She didn’t even seem to have noticed the bed or the cameras. Or maybe this wasn’t exactly a surprise to her.
Wasn’t such a surprise to me either, to be honest.
She was just staring round bewildered, as if she’d forgotten what we came for.
‘Come on, there’s no point hanging round now,’ I said.
It was only as we made our way back downstairs that I remembered the other door down here. There was a key protruding from the lock. I caught Miranda by the edge of her sleeve to stop her returning downstairs and pointed towards it. Made her wait while I turned the handle.
It wasn’t locked.
I went in.
It was a bathroom, of course there had to be a bathroom. Large, stone-flagged, white-walled like the rest of the house. Straight ahead there was a circular pattern of dipped tiles in the floor, centred on a plughole, with a shower nozzle hanging directly above from the ceiling – and beyond that a claw-footed iron bath painted white, and above it a bare sash window open halfway, a mild breeze trickling in, a shimmer of light reflecting on the glass like . . . water?
I stepped straight across the centre of the open shower to the edge of the bath and looked down. Water filled it almost to the brim; it was a wonder it hadn’t spilled over.
The only movement in the water was the shiver of wind on the surface, and it seemed inexplicable it should be so still, because lying naked on the bottom of the bath, staring upwards, eyes wide open, was Alice.
Chapter Thirty-Five
For the second time in little more than a week, I found myself waiting to give a statement to the police on the discovery of a body.
Miranda Gray and I were downstairs, in the small bare front room. I was standing at the window watching officers come and go, and Miranda was sitting in a corner, upset, and talking, talking. Cruelly I was tempted to borrow a phrase from Oscar Wilde and remind her that to lose one patient was unfortunate, but to lose two was starting to look like carelessness.
Mostly I was wondering whether Vincent Strange had called Alice last night. If he’d told her what I’d said about the photographs in his gallery. How that might’ve affected her. Could the fear of discovery have been enough to make her kill herself? Had she killed herself?
It was like history repeating.
Eventually Fitzgerald turned up with Sean Healy, and with them Alastair Butler, the City Pathologist, and they went upstairs, talking quietly together. They were up there more than half an hour before the pathologist came downstairs alone and went out into the lane.
I hurried out of the door after him.
‘Butler?’
He turned round with a look of offended surprise. He had the kind of face, I always felt, that made Stalin look like a barrel of laughs by comparison.
‘Saxon, isn’t it?’ he said stiffly.
He knew perfectly well what my name was, but he’d never liked me. On the few occasions we’d met before, he’d barely even looked at me. Partly I guess it was because of my relationship with Fitzgerald; he was pretty traditional in that respect. Partly too the fact that I’d been close to the previous pathologist. Butler was a man who believed in keeping his distance. If he was married, he’d be the sort to address his wife by her full name over breakfast.
‘Well?’ I said.
He gave me the familiar raised-eyebrow treatment.
‘Well?’ he repeated, like it was a foreign language.
‘How did she die?’
‘I really don’t think I should be discussing that with you, do you?’
‘Why the hell not?’
‘You are not authorised to have that information.’
I cut him short sharply.
‘Come on, Butler, don’t be such a tightass, I’m not asking you to betray your country. I knew Alice. I found her body. I only want to know how she died.’
‘And I have already told you that I can’t disclose that.’
‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘I really do not wish to have this unseemly discussion,’ Butler insisted. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me’ – and he turned once more to leave. I was reaching out to catch his arm and prevent him moving further down the lane when another voice behind me spoke my name like a warning.
Butler looked round at the sound of the voice too and saw my hand stretched out, and then we both looked at Fitzgerald, who was framed in the doorway.
‘I’ll catch up with you later, Chief Superintendent.’ The pathologist nodded to Fitzgerald, and left, his footsteps rattling military-style through the arched tunnel back into Temple Bar.
‘Grace—’
She didn’t even let me start.
‘What are you trying to do here, Saxon?’ said Fitzgerald.
‘Butler’s not like the rest of us, you know. Not only is he a stickler for the rules, but he also doesn’t know you. Hasn’t had time to get used to your less than subtle ways. He won’t stand for it. If he complains—’
‘I only wanted to know—’
‘How Alice died, I realise that. But there are other ways of finding out than grabbing hold of the City Pathologist at a potential crime scene and demanding he tell you something that you know he never will. Christ, you’re not twenty-two any more. Haven’t you learned by now that there’s a time and a place for everything? That there are different ways of getting what you want?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ll call him. Apologise.’
‘No. You’ve done enough damage this morning. Just forget about it, and tell me instead what you and Miranda were doing here in the first place.’
I told her briefly about not being able to contact Alice, and how Miranda had a key.
‘You do seem to have a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ she observed wryly when I’d finished.
‘Tell me about it. So how did she die?’
‘Butler reckons suicide.’
‘Another one,’ I said. ‘I’m growing kind of tired of hearing that.’
‘You have any better suggestions?’
‘Miranda was Alice’s therapist. She says Alice wasn’t the suicidal sort.’
‘Then why don’t you get her to explain why there are no signs of a struggle, no bruising?’ That all sounded depressingly familiar too. ‘It just looks as if Alice took as many tablets as she could find whilst still being able to walk – there were half a dozen empty bottles lined up against the window in the bathroom – and then slipped into the bath. Died fairly peacefully, Butler thinks. We should all be so lucky. And there’s another thing.’
‘What?’
‘She was pregnant.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No. Obviously we’ll have to await the autopsy results to confirm, but there’s a home pregnancy testing kit in the wastebin, and it’s showing positive.’
‘She told me at the funeral she felt sick,’ I remembered.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, she’d said.
‘And that’s not all. Come on.’ She led me back inside the house and up the stairs, where the police were still searching the sitting room. On the table was a bundle of photographs. Two of the cops were standing leafing through them, and looked embarrassed when they realised Fitzgerald had reappeared.
‘Don’t you have something more useful to do, boys?’ she snapped, and they murmured apologies and stared at the floor as they edged away. Fitzgerald glared after them and then reached out and handed me one of the photographs from the pile they’d been looking at.
Leering at, maybe that should be.
It was a picture of Alice. Naked. She was lying on the bed I’d seen upstairs. Head thrown back, eyes closed. There were other pictures. Alice standing naked under the shower. Lying face down on the couch in this same room. Sprawled across the floorboards. And there were pictures of Alice and Felix naked together, Alice and Felix making love.
Not the kind of shots you’d show to the aunts at Thanksgiving, put it that way.
‘So they wer
e sleeping together,’ I said.
‘You think he was the father of her baby, if she was pregnant?’
‘I asked around about her,’ I answered. ‘She was a pretty private person, but I couldn’t find evidence that she’d taken any other sexual partners lately apart from Felix. In the past she seems to have made her way through plenty, but there were none recently.’
It didn’t take a genius to imagine what had happened here.
Alice had discovered she was having a baby.
Felix’s baby, maybe.
Couldn’t handle it.
Took an overdose.
Ran a bath.
Case closed.
So much for my suspicions about her last night.
‘Did Butler say how long she’s been dead?’ I asked.
‘Not more than twelve hours was the closest he’d say.’
‘Shit.’
‘Is that a problem?’
I didn’t tell her just how far I’d taken my suspicions of Alice last night, but I did confess that I’d called Strange to ask if the sado-masochistic photographs on his wall were Alice’s work, and how, if he’d called Alice and she feared exposure, then maybe—
‘You called Strange?’ said Fitzgerald before I could finish. ‘After Buckley’s warning letter? You weren’t supposed to go near him.’
‘Strange reminded me of that too, funnily enough.’
‘There’s nothing funny about it. What are you going to do if he tries to slap a restraining order on you? That’s going to look fantastic. The press will have a field day.’
What could I say?
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’ll speak to him. Someone will have to tell him about Alice anyway. Might as well kill two birds with one stone. I’ll find out when the last time was he spoke to Alice. And come to think of it, screw him anyway if he complains. And screw Butler too.’
‘But you just said—’
‘I know what I said about Butler. Have you never heard that it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind? But I have more important things to worry about right now than whether the City Pathologist thinks his toes have been trodden on. I’m tired of tiptoeing round all these precious little male egos each trying to protect their patch. So he’ll gripe a little. Let him gripe. Butler’s not the point. I can handle him. This isn’t about him. It’s about you. You can’t carry on blundering about the city like an elephant in Doc Martens. I care too much about you, Saxon, to have you putting yourself in these situations all the time.’
‘Will you still feel the same way if he makes a complaint?’
‘Officially, you mean? He won’t. Trust me. I have to work with him every day. He’s not going to make a big thing out of you asking him an improper question at a crime scene when he knows the very next day that he and I’ll have to be making polite conversation over a corpse. He’s too professional to let this morning get in the way. He’s probably already shrugged it off as little more than he’d expect from an uncouth American.’
‘Chief?’
Fitzgerald turned round. Healy was standing at the bottom of the stairs.
He beckoned her over.
They spoke for a moment, their heads bent together, whilst I looked through the remaining photographs of Alice and Felix and tried not to listen.
‘Saxon, I have to go,’ Fitzgerald said presently. ‘I’ll catch up with you later.’
And she was gone.
‘What was all that about?’ I asked Healy.
‘Something came up,’ he said noncommittally.
‘I guessed that. What is it this time?’
He looked uncomfortable.
‘I can’t say.’
‘Not you too,’ I said.
Healy glanced round quickly, making sure no one could overhear.
‘You’d better not say this came from me, understand?’
‘I understand.’
Healy lowered his voice.
‘Mark Brook is dead,’ he said.
‘What? I thought the wound was nothing?’
‘It was nothing. But he discharged himself this morning, said he couldn’t stand being cooped up in hospital any more, and returned home. About an hour ago his wife drove round to the chemist to pick up a prescription for painkillers for him, and when she got back she found him in the doorway.’ The doorway. ‘He’d been shot. Same kind of bullet as the one that hit him in the shoulder, only this one was right through the forehead.’ He groaned with frustration. ‘Why in God’s name didn’t we see it coming? Why didn’t we realise the Marxman would go after him?’
There was nothing I could say. Why hadn’t any of us realised Brook was still in danger? That once he’d delivered the message he was meant to deliver, the Marxman would want him dead like all the others? And more than that, how had he managed to get so close?
‘Surely the press were swarming all round Brook’s place?’
‘He was barely out of hospital. They hadn’t found out where he lived yet. Witnesses said a motorcycle pulled up, the rider got off, knocked on the door, Brook answered, and bang.’
How had the Marxman known where to find Brook so quickly?
Inside information?
‘You track down the motorbike yet?’ I said.
Healy nodded.
‘It was stolen this afternoon, together with the helmet, from outside a house on the South Circular Road. The genius who it belonged to had left it sitting outside his front door with the keys still in the ignition. Some people deserve to be burgled.’
‘You don’t suspect him?’
‘No, apparently he’d already reported the bike gone by then. In fact, a patrol car was round at his house and officers were taking a statement at the time the shooting happened.’
‘At least you have the first sighting,’ I said. ‘The Marxman must be getting confident, striking in the middle of the day in a residential neighbourhood.’
‘He still got away with it. He was wearing a helmet. He’s hardly going to be picked out of an identity parade, is he? Oh, but there was one bit of luck.’
‘What?’
‘He dropped the gun.’
‘You’re only telling me this now?’
‘Give me a chance. Soon as he’d shot Brook, it seems he climbed back on, kicked the motorcycle into gear and roared off back towards town. Only he roared off a bit too fast, because he misjudged the next corner and nearly went flying. The gun fell out of his pocket. Couple of witnesses said he stopped and was making his way back for it, then realised there were too many people around. Ballistics have it now. It’ll be a while before they can say for sure, but they’re pretty confident it’s the same gun he’s been using all along.’
Healy’s news was shocking, but for the first time in weeks I felt happy for Fitzgerald. This was the first real break she’d had in the case. This was her chance to bring the cycle to an end, to get them all off her back: Draker, Sweeney, the press. Throughout the last months, the murder squad had made little headway finding out where the Marxman had got the gun, but if today he’d lost his preferred weapon, then that might mean he’d be on the lookout for a new one.
‘We’ll put the word out straightaway,’ Healy agreed. ‘Make sure every criminal in the city keeps an eye out for anyone trying to buy a gun. Anyone suspicious, anyone they don’t know, we have to make sure they get in touch with us. Make it worth their while.’
‘It’ll be worth every nickel if it brings in the Marxman.’
Unless he already has a backup gun, I thought, or an alternative source of supply.
But I said nothing.
No point being negative.
There was a first time for everything.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I dreamt the sea came to take Dublin, lifting itself up in the bay like a sleeper climbing out of bed and collapsing sideways into the harbour and down the length of the river as it wound through the city, past North Wall and Custom House Quay and Bachelor’s Walk and out towards Islandbridge; and the walls that
had held out against the sea for so long suddenly gasped and cracked and gave up the ghost, and the salt water sneaked out into roads and quickly began to spread. As I watched, it stretched itself through Abbey Street and Mary’s Lane and College Green and Temple Bar, Winetavern and Fishamble and Sycamore, flowing over doorsteps and flooding the houses behind, coming indoors without knocking and slowly edging up the stairs until the roofs were boats and many more were submarines with chimneys for periscopes peeking out; and still it went on rising further until it had made an island of Dublin Castle, and then Cornmarket was gone and the Coombe, and St Stephen’s Green was a bay, salt water splashing at a stone shore, and I was standing on my balcony looking out at this sudden, quiet sea stretching out to where Mountjoy away to the north had become Alcatraz, marooned on its stark rock. And before I knew what I was doing, I was diving off my balcony into the water below, which was strange since I can’t swim, and the water was so cold it stole the breath from my body, and I found I could swim because I was pushing underwater, supple as a fish, down through sunken roads, and I was the only swimmer. And Baggot Street was a sea trench, with lights still lit in windows, and sparkling plankton drifted like blossom, and the water was pulling leaves off trees and filling the sea with them as though it was autumn and it was the wind which had tugged them off rather than the tide, and I was swimming in and out of open windows and up stairways, round the spires of drowned churches like I was flying, through alleyways, peering into secret places, passing like a ghost, like a fragment of some child’s dream that had got left behind when everyone fled from the rising waters. And the more I swam, the more the houses became like rocks, encrusted with seaweed and barnacles and hollow within like grottoes, and I realised I needed to breathe suddenly, and I rose, rose, my chest bursting with the effort of it, until I felt the air fill my lungs, and I was shouting with relief – till I looked and saw the city was gone and I was far, far out to sea, and it was dark, and all I could see in the distance was the lighthouse at Howth, blinking off, on, off; and even as I kicked for home, I knew it was too far to reach.
My body was stone.
The Dark Eye (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 2) Page 24