A Day in the Life of Louis Bloom

by Paul Charles

  ‘Yes, they still go out for an occasional drink or meal, you know, for a catch-up. I know she cared immensely for Louis and she will be very upset… as we all are.’

  ‘What does Mariana do?’

  ‘She’s married,’ Sophie said, flying in another laugh.

  ‘And you’re married,’ O’Carroll said, ‘and you work here.’

  ‘Okay, fair point,’ Sophie replied, ‘Francie did not want his wife working – she doesn’t need to.’

  ‘Okay,’ McCusker started quickly, ‘tell me this, Sophie: what did Mariana do for a living when she met Louis?’

  ‘Ah… okay,’ this time her laugh was more of a nervous one, ‘Mariana was an escort when she met Francie – yes, in fact, that is also how she met her husband.’

  ‘So Mariana was an escort when she first met Louis?’ McCusker asked. ‘He needed it spelling out.’

  ‘Well, yes and no really.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Well, I introduced them both as good friends of mine and not as an escort and a potential client, if you see what I mean. But at the time they met she was still in the escort business.’

  ‘As an escort, what would have been expected of her?’ McCusker asked, feeling this point also needed spelling out.

  ‘Well, you know, I suppose we could all be guilty of hearing the word “escort” and thinking “nudge, nudge, wink, wink, I know exactly what that means”. But I can tell you this: Mariana is nobody’s fool and all I would say is she was never going to do anything she wasn’t comfortable doing. I know her company takes a very large deposit and it’s made clear to their clients that the service provided is companionship. You know, some men really are satisfied just to have some great company for an evening, and they’re equally keen to be seen with a beautiful girl on their arm.’

  ‘Okay, that makes sense,’ McCusker said, happy with the information. She perhaps did “protest too much.” There was perhaps more valuable information to be gained on the topic, but he wasn’t going to get much more right now. On top of which, if he continued with the direct questions he really wanted to ask about Mariana, there was a good chance that Sophie, and perhaps even his own partner, were going to accuse him of being un-gentlemanly.

  ‘Have you ever met a friend of Mariana’s called Murcia?’ he asked, deciding to move on.

  Sophie Rubens looked a little uncomfortable. She looked like she was going to give another of her “yes” winks but didn’t. The problem for McCusker was that she had looked uncomfortable in so many different ways since the start of the interview.

  ‘Yes, I know Murcia; I’ve met her a few times, solely through us both being good friends of Mariana’s.’

  ‘And Murcia was also a good friend of Louis’?’

  ‘I don’t know if I would use the word “good” to describe their friendship but, yes, they knew each other.’

  ‘And would you say that Murcia and Louis–’

  ‘I wouldn’t really be qualified to answer that question; you should ask Mariana, or, better still, Murcia herself.’

  ‘But from your knowledge, would you say that was Murcia and–’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ she said, semi-glaring at both of them, ‘I really don’t know a lot about that and I feel it unfair to speculate.’

  ‘Okay,’ McCusker said, thinking that’s also one he might need to leave for another time. ‘Did Mr Fitzgerald and Louis get on okay?

  ‘Yeah, I mean when I saw them at social events, mostly fundraisers, Francie, Louis and Ron Desmond always seemed to be thick as thieves.’

  ‘But not Harry?’

  ‘Not Harry what?’

  ‘Well, you just said that when you saw Francie, Louis and Ron together at fundraisers, they seemed thick as thieves?’

  ‘I didn’t actually mean they were thieves, Mr McCusker,’ she said, and shrieked.

  ‘No, I know, I got that,’ McCusker conceded, ‘but my point was that if you saw them all at fundraisers, then there was a good chance that you would have been there with Harry, yet you didn’t say that Francie, Ron, Louis and Harry were always thick as thieves…?’

  ‘Goodness, I believe we’ve just enjoyed a Columbo moment,’ Sophie shrieked, as she checked her extremely large wristwatch. ‘Yes, you’re correct. But, you see, my Harry isn’t part of that fundraising set, so he’s never off working the room.’

  ‘What about Al Armstrong, what can you tell me about him?’ McCusker asked.

  ‘Okay, time out,’ Sophie Rubens called. ‘Can you guarantee me that anything I tell you won’t get myself and Harry into trouble?’

  ‘For instance?’ McCusker asked, now totally intrigued.

  ‘For instance, hypothetically speaking, of course: if, say, I wanted to tell you that I saw Al selling say… am, oh… what could we be talking about now… oh, yes I’ve got it… what if I said we saw Al selling weed,’ she said, making “weed” sound like a revelation she’d just experienced. ‘Could that get Harry and me into any trouble?’

  ‘No,’ O’Carroll replied, as the official member of the PSNI, ‘you wouldn’t get into trouble.’

  ‘And what if say, I said, I mean wildly out of character here, I know, for Harry and I…’ and her shriek of laughter was even wilder than normal, ‘but say I said that Al sold Harry and I some weed– what would your position be then?’

  ‘As long as you were only using it personally and in the privacy of your home, we would have no issue with that at all. As you said to my colleague earlier, it is 2018 after all.’

  McCusker wanted to high-five O’Carroll on the spot – the only problem was that neither of them were high-fiving kind of people.

  ‘Okay then,’ Sophie braced herself and proudly announced, ‘we regularly bought very expensive, but consistently high-grade marijuana from Al Armstrong.’

  That got the pen squeaking noisily in O’Carroll’s wee pink notebook.

  ‘Did he sell to Louis?’ McCusker asked.

  Sophie let out another perfectly timed shriek. ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ she said in a whisper, as if someone was listening in. ‘Louis was the poster-boy for people who were naturally high on life! He liked an occasional glass of expensive red wine, but that was it for him.’

  McCusker was about to raise his next question when she continued with, ‘Mind you, Louis did say that there were a few evenings when he went home and Armstrong had clearly been around, and Elizabeth was stoned out of her brains’

  ‘Did he sell to other people?’ McCusker asked, still somewhat shell-shocked from Sophie’s last revelation.

  ‘Yes, of course, and he used his property refurbishments as a way to launder his money. Every time Armstrong had a property sale, Louis would always say, “I see my wife’s bestie has just got rid of another shipment of weed”.’

  Okay, McCusker thought – this is the type of progress I like. Could Armstrong have a supplier, who he in turn owed money to, and either Louis found out about it or Armstrong saw getting rid of Louis as a way to getting to his money through Elizabeth? The other image he was having a hard time with was the one of the Superintendent’s wife’s sister sitting in her wee house up on Landseer Street stoned out of her Christmas tree.

  ‘Did you ever meet Louis’ brother, Miles?’

  ‘Never did, no. But Louis and Harry used to talk about him,’ Sophie said, and then released another of her laughs, which McCusker was convinced rattled each and every one of his and O’Carroll’s dental fillings. ‘He certainly sounded like he was out there. Way out there! Harry can probably fill you in better on Miles’ background.’

  ‘What can you tell us about how Louis was, the last time you spoke to him?’

  ‘Do you remember when you were young, and you felt that time used to pass really so slowly? Later, of course, you come to realise that it’s because you only had a few things on the horizon, like summer holidays, birthdays and Christmas. As we get older we have lots more special events to fill up our lives with – adventures, career highs and lows, ne
w books, new albums, new movies, TV programmes, the theatre, concerts, trips, holidays, special meals, friend’s weddings, the birth of friend’s children, friend’s children’s weddings, and on and on. Well, you have to know the everyday of Louis’ life was like a birthday or Christmas Day to him. I’ve never known a man or woman whose life was filled with so many wonderful things, and equally I’ve never known anyone who enjoyed their life more than Louis did his.’

  ‘Tell me this, Sophie,’ McCusker started, and paused, ‘you know the woman you went to see Louis with that first night?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘What ever happened to her?’

  ‘She also met her true love, a farmer’s daughter from Randallstown, and they run a very successful garden centre up just outside Randallstown.’

  ‘Excellent,’ McCusker replied, ‘could you give me her details please?’

  Sophie seemed very put out by that, but passed the information on anyway.

  ‘For ruling-you-out purposes only, Sophie, could you please advise what you were doing last night from 8.30 until, say, 1.30 this morning?’

  ‘I was at the Mac Theatre seeing Eric Bibb.’

  ‘Were you with Harry?’ McCusker asked, feeling quite foolish, not to mention guilty, because he knew, he thought, exactly where Harry had been at that time. He was equally convinced that a husband and wife would never contradict each other, particularly a married couple that had managed a quick catch-up between police interviews.

  ‘No, Harry was working last night.’

  ‘Were you with a friend?’

  ‘Nope, just by myself.’

  ‘Did you buy anything by credit card – tickets, coffee or even a snack? They have a really nice café on the second floor there,’ McCusker said, knowing it was on the ground floor.

  ‘Nope, I paid for my ticket, in cash, went upstairs to the café, had my coffee, wine and quiche, all paid for with cash,’ she replied, fumbling around, like she knew she’d made a mistake. She looked at her watch again.

  ‘Okay,’ McCusker said, taking the hint, ‘we’ve probably detained you long enough for now, so let’s leave it there.’

  Sophie got up to leave, said her farewell with a ‘Cheery-bye’, but just before she opened the inner of Louis Bloom’s office door, she turned and added, ‘I suppose Harry told you about Louis’ worry over Elizabeth?’

  ‘Oh,’ McCusker replied, completely caught unawares, ‘and what worry was that?’

  ‘Well, Elizabeth Bloom frequently used to make this mysterious drink for Louis, but she’d never say what it was she put in it. She’d always say it was all very healthy stuff for him. Like an energy drink. So, about a week ago, Louis brought the remains of one of the drinks to Harry and asked him to analyse it to see exactly what it was she was giving him.’

  Chapter Twenty

  As they were entering Leab David’s reception space outside Louis Bloom’s office, seconds after Sophie Rubens’ departure, Leab looked like she was about to give McCusker some information. However, O’Carroll’s mobile went off with its distinctive Stevie Wonder ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’ ring tone. It was Superintendent Larkin instructing them to go immediately, without further delay, to Louis Bloom’s house, where a disturbance had just been reported.

  They did as bid.

  ‘Who invented the wheel?’

  ‘What are you on about now, McCusker?’

  ‘No, it’s just that your wheels caught my attention just as we were about to climb on board,’ he said, as they fastened their seat belts and she noisily engaged the gear stick and headed back up towards the busy Stranmillis Road, ‘and I was just thinking that, you know, as an invention, we rather take the wheel for granted and really, when you think about it, it’s such a marvellous invention, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sometimes, I mean like now for instance - I’m really so sorry I ever mentioned you to my sister.’

  ‘No seriously,’ McCusker protested, ‘just think about it; let’s forget all about the Industrial Revolution – where would we be without the wheel? In fact where would the Industrial Revolution be without the wheel? Take another instance; just now, if we needed to run up to Landseer Street, well… we’d arrive severely out of breath and hardly be in a position to deal properly with a disturbance of any kind. So every now and then, you know, I’d really just like us to stop for a few seconds and celebrate the person – man or woman – who invented the wheel.’

  ‘McCusker…’

  ‘I’m serious, Lily,’ McCusker interrupted her interruption, ‘think of where Henry Ford’s motor car would be now if someone hadn’t invented the wheel. All these vehicles scooting all around and about us would all be parked by the side of the road, rusting.’

  ‘McCusker,’ she started again, this time as she took a quick left into Landseer Street, ‘I think Grace does have the measure of you. She claims that there is method in your madness. She says if I, or we, or she, or whoever only stopped to think – like just now, when you asked “Who invented the wheel?”, we’d realise that there was always a point behind your tangents or, maybe to put it more bluntly, a method in your madness. Like, for instance, we’re here, and due to our preoccupation with your tangent, we’re relatively stress-free and neither did we endanger either ourselves or, more importantly, other people on the road in the process.’

  As they hopped out of the car and ran towards Louis Bloom’s blue, Victorian, front door, McCusker was saying, ‘I still maintain we couldn’t have done it without wheels!’

  * * *

  McCusker and O’Carroll had to wait for ages outside the door. They could hear screaming and shouting and effing and blinding like it was going out of fashion from beyond it. Eventually the door opened up and Al Armstrong appeared. The majority of his snow-white T-shirt, or what used to be his snow-white T-shirt, was covered in the rich, crimson life force, known as blood. He’d a towel with some ice cubes held to his nose.

  ‘What on Earth is happening?’ O’Carroll asked, in a surprisingly calm voice.

  ‘Miles has gone loopy again!’ Armstrong managed to croak, rolling his eyes and nodding his head in the direction of the kitchen.

  O’Carroll headed off in that direction as McCusker, supporting Armstrong by the elbow, peeled off into the lounge and succeeded in managing to get the casualty to lie down on the sofa (minus cushions, so that he was totally horizontal). McCusker removed some of the ice cubes from the towel, placed them in one of the napkins Mrs Bloom had on the sideboard and put the ice pack underneath the quivering Armstrong’s neck.

  ‘Keep it there,’ McCusker advised, ‘it’ll cool down your blood, which will, in turn, slow down the flow.’

  ‘Elizabeth,’ Armstrong managed to mutter, and McCusker immediately headed off in the direction of the screaming and shouting in the kitchen.

  ‘So where’s the Will?’ a stranger shouted at the recently widowed Mrs Bloom. The stranger, McCusker assumed, was Miles Bloom, and he was screaming at the top of his lungs, about 2 inches away from the face of a sobbing Mrs Bloom.

  ‘I don’t know, Miles, I keep telling you I don’t know,’ Elizabeth cried out in utter desperation.

  ‘Step away, Sir,’ O’Carroll commanded repeatedly.

  ‘What’s in the fecking Will?’ Miles demanded, totally ignoring O’Carroll. ‘Do I get my money back? I have a right to that money, it’s mine.’

  ‘I don’t know how many times I have to say this, Miles,’ Elizabeth pleaded, wiping her eyes and nose with a soggy tissue. ‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’

  ‘Step back.’

  ‘It’s none of your fecking business, get out of here,’ Miles screamed at O’Carroll, before returning his attention to his sister-in-law. ‘You must have discussed it. You must know if I’m getting my birth-right back.’

  ‘Step back,’ O’Carroll ordered, for what sounded like the final time.

  ‘You take care of Mrs Bloom,’ McCusker suggested, as he ran in, ‘the thing I find is when you’re dealing with
a spoilt child, you have to treat them as a spoilt child.’

  With that, he opened the kitchen door out into the garden, simply grabbed Miles Bloom in a bear hug from behind, trapping his arms, and then surprised everyone by yanking him off his feet and marching the shocked, denim-clad man – who looked and sounded like he made a habit of stamping his feet and getting ugly in mixed company – out into the garden.

  Now Miles was incensed to the nth degree.

  ‘I’ll have you for GBH! This is police brutality! I’ll have you!’ he screeched in an inhumanly high-pitched whine. ‘I’ve got witnesses! Elizabeth you’re a witness to this,’ he called back into the kitchen.

  ‘No, Sir,’ McCusker started, ‘when you calm down, I believe you’ll find that I’m not in fact brutalising you, but I am in fact restraining you for your own good.’

  Miles struggled with all his might and couldn’t break free of McCusker, who by this time was gently whispering in his ear: ‘Shame on you for terrorising a poor woman who’s just lost her husband.’

  There was more screaming and shouting and frustrated effing and blinding from Miles.

  ‘Can I just say, Sir, that I can comfortably restrain you like this – for your own good, you understand,’ McCusker continued, in a very soothing and even tone, ‘for quite possibly the remainder of the day, but most definitely until you calm down.’

  Just like a spoilt child, Miles Bloom eventually settled down a few minutes later. By which point O’Carroll had a brew-up going for all of them.

  ‘So I suppose you have to take me to jail now,’ Miles inquired, after a few more minutes of silence.

  Elizabeth didn’t betray relief at the suggestion; if anything, she looked particularly concerned.

  O’Carroll took her lead from Mrs Bloom and said, ‘Well, this seems to me to have been a domestic dispute and in such instances we have to give a warning…’ she paused to glare at Miles, ‘the first time. The incident with Mr Armstrong seems to be another matter entirely – he seems to have been assaulted and if he wishes to press charges_’