by Ingrid Black
“There’s not much to tell really,” I said resignedly. “One time we were working on a case together. We’d flown down to Denver, Colorado, had a frustrating day. We ended up going to some awful bar and drinking too much. One thing led to another.”
“You slept with him.”
“If you can call it that. It was nothing. Not something I cared to remember, at any rate. I just wanted to forget about it as quickly as possible. Next day I never mentioned it, he never mentioned it, and neither of us ever said a word about it again. Not once. It was... embarrassing. I felt I’d lost some contest. JJ was the kind of man that other agents wouldn’t have trusted their wives around. He made Walsh look like a monk in comparison. I didn’t want him to see what happened as a victory. The crumbling of the ice maiden, you know. They were always talking, all of them, in the field office, about how frigid I was. I just felt I’d let myself down, and all because I got drunk. I didn’t know afterwards if they were talking about it amongst themselves, but I don’t think so. I think I’d have known. There would’ve been looks, smiles, you know what it’s like, sudden silences. They wouldn’t have been able to hide it. Since there was nothing, I guessed Kaminski hadn’t said a word about it.”
“You must’ve been relieved.”
“In a way, yeah, I was,” I said. “But in another way, it made things worse.”
“Why worse?”
“Because by not saying, it made it seem as if it was somehow... what’s the word? A guilty secret. Something illicit. So the more he didn’t say anything, and I didn’t say anything, the more it seemed to grow and take on a significance it didn’t deserve. I felt it was there in reserve, and he could use it against me somehow. You’re not mad, are you?”
“Why would I be mad?” she said. “It was long before I met you.”
“I’d hate you to be jealous, is all. There’s no need. My relationship with Kaminski, such as it was, isn’t so much dead as never alive. It wasn’t relevant.”
“At the risk of sounding picky, sleeping with someone is always relevant.” She offered a smile of reassurance. “But even so, I don’t want you to feel bad. It was something I sensed up there, that’s all. I needed to know. It makes things easier next time we all meet. But I don’t deny it’s weird. That’s the first person I’ve ever met that you’ve also slept with. The first person I know about, anyway. Unless you’ve been seeing Dalton behind my back.”
“I think we both know that’s the least of your worries.”
“I’m just wondering,” she said.
“Wondering what?”
“Wondering if what you two had was more significant to Kaminski than to you.”
“In what way?”
“In this way,” she said. “What if he really came to Dublin to see you again? What if this whole thing was planned from the start to get him into a position where he could see you? That you were meant to see him that day, it wasn’t accidental at all.”
“That’s not possible. Is it? His wife was killed. He did quit the FBI. He did follow Randall back down to Texas.”
“But still the only connection between the two events – the one in America and the one here – is him. And you are his only connection to Dublin.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to put him under surveillance and see what happens,” she said. “Either way, it makes sense. If all this really is connected to Marsha Reed’s death, then I need to know where he goes. I don’t think he’ll cooperate. If Buck Randall gets in touch again, he’ll keep it to himself. And if it doesn’t have anything to do with her death, then I have to know that too. The last thing I need on this case at this point, at any point, is distractions. Whichever it is, I want to know what he’s doing.”
She was reaching for her cellphone to do just that when it rang.
“Walsh, is that you? Speak up, I can hardly hear you. What is it?” Long pause. “I’ve got you. I’ll be there right away. What’s the address?”
She wrote it down, then dropped the phone back in her pocket.
“Mark Hudson’s gone,” she said.
“The guy who knocked down Cecilia Corrigan?” I said. “What do you mean, gone?”
“Gone. Vanished. He hasn’t been seen for over a week. He was reported missing by his cleaning woman to the local police station. Since then, nothing.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Her death really was an accident, wasn’t it?”
“Maybe that’s only what we were supposed to think,” she said.
**********
It wasn’t until we turned into the street that I realised where we were.
“Is Hudson’s house here?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “Number 4.”
“But this is where she lived too.”
“Where who lived?”
“The woman Hudson knocked down and killed. Howler’s pen friend.”
“Cecilia Corrigan lived in this street too?”
“The very same.”
As we climbed out, I recognised the low white stone wall, the creaking gates, the sleepy summer trees dappling shadows on the ground. The only difference was that now there was no sign of the black cat.
It was obviously getting too crowded for the poor creature.
I looked up at Cecilia Corrigan’s house and thought I saw someone standing at an upstairs window, but when I raised a hand to shield my eyes from the sun and get a better look, the someone vanished, and there was only the trembling of a curtain.
“Chief,” said a familiar voice.
“Walsh,” said Fitzgerald, “what have you got?”
The young detective looked glum as he came down the path to meet us.
“Nothing, Chief. The place is empty. One of the neighbours had a key,” he said, “so we were able to take a look inside. Everything seems in order, no signs of struggle or a hurried departure. There’s someone in there you might want to talk to, though.”
He led the way up the path and through the door into Mark Hudson’s house. I felt that peculiar sensation of nervousness you always get on walking into someone else’s house when they aren’t there. It’s like an intrusion. It is an intrusion. That it’s a necessary one doesn’t make it feel any less like a violation of privacy. I felt like a peeping tom.
Though who was here to feel offended? Something about this house smelt empty, like it had already adjusted itself to the business of being abandoned.
In the small rear kitchen stood a young man in a police officer’s uniform, looking nervous. It wasn’t every day a local cop got to meet the Chief Superintendent of the murder squad. His cop’s face was slightly flushed. He was fidgeting on his feet.
Walsh introduced him as Sergeant Chase.
“He was on duty when Hudson was reported missing.”
“Is that Hudson?” said Fitzgerald.
She was pointing to a framed photograph on the shelf above the fireplace, which showed a man of thirty, possibly, wearing dirt-spattered sports gear and holding up a trophy.
“He played rugby for his local club,” acknowledged Walsh. “His team mates were the last ones to see him. He’d arranged to meet them midweek for training. When he didn’t show and couldn’t be contacted and they realised he hadn’t been in work, they reported him missing. By which time, someone else had reported him missing too. His cleaning lady.”
“That’s Mrs Emily Nolan,” said Sergeant Chase. “She came in at 9am Tuesday to begin work. Mr Hudson normally left her wages in an envelope on the mantelpiece, but there was nothing. She thought it was a bit unusual, but did her work as normal. Next day, the money still wasn’t there and he hadn’t been home, so she called the local station.”
“Seems a bit drastic, calling in the police that quickly,” said Fitzgerald. “Didn’t she know any friends or family of his she could call?”
“She says she couldn’t think of anyone else to ring,” said Sergeant Chase. “He’d never mentioned any family, and the only neighbour Hudson
really had any contact with lived across the way. She was the one who told Mrs Doran to go to the police.”
“Number 8,” I said quietly.
“How’d you know that?” said Walsh.
“That’s where Becky Corrigan lived,” I said.
“Corrigan?” said Walsh with a frown. “The old woman Hudson knocked down?”
“She wasn’t that old,” I corrected him, though it was curious because that was the way I thought about her too. “But yeah, that’s Jenkins Howler’s late pen friend. Becky was her niece. She still lives in the house. It’s over there, see?”
I showed him where, through the window, the house opposite was clearly visible. Mark Hudson probably saw it every day, just as Cecilia Corrigan saw his. It could never have occurred to either of them that one day he would be the unwitting cause of her death.
If it had been unwitting.
Fitzgerald must have been nursing the same thought, for I heard her say next: “Tell me what happened that day, the day Cecilia Corrigan was killed.”
“There’s not much to tell really, er, sir,” Sergeant Chase answered her awkwardly. “I’d only come on duty, it was about seven in the evening. There was a call in saying there’d been an accident down on Herbert Road. A woman badly injured, it said. I was sent out to take a look at it. By the time I got there, the woman was already dead. She’d been crossing the road at the traffic lights when she’d been hit by a car turning into the street.”
“Was the driver... was Mark Hudson... still there?”
“Oh yes, he was still there. He was in a pretty bad way, to be honest. He couldn’t stop shaking. He was sitting on the kerb with his head in his hands, crying, shaking. Quite a crowd had built up by then, and they were gathered round asking him what had happened, but he couldn’t talk. It was only when we eventually got him back here to the station and got him a cup of tea, that he calmed down enough to tell us what had happened.”
“Was he arrested?”
Sergeant Chase looked startled by the question, as if arresting people was the last thing he could imagine himself doing.
“No! He was breathalysed at the scene of the accident, of course, but he didn’t have a drop of drink on him, and there was no evidence he’d been driving carelessly or too fast. Plenty of eyewitnesses saw it all happen. The dead woman didn’t stand a chance. She’d just stepped out in front of the car. He couldn’t stop. Miss Corrigan said so herself.”
“I thought you said she was dead by the time you got there?” I said.
The young cop turned reluctantly towards me, wondering perhaps if he’d said the wrong thing. “I meant the young Miss Corrigan,” he said.
“Becky Corrigan was there when her aunt died?” said Fitzgerald in astonishment.
“Not only was she there,” said Sergeant Chase. “She was in the passenger seat of the car. Mark Hudson was giving her a lift home when he hit her aunt.”
I whistled softly. Funny how she hadn’t mentioned that when I spoke to her.
“And you’re sure,” said Fitzgerald tentatively, “that there was nothing more to what happened? Nothing suspicious? Something that didn’t fit?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head bemusedly. “It was an accident.”
How many times had I heard those words in the past days?
Fitzgerald and Walsh tried more questions, different angles, but they might as well have been speaking Mandarin Chinese for all the impact they were making on Sergeant Chase. As far as he was concerned, he had attended the scene of a routine road traffic accident and nothing was going to shake him from that conviction. And maybe he was right.
Finally, Fitzgerald told him that would be all and she went off to check out the rest of the house with Walsh. I retreated to the garden, found a bench to sit on, and lit a cigar.
I had other things to think about. I was feeling guilty about Kaminski. I didn’t want to say anything to Fitzgerald about it because she might get the wrong idea. Might think that somehow I still had feelings for him. I didn’t. At least I didn’t think I did. My only feeling for him right now was pity. I was struggling with the awful feeling that I’d taken away the one thing that kept him going, which had sustained him in the days since his wife was murdered, and that was the possibility of reeling in Buck Randall III.
There was something else too. What Kaminski had said hit home. As far as he was concerned, I was the cops’ lapdog now. I was the thing we’d always fought against. I was the thing I’d always despised. Somewhere along the way I had become respectable.
Safe.
I still couldn’t work out how I felt about that. Part of me needed to be on the outside. It was part of what defined me. Take that away, and what was left? I was no nearer getting an answer to that when Fitzgerald and Walsh came out to join me.
“Any luck?” I asked.
They didn’t need to speak to give me my answer.
Their faces said it all.
Or at least, they did until Walsh’s face suddenly brightened.
“Would you look at that?” he said appreciatively.
I followed the direction of his gaze. On the other side of the street, a slender woman in a revealing summer dress had emerged from the gate and was glancing over at us with a curious frown. She caught my eye, and there was a vague flicker of recognition on her face before she turned and began to make her way towards the main road.
“That’s Becky,” I explained to him.
“The girl who was in the car?”
“And the one who inherited the money, don’t forget that part.”
“Rich and hot with it,” he said. “It doesn’t get any better than this. Leave her to me.” And he trotted to the gate to follow her. “Excuse me, miss,” he called after her.
I saw her turn, and wait as Walsh caught her up and showed her his badge before reaching out an arm and shepherding her back towards her house.
“Say she did it,” I found myself saying.
“What?” said Fitzgerald, astonished.
“I’m serious. Say she was having an affair with Hudson. She gets him into her clutches, has him knock down the aunt so that she can inherit the money and the house, and then, when Hudsons’s outlived his usefulness, she bumps him off too.”
“What an imagination you have,” said Fitzgerald. “Do you have any reason for thinking so or is this just one of your legendary intuitions?”
“Neither. Thinking aloud, is all.”
“You have the dimmest view of women of anyone I’ve ever known,” said Fitzgerald.
“That’s because I am one,” I said. “I don’t have any illusions.”
I didn’t really think that. A memory of her coldness at our first meeting, the way she’d talked about Cecilia Corrigan, had merely hit me as I looked across at her.
Coldness was no crime, but it provoked mistrust.
“You know,” said Fitzgerald indulgently, “you can’t send everyone you don’t like to the electric chair. The drain on the power supply would be too great.”
“Since when did you become so understanding?”
“Oh, I couldn’t be compassionate all the time,” she smiled. “Just now and again as a special treat. Now what say we get back to looking for the elusive Mr Hudson?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The search for Mark Hudson was complicated by the small and inconvenient fact that we didn’t know exactly what we were looking for.
A straightforward missing person?
A fugitive?
A killer?
Or the victim of a killer, who had disappeared from his own life as effectively as he had disappeared from everyone else’s? Or was his absence a complete non-mystery which would be solved by his suddenly turning up, unaware of the stir he had created?
The procedure for finding the lost was different in each case. Which one was followed could make all the difference to how successful the search turned out to be. I almost found myself wishing I could call up Lucas Piper and ask him for help. His fam
ous skill in uncovering those who had seemingly been erased from the universe would be invaluable.
Or would it? This was a different city, a different country, a different world, than he was used to. He might be totally at sea here. Then again, he couldn’t be any more at sea than I felt. And surely the principles were the same whether you were looking for someone in this Dublin or Dublin, Ohio? I should send him a postcard. Wish you were here.
Where to begin? Mark Hudson didn’t have many friends, and the ones he did have knew of no earthly reason why he should have gone off the radar screen. Of a family there was no sign. There was no sign either of a girlfriend or boyfriend. On that score, Hudson’s sexuality remained stubbornly indeterminate. His few friends knew of no sexual partners, and there was no pornography in the house to indicate which way his inclinations lay. A study of his computer also found no clue in the websites he’d visited, or the emails that he sent. Most of those were related to his work as a salesman. Most of those sent to him were commercial pitches, offering the usual range of bizarre and generally unsavoury services.
Hudson’s bank account had also remained untouched since he vanished. The last withdrawal from his account came from a cash point in Talbot Street, near to where he worked. The CCTV at the bank had recorded him arriving the day before he disappeared to take out money. Grey and grainy, it represented the last sighting of the missing man. If he had been planning on going away for any length of time, there was no hint of it in this transaction.
Nor were there any unusual patterns in his financial dealings in the months leading up to his disappearance. It’s not like he was stockpiling money ready for a midnight flit.
His car hadn’t turned up either. He’d switched cars after knocking down and killing Cecilia Corrigan. Popular psychology would suggest that he did so because the car reminded him of that painful memory. Well, maybe. He’d bought a used Honda, metallic blue, 2002 registration. A search of car parks and side streets in the city had failed to uncover it abandoned. Police patrols remained on the lookout for it, but without much hope.
Airport checks, meanwhile, showed that his passport had not been used, so if he had left the country by plane then he was travelling on a false passport. There was always the boat out, but then he must either have left the city as a foot passenger on one of the ferries or taken a different car, and that left the same question of where his other car had gone.
