The Judas Heart

by Ingrid Black

  “What’s he doing?” I said.

  “Sorry?” he replied with a show of incomprehension. But he had the look of a schoolboy caught out looking at another kid’s test.

  “Kaminski,” I said. “The guy you’re watching. What’s he been at?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Do I know you?” he said eventually.

  I explained who I was.

  Showed him my nice new shiny ID to prove it.

  “I heard about you,” he conceded reluctantly.

  “Then can I get in?” I said. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask to play with your truncheon. I just don’t want JJ to see me if he’s up there.”

  He looked bemused again.

  “JJ?”

  “JJ... Kaminski... look, can we continue this conversation behind blacked-out glass?”

  By now anyone walking by would’ve thought I was a hooker fishing for a client.

  With a grunt, the surveillance guy finally unlocked the door and let me in, and I slid into the passenger seat, grateful at least for the air conditioning inside.

  Cool air played with my hair, and I let it.

  “So you know the target?” the driver said to me.

  “We used to work together,” I said, “back in the States. We were in the same FBI field unit. That’s why I thought I’d come along tonight and see what’s happening.”

  Another expressive grunt.

  “Nothing is what’s happening,” he said. “Far as we know, he hasn’t left his room all afternoon. He had his dinner brought up, some drinks from the bar, and that’s about it.”

  “Who else is watching?”

  “We’ve got two more. One in the lobby, watching the stairs and lift, another keeping an eye on the rear of the building. Those are the only exits apart from the fire doors and they’ll set off the alarm anyway if they’re opened. He can’t get out without us knowing.”

  “Isn’t that what they said about Clint Eastwood in Escape From Alcatraz?”

  As if on cue, a voice crackled onto the police radio.

  “He’s moving.”

  And a moment later, we were gazing out of the windshield at the steps of the hotel, where Kaminski could now be seen, still looking dishevelled, ruffling his hair. He barely looked up from the ground as he descended the steps and set off along the sidewalk in the direction of town. He certainly didn’t look across at the car in which we sat. Maybe he really hadn’t noticed it. He was distracted right now, after all. Or maybe he was only making it seem as if he hadn’t. I couldn’t help wondering if he’d seen me climbing inside and this was his way of yanking my chain. Making me think he was going somewhere.

  Making me think he was on his way to meet someone.

  Someone like Buck Randall.

  Chances were he was just going to pick up another bottle of Jack Daniel’s, but I still felt as if something was about to happen, as if that’s what the strange atmosphere that night had been preparing me for.

  I reached for the door handle.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I want to follow on foot.”

  “You can’t follow him, you don’t have - Hey, come back!”

  I stayed on the other side of the street, keeping Kaminski in sight, ready to dodge out of sight if he became suspicious of being followed. But he didn’t turn round once. He just walked straight on. A man with a purpose. Or was I simply reading in his actions what I wanted to see?

  Soon he had crossed the Grand Canal and continued onto Lower Baggot Street. Doubt grew. If Randall had managed to make contact with Kaminski to arrange a meeting, why not somewhere quieter? Or did he want the safety of the crowd around him?

  The city began to fill up again, with the same sweating, shouting, laughing, partying summer souls as before, only now they made less impression on me than the breath of a butterfly. My entire attention was focussed on Kaminski and his mission.

  Wait.

  What was this? Kaminski had approached a man standing in a doorway and was talking to him. Could this be - ? Then the man raised his arm and pointed further down the street and I realised Kaminski had only been asking for directions.

  A mute wave of thanks and he was on the move again.

  I tried to suppress an ache of disappointment when I saw where Kaminski had apparently been trying to reach – an all-night chemist just past Roger’s Lane.

  Kaminski pushed the door and disappeared inside.

  I edged closer to the glass and looked inside.

  Kaminski had stopped in an aisle less than six feet away from me, looking at boxes of painkillers. So much for the big mystery. He was probably just trying to shift a headache from all that Tennessee whiskey earlier. He lifted a packet down and headed to the counter to pay.

  I turned and saw the surveillance guy from the car standing across the street at the bus stop, trying his best to look inconspicuous, and failing miserably.

  He made a gesture as if to say: What’s he doing?

  I shrugged.

  I managed to get out of sight before Kaminski emerged from the chemist with his box of pills, and I smiled to myself as his eyes glanced across the street briefly at his pursuer. It would take more than pretending to check out a bus timetable to fool Kaminski.

  Had he seen me too?

  I wouldn’t be surprised.

  He set off again in the direction of his hotel, and I couldn’t decide whether to bother following him back there. The whole evening seemed to have been a waste of effort on my part, like I’d been trying to prove something to myself without knowing what it was I was trying to prove. I should just head home. My apartment was close. At that moment, bed seemed like the best idea I’d had in a long while.

  Soon, I was glad that I stayed out.

  There was some kind of disturbance up ahead on the corner of James Street East. A small huddle of people had gathered round in a ring, like they were getting ready for some impromptu team talk. Kaminski’s steps slowed as he neared them.

  In the gaps between the legs of the people watching, I could see a young woman kneeling on the ground, barefoot, grasping the front of her loose nightdress and pulling it tightly to her frame, in an effort to cover herself. The nightdress was torn. She was crying. As I got closer, unconcerned now with whether Kaminski saw me, I heard her voice.

  Choking.

  Pleading.

  The breath catching in her throat.

  “Don’t let him come back,” she was telling them. “Please, keep him away from me.”

  “What is it?” someone asked her.

  Between sobs that racked her body like electric shocks, she finally managed to force out the words.

  “He tried to kill me,” she said.

  He tried to kill me.

  Then she started screaming.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “What happened to you last night?” said Fitzgerald when she called next morning.

  For a second, I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “I was with Rose Downey, remember?” I said, naming the woman that I’d found crouched and frightened on the ground on the road to Kaminski’s hotel the previous night.

  “That’s my point. You’d gone by the time I got there,” said Fitzgerald. “I was looking for you. Healy told me you were on the scene when he arrived. Next thing, you were gone.”

  “I didn’t feel so hot.”

  “A headache?”

  “I just wanted to get home.”

  I guess I didn’t sound too convincing.

  “You OK?” pressed Fitzgerald. “You sound strange.”

  “It’s nothing. Forget it. Like I said, I don’t feel so hot.”

  “Last time you used that line it was in the past tense,” Fitzgerald said. “You’ve deteriorated quickly. Would you rather stay home today?”

  “I was thinking of dropping by the hospital to see Rose again.”

  “There’s not much point. The doctors still have her sedated. They won’t let us que
stion her yet. They say she’s not strong enough. She had a pretty traumatic ordeal.”

  “You didn’t manage to get anything out of her about what happened then?”

  “All she said last night was that she came back to her apartment in James’s Place East after a night out with friends, got undressed and ready for bed, and as soon as she turned out the light he jumped on her. He must’ve been hiding in her bedroom the whole time. Christ knows how she managed to get out, but somehow she opened the door and escaped.”

  “No description?”

  “Says she didn’t see his face, neither did he say a word. And of course, by the time we got her address out of her, he was long gone.”

  “You think it’s the same guy?”

  “Who knows? We’ll have a better idea over the next couple of hours, once her apartment’s been properly analysed. The lock on the door was already broken, apparently, so there’s no sign of any break in, there was no need for it, and no restraints were used but then he didn’t have time to finish the job, so who knows what way things may have turned out? I’ll be able to give you more details over lunch, if you’re interested. There’s a price, though. I want you to do something for me first. You know Kim Denning?”

  “Marsha Reed’s friend. The one who found her body.”

  “That’s her. She’s going round to Marsha’s house today to pick up some stuff. We’ve finished with it now. The keys are being handed back to the father later this afternoon. Apparently he didn’t want to deal with clearing out his daughter’s personal stuff, so Kim said she’d do it for him. I said I’d go round this morning to open up for her, but after the attack on Rose Downey and what you found out yesterday about Marsha’s trips to the internet cafe, I’ve got too much to follow up. So what about it? Would you do it for me? I can pick you up at Marsha’s place about one and we can go get something to eat together...”

  Which is how I found myself walking round to Dublin Castle to pick up and sign for the key to Marsha Reed’s house from the desk sergeant, and then continuing on down Patrick Street past the cathedral and over the junction towards Lower Clanbrassil Street.

  At least an early night had cleared my head. I was feeling stupid again for allowing myself to be made feel low by my suspicions. It’s just that sometimes when you’ve lapsed into foolishness, it can be tempting to nurse the foolishness longer than is healthy. In all these years, Fitzgerald had never given me a moment’s cause to doubt her.

  She deserved better than my paranoia.

  My moods.

  I turned off into Fumbally’s Lane, relishing, as I always did when I came here, the almost Dickensian quality of the old street names in this area of the city: Ebenezer Terrace, Marrowbone Lane, Black Pitts. When so much else in the city had been prettified and sanitised, it was good to be reminded of the ancient dark heart still beating here.

  Marsha Reed’s father, Healy had told me, was blaming himself for his daughter’s death for buying her a house in this district. He hadn’t wanted her to live here. He could have afforded to fix her up with a place of her own in any part of the city. But St Gobnat’s was what she wanted, so St Gobnat’s was what she got. I got the impression she was the kind of girl who was used to getting what she wanted. The father had been left a widower when Marsha was still young. She’d been spoiled. I wondered if that was what made her seek out such extremes in her sexual life. Was she punishing herself because life had been too easy?

  Then I admonished myself for indulging in this pop psychology.

  I should leave that to Fisher’s new girlfriend.

  It was strange, though, how people had an instinct to blame themselves for things that were none of their fault. It wasn’t living in this district which had killed Marsha. Most likely, it was her own bad choices which had done that, and there’s nothing parents can do to stop their kids making those once they’ve flown the coop. Just ask my mother.

  It wouldn’t have mattered where Marsha had lived in the city if her own desires were leading her into danger.

  I guessed it would be sold now, I thought as I passed through the front gates and continued up the laneway towards the church. Marsha’s father would hardly want to keep the place after what had happened to his only child within its walls. For a moment, the thought crossed my mind that we should buy it, Grace and me. That’s what she wanted, wasn’t it? A place together. And two weeks ago, maybe, it would’ve been perfect for us. Close to the city for me, peaceful enough for Grace. Did it make a difference that Marsha had died here? Someone would live here again. Why not us? And yet I knew, even as I framed the notion in my brain, that this was a non-runner. The house would be tainted for ever now.

  “Oh.”

  The exclamation came from a red-haired young woman in flat shoes and what looked like jodhpurs, sitting on the steps of the church, clutching a purple shoulder bag on her lap. She had a startled look on her face. I guess she hadn’t heard me coming.

  “I wasn’t really sure what time I was supposed to be here,” she explained, scrambling to her feet, once I’d introduced myself.

  “You been waiting long?”

  “About an hour,” she said, considering. “I didn’t mind. It’s so beautiful in here, isn’t it? I can’t believe this is the last time I’ll ever come here. I can’t believe someone else is going to be moving in. Everything about it just reminds me so much of Marsha...”

  She bit her lip gently. Whether it was simply an involuntary habit, or she was trying to stop herself from crying, I couldn’t tell. I fitted the key into the lock to let us in.

  “I know it sounds strange,” she said, “but I’d buy it myself if I could. I wouldn’t live here. I couldn’t. I’d just hate someone to come and pull it down. Marsha loved it so much. After what happened, I wouldn’t be surprised if her father had the whole place flattened.”

  “Why don’t you buy it?”

  She laughed hollowly.

  “I couldn’t afford it. I’m an out of work actress. The last job I had was the voiceover for a radio ad for toothpaste. My work doesn’t even pay my rent, never mind the mortgage on a place like this.”

  “Is that how you met Marsha?” I said. “Through the theatre?”

  She nodded as she stepped into the hallway.

  “We were appearing together in A Midsummer Night’s Dream...” She stopped. “Listen,” she said. “It’s so quiet.”

  It was. The last time I’d been inside the church, Fisher had been talking, detectives had come and gone, trailing a perpetual echo of footsteps and murmured voices.

  Now I knew what the phrase “silent as the grave” really meant.

  This must have been what it was like for Marsha when she was on her own. This must have been what attracted her to the place. Once the door was shut, the world ceased to exist. All was still, undisturbed, uncomplicated. What a contrast to her own messy life.

  “I should get started,” Kim said, but she made no move to do so.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” I said.

  “Would you?”

  We went through, crossing the floor to the doors at the other end of the church, and down the narrow corridor into Marsha’s closet, and Kim took out a roll of black bin liners from her shoulder bag and began to tear them off one by one. She started to fill them methodically with the clothes in Marsha’s drawers and her shoes.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do with all this stuff. Give it to the charity shop, I suppose. It doesn’t seem right somehow,” she said. “I know it’s not like she has any use for them anymore, but she was so passionate about her clothes. She was passionate about everything.”

  “Does that include Victor Solomon?” I said.

  She shot me a look of flame.

  “Don’t talk to me about that bastard,” she said. “He’s the reason she’s dead.”

  “You think Solomon killed Marsha?”

  “He has an alibi, doesn’t he? That’s what I heard,” said Kim. “I didn’t mean he himself physically kille
d her. Just that if it hadn’t been for him, she might still be alive now. All she wanted was to be with him. She was crazy about him. When he rejected her...”

  “She put herself at risk trying to forget him?” I finished for her.

  “I warned her,” said Kim. “I know she’d been going to that club downtown. She used to tell me about it. It was a giggle, that’s all.” I recalled that’s what Todd Fleming said too. Marsha must have told that to everybody, trying to make the darkness of her desires seem routine, uncomplicated. “It was mostly role-playing, she told me, dressing up, pretending to be someone else for a few hours. Putting on a mask. Like acting, yeah? I mean, I knew she had fantasies,” she went on reluctantly, “about being tied up, being dominated, but if you met her, you’d know there was no harm in it. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of kinkiness now and then, is there? It’s not against the law. Everyone does it. They even sell those furry handcuffs on the high street now, don’t they?”

  From what we now knew of Marsha Reed’s sex life, it had gone way beyond a bit of innocent kinky fun with furry handcuffs and silken binds, and I suspected Kim Denning knew it too, which was why she was subconsciously turning all her statements about her friend into questions, like she was looking to me to back up her need to see all that Marsha did in the best light. I didn’t puncture her illusions. I wanted to hear her talk.

  “She told me she stopped going to the club after she met Victor,” Kim said. “She wanted a different life. She wanted to be with him, but she said he wasn’t interested in taking things further than a casual thing. Wham bam, thank you, ma’am. That was his style. He gets his kicks pushing the little people like me around on stage. But he wouldn’t leave his adoring wife-to-be, and Marsha drifted back into her old world again. If she’d been with him, maybe she’d have been safe. Though whether he would’ve been is another matter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Marsha was very possessive. I’ve never met anyone who could get so jealous. She’d just lose it completely when she was mad. If anyone was going to kill anyone, I’d have said it was Marsha who’d kill him, never mind the other way round. She was furious when he said he didn’t want her anymore. She actually said she’d kill him. She said she’d kill him and then kill herself. I told her not to talk like that. It’s ironic really. If only she’d been more patient.”