by Ingrid Black
“Don’t let him bother you,” Healy said to me after Dalton’s wide smug ass had made its exit. “He got one of the sergeants to do it this morning. It makes a difference when you tell hotels you’re calling from the DMP for information. They take you much more seriously.”
“The main thing is we know where he is now,” said Fitzgerald. “He’s not the one who’s in control like he has been hitherto. Let’s go see how he likes that.”
“Right now that doesn’t feel like much of an advantage.”
“Every little helps,” she replied. “Besides, it’s all we’ve got.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
It took him so long to answer the door I began to suspect he wasn’t there.
“You think he’s moved on again?” I whispered.
“No,” said Fitzgerald. “Someone’s coming.”
A number of emotions crossed Kaminski’s face when he opened the door and saw me standing there. First came the shock that I was there at all, then a resigned smile crept into his features, and he murmured: “So you tracked me down. Does this mean you’ve decided to -?”
Then the door swung open wider and he saw who was standing behind me. The smile vanished.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “You’re the tooth fairy.”
Fitzgerald held out her badge for him.
Kaminski looked at it, rubbing his face, rubbing away sleep. He looked ashen. He needed to shave. I wondered again what his former self would think if he could see himself now.
Whether he would even recognise himself.
“Detective Chief Superintendent Grace Fitzgerald,” he read aloud. “I’m honoured.” He handed the ID back without looking at Grace once after that initial realisation that she was there. Instead his eyes were fixed firmly on me. “So you sold me out,” was all he said.
“I didn’t sell anybody out,” I said thickly.
He didn’t answer that. Instead he stepped back and waved a hand. “I guess you’d better come in,” he said to the both of us. “Unless you’re here to put me under arrest?”
This time he did look at her.
“Why would we be putting you under arrest, Mr Kaminski?” asked Fitzgerald.
He shrugged. “For withholding vital information from the police, for being in the country under false papers, for sounding my horn in a built up area after 11pm, that sort of thing. I’m sure you can think of something.”
“You didn’t tell me you were here on a false passport,” I said.
“You didn’t ask,” Kaminski pointed out. “But you didn’t seriously think I’d have come here under my own name, did you? I’m a little tired of everyone knowing where I am.”
“Right now,” said Fitzgerald, stepping into the room briskly, “I don’t much care what name you’re travelling under. Our priorities are a little different.”
Kaminski shut the door behind us.
It was a small room, little more than enough space for a bed and a few sticks of furniture. Grey net curtains were drawn over. In the corner, a TV was switched on. Kaminski had been watching golf. There were the remains of a meagre room service lunch on a tray. His bag was on a chair, still only half unpacked, as if it hadn’t made up its mind whether it was staying,, and the bed was crumpled, like he’d been sleeping when we knocked. A half empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s stood on the bedside table next to a tumbler. Kaminski made no move to remove it. He clearly didn’t care what we saw. Or what we thought about what we saw.
All he did was pick up the TV remote and snap the sound off. He kept the set on, though, so the sight of long acres of green, interrupted occasionally by flashes of blue sky as the camera followed the trajectory of the ball, remained in the background as we talked, and I found I couldn’t help my eye straying unconsciously to the set as we spoke.
Kaminski wasn’t distracted by it. He didn’t glance at it once. He was still staring blankly at us. I sensed we could’ve been standing there stark naked and he would scarcely have noticed. Something was dead inside him. Perhaps it was his own capacity to feel alive.
“You must be leading the investigation into that girl’s death,” he said finally to Fitzgerald. “Did Saxon told you what I told her?”
“She did.”
“Then what are you doing here?” he asked bluntly “Shouldn’t you be out there looking for Buck Randall?”
“We’re actively pursuing a number of lines of enquiry, including that one,” Fitzgerald said. “I hope it turns out to be fruitful. But these things take time. In the meantime, I thought it might help if I spoke to you myself, heard your side of the story.”
“I’m not in the mood to talk right now,” Kaminski said with a show of feigned regret. “Besides, I’m sure Saxon here has told you all you need to know. I’m confident she’s repeated everything I said last night faithfully. What more needs to be said?”
“I realise this is a difficult time for you, Mr Kaminski-”
“Please,” said Kaminski. “Call me JJ.”
“I thought you hated being called JJ?” I said.
“It doesn’t look like it matters anymore what I want or don’t want,” he said. “Just tell me this,” he added, turning to me again. “Did you even give this any thought at all, like I asked you to, or did you just pick up the phone and dial 999 and tell her everything I said?”
“Of course I gave it some thought,” I said wearily. “That’s why I told her. I was the one who was thinking.”
“Well, I guess I should’ve known better than to trust you anyway,” he said to that. “You always were an insubordinate little shit. You were always questioning everything, always dissatisfied with whatever we were doing, always wanting to take over and do things your own way. You always knew better. Though you’ve obviously changed some now, huh?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, look at you, running round doing the police’s work for them, running to do their bidding, like a dog fetching a stick. You put it down, you get a pat on the head, they throw you another one.”
“That’s not fair,” I said.
“Saxon,” said Kaminski, “I am way past caring about fair. No offence,” he went on, turning to Fitzgerald, “but you know we used to have contempt for people like you when we were in the Bureau.”
“Is that so?” said Grace.
“It was always the same. We’d drop in on some little out of the way place, a town, somewhere, anywhere, Nowheresville most of the time, and then instantly you’d just hit this wall. The local police who didn’t want you treading on their patch, on this little patch of territory that they’d lovingly cultivated, where they were lords of everything, and suddenly here we were, the FBI, dropping in. It was warfare. Sure, the professional rivalry and creative tension could have its uses, keep us on our toes, but we still knew it was warfare.”
“Times change,” I said.
“You’re telling me,” he said wryly.
“This is getting us nowhere,” said Fitzgerald. “Whatever problems you have with involving the police in this matter, the fact is that it’s too late now. It is out of your hands. Your best bet now is to cooperate as fully as you can with the police in Dublin, whatever you think of our abilities, and see if between us we can’t track down this man.”
Kaminski didn’t answer. It was like the fight had gone out of him with his last defiant speech. He simply nodded mutely, then sat down on the edge of the bed and regarded us as if to say: OK then, what have you got? Grace answered the unspoken challenge by taking out the original photograph of Buck Randall which she had retrieved from Dublin Castle after copies had been made. She dropped it on the bed next to Kaminski.
“Is this the man you suspect of killing your wife?”
Kaminski looked at the picture for an eternity, almost like he was trying to decide whether this was the same man, but I could see how his fingers tightened on it.
“That’s him,” he said grimly in the end.
“Is it a good likeness?” asked Fitzgerald.
&nb
sp; “Randall’s lost the moustache,” he said. “This must’ve been taken when he first joined the prison guard. That must be about, let me think, seven years now? Maybe a little longer? He looks a little older now.” He took out his wallet and prised out a picture. It was a little battered from being in his pocket so long. In this one, Randall was out of uniform and walking in the sun. It looked more natural than the one we had. “This is the best one I have,” he said. “It’s the one I show people when I want to know if they’ve seen him. I took this one of him when he came off duty one night,” Kaminski said. “But it’s been three months since I saw him, so I guess he could’ve changed his appearance again.”
“Can I keep this?” said Fitzgerald.
“No. Like I say, it’s the best one I have.”
“You have more of them then?”
Kaminski smiled grimly.
“You could say that...”
He got to his feet and walked over to the wardrobe. He opened the door and reached inside. He came back carrying a small black holdall. I wondered where he’d been keeping it. It certainly hadn’t been in his last hotel room, or I’d have found it. He unzipped it and tipped it upside down. A small shower of photographs fell out onto the bed.
There were dozens, all of them of Buck Randall. Kaminski had obviously been watching Randall for a long time. There were shots of him in his car, shots of him outside what I presumed was his front door, shots of him standing at a window, looking out, shots of him pushing a supermarket trolley piled high with groceries through a car lot.
“It’s lucky the cops never found your collection when they pulled you in,” I said. “They’d have had you down as a stalker. Where have you been keeping all these?”
“I usually put them in the hotel safe,” he said. “You never know who might be breaking into your room next.”
There was a short uncomfortable silence.
I could feel Fitzgerald looking at me.
“You broke into his room?” she said eventually.
“Did she not tell you that part?” said Kaminski, and he smiled with genuine pleasure for the first time that morning. I had to admit it was good to see it, even if it was at my expense. It suggested there was some of the old Kaminski still left in there.
“I wouldn’t exactly call it breaking in,” I began carefully.
“What would you call it?”
“She bribed a chambermaid to let her in, isn’t that right, Saxon?” said Kaminski.
“Shut up, Leon. Who said I bribed her? I spun her a line is all. I wanted to have a look round, see what he was up to. I didn’t know how else to do it. I should’ve told you,” I admitted to Fitzgerald. “It didn’t seem like the right time. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t say anything, just shook her head and turned back to the pictures, asking Kaminski: “Do you mind if I take a couple of these?”
“Will you bring them back?”
“Soon as I’ve made extra copies,” she promised.
“Then be my guest.”
Fitzgerald carefully picked out three pictures which showed Randall at his best, and slid them into her pocket. Kaminski pushed the other pictures to the side and sat down again on the bed. He made no move to put them away.
“When was the last time you saw this man?” Grace asked him.
“I told you. About three months ago. You’re not trying to catch me out, are you, Detective Chief Superintendent? You’ll have to try a bit better than that.”
“You definitely haven’t seen him since you arrived in Dublin?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know he’s here?”
“Because he’s communicated with me. I thought Saxon told you everything?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Fitzgerald. “I just need to get the facts straight. How do you know it was Buck Randall who was making contact with you?”
“Why would anyone else be trying to make me think they were Buck Randall?” said Kaminski, looking confused and still answering a different question. “It doesn’t make any sense. It was Randall I had the quarrel with. No one else hates me that much.”
“You think he hates you?”
“I’d take a wild guess that a man who takes the trouble to taunt the husband of the woman he murdered probably isn’t filled with feelings of great affection.”
“Why does he hate you?”
“Because I’m the only knows who knows who he is... what he is... I know his true nature. Everyone else fell for the act, they didn’t recognise him. I did.”
“Why not just kill you too?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
“Take a guess.”
“Because this is more fun?”
“It’s dangerous, though,” I said. “You said yourself that no one else suspects him of being anything other than what he appears to be. That way he gets to carry on doing what he does. By playing games with you, he runs the risk of being discovered. Of being stopped. I still think it would be better to just get you out of the way.”
“I’ve wondered about that,” said Kaminski reluctantly. “I can only think he’s getting a kick out of this, that this has become part of the pleasure for him. Killing is a risk-taking business. It’s the risk that people like Randall get off on.”
“And that’s the same reason you think he killed Marsha Reed?”
“He didn’t need a reason to do that. Killing women is what he does. But he wanted me to know, yes, he wants to torment me, he wants to show me what he can do. To show me what he’s going to carry on doing unless I stop him. Because no one else will. I don’t think he’s planned this whole thing through. I think he’s improvising. He just wanted to kill Heather, but then when I began to pursue him then that became woven into it too.”
“And now you’re connected to him.”
“Through Heather, yes. She’s what it’s all about.”
“You’re sure then that he’ll contact you again? That he won’t just run now?”
“Why would he run? The only way he runs is if you make a mess of this and let him know the police are onto him. He has to think it’s me and me alone. It has to be him and me, no one else. If he gets any hint the police have got involved, he’ll be gone.”
“And you won’t get your revenge,” I said.
“It’s more than that. If he just vanishes now, then it’s not only me who loses. It’s the other women he’ll kill, because he will. He vanishes now then more people are in danger. I hope you understand how serious this situation is, Chief Superintendent?”
“I have a long experience of these kinds of investigations,” Fitzgerald answered icily. “I know what’s at stake. I know how to be discreet. You should also know that the more information I have the easier it becomes. If I could see the notes Randall sent you -”
“I lost them,” he interrupted bluntly.
“You told me you had them last night.”
“I’m a careless person, what can I say?”
“You’re just keeping them to yourself now to spite me,” I said. “Because I squealed on you, as you see it, you’re throwing your toys out of the pram, not cooperating.”
“It could make all the difference,” said Fitzgerald, more conciliatory.
He didn’t waver.
“If it turns up, you’ll be the first on my list.”
“I could have it analysed.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“We’re only trying to help,” I said quietly.
“Is that what they call it now? Trying to help? It feels more like betrayal.”
“I haven’t betrayed anyone.”
“Of all the people I thought I could trust, it was you. I was the one who gave you your first break. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have got near a big case for years. With your bad attitude, maybe never. Now the one time I need you, the one time I ask anything of you, you dump on me. I thought we meant more to each other than that.”
“I did what I thought was right. Whatever y
ou say, however bad I feel about it, I still think it was the right thing to do. You can’t find Buck Randall on your own.”
“He found me,” said Kaminski simply. “I can find him.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Do you think he knows about us?” asked Fitzgerald as we made our way downstairs. This was the last question I’d expected.
“How could he?” I answered eventually.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“True. Then I’d say not.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
“If I did, I didn’t mean to,” I said. I considered what she’d said for a moment, as we reached the ground floor and crossed the lobby to the entrance. “JJ was always pretty perceptive,” I admitted. “He picked up on things that weren’t obvious to the rest of us.”
“Some people are like that,” she agreed. “My reaction might’ve given it away when he mentioned you breaking into his room.”
“I told you, I didn’t break in.”
“Let’s not split hairs. It was the not telling me which was the important part.”
We walked out to the car in silence.
I leaned on the roof on one side, resting my chin on my folded hands, as she searched her bag for the keys on the other side.
“I really am sorry,” I said.
“Are you?”
“Yes! At least, I don’t know.” The car beeped open, and I climbed in, buckling myself into the seat belt. “I didn’t want to worry you. I still don’t. It was nothing. Just me being me.”
“You being you will get you arrested one day.”
“Do you always do everything by the book?” I said.
“Not always,” she admitted.
“Do you always tell me when you’ve crossed the line?”
“Not always.”
“There you are then.”
“What we don’t know can’t hurt us, is that what you’re saying?”
“Something like that.”
“Does that include not telling me about you and Kaminski?”
Shit, that was the last thing I needed.
“I’m pretty perceptive myself when I need to be,” Fitzgerald said.