by Ingrid Black
Of course, if his disappearance was the result of foul play, whoever was responsible would have taken every effort to get rid of the incriminating evidence, including the car.
But how to dispose of a car? Bodies can be dumped down abandoned wells, buried under a new patio, put inside existing graves, fed to animals. Generally the best way to get cars out of sight effectively was either to send them to the auto crusher, or have them resprayed and fitted with fresh number plates. Enquiries were pursued on both fronts.
It all came back to the same dilemma: why was Mark Hudson missing? Dublin wasn’t like London or New York. Unlike those places, it wasn’t a place where the world’s detritus came to burrow down, unseen, in the city’s cracks, where those who have spent a lifetime cultivating anonymity for usually malicious ends congregate.
Until we knew the answer, the rest might remain forever hidden.
Becky Corrigan hadn’t been much help. She recalled seeing Hudson around the weekend he vanished, but they hadn’t spoken and she didn’t know him well enough, she claimed, to detect any weirdness in his behaviour that might suggest something was up.
She also flat denied that he could have intended in any way to kill her aunt. She’d been in the car. She knew how it happened. She’d seen it – “with my own eyes”, as she put it. (Why do people always say that? Like there was a way they could’ve seen it with someone else’s eyes instead.) On this, she was certain. Maybe Hudson had been distracted by talking to her, maybe he’d taken his eyes off the road for a second, but do it deliberately? No way.
I didn’t think much of her story, but Fitzgerald had an irritating habit of asking me to prove my hunches with evidence and that wasn’t possible, mainly because there wasn’t any.
All I knew is that it all seemed a bit too neat that Hudson would’ve given her a lift that night, but then Becky said he often picked her up on his way home, in fact she suspected he had a thing for her, that he deliberately arranged the times of his journeys in the hope that he’d get the chance to offer her a lift, though she insisted their relationship went no further than casual friendship. He wasn’t her type, she said.
And in truth, I had no good reason to suspect her of lying. Becky benefitted from her aunt’s death, but that didn’t mean she colluded in it.
I’d benefit from my mother dying too, since I’d get a half share along with my brother in the family mansion – OK, so it’s a decaying town house in downtown Boston, but I keep up to date with the property prices in New England and it was still worth getting hold of – but that wouldn’t mean I should be hauled in as a suspect when she finally croaks.
Not that I hadn’t seriously considered the attractions of bumping the old girl off in my time. Sure, everyone’s had the same thoughts, no?
The more we delved, the less there seemed to go on. Hudson’s mental state remained unfathomable. Was he depressed? Did he feel bad about killing Cecilia? Might he have taken his own life in despair? Guilt could do that to a person, but in Hudson’s case such lines of enquiry couldn’t be any more than guesswork and speculation. Whoever said no man is an island should have tried meeting Hudson. He wouldn’t have been so sure then.
Normally in missing persons’ cases, there’s a long list of people whose testimony can be sifted for hints of their likely whereabouts. Wives, ex-wives, cuckolded husbands, children, business associates, relatives, folks they owed money to, folks who owed them money, even the police if they’d ever found themselves on the wrong side of the law.
Hudson’s only contact with the police had been following Cecilia Corrigan’s death, and, like the dead woman’s niece, Sergeant Chase continued to insist that there was no more to that than had been immediately apparent. There was no reason to doubt either of them.
But that still didn’t explain where Hudson was right now.
Pictures of Buck Randall were circulated discreetly around the area, to Hudson’s few friends, work colleagues, Becky herself, but they failed to elicit any positive response.
No one had seen Buck Randall here, just as no one had seen him in the vicinity where Marsha Reed died, and none of her friends, either those at the theatre or at the sex club where she’d gone to get her fun, could place his face. His fingerprints were also conspicuous by their absence in the converted church where she died.
The whole thing looked like one huge red herring, which Seamus Dalton didn’t hesitate to remind me when I returned to Dublin Castle.
I sat at a borrowed desk, wondering again what the hell I was really doing here. It was early days, but I was painfully conscious of my failure to bring any of those skills to the table that Assistant Commissioner Stella Carson had hoped. At least with Kaminski, I would’ve known what I was doing. At least I would’ve been doing something useful, especially if, as I was increasingly starting to suspect, there turned out to be no connection whatsoever between Buck Randall’s presence in the city and the death of Jenkins Howler’s lonely pen friend.
And yet how could there not be a connection? The only other explanation was that the two things were a coincidence, and I believed in coincidences even less than I believed in fairies. Though maybe I should revise my scepticism in the light of experience. Sometimes chance takes a hand. Like the time I saw Kaminski in Temple Bar.
Likewise, if Dermot Bryce hadn’t quarrelled with his wife on a particular night, or he hadn’t left the house to go walking and calm down, or he’d taken a different path, or gone to a late night cafe instead, or didn’t watch the news, or didn’t believe in helping the police, we might have floundered a lot longer.
But that was all still to come. At that precise moment, I’d never even heard of Dermot Bryce, and I had no idea how important his recollections would turn out to be.
“You look like you need rescued,” said Healy eventually. “Want to come with me?”
**********
The trip was worth it alone for the look on Todd Fleming’s face when he saw us walking into the cafe. I’d say we were both the last people he’d expected to see - and also the last ones he wanted to see, with the one exception of Fitzgerald herself. He’d been spared that at least.
“This is early for the night shift,” remarked Sean Healy affably.
“I’m covering for someone,” Fleming said.
“Sounds like a confession,” said Healy.
Fleming looked momentarily non-plussed before recovering his composure.
“If I ever feel the need to confess, I’ll go find a priest,” he said. “In the meantime, what can I get you? Coffee?”
“Coffee would be good. Black. No sugar,” said Healy. “Saxon?”
“Nothing for me.”
“You arrest Solomon yet?” Fleming asked as he reached for a cup and poured Healy his coffee. “Or have you just come here to ask me some more pointless questions?”
“We’re still in the middle of our investigation,” Healy answered. “But as it happens, we’re not here to see you at all. Your boss left something for us. I’d say that’s it up there.”
Fleming followed the line of Healy’s gaze until it rested on a brown envelope tucked behind a jar on a shelf above his head. The words FAO Sergeant Healy were scrawled across the front. Looked like Healy had been secretly demoted somewhere along the line.
Fleming reluctantly lifted down the envelope and slid it across the counter. It was obvious his curiosity was pricked as to what was inside, but he wasn’t going to admit it by asking.
All he said was: “Will that be everything?”
“No,” said Healy. “We’ll need the use of one of the computers. Is that a problem?”
“It’s quiet,” said Fleming by way of an answer.
“Then lead the way.”
Fleming took us to one of the booths in the cafe. He was right about it being quiet. Apart from us, there was only one other customer, a young women over by the door checking out cheap flights. The strange lure of a foreign sun when the one above Dublin was punishing enough.
Hea
ly asked for the booth furthest from the counter, in a dim corner where we wouldn’t be overlooked.
“This was where Marsha always sat,” said Fleming as he switched on the screen and typed in the password, before adding sharply: “But then you probably knew that already.”
As it happened, we hadn’t known, but it soon made sense that she would have chosen this spot. What Healy had in the envelope was a printout of the websites which Marsha Reed had looked at during her visits to the internet cafe. Fitzgerald had asked the owner for a list and, once he’d spluttered a little about civil liberties and the Big Brother state, he’d agreed to see what he could do. Anywhere that was publicly accessible like this had to keep tight records. The internet was a felons’ paradise. Terrorists, pornographers, people traffickers, drug smugglers: they all operated under its sheltering wing. And where they went, the law was bound to follow. Civil rights devotees might not like it, but the police couldn’t afford to allow any public space to remain out of surveillance.
And the internet, as many of its habitual users failed to realise, was the most public space of all. Nothing that happened there was every truly private. Hence, all it took to locate a record of Marsha Reed’s internet use was the computer she had used and the times she had accessed it.
Like I say, it didn’t take a genius to figure out why she preferred this dim haven in the corner. The kind of websites she’d visited in the cafe were not the kinds you’d want to share with any casual observer looking over your shoulder as you surfed.
First there were websites set up as anonymous forums where other like-minded souls who shared Marsha’s sexual proclivities could make contact, swap stories and tips, arrange to meet up. There were sites listing clubs in other cities – maybe she’d visited them on her own travels, or maybe she was just curious to know what was out there – and weblogs by people who wanted to record every aspect of their sex lives, in considerable detail, for the benefit of strangers online. Mostly, though, Marsha’s interests on the internet had revolved around her private studies into murder, which had also been evidenced by her book collection.
From my own reading, I was anecdotally familiar with the content of many of the websites Marsha had regularly visited, but it still made me feel uncomfortable seeing them for myself. These were not forums which had been set up to collate academic research into serial murder, but more like fan sites on which users were invited and encouraged to trade their own enthusiasms for their “favourite” killers, or to rank crimes, as in a popularity poll, according to various sick criteria. There were plenty of photographs too, many of which must have come from the original police investigation teams from across the world: the United States, the Far East, Europe. Murder was the ultimate loss of privacy. The bodies of the dead were inevitably reduced to the raw stuff of police work. This, though, added a new and unnecessary dimension to the unavoidable indignity. At the click of a button, the intimacies of the crime scene were now translated into instant entertainment for voyeurs.
There was nothing in the photographs I hadn’t seen a thousand times before, and not just through the impersonal gaze of the camera, but up close, drawn inexorably into the dark aura that the dead weave around them, near enough to touch, near enough to smell. But it wasn’t the content of the pictures which shocked, but the heartless context in which they were being so casually and thoughtlessly presented. It made me angry, wondering what Marsha Reed had seen in these places, what primitive pleasure she had taken from them, if it was indeed pleasure that she’d been looking for when she visited them. Would the pictures of her crime scene end up online too? I wondered what she would’ve thought of that. Would that have made her understand the violation involved? Or would it have turned her on more?
I didn’t know her well enough to answer that.
I didn’t know her at all.
Angry or not, I kept my feelings in check. My feelings had no place. This was what investigation was all about. It was about detaching yourself from the passions that surrounded murder so that you could see them more clearly. Getting too involved was fatal.
I should know.
I made that mistake all the time.
Sean Healy barely spoke a word as we worked. His eyes were fixed to the screen, silently taking in what he saw, missing nothing, only making occasional notes.
His coffee grew cold.
Across the cafe, I sensed Todd Fleming watching intently whenever he got the chance. The radio had been playing when we walked in. It was now switched off, as if he needed to concentrate and the noise of it had been distracting him. Did he know what we were looking at? Did he fear we might find something we weren’t supposed to know about?
Once, accidentally, I caught his gaze from across the cafe.
He didn’t look away and I felt like I’d been caught doing something shameful, without being able to say precisely what the shame was for. Before I could say a word to Healy, he whistled softly.
“Would you take a look at this?” he said.
**********
I found Fisher in the canteen at Dublin Castle, picking halfheartedly through a limp salad. Miranda must’ve put him on a diet.
Poor chump.
“Have you got a moment?” I said.
“For you,” he said, pushing away the plate with gratitude, “always. Besides, I have nothing much to do until the reception tonight.”
“The reception?”
I’d forgotten. There was going to be some party that night for Stella Carson to let her meet and greet the press and local bigwigs. I was supposed to be going there myself. I guess there wasn’t much chance of getting out of it.
“You’re not running home to Miranda then?”
“Miranda won’t be home till later,” he said, “and I don’t fancy being out there by myself. It’s not like there’s anything there for me when I’m on my own.”
He was probably thinking of Laura and the children again.
“You don’t like the neighbours?”
“I hardly see the neighbours. Not during the day, anyway. It’s a ghost town. They’re all at work.”
“Not everyone is as fortunate as us. They have to work for a living.”
“I know. It’s such a bore. But it’s not that. It’s the kind of people they are. They’re all investment bankers, insurance brokers, MDs of their own companies. I have nothing in common with these people. Even when I do bump into them, I have nothing to say to them.”
“I’m sure you manage,” I observed wryly.
Fisher had never been lost for words for long.
“I manage,” he acknowledged, “but with no conviction. Who are these people? Where did they come from? What language do they speak? They’re an alien species to me. Still, I suppose that’s what work’s for, isn’t it? To fill the emptiness.”
“Speaking of which...”
I opened the flap of the folder I was carrying and took out a sheaf of printouts to show Fisher what Healy and I had found on the computer at the internet cafe.
I soon had his attention.
“She was soliciting strangers online to murder her?” he said.
The merest raise of an eyebrow was the only surprise Fisher allowed himself to show. I guess when you’ve seen and heard everything, there’s not much that can shock you anymore. And Fisher had seen just about all there was to see in his time.
“Consensual homicide,” he said. “Interesting. There was a similar case in the United States about ten years ago. I don’t remember the precise details. A woman from Maryland – a happily married businesswoman, by all accounts – used the internet to arrange for a stranger to sexually torture and then kill her. Police found that her computer contained hundreds of pages of email in which she’d been trying to convince people to kill her too.”
“Sharon Lopatka,” I said. “I remember. She was tortured for days before being killed. Christ knows what was going on in her head. There was also a German man who agreed to torture, kill and eat his companion’s remains.
He was only arrested when he posted a request for more victims. I’m sure Marsha Reed must’ve come across the cases.”
“And got the idea from that?”
“It’s a possibility,” I said.
“If she was a willing participant, that would certainly explain why the cords were not tightened so fast. The ethics of it are fascinating,” Fisher added. “If the victim wants it to happen, does that make it murder? If death is what Marsha sought, was she victim or perpetrator?”
“Murder is murder,” I said with certainty. “Just because the victim might want what happens to them doesn’t mean you have the right to do it. And we can’t say for certain that this was what Marsha really wanted. She might’ve been using the exchanges as an outlet for some private fantasy of hers. We don’t know she ever really intended to go through with it. And she never once in all those emails reveals her real name. She only gives a phone number. That hasn’t been traced either. There’s no evidence it even belonged to her.”
“The Mardi Gras phenomenon, they call it,” said Fisher. “You assume disguises, masks, to take on various personalities and act them out without consequences. The internet’s the perfect place to do that. It explains, at any rate, why she didn’t have a computer in her own house. I did wonder about that. Her father seems to have bought her everything else. This was another part of her life that she wanted to keep secret, separate, neatly fenced off.”
“Pretty risky, using a public computer in an internet cafe.”
“Not when you have someone who works there eating out of the palm of your hand. Besides, why should she worry that anyone would be interested in her internet activities? She was just another customer in just another cafe. Little Ms Anonymous.” He paused. “Did anyone express an interest in taking her up on the offer, by the way?”