by Paul Charles
‘What had he been working on that morning?’ McCusker asked.
‘Well, he was a bit excited. He’d had a bit of a breakthrough on his work that morning. He… he, even at his age, was still trying to figure out what it was that attracted people to each other. The “beauty is only skin-deep” rule didn’t apply to him. He maintained that some of us simply have the ability to see the true beauty in others, whereas others are blinded by certain predetermined prejudices. He also believed that we subconsciously know when someone else is attracted to us and that, in itself, is an attraction. He still had work to do on it, but he’d broken the back of the task that morning.’
O’Carroll was still scribbling away a minute or so after Harry finished talking.
‘Miles Bloom,’ McCusker announced to break the silence, ‘what can you tell us about Louis’ brother, Miles?’
‘Well, we talked about Miles quite a bit over the years,’ Rubens admitted, ‘and I sometimes thought the big thing with Miles was that Louis wasn’t so much intrigued that someone would want to walk up Slieve Gullion on a daily basis. No, Louis could kind of get that. What he couldn’t get his head round, though, was the fact that Miles not only wanted to do the climb on his hands and knees, but that he’d also insist on doing it with a boulder strapped to his back.’
‘So are you saying there was no strife between them?’ McCusker asked.
‘Oh, there was strife between them all right. Miles most likely had a wee doll dressed up to look like Louis, and my guess is that it wasn’t so much he was sticking pins in it, but more that he was hammering nails right through it.’
‘Do you know what was behind the hatred?’
‘Oh yes, everyone did,’ Harry said. ‘It wasn’t a big secret, everyone knew about it.’
‘And it was?’ O’Carroll prompted.
‘Basically it all stemmed from the fact that Louis’ father, Sidney, left all his money and property to Louis.’
‘Was the hatred mutual?’ McCusker asked, taking up the questioning again.
‘No, Louis felt sorry for Miles.’
‘But not sorry enough to redress the balance and gift Miles some of the money?’ O’Carroll asked.
‘He did think about it, believe me,’ Rubens said, with a gentle smile, ‘but he didn’t want to go against his father’s final wishes and, more importantly, he knew Miles would blow it all in a matter of months and be back looking for more.’
‘Why would Miles think he was entitled to some, if not all of his father’s estate?’ McCusker asked.
‘Miles was the older brother, and the eldest son usually–’
‘-usually gets the majority of the estate,’ McCusker said, finishing Rubens’ line for him.
‘Was Miles equally at loggerheads with the staff his father had willed all his business to?’ O’Carroll asked.
‘Oh, he spent a considerable amount of money in the courts with that one as well. But the father had foreseen such an outcome and had made everything watertight. But to answer your original question, he seemed to reserve all of his personal hatred and anger for his brother.’
‘Could Miles’ anger have been severe enough that he could have done harm to Louis?’ McCusker asked.
‘Well, that’s the question everyone is asking.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘Candidly?’
It was a weird question to ask a policeman investigating a murder.
‘Yes, of course, we’ll be discreet,’ O’Carroll agreed.
‘Well, I certainly think he was unhinged, and Sophie and I always cautioned Louis to be careful. But at the same time, I’ve always thought that if Miles had done anything to harm Louis, then surely it would just put the family money even further away from him.’
‘Fair point,’ McCusker said. ‘And before we leave Miles Bloom for now, are you sure there is nothing that happened or that you are aware of which would point a direct finger at Miles?’
‘Well, Elizabeth would be a better person to speak to about that, as she witnessed several of the incidents.’
‘Okay,’ McCusker said, hopefully signalling they were going to draw a line under that for now. ‘Do you know a lady by the name of Mariana Fitzgerald?’
‘Yes I do,’ he replied with a smile, ‘yes I do.’
McCusker nodded at Harry Rubens in a, “Yes, and?” kind of way.
“Well Sophie is the real connection; she is a friend of Mariana’s husband.’
‘What can you tell me about her?’
‘That’s probably a better question for Sophie – she knows her better.’
‘What about another friend of Mariana’s? A lady who might have been called Muriel, or maybe something similar?’
‘That would be Murcia.’
‘O-kay,’ McCusker replied, very happy to at least now have her proper name. ‘Was she also a friend of Louis’?’
‘Again, that’s a good question for Sophie. I believe she, Mariana and Murcia have enjoyed a few girls’ nights out.’
‘That’s nearly it,’ McCusker said, feeling that he already knew the answer to at least part of his final question of the session. ‘Finally, what were you doing last night, between the hours of 9.00 p.m. and 1.00 a.m.?’
‘Let’s see now,’ Harry Rubens started slowly, ‘let’s see now. I was here from about 7.00 until about midnight.’
‘Really?’ McCusker said involuntarily, expecting that Harry and Sophie would be each other’s alibi.
‘Yes, what’s so strange about that?’
‘You were here, that whole time?’
‘Yes… sorry, I mean no. I nipped out at about 8.00 to Smokey Joe’s, you know, the chippy on Camden Street?… for one of those treats – a fish supper, fish and chips by another name, the fish in really crispy batter, forbidden, unhealthy and quite possibly, necessary indulgences. You know, you really should avoid the calories but sometimes they’re purely irresistible. I got back here about twenty minutes later with my fish supper and I’d a wee glass of Sancerre – I keep a bottle in the fridge for such occasions.’
‘So you would have got back here around 8.20?’
‘Maybe, I wasn’t clock-watching – could have been a bit earlier, could have been a bit later?’
‘Did anyone see you en route?’
‘No one I recognised.’
‘Tell me this, Mr Rubens,’ McCusker asked, ‘do you use that particular chippy a lot?’
‘Well, hopefully not a lot, but yes, I do occasionally go there.’
‘Do you go there often enough that some of the staff would recognise you?’
‘I would imagine so,’ Rubens replied, ‘I would imagine so. It’s a family business. Ernie’s the guv’nor – he always says hello to me and I believe at least a couple of them would know me.’
‘So you left here around midnight,’ McCusker said, ‘then where did you go?’
‘I went home.’
‘Which is where?’ O’Carroll asked.
‘We live on campus in the Elms Village.’
‘And was Sophie awake when you arrived home?’
‘No, she wasn’t,’ he replied, ‘no, she wasn’t. I went to bed and when I woke up this morning she was already downstairs preparing our muesli.’
‘Okay,’ O’Carroll said, putting her pink notebook away, ‘that’ll do us for now.’
Chapter Nineteen
As they were walking down Stranmillis Road, past the chunky Ulster Museum, on the way to the Lanyon Building and Louis Bloom’s office, McCusker said: ‘You know, Harry Rubens was walking down, or up, here at around a similar time as Louis Bloom was taking his rubbish out.’
‘Yes,’ O’Carroll replied, in a tone that suggested her mind was elsewhere. ‘You know, Harry Rubens was perfectly turned out, don’t you think?’
‘I suppose it’s all a matter of taste,’ McCusker replied, fearing where this was going.
‘You know, you could do worse than adopt the new casual dress sense, whereby it isn’t necess
ary to wear a suit and tie every day.’
‘But I like wearing suits and ties,’ McCusker complained. ‘I’m not really a fan of the way people wear wrinkled clothes these days.’
‘Be quiet, will you, for heaven’s sake, we’re in public,’ she hissed, ‘sure they’re designer wrinkles, and very expensive at that.’
‘And you call me weird!’ he said, as they arrived at Louis Bloom’s office.
O’Carroll let McCusker go in by himself, while she remained outside the door so she could make a call on her mobile.
‘Ah, Inspector McCusker, your sergeant said you’d be by,’ Leab David offered the second he walked through the door. She appeared very happy to see him.
This time he took pains to explain to her that he wasn’t exactly an officer of the PSNI, but was hired from the Grafton Agency on a freelance basis. So frequently did he need to point this out, as per PSNI regulations, that he really was thinking of getting the information printed up on a wee card that he could hand out to people.
‘I’ve a wee favour to ask you,’ McCusker continued, knowing from the blank look on her face that he’d lost her at “officer”: ‘I wonder if you would have access to a student register?’
‘Yes indeed, who are you looking for?’
‘Well, I don’t know his name but I know he came from Magherafelt High School?’
‘Okay, I wouldn’t have that information to hand but I think I know a way to uncover it – can you give me until this afternoon? I’ve got a pile of stuff I need to do.’
‘Perfect,’ McCusker replied, just as a proper member of the PSNI, DI Lily O’Carroll, walked through the door with a strange looking girl-woman.
‘This is my colleague, McCusker,’ O’Carroll started off, by way of introduction. ‘McCusker, this is Mrs Sophie Rubens.’
Mrs Sophie Rubens looked like she was too young to be a Mrs. She was unsymmetrical and her crow-feathered hairstyle looked like an artist had drawn it on her head. She wore a long, bottle green neck-to-ankle smock-cum-habit affair, which was waisted with a pencil thin, shiny black leather belt.
‘Was your husband okay when you stopped by to see him on your way over here to meet us?’ McCusker tried, punting a long one. ‘He was quite upset when we left him.’
She paused for a second, thereby confirming that, in fact, she had quickly been to see her husband for a catch-up before proceeding to her own interview.
She winked at McCusker, who quickly came to realise that Sophie always winked at you in place of nodding agreement or saying yes.
‘He was okay,’ she said, ‘he’s going through a bit of a bad tine at the moment.’ Then, after a pause, she quickly added ‘We all are.’
‘My partner thinks I should dress more like your husband,’ McCusker offered, as an alternative ice breaker.
She rewarded him with a high-pitched shriek of a laugh. McCusker couldn’t figure out if she was amused that her husband’s clothes would allow themselves to be inhabited by someone as uncool as himself, or if she thought McCusker was aware that he had just made a very funny suggestion. Whatever the reason, she couldn’t get it out of her mind because she let fly with another shriek.
‘My partner,’ O’Carroll offered, perhaps in an attempt to balance the books, ‘still feels that Nike should make trainers that look exactly like brogues.’
This elicited another raucous laugh from Sophie Rubens. McCusker realised that Sophie liked to fly her sharp, cutting laugh into every available gap in the conversation, humorous or not. It’s like her laugh was pre-recorded onto a tape machine, which she replayed on cue, so identical were her emissions in duration, pitch, crackle and insincerity. Perhaps, McCusker thought, the laugh was based more on nervousness than insincerity.
Eventually they settled down in Louis’ office. Leab David closed the door behind them. McCusker wasn’t sure if it was intended to give them privacy or to retain the privacy and quietness for herself.
‘Oh this is terrible, isn’t it?’ Sophie started, ‘who would do such a thing? Could he just have been mugged in Botanic?’
‘Are there many muggings in Botanic Gardens?’ O’Carroll asked.
‘There were a few – perhaps all by the same gang, back in 2010’, she replied, appearing to focus all of her concentration on the history of muggings in Botanic Gardens. ‘I don’t believe any have been reported since.’
‘Harry told us that you and Louis were already friends when he met you?’
‘Yes, Louis and I met Harry on the same morning, in this very room in fact.’
‘How did you and Louis meet?’ McCusker asked, O’Carroll seemingly keen to let him take the lead in these chats.
‘A friend of mine brought me along to one of the talks he was giving outside of campus. I thought he was great, as he always is when he’s freefalling. I went up to him after his talk and told him how much I enjoyed his chat. When he discovered I’d just started to lecture at QUB he told me to ring up Leab David and fix a time to come in to see him. I think he did it this way so I would know he wasn’t trying anything on with me. That’s one of the things I loved about Louis; he was always very straightforward. He always wanted everything to be transparent.’
‘Did you know he was married?’ O’Carroll asked.
‘Why yes, of course,’ she agreed, this time both with the words and her characteristic wink.
‘Did he tell you?’ O’Carroll pushed further.
‘My friend really liked him from afar and she knew all about him, on top of which he was wearing a wedding ring the first night.’
‘Did she get to meet him that night as well?’ McCusker asked.
‘No, no, it really was like hero worship for her. She had actually worked out in her mind what she was going to say to him if she met him.’
‘What was she going to say?’
‘She’d spend hours working this out but she was going to use that famous quote from the movie Casablanca – “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” But on the actual night when it got down to it, well… she was absolutely petrified. When I suggested we go up and introduce ourselves, she chickened out and did a quick body swerve at the last possible moment.’
‘I believe you introduced Louis to a friend of yours, a lady by the name of Mariana Fitzgerald?’
‘Yes, actually I was more a friend of her husband before they got married.’
‘And Mariana and Louis remained friends?’ McCusker continued, on the same theme.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Sophie replied.
‘When you introduced Mariana to Louis, was she already married to Mr Fitzgerald?’ McCusker ventured, not really thinking.
‘No.’
‘But you said that you met Mariana because you were friends with her husband?’ O’Carroll said.
‘Ah yes, I can see what you mean,’ Sophie replied slightly awkwardly. ‘You see, when I met Mariana, she and Francie were just dating. Francie was a good friend of my older brother’s when we were growing up, and we’ve all remained friends. Francie and Mariana got married after I introduced her to Louis.’
‘Was she still playing the field at that stage?’ O’Carroll asked.
‘Good heavens, no!’ Sophie Rubens replied immediately, ‘I mean, they went through a couple of tricky patches before they eventually married. To be very candid with you, it was so on-off, on-off, on-off, that I was really surprised when they announced they were going to get married.’
‘So how did you come to introduce Mariana and Louis?’ McCusker asked.
‘Well, it was in one of Mariana and Francie’s down periods and she rang me up one night saying she was bored and did I want to go out for a drink. So we went out, had a few vodkas on an empty stomach, then a few more, then we got a bit squiffy, as one does. She poured her heart out to me. She was annoyed at Francie because he wouldn’t commit to her and, in her words, she didn’t want to waste her life on him only for him to run off with a younger filly when… well, the actual words she used and
I remember them well, were, “When everything starts to go south”. As part of the same conversation, she said she’d just like to have some fun again. She wanted life to be fun again like it had been when she first met Francie. She asked me if I’d any friends who liked a bit of fun. I immediately thought of, and suggested, Louis…’
‘But he was married,’ McCusker complained.
‘Yes, and it’s 2018 and men and women and boys and girls can go out with each other and still keep it uncomplicated and innocent.’
‘You’ll have to forgive my partner; he’s still stuck in the sixties,’ O’Carroll protested, ‘but an even bigger problem might be, it’s the 1860s he’s stuck in.’
Sophie Rubens let fly with another wild shriek of laughter, staring intently at McCusker, ‘Louis is a loyal husband to Elizabeth but… sorry, not but… and – yes “and” is the word. Louis is a loyal husband and they have become more like companions. I’m not swearing here that he never ever…’ again she paused to stare at McCusker, ‘slept with another woman. I just don’t know, and I really didn’t want to know. All that I can tell you is that before Louis introduced me to Harry, Louis and I went out several times, and it was never, ever, anything other than fun and social – and in that order. He never once even tried to land a brotherly peck on my cheek, you know, just to see how I’d react.’
‘So Louis and Mariana met up… and became friends…’
‘Yes indeed. In fact,’ Sophie said, and winked, ‘I do remember a couple of times when I went out with both Louis and Elizabeth, and there was never anything weird or awkward. There was even a fundraiser that Louis and Elizabeth, Mariana and Francie and Harry and I all attended together.’
‘Right, so,’ McCusker replied, accepting that he’d just been put back in his box; nonetheless, there were still questions to be asked. ‘So Louis and Mariana became friends, and they continued to be good friends even after she and Mr Fitzgerald were married?’