‘I appreciate it, Fisher,’ I said, ‘but there’s somewhere I need to go.’
‘You going to tell me where?’
‘No.’
‘Thank heavens for that. I’d have been disappointed if you had. You wouldn’t be the same Saxon we all know and love if you suddenly started being forthcoming.’
‘I aim to please.’
‘Isn’t that the Marxman’s motto too?’
Chapter Thirty-Eight
‘You should be careful,’ I said. ‘Last person I arranged to meet secretly like this wound up lying face down and dead in the water with a bullet hole in his head.’
‘That’s not funny,’ said Vincent Strange.
‘Who’s laughing?’
Strange was where he’d said he’d be when he called earlier out of the blue, in St Stephen’s Green, standing by the worn bronze statue of one of history’s dead rebels about whom I knew nothing and cared less, wrapped in his favourite fur coat and looking his usual conspicuous self. He simply didn’t possess the gene for blending into the background.
‘You’re probably wondering why I called,’ he said.
‘I haven’t got around to wondering yet. I’m just giving thanks it wasn’t another letter,’ I replied. ‘Still, this is better than hiding behind lawyers, isn’t it? Much more civilised.’
‘I wasn’t hiding behind Conor Buckley,’ Strange said with a pained expression. ‘It had been a difficult few days. At the time I didn’t want you bothering me, that’s all.’
‘Who was bothering you? I just wanted to ask a few questions about Felix.’
‘I saw it differently.’
‘Buckley made that plain enough.’
He was avoiding my eye. I could tell he was nervous, debating whether he’d done the right thing. It didn’t take much of a genius to figure out why. He must want something from me, and we didn’t exactly have the kind of relationship where he’d feel comfortable asking for a favour.
You couldn’t even call what we had a relationship to start with.
‘Let’s walk,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand here like some idiot.’
I wanted to say: Why change now?
But I kept my mouth shut.
I was on my best behaviour.
Whatever reason he had for calling, after all, it had to be a good one to make him overcome his natural inclination to treat me like something unpleasant he’d found beneath his shoe.
So we started walking.
Taking a stroll round the park like any other courting couple. The oddest-looking courting couple you ever saw in your life, but love is blind, isn’t that what they say?
I liked it here. In summertime, when the air was warmer, I often stepped out from my apartment only a few hundred yards away, and ate lunch sitting on one of the benches that lined the pools. The trees would be rich with foliage, birds sang through the relentless howl of traffic, the sound of children laughing drifted over from the playground elsewhere in the park.
There were always plenty of people doing the same, office workers taking time out in the middle of the day, kids bunking off school, old folks taking a stroll, remembering the place as it used to be. Today was quieter, because the summer had yet to get going; it was taking its time, and the air still had an edge to it that encouraged people to think they’d be better off indoors. The paths were wet with a rain I realised I hadn’t noticed falling that morning. The trees still looked as if coming into leaf was a struggle many of them might not bother making this year.
I knew how they felt.
‘Is this about Alice?’ I said.
‘No. At least, maybe. Oh, I don’t know. Do you think she killed herself?’
‘As a matter of fact, I do.’
‘You didn’t think Felix had.’
‘That was different.’
‘Different how?’
‘Felix had no reason to kill himself, as far as I could see. Far as I can still see. There was no reason for him to do what he did. Only problem was that no one would listen when I went looking for answers.’
‘If you mean me . . .’ began Strange.
‘You were one of a number.’
‘I had my reasons.’
‘For lying to me?’
‘I didn’t lie to you. Or rather, yes, I did lie. When I told you that Alice said you were bothering her, for example. And that she didn’t believe Felix had been murdered. She did believe it. She even asked me for my help in finding out who had killed him.’
‘Why didn’t you give it to her?’
‘Because I believed that it was absolutely the wrong thing for her. I was worried about her, it wasn’t good for her to be obsessing about Felix; he’d killed himself. I felt that if I encouraged her, it might only make her more fragile, and what would be the point? He killed himself, the police knew that, I saw the pathologist’s report. Those were facts that couldn’t be ignored. I couldn’t encourage Alice to go chasing after what seemed to me a fantasy.’
‘And do you still think that’s what it was? A fantasy?’
Strange stopped walking. We’d come to a bridge over a lake in the centre of the green. He leaned now on the side and stared down at the water. A swan floated by, looking up hopefully for crumbs, then dipped its beak into the water for food that wasn’t there, momentarily headless.
‘I don’t know any more,’ Strange said. ‘All I know is that something is not right. That’s why I needed to talk to you. That’s why I came here today looking for your help.’
‘I’m still waiting.’
At first he couldn’t say it.
Couldn’t form the words, same way I hadn’t been able to when I wanted to tell Alice about Felix’s first phone call. And when he finally did force the words out, I understood the difficulty.
‘A man contacted me two nights ago,’ he said, ‘and asked me to supply him with a firearm.’
‘I didn’t realise you’d branched out into gun dealing,’ I said. ‘Is the art market a bit slow at the moment?’
‘I presume that’s another attempt at a joke?’ said Strange, lifting his elbows off the side of the bridge and starting to walk again. ‘Frankly, I find the suggestion that I would sell one of my guns offensive. I’m a collector, not a criminal.’
‘Who was it?’ I asked, following him.
‘You may find this hard to believe, but he never got around to giving me his name.’
‘You say contacted. You mean . . .?’
‘He telephoned me. At the gallery. I never saw his face.’
‘Did you recognise the voice?’
‘I’m fairly sure I’ve never heard it before.’
‘Then it seems like congratulations are in order. You’re one of a select group. Only two people have heard the voice of the Marxman – and the other one died shortly afterwards.’
His reply came out almost like a yelp.
‘Who said anything about the Marxman?’
‘Come on, that’s what you think, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘And after what happened to Felix, I don’t blame you. Who else would come to you for a gun? Ordinary criminals don’t usually ring up art dealers when they need weapons. They have alternative supplies. The Marxman doesn’t. He can hardly go through the usual channels when half the criminal world’s waiting for his next move so they can cash in on the reward. You’re not saying you think it’s a coincidence you got a call within days of the Marxman losing his favourite Glock? Has it ever happened before?’
‘Of course it’s never happened before.’
‘There you are then.’ The trees roared above us suddenly with a wind from out of nowhere. For a moment it drowned out the noises of the city and I could almost imagine we were lost deep inside a forest. ‘What kind of gun was he looking for?’
‘Not a Glock, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Strange said, managing to make the word Glock sound almost comic. ‘He just said he wanted a gun. He wasn’t fussy, as long as it was working and couldn’t be traced. That, and the ammunition to go
with it.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said no. I told you, I’m not a gun dealer.’
‘Good boy. I would’ve expected nothing less from a law-abiding citizen like you,’ I said. ‘So what exactly are we talking about it now for? Why didn’t you go straight to the police?’
‘Well,’ said Strange, ‘that’s the awkward part. When I said no, the caller threatened that if I didn’t provide a gun under the specified conditions of secrecy, or if I went to the police, then he would reveal certain information about me which I would rather keep private.’
‘This information being?’
‘You don’t honestly think I’m going to—’
‘Tell me? Yes, I do. Unless you fancy being a front-page lead in tomorrow’s tabloids.’
‘Fuck.’ It was the first time I’d heard him swear. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’
‘I’m also waiting.’
The words came out bleeding and reluctant as pulled teeth.
‘I have a certain lifestyle to maintain which can become . . . expensive,’ he began, refusing to meet my eye. ‘I admit that there are a number of occasions on which I may not have lived up entirely to the professional standards I and others expect of me.’
‘Now you’re talking like a lawyer. I’d better watch out or you’ll start spouting Latin and talking about the party of the first part next. You want to give me an example instead?’
‘Now and again I may have made extra copies of particularly sought-after photographic prints without the knowledge of the artist, and passed them on to interested parties. And I may have adjusted the odd percentage point in my commissions as I struggled to make ends meet.’
‘Jesus, I am so dumb,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘And there was me all along thinking you were going to tell me you were the father of Alice’s baby.’
‘Me?’ breathed Strange. ‘There was never anything like that between Alice and me. Even had I desired her, Felix was always in the way. Felix was the only man for her. There’s no point pretending otherwise now, is there? There are no secrets in death. Alice may have played around a lot in her younger days, but she’d grown out of it. She’d realised, I think, that all she wanted was Felix and she hadn’t taken another lover for ten years. Nor had he before that little Gina Fox came along. Felix is the only one who could possibly have been the father of her baby.’
‘So your crimes are financial rather than fleshly?’
‘Please do not mock. This is ticklish enough as it is.’
Ticklish?
The man had a definite talent for understatement.
‘Especially when I have,’ he added, ‘nothing to be ashamed of.’
‘Then I’m confused,’ I said. ‘If you’ve nothing to be ashamed of, then why are you so anxious that the things you may have done don’t become public? So anxious that you haven’t even informed the police of the fact that God knows who is trying to blackmail you into becoming an arms dealer.’
‘As I indicated, there has been a lot of negative publicity in recent days about Felix and Alice. About the pictures that were found in their house. I have my reputation to think of. I wouldn’t want it to be thought that I was involved in any way with something underhand.’
‘Heaven forbid.’
‘It’s just that people—’
‘Wouldn’t understand,’ I said. ‘You said something similar the first time we met too.’
‘You can sneer,’ said Strange, ‘but I can already feel the disapproval out there drifting towards me since Alice died. It’s like a glacier moving south. Clients have cancelled planned meetings, buyers have put off coming to the gallery or to Dublin to see me. If they were to find out that, in addition to their erotic activities, I had made certain errors in my accounting practices, things could become awkward for me professionally.’
‘Why not ask your good friend Assistant Commissioner Draker to help out again?’
‘There are limits even to friendship,’ said Strange with a wry smile, ‘and I think I may well have reached them. There have been a couple of incidents already.’
‘Being photographed at a party organised by a gangster, for one. I heard about that.’
‘Again, I did nothing wrong. I had no idea what Frederick Sheehy was involved in at that time. But people do have a tendency to draw the wrong conclusions. To be judgemental. And then there was another incident which there really is no need to go into now.’
‘You mean giving Felix the gun with which he killed himself?’
‘You know about that?’
His childlike astonishment was almost touching.
‘Don’t panic, I’m not going to start naming names to a Senate committee.’
‘Well then, since you know already, there’s no point trying to put a good gloss on it. It was a terrible misjudgement and I have suffered grievously for it. I lost a good friend. And the only reason I gave him the gun in the first place was because he threatened to expose the same mistakes of mine. We’d quarrelled about that some months back when he confronted me about . . . irregularities in his payments. That’s why we drifted apart. And now here it comes again. My fear this time is that I may fall foul of a crude three-strikes-and-you’re-out mentality.’
‘Maybe whoever called is banking on you being afraid of it too,’ I said, as I looked up and noticed that we were approaching the bronze statue again where we’d begun our circuit of the park. ‘But I still don’t see what this has got to do with me. Why you’ve come to me of all people with this news.’
‘I was hoping you could tell me that.’
‘Why would I know anything?’ I exclaimed.
‘Because,’ said Strange, ‘the caller specified that it should be you who makes the drop-off. Hands the gun over. That was his only condition.’
I looked up through the trees at the buildings that surrounded St Stephen’s Green, trying to pick out my own window and imagining myself up there, looking down at me.
Should I give myself a wave?
Imagined someone else standing here too, looking up in the same direction, waiting, watching for the moment I left and he could climb the stairs and let himself into my rooms.
Why me?
It could only be because of Felix, I thought. If it was the Marxman who’d called Strange, and I didn’t doubt that it was, then he’d know I’d been investigating Felix’s death. I’d hardly kept quiet about it. I can’t keep quiet about anything.
My tongue has a life of its own.
Did he think that I too was following his footprints in the snow as Felix had done? And if he did, what would he do if I just appeared, like he asked, and handed him Strange’s gun?
Did I really need to ask?
‘So what exactly,’ I said, ‘are you asking of me?’
‘I want you to do what he said on the telephone,’ said Strange, as if the answer was so obvious a child wouldn’t have needed it spelled out. ‘I want you to take the gun, I’ll give you a gun, any gun, and I want you to give it to him.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘Don’t say that. Think about it at least.’
‘What’s there to think about? You’re saying you want me to give the Marxman a gun?’
‘I’ll pay you. I’ll give you ten thousand. Twenty. I don’t care.’
‘Money has nothing to do with it,’ I said. ‘The man’s a killer, Strange. You’d have to be loco to even be having a debate in your head about doing what he says. And why should I help you? I’m amazed you have the nerve to even come and ask me. From the first moment we met, you’ve done nothing but frustrate me. Put obstacles in my way. And now you want my help?’
‘Is that what this is about? Getting your own back? No one would listen to you about Felix, so now you’re going to turn me away when I need your help?’
‘It’s not that at all.’
‘Then what is it? I just want him to go away. Can’t you see? I’m desperate. Can you imagine how hard it was for me to get the courag
e to come and tell you this, not knowing what you’d do, what you’d say, how you’d react? But I had to. I’m in a hole and I want to get out, and I don’t know how to get out except by simply doing what I’m told. I just want to be left alone. I want my life back. I don’t know what else to do. If you don’t do what he says . . .’
I almost felt sorry for him at that moment, but not so sorry that I didn’t realise the risks he was willing to run with the rest of the population of Dublin in order to save his own hide.
‘The fact that you’re desperate is why you’re not thinking straight,’ I said. ‘Can’t you see how much worse it will be for you if it gets out that you’ve knowingly assisted a multiple killer? Whereas if you help the police bring him in, no one’s going to care about a few dollars that found their way mistakenly into your back pocket. You’ve got to start thinking, Strange. I mean it. Don’t you even care that more people will be killed if you do what he tells you?’
‘Of course I care,’ he said fiercely. ‘I feel like a worm for even contemplating doing what he asks, but I’m over a barrel, don’t you see? I can’t be expected to take the responsibility for being a hero entirely on my shoulders. I have to think about myself. My own future.’
‘Then think about yourself. Because do you really think this guy’ll just vanish if you give him what he wants now? That he won’t come back for more, and more after that? There’s always something else to ask for, and you always ask the people who gave most easily the first time.’
‘What else can I do?’
I tried to put the possibilities into some order in my head.
‘When’s he calling back?’
‘About midnight. He’s going to tell me the time and place the handover is to happen.’
‘Then you’re going to have to take the call,’ I said. ‘Act as if everything’s OK, agree to whatever he says, just arrange the details, then call me.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘You have to trust me. You came to me looking for help and I’m offering it to you. But you have to let me do things my way. I’ll make sure your name is kept out of it as best I can.’
‘You’re not going to go to the police, are you?’
The Dark Eye (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 2) Page 26