The Judas Heart

by Ingrid Black

  “Whatever. What’s he doing here? Did he hear you had to miss the play and come round to offer you free tickets?”

  “Not exactly. He was sleeping with Marsha Reed.”

  “I don’t know why I’m taken aback. You did say she was sleeping with everyone.”

  “Not all of them, though, gave her an expensive necklace.”

  “The missing necklace was from Solomon?”

  “The very same,” she said, and she held the door open for me as I stepped inside.

  I knew this place well enough. Dublin Castle was where the murder squad of the Dublin Metropolitan Police had its headquarters, along with a number of other major departments, such as vice, anti-terrorism and drugs. There were cells in other parts of the city, local police stations where less serious crimes were dealt with. There was even the main administration block out in the Phoenix Park, where the Commissioner and his cronies were to be found and where most of the important decisions were made. But Dublin Castle was where what really counted went on. Didn’t matter how many robberies were solved or how many tax evaders convicted, or how many people the Dogs Division picked up for not having a dog license, or even how many pickpockets were rounded up for swiping wallets from tourists who seemed to think they were safe in Dublin. It was how a police department dealt with murder cases that made the difference to their reputation and standing.

  Dublin didn’t exactly have a shining record in that respect, though it was not for lack of trying on Fitzgerald’s part. She was a fine detective, just frequently frustrated by the lack of proper structures and resources. Uniformed police in the city couldn’t always be relied upon to even preserve a crime scene properly for forensic analysis. Sometimes it felt like the cops here were lagging decades behind. Unless Fitzgerald was called in quickly, it was often too late.

  As always when I came here, I had to suppress the vague feeling that I had strayed into unfriendly territory. It was easy to forget that the police and I were supposed to be on the same side. Too often in the past, I had been made to feel as welcome here as an outbreak of bird flu, even when I was meant to be offering a helping hand with particular cases.

  Make that especially when I was meant to be helping out.

  “Here,” said Fitzgerald.

  “What is it?”

  “Your pass,” she said, pinning it to my collar. “Now you’re official.”

  “Thanks. Are we going up?”

  “Follow me.”

  And follow her I did, up the main stairway to the upper floors where most of the murder squad’s real work was done, and wishing we could’ve taken the lift instead. Unfortunately, she told me that was broken too, like the one in my apartment building.

  Did anything work anymore?

  I was out of shape. Long gone were the days of my FBI training, when I could do a hundred push ups without giving it a second thought.

  Lately I found getting out of bed a struggle.

  “So was that his lawyer with him?” I said between breaths as we climbed.

  “His solicitor brought him in this morning, said his client wanted to make a statement,” Fitzgerald explained, taking the steps with ease. “He knew we’d be digging into Marsha’s background and obviously realised it was inevitable that his name would come up eventually. He decided to take the initiative and present himself for questioning. It wouldn’t look good if we’d turned up at the theatre unannounced. Not good for business, I mean.”

  “Did you know he was Marsha’s boyfriend?”

  “Her friend, who found the body, said Marsha had told her she was sleeping with someone important in theatre circles here in the city, but she wouldn’t reveal who it was. Not initially. She badgered her until Marsha eventually admitted it was Solomon.”

  “What’s his story?”

  “That he and Marsha had been sleeping together on and off for the last six months or so, but that it was no big affair as far as he was concerned. But then he would say that. He’s engaged to be married to an actress who’s starring in his latest play. They’re quite a well-known couple. You can understand why he wouldn’t want it getting into the papers that he was seeing Marsha Reed as well. He says he last slept with her about a month ago.”

  “They’d split up?”

  “He says it wasn’t even the kind of relationship where you needed to split up,” said Fitzgerald. “They just saw one another when they saw one another. I got the impression that if he bumped into her around town in the evening and he didn’t have anything else lined up, he was happy enough to appoint her as his temporary bed warmer, but that he wasn’t going to be calling her up to make a date for dinner or drinks or anything like that.”

  “He gave her the necklace, didn’t he?”

  “A meaningless trinket, if you listen to him.”

  “Was he part of her little S&M set?”

  “He says not,” said Fitzgerald. “According to him, he knew nothing about that part of her life and, if he had known about it, he’d never have got involved with her in the first place.”

  “The morally upright type, huh?”

  “That’s the general picture. Though more upright than moral, if you ask me. You know what these artistic types are like. See? Here we are now. Do try and stop panting. People will think we were up to something.”

  And she ushered me through the door into the upstairs corridor off which the murder squad was housed. Her own office was at the end of the hall. The main incident rooms were down the left. The windows along the other side looked down on the street below.

  Patrick Walsh was standing in the corridor, waiting.

  What was there to say about Walsh? He was young, lean, ambitious, capable, sharply-dressed, good-looking: and those were just a few of the reasons why so many of the other detectives loathed him. I liked him well enough, though I admit there was a cockiness to him that could be jarring on first contact. He considered himself to be God’s gift to the women of Dublin, and felt that women should be grateful to the Lord for blessing them with such a gift.

  He’d even asked Fitzgerald out once.

  Whatever other faults he had, he certainly didn’t lack chutzpah.

  He did, though, have a bad habit of calling me –

  “Babe! If I’d known you were coming in, I’d have put on my best aftershave.”

  “Save it for someone who doesn’t mind being called babe,” I said. “Though to do that, I guess you’d have to find a time machine to take you back to the 1970s.”

  “I love it when you get angry,” Walsh said.

  “Break it up, you two,” said Fitzgerald. “If you want to flirt, do it on your time.”

  Flirt? That woman sure knew how to get on my wrong side.

  “I heard you wanted to talk to me, Chief,” Walsh went on before I could object.

  “Yeah, there’s something I want you to take a look at for me. Saxon,” she said, “did you manage to finish that list?”

  “I have it in my pocket here.”

  I fished it out, and passed it to her. She unfolded the sheet of paper and glanced quickly through the names.

  “Is this the whole list of people who took your class?” she said.

  “There were seven,” I confirmed. “Eight, if you include Marsha Reed.”

  “Popular course,” murmured Walsh sarcastically.

  I ignored him.

  “I put down a few impressions of each one, just as a pointer for you. Sara O’Leary – that’s her there at the top – was the one who seemed to know Marsha best. They sat together, sometimes they left together, I heard them making arrangements once to meet up for a drink.”

  “Has her name come up in the investigation yet?” she asked Walsh.

  “It doesn’t ring any bells.”

  “That guy there,” I said, pointing to another name on the list I’d given Fitzgerald, “might be worth talking to as well. He arrived for one class with Marsha. I remember hearing them laughing on the stairs up to the lecture room. They may’ve only just
seen each other as they arrived, but it’s probably worth following up anyway to see how well he did know her.”

  “What about the others?” asked Walsh.

  “That’s for you to find out,” said Fitzgerald.

  “Chief?”

  “Take this list round to the college and find addresses and phone numbers for all seven. Pay them a call, see if they have any further information about Marsha Reed.”

  “Will do. And Solomon’s alibi? Shall I check that out first?”

  “Leave that to me,” Fitzgerald said. “I’m just going back to my room to pick up some files, then I’m going over to speak to her with Healy.”

  “Solomon claims he was at the theatre until eleven on the night of the killing,” Walsh explained to me. “Then with his fiancé until ten the next morning.”

  “You never know, he might be telling the truth,” Fitzgerald said. “It happens.”

  “Shall I make my own way up to the Assistant Commissioner’s office then?” I said.

  “Walsh will take you. Won’t you, Walsh?”

  A grimace.

  “Yes, Chief.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” I said after Fitzgerald had gone out of earshot. “Don’t you want to take me up there?”

  “It’s not that, babe. You know nothing gives me more pleasure than spending time with you. I just want to get these interviews over as soon as I can,” he explained, waving the list of names Fitzgerald had handed to him a moment earlier. “I have a date tonight.”

  “From what I hear, you have a date every night.”

  “But this date is something special,” he said. “This one I have high hopes for. Her name’s Lucy and she works downstairs in Vice.”

  “Is that part of the attraction?”

  “If a woman chooses to works in Vice, she’s got to be kind of kinky, right?”

  “Walsh, you’re a sick man. Logical, but sick.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said. “I just wish I could’ve gone with the Chief instead of being stuck with the job of tracking down your ex-students. No offence.”

  “None taken.”

  “I bet Healy gets to meet Zak Kirby too. I worship that guy.”

  “Healy or Kirby?”

  “Very funny. You should be a stand-up comedian.”

  “That’s what my doorman tells me.”

  I’d forgotten that Walsh had a thing about the theatre. He’d often admitted that acting was his first love, and police work only came second when it became clear that the acting was going nowhere. He still took part in amateur productions occasionally. Getting a foot in the door with Victor Solomon’s crowd at the Liffey Theatre, even under these circumstances, would’ve been even more irresistible to him than an evening with Lucy from Vice.

  Was Fitzgerald keeping him away from that part of the investigation because she feared he might not be able to keep his mind on the job, or that he might be too star struck by the people he’d be seeing there to stay objective? If he had any sense, he wouldn’t mention his hero worship of Zak Kirby. The American, who was in town to appear in Othello, was surely already beginning to wonder what he’d got himself in for, with the cops turning up to interrogate him about the movements of his own director on the night of a brutal murder.

  If they started asking for his autograph as well...

  I was being unfair. Walsh had always shown total integrity when it came to doing his job, even if he did leave his brain in his pants when it came to the rest of his life. He probably just wanted this one rare chance to soak up some of the atmosphere of the real theatre.

  It wasn’t a crime.

  “Come on,” he said dolefully. “I’d better get you to the Assistant Commissioner before the Chief comes back and gives me hell.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rising from her desk, Stella Carson held out a hand to greet me.

  “You must be Saxon.”

  Now I was hearing it for myself, the voice didn’t sound so bad. It wasn’t going to win any prizes for musicality, that’s for sure, but I’d been on the receiving end of worse.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she added.

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  She was smaller than I’d expected – smaller than Fitzgerald, that is, if not as small as me - with a sharp, clever face, an impression accentuated by the way she had her dark hair pinned back severely. The smile she offered was warm enough, however, and her eyes didn’t have that deceitful look you often saw where the eyes are sizing you up critically even as the mouth played the part of smiling. She had a strong, athletic look to her, but still looked trim. Most men in the force her age had already succumbed to middle aged spread, the side effects of consuming too many long liquid lunches with the other administrative overlords at whatever gentlemen’s club they bunkered down in. There was none of that with her.

  “Won’t you sit down?”

  I took my place in the chair she waved me into, and watched as she made her way back round to the other side of the desk. There was a cardboard box sitting opened on her desk from which she’d been taking out various files and book and diaries – as well as a framed photograph showing a young woman in her mid-twenties in a graduation gown and mortar hat, holding a rolled-up degree. The photograph had taken pride of place on the desk.

  Quite a contrast from the way the office had been when Assistant Commissioner Draker had occupied it, when any trace of his ordinary home life had been ruthlessly expunged, like it didn’t matter. Either that or Draker never had an ordinary home life of which to be reminded.

  “My daughter,” Draker’s successor explained when she saw me glancing at it. “She recently finished her law degree. She’s starting work soon with the Prosecutions Office.”

  “That’s a relief,” I said. “For a second there, I thought you were going to say she was becoming a defence lawyer.”

  “The enemy,” agreed Carson. “What a dreadful thought.”

  “Will she be following you down to Dublin?”

  “She’s already down here. She went to Trinity. So you could say I’m the one who’s following her. I’m staying in her place right now whilst I look for a house, and trying hard not to interfere too much with her life. It’s a difficult habit to break.”

  “At least you’re trying to break it,” I said. “Some mothers never learn to let go.”

  “Are you speaking from experience?”

  “Not me. I think my mother decided to let go approximately five minutes after she gave birth,” I said wryly. “I’m not objecting. It suited me fine.”

  She paused briefly before continuing.

  “You’re probably wondering why I asked to see you.”

  “It had crossed my mind.”

  “It wasn’t to talk about my family troubles, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m saving that up for my memoirs. Fitzgerald didn’t tell you what I wanted?”

  “She said she didn’t know,” I said.

  “I didn’t say anything directly,” Carson said, “but I think she guessed what I was thinking all the same.” Another pause. “Do you want something to drink? Coffee? Tea?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Straight to the point. That’s what I would’ve expected. I read your book. Your first book, that is. I don’t get much time for reading, but I did read that. I like your point of view.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “Fitzgerald tells me you knew this woman who died.”

  Is that what this was about?

  “I wouldn’t say I knew her.”

  “You’d met her, though?”

  “Dublin’s a small town in many ways,” I said. “She sat a course I was teaching.”

  “Do you think she admired you?”

  “She gave no hint of it if she did,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

  “She had a lot of books about crime, murder, in her room. Serial killers, you know.”

  “Novels?”

  “Mostly non-f
iction,” Carson explained. “Yours were among them.”

  “You think that’s important?”

  “You know how it is, you have to examine every possible lead. If nothing else, it helps flesh out the kind of woman Marsha was. From what I’ve seen of the initial reports, there’s not much else to go on. I suppose it was just my clumsy way of easing the conversation round in the right direction. Have you seen the crime scene photographs?”

  I shook my head.

  That was her cue to slide a cardboard file across the desk towards me.

  “Take a look,” she said.

  The first picture I took out of the file was one of Marsha Reed lying dead where she was found, naked, tied to the bedposts with cords, a bag over her head. Her last desperate breaths had made the bag cling to her face like a second skin. The sheets underneath her body had become tangled with the violence of her struggle to capture air.

  There were plenty more of the same. Close ups, wide angle shots, panoramas of the interior of the converted church where she’d lived, each photograph overlapping with the next so that not one inch of the dead woman’s final surroundings would be missed.

  Most curious to me were a series of snapshots showing Marsha Reed’s body lying on the bed covered with a sheet.

  “Did one of the police officers at the scene cover her body?” I said.

  “No,” the other woman said. “She was found like that. Didn’t you know?”

  I hadn’t known. Fitzgerald hadn’t mentioned it.

  I found myself considering what it meant. Did the killer feel ashamed of what he’d done? Killers sometimes covered the bodies of their victims if they couldn’t accept what they’d done. Covering the body was a way of pretending that it hadn’t happened. Sometimes too they didn’t want the dead eyes of their victims staring back at them accusingly, though in Marsha’s case she had died face down. Whatever the reason, covering the body certainly tied in with the investigation’s assessment of a sexually-motivated killer who knew his victim.

  “He didn’t cover the body straightaway,” Carson said.

  “He didn’t?”

  “The blood was dry when it touched the sheet. That meant some time must have elapsed between the killing and the covering.”