was nothing there, and locked the door with a high-pitched beep. The light in the car flashed brightly for a moment, then extinguished itself; and now there was only the pale orange glow from the street lamps at the top of the ramp, and what seemed like the distant haven of the security light above the door.
Between the pillars that held up the roof, shadows lurked. The windscreens of the parked cars were like black mirrors reflecting blackness back, so that the more you stared at them the more they began to look like holes into which you might fall if you weren’t careful.
The air was stifling and hot, even after midnight. It was like all the hot air of the city had fled here during the day to escape and had then become trapped. Now it was heating up the space down here like the blast from a restaurant kitchen. I could feel heat pounding in my head, which in turn dulled my sense of hearing, and that made things seem worse.
Carefully, I began to make my way across the car park.
I could hear the murmur of traffic in the streets above head level, and even the sound of music drifting over from some bar. But in here my footsteps sounded unnaturally loud.
I found myself concentrating on the sound they made, like a monk contemplating the sound of running water as an aid to prayer. My heart was racing in my chest. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. It wasn’t like me to be so nervous. I didn’t usually –
I spun round.
There.
There was something, I knew it. Something behind that car over there, the Mini which belonged to the neurotic woman who lived opposite me, who fed the pigeons from her balcony, and even let them fly inside, according to Hugh.
Not that you could always believe what Hugh said.
Christ alone knows what he tells people about me.
But something was moving there.
I could see it.
“Come out!” I said with more confidence than I felt. “I know you’re there!”
Something shifted slightly in the dark.
I took a step forward.
“Come out, I said.”
A couple more steps towards the Mini, quickening my pace to cover my trepidation, wishing that I had something more than keys in my hand to defend myself.
Though you could do worse than have keys for a weapon. There were times in the past when I had done worse, and I was still around to tell the tale.
I paused a final moment, before jerking forward quickly to startle whoever was hiding there into revealing themselves – and then I jumped as something rushed out past my feet, and I let out a cry, remembering the rats. Only it wasn’t a rat, but a black cat with luminous green eyes which must have wandered in here to get some shelter from the heat.
Or else someone in the building had taken in a cat against regulations. The cat was now cowering under the next car, staring out at me with wide frightened eyes. Feeling guilty, I got down on my haunches and held out a hand and tried to make some cat-friendly noises, but they obviously didn’t convince this cat because he didn’t look like he intended coming anywhere near me. And I can’t say I blame him.
I wouldn’t have trusted me either.
“Go screw yourself then, you flea bitten little rag,” I muttered to myself irritably as I got to my feet again and turned round.
The cry was out of me before I could hold it in.
Kaminski was standing right behind me.
“What’re you playing at?” I yelled at him. “You near scared me to death.”
“What were you doing at Marsha Reed’s house?” was all he said to that.
I couldn’t speak. I saw him in the dimness and he looked half-deranged. In fact, forget the bit about being only half deranged. His eyes were wide and staring, like he’d just stuck his finger into a live socket. His skin looked flushed and blotchy. He had the vague, slightly unfocussed look of a man who’d been drinking.
Though in truth, I only remembered what he looked like afterwards. At the time, all I could think of was what he’d just said.
“Marsha Reed?” I echoed, taking a step back as I did so, not liking anyone to get that close. It makes me uneasy. Especially when they’re clearly in an emotionally unsteady mood.
“Yeah, Marsha Reed. The dead woman. You know who I’m talking about,” Kaminski said, his voice rising with irritation. “What were you doing there earlier?”
“What were you doing there?” I answered.
He paused at that.
“I had my reasons,” he muttered.
“Then I had my reasons too. Two can play at that game.”
“What game?”
“I haven’t a clue. Whatever game it is you’re playing here right now, hiding out here, sneaking up on me...”
He looked suddenly apologetic.
“Look, I’m sorry about that, OK? You pissed me off. I just wanted to –.”
“Scare the crap out of me. Yeah, I noticed.”
“I was going to say I wanted to give you a taste of your own medicine,” he said quietly. “It was a bad idea, I see that now. I said I’m sorry.”
I took a deep breath.
“Look,” I said, “we can’t talk here. You’d better come up to my apartment. I’ve been in your hotel room, it’s only fair I return the compliment, right?”
He caught my eye, and smiled at the reminder. Suddenly he didn’t look so unnerving. He was under pressure, I was jumpy, that’s all it was.
“And then,” I added, “you can tell me what the hell’s going on.”
“I’m not sure I know the answer to that question myself,” Kaminski said.
A loud rattle alerted us to the fact that another car has crossed the grate at the top of the ramp, and in the next second a bright explosion of headlights cut the gloom around us, like an intruder bursting in. I recognised the Mercedes as it turned into a far corner.
“It’s just a man who lives upstairs. Come on,” I said, “why don’t we go upstairs where it’s quieter and I can fix you coffee or something?”
He didn’t say anything on the way up in the elevator, nor in the hall as I stood looking in my pocket for my new key. Only when I stepped inside and switched on the lights did he break his silence, whistling appreciatively as he looked around at my apartment.
“So this is where you’re hiding out these days,” he said.
“You’re the one who’s hiding, JJ,” I said.
“Don’t call me that,” he said.
