The Judas Heart

by Ingrid Black

  Paralyzed by confusion, I stood and watched as the cab got further away.

  Any other day it would’ve been stuck in traffic, but today was Sunday and it was gone in moments. At the lights on College Green, it turned left.

  The last sight I had of Kaminski this time was of his face, peering out the back window, watching me watching him, making sure the brief pursuit was over.

  Then that sight faded too.

  He had melted into the city.

  The old magician had pulled a disappearing trick on me for a second time.

  Chapter Two

  “There are lots of Americans in Dublin,” said Fitzgerald. “The place is full of Irish-Americans looking for their roots.”

  “JJ isn’t Irish,” I said. “He’s Polish. If he wanted to visit the old country, he’d have booked a flight to Warsaw not Dublin.

  “Maybe he’s lost. Or making a connection,” she quipped. Then, when I didn’t smile, she continued: “Then what if he’s over seeing relatives? There are plenty of Poles in Dublin right now. They’ve even set up their own cable TV channel, you know. And don’t you remember, I actually arrested a Polish man for murder last month. That’s the seventh nationality I’ve arrested in the past three years. I like to think of it as a sign that we’re getting very tolerant and multi-cultural. We welcome murderers now from all parts of the globe.”

  This time, I couldn’t help smiling.

  “They should put that on the holiday brochures,” I suggested. “Think of the boost it’d give to tourism. You could even offer a discount for block bookings by psychopaths.”

  “There you go,” she added to that. “Your friend could simply be here on holiday.”

  “People like JJ don’t take holidays.”

  “He could have changed since you knew him.”

  “People like JJ don’t change either. It’d be too quiet for him here anyway.”

  “Dublin’s too quiet for you too,” said Fitzgerald, “but you’re still here.”

  “What can I say? Love makes us all do strange things.”

  “That’s it. He must be in love.”

  We were catching that bite to eat in a tiny Italian place in Wicklow Street. That is, we’d got past ordering and onto the first glass of wine, but not so far as to actually start eating, unless the bread basket that I was quickly making my way through counted.

  Fitzgerald was doing what Fitzgerald did best. She was being rational. I needed that sometimes. Counterpart to my craziness.

  Though it still didn’t explain why Leon Kaminski had run from me, as I lost no time reminding her.

  “True,” she conceded. “That’s not what you’d call normal behaviour. Not that you’re exactly a practitioner of the fine art of behaving normally yourself.”

  “I’ll ignore that remark.”

  I looked across the table at her, and once again my dominant thought as I watched her was how well-named she was. She did have grace, a poise and elegance that had always eluded me. I was lucky to have got her. There were days when I thought she was way out of my league. I didn’t deserve her. She put up with a lot, and she rarely complained.

  Grace Fitzgerald was a Detective Chief Superintendent with the murder squad of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and she was the very reason I was in Dublin at all.

  I’d met her shortly after coming to the city for the first time. She was a source for a book I was writing at the time about a serial killer called the Night Hunter who had killed five women. Somehow we were still together - and with my talent for screwing up relationships and getting people hacked off with me, that ought to be considered something of a miracle.

  Without Fitzgerald, I doubted I’d still be here at all. Dublin was a great place to hang out, but I would never have stayed here longer than a couple months if it hadn’t been for her. Because of her, I’d now been here much longer than I’d ever stayed in the one place. Before I knew it, I’d been living here and I couldn’t even recall when I passed the line from passing through to actually living in the place. That was a line you crossed before you knew you’d crossed it, and then sometimes it was too late to get back to the other side.

  She was perfectly integrated into the city in a way I’d never been in any place. Boston, maybe, but even there I don’t remember ever being entirely comfortable. Maybe I was just uncomfortable in my own skin, and you couldn’t change that, couldn’t slough and shrug out of it like a snake when the weight of everything became too much.

  Fitzgerald wore her own skin like it was a silk gown. It fitted her exactly, and through her it was like a thousand invisible lines radiated out and criss-crossed the whole city, so that she and it became inseparable. I found myself able to get a connection to the city through her, otherwise I’d merely have been drifting, ghost-like, through the streets, rootless, pointless.

  Right now, I was trying to explain to her why I felt so unnerved by seeing Kaminski.

  I was failing because she still didn’t get it.

  “How do you know him, anyway?” she said.

  “He was in the same FBI field office as me in upstate New York,” I explained. “He was senior to me, obviously. I’d only just left Quantico, and he was the golden boy, fast-tracked to the top, his path laid out. He was good looking, always well dressed. His parents came from Poland after the war and settled in New Jersey, and they’d always instilled that into him. He had to look the part. He had to blend in. Be anonymous.”

  She nodded. “I know the type.”

  “Kaminski played his part to perfection,” I said. “He’d effortlessly erased whatever traces remained of his European genes and become the true all-American college kid. You know, teeth so bright you had to wear shades, and so straight you’d think they were put in his mouth with the help of a spirit level. Not a hair out of place. His skin was so perfect you’d swear he must have the DNA of new born babies injected into the nape of his neck every morning at seven sharp, and twice a day at weekends for that extra glow. He probably thought he looked like Tom Cruise. He certainly had to wear heels like Tom Cruise because he wasn’t much taller than I am, and everyone’s taller than I am. The Seven Dwarfs included.”

  “You didn’t get along with him?”

  “I got along with him fine. Hey,” I said, when I saw her looking at me sceptically across the table, “don’t be so cynical. I get along with people all the time.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “It surprised a lot of other people too,” I admitted with a shrug. “They had a system when you were starting out in the FBI. You didn’t have a job as such, but fully-fledged agents could choose whichever younger inexperienced agents they took a shine to along on operations. Hence the newcomers tended to ingratiate themselves with the older ones. Well, you know me. I was never one for ingratiation. Something insolent is encoded in my DNA. Despite that, JJ took me under his wing. I don’t know what tricks he thought I brought to the party, but he must’ve thought I brought some because he was always picking me.”

  “He must have seen you as a challenge,” said Fitzgerald.

  “That’s what I reckoned. I certainly got a lot of experience thanks to him, worked on a lot of cases that would otherwise have passed me by, and which I might’ve waited years before coming into contact with. I was grateful. It could be tough for women in those days. I thought we were friends. That’s why I couldn’t understand why he didn’t tell me what he was feeling in the run up to his disappearance. I always felt I could’ve helped.”

  “And afterwards it was too late because by then you’d left the Bureau too?”

  “Precisely.”

  Left. That makes it sound so simple. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. I was only in the FBI seven years, which is less than a third of the recommended period before retirement, but I burned out faster than I expected. I’d had enough of death.

  I didn’t realise then that death has a habit of following you around, no matter how hard you try to escape it.
/>   Whatever the reason, I ended up resigning my post and writing a book about my experiences in the Bureau. The book did well enough that it led to other books, I got a film deal, I had real money for the first time in my life, and by a circuitous route I finally found myself here in Dublin, where I continued to write the odd book now and then.

  Very odd books, some might say. Crime books, books on profiling, sketches of old cases, unsolved murders, forgotten killers. I had a new life, but people in the FBI had never forgiven me. They felt betrayed. I’d had angry calls from former colleagues demanding why I’d done it. Personally, I think they overreacted. But that’s the way it goes.

  I didn’t hold it against them.

  I moved on.

  Or I thought I had. Now here he was, back in my sights.

  Acting suspiciously.

  “You should find out where he’s staying, go round and say hello,” said Fitzgerald. “You don’t always have to make things more complicated than they really are. There are a million innocent explanations as to why he could be here.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said confidently.

  “You sound pretty convinced.”

  “That’s because,” I said, leaning across the table with a smile of triumph, “I took down the number of the cab JJ got into, and managed to track down the driver.”

  “And?”

  “And it turns out that Leon Kaminski isn’t Leon Kaminski at all. Or rather, he isn’t calling himself that. He’s staying at a hotel in town under an assumed name.”

  “That’s not a crime. Not technically.”

  “You haven’t heard the name he’s using yet. Want to take a guess what it is?”

  “I don’t like the odds.”

  “Buck Randall III.”

  Fitzgerald laughed so hard that diners at the other tables turned to look at her disapprovingly.

  “That is one great name,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Isn’t it?” I said. “Sounds like the hero of some 50s Western series on TV. Now what would JJ be doing creeping round Dublin calling himself Buck Randall III?”

  “You got me,” she said. “I give up. Tell me.”

  “I don’t know, that’s the point. It was a rhetorical question.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “He must be here on FBI business. That’s why he ran. He didn’t want me knowing. He didn’t want me interfering.”

  “You? Interfere in things that are none of your business? The very thought.”

  “I’ll ignore that remark too,” I said, and as I spoke I realised there was nothing left in the bread basket but crumbs. I’d probably have spoiled my appetite for dinner now.

  “Do you want me to make some calls?” said Fitzgerald, taking pity.

  “You’d do that?”

  “Anything for a quiet life,” she said. “But you know, if he is in Dublin on FBI business, then I’d be the last person to find out about it. You Americans rarely believe in sharing information about what you’re up to with we unsophisticated locals.”

  I was about to rise to the bait, as I always did when people in Dublin started rhyming off their litanies of anti-Americanisms, when Fitzgerald’s cellphone went off.

  The smile vanished from her lips, and the same diners who had disapproved of her laughing were now openly muttering rebelliously.

  “Shit,” she said. “What now?”

  She took it out of her pocket and looked at it.

  “It’s Healy,” she said. She meant Sean Healy, a fellow detective on the murder squad and the one she felt closest to in the whole department. They’d worked together on cases from the first day she joined. “I’d better go see what he wants. Don’t be going anywhere now.”

  Fitzgerald pushed back her chair and rose. By the time she reached the lobby, she was already through to Healy. The glass door swung shut and cut off her voice, but I could still see her through the glass, talking quickly. I refilled my glass with wine and swirled it around just for something to do with my hands, and tried to suppress the feeling that the evening had come to an abrupt end.

  “Duty calls?” I said when she got back.

  “A woman’s body’s been found.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Would they be calling me on my night off otherwise?” She sighed. “The City Pathologist’s already on his way over. I guess that puts paid to Othello.”

  “I’ll try to suppress my disappointment,” I said.

  I hadn’t even realised it was Othello we were going to see.

  “Are they sending a car?”

  She nodded.

  “Five minutes time. And I’ve been looking forward to dessert all day. Oh well, it’ll be good for my figure.” She caught my eye. “I’m sorry, Saxon. I was looking forward to this evening.”

  “It can’t be helped. Don’t go beating yourself up about it.”

  “Will you be OK on your own?”

  “I think I can manage to find my way home,” I smiled. “If I get lost, I’ll call 999. Don’t worry about me. There’s no point getting hooked up with a binman and then complaining when he has to go and take out the trash. That’s part of the job description.”

  “What a charming way you have with words.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

  Chapter Three

  I made my way home alone through the warm evening streets only to find that the lift was broken again. That meant I had to climb the seven flights of stairs to my apartment, and by the time I got there I couldn’t deny that I’d been in more agreeable moods.

  To make matters worse, the door had started getting temperamental lately and I had to kick it a few times before it opened. The woman who lived alone across the hallway from me came out to ask if everything was alright. What she meant was that I should shut up.

  I told her everything was fine. What I meant that she should get back to bed and mind her own business. It wasn’t much after ten and the woman was in her pyjamas.

  And I thought my social life left something to be desired.

  I’d spent the last couple of hours since Fitzgerald was summoned to the scene of another death just walking round, idly following a haphazard circuit of streets that were so familiar to me by now that I could have walked them with my eyes blindfolded.

  Not that I intended to try.

  You never know what you might step in.

  Cities in summer always come into their own after the sun goes down. During the day it’s too hot to stir, too hot to care, but at night the dark takes the edge off the heat that has gathered in the streets. People come out and experience the city with an immediacy impossible at other times of year. Usually they just regard the streets as passages to connect the places they need to get to. In summer, people become a part of the city instead of intruders in it. Temple Bar tonight had been humming with voices and music and the clatter from the open windows of restaurant kitchens. Tables and chairs had spilled from every doorway and people were drinking wine and flirting with one another. Without Grace, I felt disconnected from it all. It seemed a waste to be spending the night alone.

  Death has no consideration for people’s lives.

  Once inside my apartment, I put a CD on low without even looking what it was, then took a beer from the fridge and carried it out to the balcony, sitting with my feet on the balustrade, surveying my kingdom. I lit a cigar to keep the beer company. Cuba’s greatest gift to civilisation, though since its other contributions included political repression, censorship, and a way of life so wretched that huge numbers of its own citizens would rather risk shark-infested seas to cross to Florida than remain, that’s not necessarily saying much.

  Far across the river on the Northside, I could see the light at the top of the Dublin Spire glowing, a personal Pole Star for everyone like me who had nothing else of their own to look at that night. The rising smoke from the cigar made the light quiver.

  Somewhere out there was Ka
minski.

  Or should that be Buck Randall III?

  Fitzgerald was right, she usually was right. I shouldn’t let it bother me what Kaminski was doing in Dublin. He had a right to go where he wanted, and to call himself whatever he liked. And if he was on FBI business, then I had even less right to know.

  I’d relinquished the right to be involved in those matters a long time ago.

  But it’s never been my nature to let things go. That’s what gets me into trouble. And it wasn’t like I’d asked for this reminder of my past life to barge its way in unceremoniously.

  Nor had I asked to be reminded of it in so bizarre a fashion.

  All he’d had to do that afternoon was wave a greeting, say: “Hello, Saxon, how’s things?” A couple of moments of polite conversation later, then: “I have to scoot, but you keep in touch now, you hear?” Even if both of us knew it was a lie.

  Instead, he’d raised his finger to his lips as if imploring my silence, just like before, and it was like he was mocking me. Though why I should feel mocked by the memory of his disintegration was unclear. It wasn’t me who’d lost it. Though some of my former colleagues certainly thought otherwise when they read my book - and lost no time telling me.

  Sitting here so far from the world where I’d originally known Kaminski, I couldn’t help being perplexed at how it had come to this. Why did things have to get so weird?

  What made it worse was that our dealings with each other had always been so uncomplicated. Most of the time, at any rate. There was one little incident between us that I didn’t much care to dwell on which had made the atmosphere awkward for a time, but even that hadn’t been allowed to poison what had always been a straightforward relationship.

  We’d always been able to laugh too.

  Usually at my expense, it’s true, but that was fine by me. I’d never made the mistake of taking myself too seriously. Doing what we did every day, you couldn’t afford to.