by Paul Charles
‘When Louis went on his talking engagements did you ever go with him?’
Murcia seemed at first bemused by McCusker’s question and then seemed to accept something. Perhaps, McCusker thought, that they hadn’t been as careful as she’d first suggested.
‘Well, I wouldn’t actually travel with him. And I wouldn’t stay in his hotel room. I would book into the same hotel, and he would come to my room.’
‘Did you ever attend any of the events?’
‘Mostly no, but if there were tickets available to the public I would buy one and slip in. But he would never ask the organisers for a ticket, or for a seat at his table for me. No one would have known about us.’
‘Would you ever go for walks around the city when you went to the talks?’
‘Sometimes he would arrive at the hotel a day early. Or stay on an extra day, and we’d have more time together. We would never leave or enter the hotel together, but we’d meet outside and have lovely walks and go to quiet hotels or bars.’
‘What were your plans?’ O’Carroll asked.
‘Plans? How do you mean?’
‘Had you talked about being together? Did you ever consider what you would do if you managed to secure a divorce from Mr Noah? Would Louis leave his wife? Would you get married?’
‘With Louis, he was so preoccupied with enjoying today that he never worried about tomorrow. He was married to Elizabeth. Louis would never leave Elizabeth. He thought when you marry you should be like wolves, you should mate for life.’
‘Did he think that Elizabeth…’ McCusker started.
‘Look, I can see in your eyes, you are thinking, “okay, he wasn’t considering marrying her, so it was a certain kind of a relationship, it wasn’t really serious.” But that was not how it was with Louis. He was so loving, but he never discussed love. He was my friend, my lover, my mate. We weren’t together forever but we were together. Louis believed jealousy was an incurable disease. He… we had no time or need for jealousy. What was there to be jealous about? He said we shared ourselves with each other. There were other circumstances and considerations in both our lives that had to be accommodated. I do know he shared, what he shared with me, with no one else, and I, in return, honoured that. And now he is no more.’
‘I am sorry if you thought we misjudged your relationship, but please believe me, we most certainly didn’t mean to – we just need to uncover all we can about Louis to try and figure out what happened to him,’ McCusker said. ‘What I was going to ask you was, if you, or Louis, ever thought that perhaps Elizabeth might leave Louis?’
‘That was Louis’ main point. He thought you can’t leave your brother or sister or parents, you can’t leave your husband or your wife…’
‘But you’re leaving your husband,’ McCusker said, as an image came to mind, of Louis passing a sample of the energy drink Elizabeth Bloom had prepared for him to Harry Rubens for analysis.
‘My marriage, it was but a business arrangement, it was nothing, it was not emotional, it was not spiritual.’
At that point they heard someone trying to open the door. Murcia nearly jumped out of her skin and was petrified until she heard Mariana say, ‘It’s only Mariana.’
Mariana noticed immediately how upset Murcia appeared, so she explained to O’Carroll and McCusker that once when Murcia had been at the flat by herself she heard someone turn the door handle several times. She feared Woyda had found her. Murcia froze in silence and eventually whoever had been at the door went away.
‘A few more minutes please?’ O’Carroll said, ‘and we’ll leave you both in peace.’
‘Of course, I will shut myself in the kitchen and make us all some tea and coffee to go with these fresh croissants I’ve just bought. Just give me a call when you’re ready.’
‘Merci, mon ami,’ Murcia called out to Mariana.
‘Could you tell us please, Murcia, where you lived with Mr Noah?’
‘But of course, I will write out the address for you in your little pink book,’ she offered.
O’Carroll gave her a clean page at the back of the book and her pen. Murcia scribbled for a time and handed book and pen back over the table.
‘Can you please tell me what you were doing on Thursday night between the hours of 9.00 and 1.00 on Friday morning?’
‘But non… surely you don’t think that I… this is… pas bon… it is terrible.’
‘It’s not that Murcia,’ O’Carroll explained, ‘in our investigation it is equally important for us to identify those we can definitely rule out; it means we can concentrate on fewer people.’
She smiled her thanks.
‘On Thursday night… I saw Louis in the afternoon, he left at 5.30. Mariana had friends over for dinner. She invited me over but I stayed in Dukes. I had dinner in my room. I watched a TV programme called The Fall and went to sleep at 10.30.’
‘You didn’t see anyone?’ O’Carroll asked, for the record.
‘No one.’
‘You said you had food in your room,’ McCusker said, ‘what time would that have been?’
‘Just after The Fall had started,’ she replied.
‘So someone brought your food to the room just after 9 o’clock?’
‘Yes, yes, but of course! A waiter, a waiter saw me in my room,’ she said, offering McCusker a heart-warming smile. ‘Wait… I have a receipt in my bag. Mr Noah taught me to keep all my receipts. Mr Noah said receipts are better than cash.’ She fished around in her Bobi leather Jérôme Dreyfuss shoulder bag and eventually pulled out a receipt with all the joy of a woman who felt she had just saved her own life.
McCusker examined the receipt. It was for a mushroom risotto, a glass of Chablis and a tarte Tatin. The bill was printed out by the kitchen at 21.08, for an amount of £34.60, and according to the waiter’s signed “Paid” scribble, she paid £40.00, including tip, in cash.
Mrs Noah most definitely could not have been in Botanic Gardens when Louis Bloom was delivering his bag of rubbish to the bin.
As the three of them walked across to Mariana’s kitchen in silence, O’Carroll thanked Murcia for her patience.
‘De rein,’ Murcia said, smiling as they opened the kitchen door.
‘You’re welcome too,’ Mariana said, slightly confused.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Back at the fort, also known as the Customs House, DS Barr was back in residence. Ron Desmond and he hadn’t quite cleared up the issue of the missing £480k, but Barr felt they were not very far away from doing so. The bank had confirmed that they had received the money but, due to the fact that there was “an error with one of the digits” on the transfer request, the funds had not been credited to the actual account.
‘Not an error you’d get if the business had been conducted by cheque,’ McCusker proudly claimed.
O’Carroll made a great fuss of totally ignoring him.
The bank confirmed that the minute the donor’s bank provided the correct digits for the recipient’s account, the full funds would officially be transferred over. Ron Desmond was very grateful and had officially contacted Superintendent Niall Larkin to praise the superintendent’s team, claiming that if DS WJ Barr hadn’t been so diligent and brought the discrepancy to the university’s attention, the funds could most certainly have disappeared forever into the banking equivalent of a black hole.
McCusker wondered if there was such a space and, if there was, how much had accumulated there; where it had come from; how long would it stay there; and, most importantly, where would it end up?
Perhaps they needed Detective Sergeant Willie John Barr over there to keep an eye on things for them. Then again, perhaps they didn’t; he was much too invaluable where he was.
Thomas Chada, the former Magherafelt High School pupil, had rung in for McCusker and politely said he would ring again after his 4 o’clock lecture.
Before he and O’Carroll left the office again, McCusker asked DS Barr to pull all the records he could on Noah Woyda.
‘What does a woman like Mariana ever see in a man like Francie Fitzgerald?’ O’Carroll asked, when they were on their way back to Queens University. McCusker was keen to walk but O’Carroll insisted on taking her car, reasoning that they could get over to Queens and clear up the couple of things they needed quicker than McCusker could tie up his shoe laces.
‘His chequebook,’ McCusker replied. ‘Seriously, though, didn’t Murcia pretty much admit as much in our interview?’
‘But Mariana could do better for herself?’
‘So could Murcia?’
‘So you like the Marilyn Monroe look?’ O’Carroll said, and shot him a glance to catch his reaction.
‘No, I mean, yes, of course,’ he agreed, ‘but with Mariana and Murcia, both of them have clearly accepted that they aren’t going to get the man of their dreams.’
‘I find it sad that they feel that imperfection is actually okay,’ she said.
‘Maybe neither of them wanted the lifestyle they felt they would achieve with the people they were dating?’ McCusker suggested.
‘Well, I must admit, I wouldn’t want to be living hand to mouth. But to some degree, even in marriage, you have to take responsibility for your own preferred lifestyle choices. It’s hard to get it right, but I’m not sure I agree that you have to compromise.’
‘You mean like Mariana and Murcia did, where they opted for financial stability over happy ever after?’ McCusker said.
‘Well yes,’ she agreed, ‘you have to wait until you find the right person. Maybe waiting is the only compromise we should tolerate. Waiting to get it right.’
‘Sure, in all our lives there will always be something that is wrong,’ McCusker said, ‘something we need to fix; maybe even something we can’t fix and so we have to own up and accept our situation and find a way to move on.’
‘My worry is that if women like Mariana and Murcia can’t find Mr Right, there’s very little chance for me,’ O’Carroll admitted.
‘Well, Grace found me, and I found her–’
‘But neither of you were looking…’
‘Maybe so, but I still think it’s much too early for you to give up on Jenson and Gary,’ McCusker said, referring to O’Carroll’s preference for the perfect, English gentleman types in general, and Jenson Button and Gary Lineker in particular. Both were very English, polite, good looking, friendly, personable, all-round good guys, and world-champs in their chosen sports.
‘And pray tell, how do you figure you’re in the same league, McCusker? Can you play football better than Gary? Drive faster than Jenson?’
‘No,’ McCusker replied, pulling a packet of Walker’s Smoky Bacon crisps out of his pocket, ‘but I can eat these a lot quicker than either of them!’
By which point, luckily for McCusker, they’d reached Harry Rubens’ office in the David Keir Building on Stranmillis Road. The previous day McCusker had felt that the building - named after a previous and celebrated Vice Chancellor, Sir David Lindsey Keir - was drab and more like a 1950s style hospital than a hall of knowledge. But today’s sunlight had totally transformed the building and the twin cylindrical towers guarding the regal entrance were now quite majestic. In this illuminating light, McCusker found it difficult to believe the well documented ghost stories about the underground tunnel that connected this building to the Ashby Building next door, on Stranmillis road.
Harry surprised O’Carroll and McCusker by not dismissing tales of hands on shoulders but nobody being there, or several anonymous reports of a member of staff’s hand that had been taken hold of, for them only to find, once again, that no one was there. Rubens’ theory seemed to be that some of the ghosts of the neighbouring (directly across Stranmillis Road) Friars Bush graveyard were trapped on a different spiritual plane and couldn’t find their way back to the graveyard. Hence the ghosts’ reason for taking hold of people’s hand was in the hope todays visitors might help the ghosts return to their natural, if somewhat nonphysical, habitat. McCusker was shocked that an academic, such as Harry Rubens, was prepared to give such tales credence. Perhaps he was just trying to spook the two cops.
‘I won’t ask you how the case is going,’ he continued, changing gear flawlessly and getting down to business, offering them some Cold Zero as per last time, ‘I know you wouldn’t tell me anyway and like everyone else, I will wait to find out in the Belfast Telegraph once you’ve solved the mystery.’
‘I’m happy you have that confidence in us,’ McCusker admitted, ‘but it’s very difficult, don’t you see, when people who claim to be Louis’ friends don’t tell us the whole truth.’
‘Sorry,’ Harry said, looking shell-shocked and visibly taken aback, ‘what exactly do you mean?’
‘Well,’ McCusker started off, the way you would when you were trying to be patient with a child, ‘you didn’t tell me that your friend Louis was dating a married woman by the name of Murcia Woyda.’
‘And I didn’t, because she’s married to Mr Noah Woyda,’ Harry replied, and smiled nervously.
‘How on Earth would he even know that you’d shared that information with us?’ O’Carroll asked.
‘Because Mr Woyda makes it his business to know these things.’
‘Do you know Mr Woyda?’ McCusker asked.
‘Sophie is good friends with Mariana. Mariana is also good friends with Mrs Woyda.’
‘I still can’t figure out how it would get back to Noah Woyda that you talked to us about his wife and Louis,’ McCusker said, noting how genuinely scared Harry Rubens looked, but then McCusker remembered this was a man who apparently believed in ghosts.
‘Oh yes he would, oh yes he would. It’s a small town, the campus is even smaller and, word does tend to get around,’ Harry Rubens admitted, with the air of a tired man. ‘Look, I knew you would find out elsewhere and I simply preferred you just didn’t find out from me.’
When it looked like neither O’Carroll nor McCusker were buying into that, Rubens continued, ‘Look, Mariana rang Sophie and said Noah wanted her and me to know that he didn’t want anyone babbling about his wife to the PSNI.’
Okay, McCusker thought, a threat, and not even a veiled threat. Now his reluctance certainly made more sense.
‘But worse than that, Sophie said that Mariana was crying and sounded absolutely petrified,’ Harry added.
‘But don’t you see, it could be important for us to know this?’
‘Surely you don’t think that Noah is involved in Louis’ death?’ Rubens said, and sounded like he never considered that to be an option. ‘Sophie and I thought Mr Woyda was just a proud man. We figured he was trying desperately hard to win his wife back and it was clear to us he didn’t want the police minding his business.’
McCusker just stared at him blankly, maybe even challenging him.
‘Yes we did,’ the lecturer claimed, ‘yes we did.’
‘Well it now turns out that he might have had a motive,’ McCusker claimed.
Harry Rubens laughed. ‘That’s just crazy! Noah Woyda is not going to murder Louis!’
‘Someone did,’ McCusker said.
‘Hagh!’ Another laugh from Harry, this time more self-conscious.
‘So you knew Louis was seeing Murcia?’ McCusker asked.
‘Yes, we did,’ he conceded, ‘yes we did.’
‘Did you ever see them together?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know where they met up?’
‘No.’
‘Did you know that she occasionally went along and met up with Louis Bloom on his speaking engagements?’
‘Did she?’
‘Did you and Louis ever discuss Murcia?’
‘Only in general terms – he liked her, she wasn’t needy, they had fun.’
‘Never about her being in trouble with her husband because she’d left him?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Okay,’ McCusker said, knowing he wasn’t going to get much further on this, ‘on a totally different matter, Sophie’s f
riend Mariana…’
‘Yes?’
‘Tell me this: does she suffer from a bad back?’
‘Not at all,’ Rubens replied, without hesitation.
‘A bad leg?’
Rubens shook his head to the negative.
‘Okay, Harry,’ McCusker said, hoping it sounded on a lighter note. ‘I believe that Louis Bloom handed you a sample of a drink his wife was mixing up for him regularly.
‘Yes she did. And I know Sophie told you so.’
‘Louis wanted you to analyse it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘And… yes, I did,’ Harry stuttered, ‘yes I did. It contained: almond milk, banana, peanut butter, maca powder, turmeric and a generous helping of cinnamon.’
‘And nothing else?’ McCusker added, somewhat relieved that he wasn’t going to have to advise his boss that his wife’s sister had, in fact, poisoned her husband.
‘Nothing else,’ Rubens confirmed, appearing as if his dark moment had passed. ‘Elizabeth really cares for Louis – she also used to spray a little perfume on his scarf before he went out in the morning, and he also reported that his favourite baseball cap always smelled of the same scent.’
Ah, McCusker thought – yet another mystery solved.
‘Also,’ Harry Rubens offered, through a very large sigh, ‘Sophie believes she might have made a gaffe when she was telling you what she was doing at the time Louis was murdered.’
‘Oh yes?’ O’Carroll said, looking up from her notebook.
‘Yes. She thinks you thought she was lying about where she was because she mistook the layout of the MAC lobby.’
‘Yes, I remember the confusion,’ McCusker replied.
‘My wife suffers from a rare condition called Aphantasia. Most people don’t even know that they have it. It isn’t really debilitating physically, which is why, mostly, it goes undetected. It’s like she really doesn’t have a mind’s eye. She can’t recall the layout of a building, or road layouts – when she’s there, fine, but when she tries to recall them she just can’t.’
