by Paul Charles
Bloom left his home at around 8.55. He’d got as far as being able to dump his garbage. That would have taken him to 9.00 to, say, 9.05 at the latest. So McCusker knew where Bloom was at that point. Okay. Did the assailant allow Bloom to start his walk home before accosting him? So somewhere between 9.05 and, say, 9.10 the assailant met up with or accosted Bloom. McCusker assumed, due to the lack of any marks on or about Bloom, that Bloom went willingly. Did they both head off to this location? McCusker looked around the quiet avenue, which would be much quieter during the night. What happened here when Bloom arrived? Was there a third person lying in wait for them? There would have to be some logic to that, in that it would be clearly easier for two people to get Bloom’s corpse from here, up and over the eight-foot high wall that separated the graveyard from Botanic Gardens and across Friar’s Bush graveyard to Lennon’s Mausoleum.
‘So we’re dealing with a professional?’ McCusker asked, himself more than anyone else, ‘someone whose aim was true and who had planned every minute detail?’
McCusker thought of Bloom in his final moments. Did he know what was ahead of him? Did he position his favoured baseball cap above him in the bushes to serve as a clue perhaps? What other evidence was there on or about the cap? That was down to the good people in the forensic department.
‘When you get a chance, can you have someone check all the local CCTV footage?’
‘There are no cameras in Botanic,’ Barr replied, offering what McCusker had learned since yesterday – that some locals referred to the Gardens as simply “Botanic”.
‘No, sorry, of course not – I meant the streets around here. I was thinking about how the assailant arrived here. I’m wondering if he’s local. Did he walk here or did he drive here?’
McCusker then shared with Barr the thoughts he’d just had about Bloom and his final moments.
‘That would make a lot of sense,’ Barr said, as they headed off back to the Customs House, ‘you know, that he knew his murderer, that there was someone else, an accomplice, waiting up here for them both. They murdered Louis Bloom and then the accomplice helped the assailant take the body over to the graveyard.’
‘Yeah, I find myself favouring that, but only because I can’t come up with a plausible alternative. But that’s never a great starting point for a suspicion.’
‘Oh yes, I nearly forgot,’ Barr said, ‘I was about to tell you up at the office and then you said hold off until we were at the scene of the crime. But the other important thing Anthony Robertson said was he felt sure that the murderer would have cleaned some blood away from Bloom’s back. He said there wouldn’t have been a lot of blood, because the knife would have done its damage immediately and the heart would have shut down and stopped pumping blood pretty quickly, but there would have certainly been some spillage that would have disappeared into the soil. There most certainly would still have been some spillage around the wound. Apparently the wound was very clean and there were no blood stains on Bloom’s shirt, so the murderer appears to have cleaned his back.’
‘That’s very interesting, WJ,’ McCusker replied, but still deep in consideration. ‘Did you ever notice, Willie John, that a tiger has markings on the fur just above its eyes? These markings tend to make it look like its eyes are actually above its real eyes. This is quite a dangerous distraction, because it can make it appear as if the tiger, cowering in the long grass or among the bushes, is not even looking at you as it prepares to pounce.’
‘Meaning our assailant must have managed to misdirect Louis Bloom’s attention?’
Chapter Twenty-Three
They finally got to meet the man referred to by all as the Vice-Chancellor. Just the Vice-Chancellor. Not the Vice-Chancellor, Joe Bloggs, but… the Vice-Chancellor. McCusker wondered if he should address him as Vice? Was that being too familiar with someone he was just meeting for the first time? Maybe he should call him Mr Chancellor.
McCusker knew he was acting a bit giddy, but he also knew that it was partly because he had the privilege to once again see the interior of Lanyon’s red-brick cathedral of culture. Leab David, for it was she who had set up the meeting with the Vice-Chancellor on behalf of DI O’Carroll, met them at the information desk in the university shop, where she was busy, as ever, working on the screen of her iPhone, the fingers of her ring hand doing their impression of a bird’s wing at the end of each message. She took them across the stunning black and white checkerboard-tiled floor of the entrance hall where Galileo, deep in marble thoughts, sat beneath a large wall clock, which in turn was set immediately under a spectacular stained-glass window. They travelled on in silence, along darkened, wood-panelled corridors, until Leab opened a door on their right, nodded to a secretary on her left, but instead of waiting to be shown through, or announced, or even knocking on the inner door, she opened it and strode straight in.
‘Vice-Chancellor, this is Detective Inspector Lily O’Carroll and Mr McCusker from the PSNI.’
Whereas the Vice-Chancellor seemed ambivalent about the detectives, McCusker noticed that his eyes totally lit up when he first saw Leab David. He shook hands with both McCusker and O’Carroll and rested his free hand on Leab’s back briefly, in a proud parental way, as they all small-talked.
The Vice-Chancellor, was well groomed, down to his manicured fingernails – perhaps even his toenails as well, McCusker guessed. The detectives’ host had a clean-shaven, weather-beaten face, and his hair was fashioned in an “old man trying to look young” American-style crew cut. He had the Brooks Bros look off to a tee: dark blue blazer, blue button-down collar shirt, red tie, cream chinos and perfectly polished, classic light brown leather shoes. McCusker figured, due to the absence of a wedding band, that the Vice-Chancellor was either divorced or his wife had passed. He had big ears, bushy eyebrows and a habit of hooding his eyes with the forehead above his eyebrows, as though he was being cautious, on guard, or maybe merely protecting himself from things he didn’t want to see. But equally, when he opened his eyes fully, as he did when he spotted Leab, the contrast in his facial expression was a revelation.
But now Leab was gone, and the Vice-Chancellor seemed more at ease with the two detectives and invited them to sit down at a large formal table positioned in the middle of yet another wonderful room in Lanyon’s building. McCusker looked through the window to his left and realised that the room was probably exactly the same as it would have been on the day the university first opened. It had been designed – and the window positioned – so that the inhabitants could view the exterior of Lanyon’s majestic entrance hall; the entrance hall McCusker and O’Carroll had just passed through. The autumn sunlight, the blue sky, the students milling around in various degrees of solemnity and laughter, the contrasting greens of the privet hedge and the perfectly manicured lawn, the decorative fawn and red brickwork painted a picture so satisfying that McCusker would treasure it vividly for the remainder of his days.
‘Well, I can tell you, I must apologise to you, in advance, if I don’t have my wits totally about me – I have to admit that I’m feel totally cast adrift at sea, if you will, since I’ve lost my very best chum,’ was the Vice-Chancellor’s first address when they were all comfortable at the table.
‘We’re sorry for your loss,’ McCusker felt obliged to offer although, on reflection, it seemed quite a weird thing to say, given the circumstances.
Either way, the Vice-Chancellor didn’t seem to register McCusker’s words, because he continued, ‘We must do all we can, all that you can, to track down and bring to justice the perpetrators of this crime.’
‘You use the plural to describe the perpetrators – does that mean you have an idea of who it may be?’
‘Just a figure of speech, if you will,’ he replied, in a crisp, easy-to-understand voice. ‘But at the same time, don’t the PSNI say: when someone goes missing, think first of the in-laws and not the outlaws.’
‘I think McCusker and I much prefer to spend our time ruling people out in an effort to disco
ver who we are eventually left with.’
‘Ah yes, the Sherlock Holmes approach, he said as he smiled warmly, ‘I will admit, I do subscribe to that approach myself. So how can I help you?’
‘How long had you known Louis Bloom?’ O’Carroll asked.
‘Twelve years?’
‘How did you meet?’
‘I knew of him before I met him,’ the Vice-Chancellor replied. ‘He came to see me. He introduced himself and said he hated to be a bother, but he needed better office space, please.’
‘Really?’
‘And we just hit it off immediately.’
McCusker saw a bit of a pattern developing, whereby if the VC didn’t like a question, he just totally blanked you and ignored it completely.
‘There are some people who you meet and know right from the start that you are going to get on with. Louis Bloom and I were two such people.’
‘Professionally and personally?’ O’Carroll asked.
‘Most certainly both.’
‘So you talked about everything?’
‘Yes, of course,’ the Vice-Chancellor replied and looked out of the window wistfully at the jewels in Lanyon’s crown. ‘My wife, Loraine, passed away six years ago. She suffered a long but dignified battle with cancer. You know, I can honestly say, had it not been for my friendship with Louis, I would never have survived the loss myself.’
‘You were close,’ O’Carroll said, more in sympathy than as a question.
‘Oh yes.’
‘Were you technically his boss?’
‘No.’
‘Really? I would have thought–’
‘No. If you want to put it in simpler terms, Louis looked after the pupil’s brains and I looked after their environment.’
‘Nonetheless, every ship needs a captain,’ O’Carroll persisted.
‘And ours would be the Chancellor, Sir Patrick Bryson.’
‘Let’s return to the in-laws,’ O’Carroll offered, as McCusker mentally returned to an earlier theme of even the Chancellor had a proper name, while the Vice-Chancellor was still always the Vice-Chancellor.
‘Yes, let us.’
‘We know that Elizabeth and Louis, although they were not exactly estranged, were no longer man and wife in the true sense of the word.’
‘That would be correct.’
‘Do you think that Elizabeth and this fellow Al Armstrong had anything going on?’
‘Louis believed they were friends, nothing more, nothing less. Don’t get me wrong, he still liked Elizabeth, but he believed she needed something more out of life than he was able to give her.’
‘Is that to say Louis felt he too needed something more out of life?’
‘I will answer direct questions that deal with the things I know for sure. I will not volunteer information, nor speculate, if you don’t mind.’
‘But you said you wanted to help us?’ O’Carroll said.
‘All you need to know, if you will, is what questions to ask.’
‘Miles… let’s talk about Miles?’ O’Carroll suggested.
‘Okay.’
‘Miles felt that his father had cheated him out of his inheritance, by leaving all his property and money to Louis,’ O’Carroll offered, in summary.
‘That’s not the problem as I see it,’ the Vice-Chancellor replied, ‘Miles felt that his father owed him a life. He was incapable of working for a living and he believed his father owed him his life and the wherewithal to live it without the daily inconvenience of having to find the money for that particular week’s provisions from. Every penny that the father made during his life, Miles felt he was making it for the both of them. But even worse than that, he believed that after his father died, he should get the estate. All of it. He felt he was entitled–’
‘But if he wasn’t entitled to the entire estate,’ McCusker ventured, ‘then surely he could have at least expected to receive some of his father’s estate?’
‘It’s an interesting dilemma, isn’t it? Who owns the father’s estate: the father or those who feel they are entitled to be the heirs? The other important point, not to be forgotten here, is that Miles had berated his father for years about money. As I said, he really felt the money was his and his father was merely an obstacle in the way to him getting his hands on it.’
‘And Louis? Did Miles feel Louis was entitled to any of the money?’
‘That right there, just might be a spotlight on the main part of the problem. As far as the father was concerned, he felt – no, strike that. Let’s say their father knew the money and the estate were his and he could and should do with it as he wanted.
‘Miles wanted the money, because a) he believed it was his and b) he didn’t want to work himself. His father believed, and I would agree with him 100 per cent, that if he had given any funds to Miles he would have squandered it away and the estate the father had worked towards all his life would quickly disappear. Sidney was a proud man. He was proud of his achievements, of the businesses he had built up, and he wanted them to continue to be successful. He did not want them sold off to the highest bidder just to satisfy Miles’ need for more money to furnish his lifestyle.
‘Sidney and Louis discussed this subject at length over the years. Louis explained that he was very happy with his life and work here at Queens and he didn’t want to give that up. It was Louis’ idea that his father set up a trust in the name of all his main employees, in order to continue to run his business interests. His father was to serve on the board as non-executive Lifetime Director and on his death Louis would take over that seat/directorship as an unpaid role, mainly for his father’s peace of mind.’
‘Was it still not a bit mean of the father not to leave Miles anything at all?’ McCusker pushed, as he noted the slightly different slant on the Miles, Sidney and Louis Bloom conundrum.
‘Well, that’s certainly what Miles felt, particularly as he was the oldest sibling.’
‘Yes of course, Miles is the oldest. I’d forgotten about that,’ O’Carroll admitted. ‘So no wonder Miles was so pissed off Louis.’
‘More than you’ll ever know,’ the Vice-Chancellor offered, sadly. ‘And that’s the reason Louis wanted it kept very quiet. He was advising his father on how to set up the estate.’
‘Okay,’ McCusker offered, as much in acknowledgement of the conflicting information they’d been hearing on the subject.
‘But the father’s point was,’ the Vice-Chancellor continued, totally ignoring McCusker, ‘as I said, leave any of it to Miles and it will all be squandered. Leave him nothing at all and it might shock him into getting his life together and going out and earning a living. That’s all that Sidney was trying to do: get Miles off his backside and working.
‘The funny thing is, if Miles had channelled but a quarter of the energy he’d squandered on anger over all of this, on constructive applications instead, then he’d be a very rich man by now.’
‘What time did you meet Louis yesterday?’
‘He dropped in to see me here at 2.45.’ The Vice-Chancellor looked directly at O’Carroll. ‘In fact, he sat in the exact same seat you’re in.’
This declaration spooked O’Carroll to the degree she hopped up out of her chair.
‘What did you talk about?’ McCusker asked when he saw O’Carroll was okay.
‘Yesterday we were discussing whether QUB should re-name one of the campus buildings after Seamus Heaney. Louis was all for honouring the former QUB student, but some in our midst felt that we could make a lot of money by offering the naming rights to AIG or Santander or Ryanair, even. Louis’ priority was for us to get a head of steam up before the money-boys knew what hit them. He even joked that Ryanair would want to charge extra for priority seating.’
‘How long did he stay for?’ McCusker asked. O’Carroll still seemed distracted at been spooked about sitting in Bloom’s chair.
‘About twenty minutes.’
‘How did he seem?’
‘Louis was always pretty m
uch up.’
‘Do you know if he was seeing anyone?’
‘Seeing anyone – as in dating?’
‘Yes,’ McCusker replied, feeling the time for beating about the bush was over.
‘I believe so.’
McCusker was relieved at the Vice-Chancellor’s reply – the fact that he, out of all of them, was prepared to address what could have been a taboo subject in respect of Mrs Elizabeth Bloom. But here was someone willing to discuss it at last.
‘A certain person or several?’ McCusker pushed on.
‘Definitely a certain person.’
‘Do you know who…’ for a split second McCusker hesitated, trying to decide whether to go for “they” rather than “she”. In the end he just let the words spoken stand as his question.
‘No.’
‘Did you discuss her?’
‘Only in that he said he didn’t want me to get tied up in it. There was a husband.’
‘Did Louis’ friend Mariana know who she was?’
‘She never told me that she did.’
‘Did Louis ever discuss where they met or anything like that?’
‘No, he said he didn’t want to – he said it was complicated. Apart from anything else, if you will, due in respect to his own wife, he was very happy to keep it all quiet. In fact, he might even have invented the husband in order to have the excuse of the cloak of secrecy.’
