by Ingrid Black
“More patient in what way?”
“Didn’t you know?” she said, eyes widening in surprise as she paused momentarily from what she was doing. “Solomon’s fiancé’s dumped him. Everyone was talking about it last night. I met some friends for drinks last night. They’re appearing in Othello at the moment. They said he was in a foul mood yesterday and he had a blazing row with her and she ended up throwing his engagement ring back at him.”
“So much for her forgiving him for his relationship with Marsha.”
“I don’t blame her,” said Kim. “Marsha was no angel, I told her she shouldn’t get involved with a man who was practically married. But Solomon’s the one who was cheating, not Marsha. And it wasn’t the first time either. He must’ve screwed most of the young actresses in Dublin. They think he’s going to make them famous, but once he’s taken what he wants he can’t get rid of them fast enough. And yes, before you ask, he did it to me too. That’s why I warned Marsha. I told her what he was like. But she wouldn’t listen. She was convinced he really cared about her. I’m just glad he’s finally got what was coming to him. Now he knows what it feels like. I’m sorry it didn’t come out sooner, that’s all.”
“What difference would it have made?” I asked.
“Maybe she’d have seen him for the scumbag that he really is,” she said. “Maybe she’d have stopped torturing herself over him and found herself a nice guy for a change.”
A guy like Todd Fleming, I thought.
Though sadly, as he found out, she didn’t seem to want nice.
She didn’t even seem to have wanted normal.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“So where’s lunch?” I said when Fitzgerald finally pulled up in her Rover at the front gate of St Gobnat’s. Kim Denning had left ten minutes earlier. She’d ordered a cab to take all the black bags away with her. Now the church was empty of everything except furniture, and that would be taken away and sold soon enough, I guessed.
All traces of Marsha would be gone.
“Bull Island,” Fitzgerald said.
“Is that some fancy new restaurant I haven’t heard of?” I said, already knowing the answer by the frowning look of concentration on her face.
“I’m afraid lunch will have to wait,” she said.
“Something happened, huh? Is it Rose?”
“She’s still not in a fit state to be interviewed formally. We’ve got a trauma counsellor on hand in case she feels like talking, but I’m not expecting a breakthrough any time soon. No, it’s Mark Hudson. We found out this morning he spent some time in the States before taking up his job here in Dublin. He was living out in New Mexico.”
New Mexico.
“Kaminski claimed Randall killed a woman in New Mexico.”
“Hudson was staying in the same rooming house as the woman who died. He was questioned by the police and the FBI at the time, but he was never in the frame as a suspect.”
“So Randall allegedly kills a woman in the same house Hudson’s staying in, then allegedly turns up in Dublin, if Kaminski’s to be believed, and now Hudson’s gone missing?”
“And there’s no allegedly about that part,” Fitzgerald pointed out.
“There’s something else too, isn’t there?” I said.
“I think we may have found Hudson’s car.”
And that was compensation enough for missing lunch.
My stomach could wait.
As we drove back through the city centre and over the river, up Parnell Street and Summerhill, past Fairview Park and onto the road that snaked round by Clontarf Promenade, she explained to me what had happened that morning.
A man by the name of Dermot Bryce had called Dublin Castle. He’d heard a report on the morning news that police were looking for a metallic blue Honda with a 2002 registration, and remembered seeing one a couple weeks earlier out along the Bull Wall.
The wall had been constructed, I’d read once, about two hundred years ago on the north side of Dublin Bay to provide shelter for the city port and make the passage in and out easier for ships. Behind the wall, huge deposits of sand and silt had gradually been left by the tide and merged to form the so-called Bull Island, three miles long and still growing steadily.
The whole area was now a protected nature reserve, home to thousands of migrating birds such as geese and oystercatchers, as well as housing two golf courses (sometimes I think the whole world is being turned into a golf course), to which Dubliners often came out to walk or to swim, crossing the wooden road bridge that connected the island to the mainland.
This was the way Bryce had come that night after quarrelling with his wife.
“I wanted to be by myself for a while,” he explained when we finally found him waiting for us near the coastguard station, as arranged. He worked as a porter at Central Station and was still wearing his uniform, peaked cap and all. He only had another twenty minutes of his lunch break to go, he informed Fitzgerald grumpily. She told him not to be concerned. If he was needed for longer, she’d make sure the station was kept informed.
He didn’t look convinced. He looked, in fact, like he was thinking that a call from the murder squad was the last thing to make his boss feel happier about a missing employee.
“The sooner you tell us what you saw,” Fitzgerald urged, “the sooner you can go.”
“I was over there,” Bryce said, pointing further along the road that ran along the Bull Wall and which looked from this angle as if it dropped eventually and disappeared into the sea. And maybe it did, for all I knew. “Right where that red car is now. You see it? I was just standing there, having a cigarette, looking out, thinking.”
It was certainly one hell of a view, if you could ignore the huge container terminals that dominated the foreshore in the middle distance. Blank those out and the great sweep of Dublin Bay stretched before us, sparkling fiercely in the sunlight, with mountains huddled protectively in the distance, heads wreathed in white clouds so perfect they were like drawings, stone guardians watching over the city that crowded untidily at their feet.
“There was hardly anyone about,” Bryce said. “It wasn’t hot like it is now, it was raining, and it must’ve been after eleven o’clock. You don’t see too many people out here when it’s like that. That’s probably why he thought I was this Peters fella.”
“Why who thought you were?” I said, bemused.
“This man who came along. He was an American, like you. Wearing one of those baseball caps. I’d seen him coming over the bridge in this car, just as I told your people earlier, and he parked right next to me down there and got out and asked me if I was Peters.”
“What did he say when you told him you weren’t?” asked Fitzgerald.
“He laughed, that was all, then he told me they had to meet a man here by the name of Peters, who was supposed to be buying the car off them.”
“Them?” I said.
“There was another man in the front seat. I didn’t see his face.”
Mark Hudson?
“What did you think of his story?” asked Fitzgerald.
“Seemed like a funny place to me to be selling a car,” admitted Bryce, “but it was none of my business. Even if he was up to no good, what was I supposed to do about it?”
“So what happened then?”
“To be honest with you, I was worried to start off that the pair of them might be queer, you know? That they might’ve thought I was that way inclined myself. But he wasn’t interested once he knew I wasn’t this Peters. He just got back in the car again.”
“Did the two men drive off?”
“No,” he shook his head, “all they did was sit there, looking out of the windscreen. They were still there when I left to go home about ten minutes later.”
“And you didn’t think any more about it until you heard on the radio this morning that the police were looking for a blue Honda?”
“Why would I?” he answered, reasonably enough
“I wonder if anyone else saw the
m,” I said to Fitzgerald.
“I told you,” answered Bryce on her behalf, “there was hardly a sinner about.”
“You didn’t see anyone who might’ve been this Peters then?” said Fitzgerald.
“Not unless he was disguised as a seagull,” he scoffed.
I found myself wondering if this Peters even existed, and noticing as I did so that Bryce was glancing down in an obvious way at his watch.
“Can I go now?” he said.
“In a moment,” said Fitzgerald. “First I want you to take a look at this.”
“Yeah, that’s him,” said Bryce as he took the picture from Fitzgerald’s fingers. “That’s the fella I saw that night. So what’s he supposed to have done, anyway?”
What had Buck Randall done? Finally proved he really was in the city, that’s what.
At least Kaminski wasn’t entirely off the wall.
“That’ll be all, Mr Bryce,” was the only reply Fitzgerald gave him, returning the picture to her inside pocket. “We’ll be in touch if we need you again. Thanks for your help.”
It was what is officially known as getting the brush off, and Bryce knew it. He went off muttering about wishing he hadn’t bothered. What did he want? A medal?
“Come on,” said Fitzgerald when he was out of earshot.
We walked from the coastguard station along to where the red car that Bryce had pointed out was parked, keeping close to the edge of the road to avoid the other cars that crawled regularly along to and from the direction of the golf club.
I tried to imagine the road empty of people and getting dark. It had to be eerie. Somewhere out among the sand dunes, I could hear birds calling, screeching. At night they must sound like something from another world. I wouldn’t like to come here after nightfall, even if I had walked out on a quarrel with my beloved and wanted to clear my head.
It could be cleared as easily within range of a streetlight.
Immediately to the right of where the cars were parked, the ground dipped unevenly under grass and rocks down towards the sea. Seagulls hopped awkwardly among the stones. They flapped away, crying in protest, as Fitzgerald stepped off the road to join them.
“Let’s hope Bryce remembered the right place,” she murmured as I followed her.
Together we crouched down to examine the rocks. She didn’t need to tell me what she was looking for. Somewhere here might be the end of the search.
The seagulls returned and settled and watched with interest, heads to one side. Had we managed to find some source of food that they’d missed?
It only took a couple of minutes before Fitzgerald gave a low exclamation.
“Saxon, look.”
A scratch of blue metallic paint on the edge of a rock.
“I think we’d better call in the divers,” she said softly.
**********
It took them less than an hour to locate Hudson’s blue Honda. That is, they found a Honda, though its colour was difficult to determine, the water was so murky down there.
Then came the problem of getting it out.
Getting the lifting crane across the wooden road bridge was a logistical nightmare in itself. The bridge hadn’t been built for that kind of punishment and creaked alarmingly under the strain. The engineers brought in by the DMP Water Unit to oversee the operation insisted it would hold, and hold it did, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the crane go down to join Hudson’s Honda under the water and be swallowed inexorably by the same sand and silt.
There wasn’t much for me to do but stand around and watch as the crane manoeuvred bulkily into place on the road, and divers descended anew to attach a hook to the car’s rear axle. The grinding of gears filled the air as the crane struggled with the bay for possession of the car. The afternoon was tense with the rasp and scrape of machinery. The seagulls had fled.
And slowly, slowly, fighting its fate, the car emerged, dripping and black with filth.
The fenders were buckled and the grill was pulled into a lopsided grin.
“What can it tell us?” said Fitzgerald. “After all this time down there, what will be left?”
“Not knowing the answer to that question,” I said, “is why you have to ask it.”
“How very Zen you are today,” she replied.
She looked apprehensive, though.
Waiting was always worse than disappointment.
The Honda, which could now be seen to have been metallic blue, even if its colour had become the subject of negotiation with the sea, was dragged over the rocks like a dog at the end of a leash, reluctant to do as it was bidden, until it sat, defeated, on the road.
Even now no one approached it.
“It won’t bite, boys,” said Fitzgerald lightly as she stepped up and peered into the windshield and the windshield stared back blackly, guarding its secrets.
The driver’s side door was more forthcoming. All the windows had been wound down, presumably to make the car sink more effectively once it entered the water.
Fitzgerald bent down and put her head inside.
There was still water inside and a stench like an open sewer. Christ alone knows what was trapped in the mud that coated the seats. Essence of Dublin Bay: I couldn’t see it catching on as a new fragrance. Fitzgerald pulled on a pair of Latex gloves and tried the handle.
It didn’t budge.
It was probably as well, or what was inside the car would’ve ended up on her shoes.
The other doors wouldn’t open either.
Before taking off the handbrake and pushing the car into the water, had Buck Randall crippled the locks to make them harder to open? Why would he bother?
Twenty feet down in Dublin Bay was surely barrier enough to the curious?
Fitzgerald shifted round to the back of the Honda, and tried the button on the trunk.
Click.
“We’re in,” she murmured as she lifted it open.
Then she staggered back violently, as the sweet, decadent, obscene smell of death escaped from the trunk where it had been trapped, and took ownership of the shore.
I clasped my hand over my face in a futile attempt to stop the smell assaulting me.
Fitzgerald had the presence of mind not to do the same. She wouldn’t want to lift the gloves to her mouth now. Instead she protected her face in the crook of her elbow, and turned away. “After all this time down there, what will be left?” she’d asked.
Not much, was my guess.
Fitzgerald was soon taking charge. She ordered everyone back whilst the City Pathologist was summoned. What we had now was a crime scene. Nothing was to be disturbed. The engineers and crane crew were told to return to the city. Uniforms were directed into place to keep unwanted onlookers away from the area. Blue tape appeared from nowhere. A shapeless white canopy was shouldered into place around the car, for the police’s privacy rather than the victim’s, though that too. It wouldn’t take long for the reporters to appear. We sat, waiting for the pathologist to arrive in a room at the coastguard station which she had immediately requisitioned for use by the murder squad.
A young sergeant was dispatched to fetch coffee.
The coffee he found wasn’t going to win any awards for taste, but it sufficed. The smell of it at least offered some relief from the smell of decay. Once it gets into your nostrils, that’s hard to shift. You keep imagining you can still smell it even when you’re far away.
It clings to you.
You wonder why other people haven’t noticed it on your hair and clothes.
Fitzgerald didn’t need to tell me what she’d seen. Bodies decay much slower when immersed in water than in the air, but the process still ain’t pretty. After only a few hours in water, the skin becomes wrinkled and white, especially on the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands. It’s as if the dead one has been walking on icing sugar.
Within a few weeks, the skin slips off like clothing. Hair becomes loose and as easily lifted off as a badly-fitted wig. The body becomes
bloated and filled with gas. It easily breaks apart if not handled correctly. The pathologist would want to make as close an examination as he could out here. By the time the body reached the mortuary, many vital indications could have been corrupted or destroyed. Murderers had relied on this fact for centuries, disposing of bodies in water because it eradicated so much of the evidence against them.
“It was definitely a man?” I asked her as we sipped the coffee.
“I’m pretty sure,” she said. “It looked like a man’s clothes.”
“I wonder if he was dead already when he went into the water?”
Whoever it was, I hoped that he had been dead already. The alternative, that the victim drowned whilst trapped in the trunk of the car, was too grisly to contemplate.
Though would we ever know? Determining absolutely the cause of death in these circumstances could prove impossible. Even determining the identity of the victim might be beyond the reach of science, unless there was adequate DNA or dental records to match against the corpse. In many instances, the body fat itself could be transformed into a greasy, pale soft substance akin to butter or soap. There would be no face to speak of.
The City Pathologist reminded us of each and every one of these provisos when he arrived with Sean Healy about an hour after the car had been dredged out of the bay.
Alastair Butler was a careful man. He lived carefully, he dressed carefully, he spoke carefully, he worked carefully. It could make him frustrating to deal with, but it did mean that when he made a pronouncement it represented his most exact thinking on the matter.
He did not deal in speculation.
He dealt in facts.
Right now he was staring over the top of his half-moon spectacles, having declined coffee, listening whilst Fitzgerald outlined the circumstances in which the body had been found.
“Whether he was dead when he went into the water, I don’t know,” she told him, “but I’m assuming the body went into the water the night Bryce met Buck Randall.”
