by Paul Charles
It was a very unsatisfactory arrangement. Mariana said that she (and she actually referred to herself as Mariana again) was happy to give them Murcia’s mobile number, which she did, but as predicted it went straight to voicemail.
‘She’ll get in touch with me a lot quicker than she’ll get in touch with you. I promise I’ll give you a shout.’
She asked for O’Carroll’s number, but not McCusker’s, and 57 minutes after they first met her they were getting up to go when she rose unsteadily to her feet with a look midway between shock and surprise.
‘Oh my goodness, and here is the very husband I was talking about, Mr Francie Fitzgerald! He can confirm Thursday night’s arrangements for you.’
‘I thought I might find you here,’ Fitzgerald said, with a soft, Free State accent. ‘I thought we might have a bite of breakfast together,’ and then without waiting for a reply, continued, ‘Where’s Murcia?’
Mariana just glared at her husband before saying, ‘This is DI O’Carroll and Mr McCusker – they’re working on Louis’ case. Perhaps you should also have a chat with them? You knew Louis quite well. Sorry darling, I’ve another appointment I have to dash off to. See you at home, sometime in the afternoon.’
Mariana Fitzgerald was gone – gone as quickly as she could hobble out of there, leaving her husband quite speechless.
‘Must have been something I said,’ he muttered, as he took over his wife’s seat.
Francie Fitzgerald had a bushy red beard and matching long red hair, which he had done up in some elaborate system that concluded in a bun towards the rear of the crown of his head. McCusker felt that someone should take a photograph of the back of Fitzgerald’s head; he was convinced that even Fitzgerald himself would agree the resultant spaghetti junction was not an attractive sight. Fitzgerald was tall and heavy-set. He removed his long, flowing, dark blue button-less coat with a buckle-less belt of the same material. The belt had been tied in a half-reef knot, as in the left-under-right-and-over section. Underneath the coat he was wearing what looked like a pair of Virgin first-class black pyjamas, matching top and bottoms. Surely he must have something warmer, McCusker thought. Fitzgerald’s outfit was completed with a pair of black laceless Dr. Martens.
‘So how’s the case coming on?’ Fitzgerald asked, rubbing his hands together, perhaps to regenerate some of the heat his body was losing through Sir Dickie Branson’s jim-jams.
‘We’re collating information at this stage,’ McCusker admitted. ‘Just for the record, what were you doing on Thursday night?’
‘I know the routine, Inspector,’ he interrupted, with his voice booming all over the place, ‘I imagine Mariana has just told you we had the Wallaces over for dinner. They arrived around 8 o’clock and they left when it was way past midnight. Is it true Louis was murdered with a single shot between the eyes?’
‘DI O’Carroll is a DI, I am not – I’m an agency cop, freelance,’ McCusker advised, for the record, because he had to.
‘Great, you mean just like Pinkerton’s Assorted Colours?’
‘Pinkerton’s Assorted Colours was a 1960s pop group who were a one-hit wonder with ‘Mirror, Mirror’,’ McCusker replied, quickly correcting what was becoming a very common mistake. Nine out of ten times when McCusker mentioned the words “agency cop”, Pinkerton’s Assorted Colours was thrown back at him, but thanks to Barr’s mysterious Google, McCusker now had all the correct information at his fingertips. ‘I believe what you meant is: Pinkerton’s Detective Agency.’
‘Okay,’ Fitzgerald shot back at him, clearly ignoring the information. ‘What does a man have to do to get a cup of coffee in here?’ he continued, smiling just too sweetly at O’Carroll.
‘Asking politely is always a good place to start,’ she said, as she very conveniently caught a waiter’s attention.
Francie Fitzgerald ordered not just a short cappuccino, but also a round of bacon sandwiches: ‘Fat cut off, bacon done crispy, sandwich packed, soft bread – the kitchen knows how I like it done.’ No please or thank you.
‘Did you spend a lot of time with Louis Bloom?’ McCusker asked.
‘Well he was a good friend of my wife’s, and we’d occasionally bump into him at QUB fundraisers and social events, but like, I’d never go to a game of rugby with him – you only do that with your mates, don’t you?’
‘Have you any idea who might have murdered him?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Did you know any of his other friends?’
‘As I say, I only really knew him because he was friends with Mariana, and they liked to have a good old gossip every now and then. But like, neither his wife nor I were ever invited to those. Was he in trouble with the PSNI? It was always my understanding he was quite well-off. I mean, he never flashed the cash, but I’d heard that he was well set up. How did he make his money, do you know?’
‘Do you know Noah Woyda?’ McCusker asked, ignoring Fitzgerald’s questions.
‘Well, I knew him as the husband of Murcia,’ Fitzgerald replied, ‘is there a connection to Louis?’
‘When was the last time you saw Louis?’
‘When was the last time I saw Louis,’ he said, pretty much mimicking McCusker’s accent perfectly. He looked to O’Carroll for approval, and finding total indifference, he continued, ‘probably last month – Mariana will know the date for sure.’
‘Mariana looked like she was in pain,’ O’Carroll said, flatly. ‘What happened to her?’
‘What did she say happened to her?’
‘We know what happened to her, we’d like to hear your version,’ O’Carroll continued. McCusker willingly played along with the bluff.
Fitzgerald looked like someone whose coke confidence had just worn off very quickly. He glanced around the room, either to check who else was in there or if the waiter was about to rescue him with the delivery of his customised sandwiches. No waiter. No rescue.
‘Listen, like I told her,’ he whispered as he leaned towards them, ‘not to mess with him. I warned her she was on her own. I warned her not to cross him. She’s seen what he’d done to Murcia.’
‘Why don’t you press charges?’ McCusker asked.
‘Are you fecking crazy altogether?’
McCusker sighed.
‘I told her: anyone asks me, she walked into a door.’
‘Well, if your wife walked into a door,’ O’Carroll said loudly, ‘then the door in question was attached to a car and the car was breaking the speed limit.’
Something twigged in Fitzgerald’s eyes.
‘You haven’t a clue what happened to Mariana, do you?’ he said, looking scared.
McCusker could see Fitzgerald mentally re-running everything he’d said, desperately searching for something, anything that might have got him into trouble. Only the detective could see that it wasn’t getting in trouble with the PSNI that was worrying his interviewee.
‘I know nothing, absolutely nothing,’ he hissed, ‘you want a statement from me, that’s exactly what it will say: “I know nothing.”’
‘What about Murcia,’ McCusker asked, ‘from your point of view, what exactly is going on there?’
‘As far as I can see, her husband loves her, worships her in fact…’ Just then, Fitzgerald’s bacon sandwiches arrived.
He greedily took a bite, a large bite – half of one sandwich, in fact – and munched away as he held a thumb of approval up to the waiter. He pointed to his chomping jaws, hopefully as a sign that he didn’t want to speak with his mouth full.
‘You know,’ he said, licking his lips, ‘that was exactly what I needed.’ He then proceeded to tuck into the next one. Fitzgerald repeated the same routine of pointing to his munching mouth. When he finished his second sandwich, he wiped off his mouth with the napkin. McCusker was still convinced there was enough food lost in his beard for a satisfactory “afters” session.
‘Tell you what, DI O’Carroll and Mr McCusker, if you want to talk to me any more we need to do it in the compan
y of my solicitor.’
With that, he stood up, pulled on his coat, gathered it about him by securing the belt –this time in a full-reef knot – and strode off purposely as if he thought (or maybe hoped) that there was a camera following his exit.
‘Excuse me a moment, DI O’Carroll,’ McCusker said, and casually strolled off after him.
McCusker waited until Fitzgerald was literally 3 feet from the front door of the hotel – and freedom. The detective reached out and firmly put his hand on Fitzgerald’s shoulder.
‘Excuse me, Sir,’ McCusker said, quite loudly, as Fitzgerald turned around, literally bricking it. McCusker let him sweat for a few moments, wondering why exactly Fitzgerald looked so nervous and so worried. ‘Do you realise that it is an offense to leave an establishment without paying for the food you ordered, and consumed, on the premises?’
McCusker felt he was guilty of behaving a little childishly himself, but it had been worth it, for in the moment after Fitzgerald had turned and his initial shock of being stopped had dissipated, he dropped his guard, and the gentle-giant image had quickly been replaced by a look of sheer, unadulterated, liquid hatred.
Chapter Thirty
‘I’ve got something I need to do this afternoon,’ McCusker started, as they walked back to the Customs House.
‘You have some PB with your wife, Anna Stringer, don’t you?’ O’Carroll said, sounding nervous.
‘You’d be the detective then,’ he replied, more amused than upset. ‘How’d you know?’
‘I figured she’d have suggested a weekend day so you wouldn’t have an excuse to say no to her. You told me she’s very religious, so Sunday was out.’
‘I feel like I’ve taught you all I know, Grasshopper,’ McCusker said, his feeble attempt at aping David Carradine’s Kung Fu’s wistful voice falling flat on its face, and deservedly so.
‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, McCusker, please, for my sister’s sake at least, try and give me something from this millennium.’
They walked on in quietness for a few minutes.
‘I really don’t know why my sister is with you,’ O’Carroll said eventually. ‘I really don’t – you’re so… grand-pappy. Why is she still with you?’
O’Carroll looked at McCusker. McCusker looked back at her with just the slightest hint of a grin.
‘Oh, you – dirty – dog! You dirty dog, you. That’s way, way too much information, McCusker. For heaven’s sake, man, stop your smirking or I’ll never be able to look my sister in the eye again.’
‘“For heaven’s sake”,’ he repeated, ‘surely that’s a very grand-mammy thing to say?’
‘Grand-mammy, McCusker? Don’t you mean Grannie?’
‘Okay, surely Grannie is a very grannie thing to say.’
‘Right, Mr Yellow Pack, it’s back to work for you. Before you leave for this big meeting with your wife, it’s my job to ensure the PSNI gets our shilling’s worth out of you.’
McCusker was going to make reference to the fact that even he knew that a shilling was no longer legal tender, but he didn’t want to push his luck too far; after all, there was a big puddle coming up at the edge of Customs House Square.
Inside their office, McCusker added a few details to the noticeboard. He talked DS Barr through what they’d discovered during the meeting with Mariana Fitzgerald.
‘Any sign of any form yet on Al Armstrong?’ McCusker asked, at the end of the briefing.
‘He was on the Drug Squad’s – as it was – radar but he never really got himself in trouble with them. A few warnings, a few seizures of assets, but grass is so low priority these days, they just laughed at me when I asked.’
McCusker was visibly deflated. He didn’t mean to show it, but he kept thinking that people like Armstrong always seemed to get away with stuff, the jammy barstewarts that they were.
‘However,’ Barr continued, ‘a few years ago Armstrong ended up in the Royal Victoria Hospital…’
‘Goodness, he wasn’t pregnant was he?’ McCusker joked, honing in on one of the grand hospital’s specialities.
Much to O’Carroll’s chagrin, Barr shared McCusker’s sense of humour. McCusker wasn’t sure that was entirely true – that O’Carroll was that annoyed at his humour - because she derived so much of her own humour at their joint expense, so her faux protests were most likely part of her rap.
‘I’ll check the Guinness Book of Records, but no, I don’t think so,’ Barr replied. ‘But apparently the then RUC was called in as routine by the hospital, because he’d been beaten up so badly. It turned out that Armstrong had been set upon by some of the casual labour he’d been using for work on one of his refurbs. All of this five-man team claimed, to a man, that there had been a disagreement over payment. They said in their statements that Armstrong had short-changed them by two weeks’ wages. Armstrong had maintained that as it had been in cash, they’d just been confused. Armstrong, the RUC files recorded, had raised the “cash” angle in the hope that his team, in fear of the taxman, would walk away from the dispute. He’d been wrong. The boys had also blatantly said that Armstrong had attacked them and they’d been forced to defend themselves. Armstrong refused to press charges, claiming it had all just been a misunderstanding, and wisely settled the disputed amount with the team before he was discharged from the hospital.’
‘Street justice,’ McCusker claimed, and took a certain amount of pleasure out of the story, but nowhere near as much as he’d been hoping for. ‘How are you getting on with the Nutters Email File?’
‘Slow work,’ Barr said, not as a complaint but more a statement of fact, ‘it’s mostly boring people with an email account who have no one to communicate with, so they seek out people like Louis, or politicians or celebrities, to vent their spleen on. I eventually managed to get into Mr Bloom’s own email account and trawled through that for a couple of hours just using key words, and it’s just normal day-to-day work stuff. Either he had another private, personal email account or he didn’t communicate with his friends by email. I’ll broaden the search just in case he was consciously hiding stuff behind coded words.’
‘It’s all a process of ruling out both people and stuff at this stage.’
‘But do you think this recent development with your discovery of a girlfriend could be thing behind all of this?’ Barr asked.
‘At this point I’m leaning towards Thomas Andrews.’
‘Thomas Andrews?’
‘Thomas Andrews. Aye, I’m leaning towards Thomas,’ McCusker said, sighing, ‘if only because he’s blamed for everything else.’
‘But surely he went down with his creation in the Atlantic on April 15th 1912?’
‘Is that a fact, Willie John,’ McCusker replied. ‘In that case you can remove him from our suspect list immediately. Progress at last!’
‘Have youse two ever thought of going on the stage?’ O’Carroll asked, rolling her eyes.
‘No,’ McCusker replied, ‘do you really think we should?’
‘Yes, definitely,’ she offered sweetly, ‘I believe the next one for over the Glen Shane Pass leaves the Crown at 1.00 p.m. so you’ve got five minutes to get there.’
‘You’re kidding,’ McCusker gushed, in genuine horror, as he jumped up from his chair and swung his coat on, ‘that means I’ve only got five minutes to get to the Fitzwilliam.’
He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard O’Carroll call out ‘Good luck’ after him, as he crashed out through the doors of the office.
* * *
McCusker was nervous about meeting his wife. He couldn’t really call her his ex-wife because they’d never legally separated. Anna Stringer, because that is how he always referred to her, both vocally and mentally, had just one morning upped and left him. Thinking about her name, he’d referred to her so much as Anna Stringer than eventually after a few years she also slipped into the habit of referring to herself by her maiden name until eventually, without informing McCusker she was doing so, she changed the name on her pass
port from McCusker to Stringer. But anyway, be that as it may, one morning Anna Stringer just upped and left him. Well, actually it wasn’t quite as simple as that.
In the months before, she’d accomplished a very fine impersonation of Amelia Earhart (or a re-enactment of Agatha Christie’s 1926 Theresa Neele/Harrogate adventure); she’d quietly and secretly busied herself with liquidating all their assets – mostly properties they’d purchased for rentals in the lucrative Portrush area. She’d been so effective in her efforts that McCusker hadn’t even noticed she’d sold the very house they were currently living in and had rented it back from the new owner. Then one evening McCusker came home from work (late as usual) and she’d gone. All her stuff with her, and the only evidence was a postcard of Barry’s Amusement Arcade with the note “Goodbye Brendy, Anna”, scrawled in the back in her spidery handwriting. McCusker hadn’t a clue where she’d gone. He’d guessed, but never checked, that she’d done a midnight flit to America where she had a sister. Later he discovered the full extent of her pre-departure pilfering.
McCusker didn’t entirely blame his wife for her actions. He’d realised, especially since he’d met Grace, that he’d never, ever been in love with his wife. He had been very naïve way back then. There had been an intense – non-consummated – teenage relationship with jet-black-haired Adelle Hutchinson, but Anna Stringer had been the first person he’d slept with and, consequently, he felt he should marry her. You couldn’t really say they’d grown apart, because they’d never been together. They lived two separate lives under the same roof. They enjoyed what could be called a “static-free co-existence”. He went about his life enjoying being a detective and hanging out with his mates as they pretended to play golf.
Then, at the time of the Lord Patten scheme and, due to the fact that he’d been promoted to Detective Inspector but had found himself doing more desk-work than investigating, McCusker had decided to take Patten’s lucrative early retirement package. The idea was that he and Anna Stringer would sell all their nest-egg properties and slide off into a Primark- or Apparel-dressed retirement, mainly composed of golf jumpers. Clearly the lure of golf widowhood had not appealed to Anna Stringer, and so she took matters into her own hands and set her sights on a more Ralph Lauren-sculptured landscape.
