by Paul Charles
‘You’d known each other for a while?’
‘Oh a good while now.’
‘Sophie Rubens introduced you?’
‘Sophie Lawson, sorry, sorry, but of course you know her by her married name,’ she replied. Sometimes she spoke so softly that McCusker had to really strain to hear what she was saying. ‘Yes, Sophie introduced us and we became great friends.’
‘You dated for a while?’ McCusker felt she was maybe flirting with him a little with her eyes, so perhaps it was best he continue asking the questions. O’Carroll, with her recent silence and scribbling in her pink book, seemed to concur.
‘We dated? But no, I mean we went out to dinner on certain dates, we had good fun, yes, but there was no funny business, nothing romantic…’
‘Did, you…’ McCusker started to ask his next question when he realised that she might not have finished her answer. ‘Sorry, you hadn’t finished?’
‘No, I mean, I was only going to say that we weren’t “just” good friends, you know, as people sometimes say to maybe suggest that it was a less intense or, shall we say, inferior relationship.’
‘I see.’
‘Louis Bloom was such a wonderful man and such a great friend,’ she positively gushed, for her at least. ‘You have to realise… for instance, when I had trouble with Francie…’
‘Francie?’
‘My husband.’
‘Yes, of course,’ McCusker said.
‘Well, I really needed someone like Louis,’ she started hesitantly. ‘You see, girlfriends can sometimes be too anti-men to give good councel in such instances. Louis could always see the big picture in matters of the heart.’
‘What was the problem you were having with your husband?’ McCusker asked, innocently.
‘But he didn’t want to get married,’ she protested, ‘Mariana can only wait a certain amount of time for you men to make up your mind.’
‘Oh.’
‘You say “oh” as if that is okay behaviour,’ she protested again, ‘are you married Inspector McCusker?’
‘I’m not an inspector,’ McCusker explained, as the PSNI insisted he do, ‘I’m a freelance agency cop, attached to the PSNI.’
‘So you’re not even a proper cop,’ she said, giggling. ‘But why should I even talk to you?’
McCusker waited for O’Carroll to come to the rescue, only she didn’t. She continued taking notes. McCusker, in the awkward silence, wondered what exactly it was she was writing; there certainly wasn’t much conversation currently. McCusker hadn’t realised that immediately after Mariana had said “you’re not even a proper cop” that she had winked at O’Carroll. O’Carroll advised McCusker of this after the interview as they walked back from the Merchant Hotel to the Customs House. O’Carroll also mentioned to McCusker that she didn’t think it was so much that Mariana was flirting with him, as it was that she was such a ridiculous flirt that she was even trying it on with not just the waiter but also the leg of the table. ‘But in the nicest possible way, you understand,’ she’d added.
‘Well now, let’s see,’ McCusker started back up, when he became aware that O’Carroll was not in fact going to take over the reins of the interview, ‘well, we are here to try and find out what happened to your friend, Louis Bloom, and as his friend we feel you might have some
valuable information, which might help us apprehend the person who killed him.’
‘Of course. I see.’ She smiled, her big, sad eyes betraying the extent of her personal loss. ‘But you still haven’t answered my question?’
‘Mrs Fitzgerald asked you if you were married,’ O’Carroll said, pointedly, reading from her notes.
‘Oh but please, call me Mariana,’ she said, ‘I hate being called Mrs Fitzgerald; it makes me sound like a really old, Irish washerwoman, with my shawls gathered about me, down at the riverside.’
‘Yes,’ McCusker eventually replied, ‘I was married.’
‘But no longer? No longer?’ she repeated.
‘No longer,’ McCusker confirmed.
‘Divorced?
‘Not… so far.’
‘So you are hoping?’
‘No, not possible.’
‘Your fault or hers?’
‘When a marriage fails, I think both sides must share the blame and I’ll certainly admit to my fault in it not working,’ McCusker replied, as honestly as he knew how. He normally wouldn’t be so open to strangers about his personal life but he hoped that by being candid with her she would return the favour. On top of which, he was under a certain degree of scrutiny from O’Carroll, if only on her sister’s behalf.
‘And you?’ Mariana asked, shining the spotlight on O’Carroll who had most certainly been guilty of hiding her light under a bushel, deep in the shadows of the Merchant Hotel’s lounge.
‘No, I’m not an agency cop, I’m a detective inspector with the PSNI,’ she replied, and McCusker acknowledged with a quiet nod that she had shown great restraint by not using the oft-quoted line: “I’m a proper cop.”
‘But no,’ Mariana persisted, perhaps showing she was happy that the attention had been drawn away from her for the moment, albeit temporarily, ‘I meant are you married, DI O’Carroll?’
‘No,’ O’Carroll replied immediately, ‘but I am looking,’ she added through a laugh.
‘Perhaps I can help you with that,’ Mariana replied, in not much more than a whisper, as McCusker continued.
‘You were telling us about the difficultly Louis helped you through.’
‘Oh yes. So he supported me; I was talking a break from Francie when I met Louis and he was the perfect remedy for a relationship on the rocks. You know, if anything, I had Louis to thank when Francie came calling again. Before Louis, I had dreaded, that if a man doesn’t marry me, that’s it, I’m on the scrapheap. After I met and had started a friendship with Louis, I was more “if you’re not going to marry me, your loss! I’m off to find someone worthy of me!”’
‘How did your husband feel about your new friendship with Louis?’
She gave McCusker a devilish wink and said, ‘I’ve found it’s not a bad thing if your man is aware he shouldn’t take you for granted. Did he think I slept with Louis? He probably did. I certainly did deny it – not too energetically, you understand, then you might start to give off a “methinks you do protest too much” vibe.’
‘And Louis and Francie met?’
‘Oh yes, they seemed to get on okay but they were never best buddies.’
‘What did Louis think of Francie?’
Mariana laughed and thought for a few seconds. ‘You know,’ she started, ‘I asked Louis that very question when they met for the first time. Louis said, “You know what, Mariana, a man can never own a woman the way he owns a classic car or a grand house – the house or the car will never, ever answer back – but Francie, well, Francie certainly has the wherewithal to finance your lifestyle. I’ve always found that to be one of men’s greatest qualities.”’
‘But Louis never had any trouble with Francie?’
‘Louis didn’t really do trouble – either he really liked you, and was interested in you, or you pretty much didn’t exist. He didn’t waste energy hating people.’
‘What about Al Armstrong?’
‘Good case in point: an unexceptional man who proves the rule. I don’t believe Mr Armstrong ticked any of Louis boxes of interest. He was a friend of Louis’ wife and so Louis was polite to Mr Armstrong but never over-friendly.’
‘Did Louis ever discuss the situation with his wife?’
‘Elizabeth was like a sitting tenant in that marriage,’ Mariana said, ‘but he’d never discuss leaving her, let alone think about it.’
‘Do you think Louis was the type of man who felt, “I’ve made my bed, so I’ll lie in it”?’ McCusker asked, trying to mould the conversation around to extra-matrimonial relationships.
‘Most certainly not. He was not a man to shirk his responsibilities. But, no, Louis most definitely wo
uld never have felt or said that.’
‘Do you think Louis had other relationships?’ McCusker asked, hoping, she wasn’t going to say “no” and close this topic down totally.
‘This is very difficult for Mariana,’ Mariana admitted, ‘I know this could be very important for you but…’
McCusker could feel both himself and O’Carroll not breathing out for fear any movement in the universe might cease further discussion on the topic.
It certainly turned out to be a breath well held.
‘…you see, they were both friends of mine.’
‘Louis’ girlfriend you mean?’
‘…I keep thinking if I hadn’t introduced him, he might still be alive. Now he’s dead and she’s petrified.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘It’s probably going to be more helpful to you if Mariana starts at the beginning,’ Mariana began, as she breathed out for the Island of Ireland, the resultant pain etched across her face. ‘I was attracted to Louis – I mean, it was impossible not to be – but I took an oath to myself that I wouldn’t get involved with anyone else until the situation with Francie had fully resolved itself one way or the other. As I might have mentioned to you earlier, at that point I was equally happy to commit to Francie, or content to let him go. Louis helped me to get to that point.
‘He was charming; while in one breath he would say he would never leave Elizabeth, in the next he would admit that he was attracted to me. But for Louis it was no biggie that I shouldn’t or couldn’t. I couldn’t even work out which of those two it was. If he liked you, then he didn’t suddenly stop liking you, just because you wouldn’t get physical with him. But more importantly, we had great fun as we were growing to be friends.
‘At the same time this was happening – or not happening, if you want to look at it that way – between Louis and I, another friend of mine, Murcia, a friend I used to work with, was trying to extract herself from a very bad marriage.’
‘O-kay,’ McCusker said, as Mariana seemed to have reached a full stop of consideration.
‘Maybe I need to go back even further,’ Mariana said.
O’Carroll and McCusker both nodded at her to continue.
‘I used to work as an escort,’ Mariana admitted, ‘it was a top-class escort service… oh my goodness,’ she said, sighing through a large exhale, ‘I don’t think I should tell you this but I’ve thought a lot about it and feel it would be better for your investigation that I should, so I will.’ She sighed again, took a deep breath and whispered, even quieter than normal, ‘for Louis.’
McCusker nodded his agreement, or acceptance – he couldn’t really work out which, but he prayed she wouldn’t lose her nerve and he made a promise to himself to stay quiet until she’d reached the end of this.
‘Cards on the table, here,’ Mariana continued, looking like she was mentally taking the plunge, ‘when I say “escort service” I don’t mean that as a euphemism for a high-class hooker. However, in the course of full disclosure, I will admit that we… well, at least I would go on some of these dates and if the gentleman behaved well and took me out a few times and was well-mannered and I was attracted to him, well, then I would do what any girl would do on an ordinary date with a man who ticked all those boxes.
‘And yes, I will also admit that on those dates, my escort fee would be increased accordingly. So far so good,’ she whispered, and paused to refresh her coffee.
‘Is that when you met Francie Fitzgerald?’ McCusker asked, risking the wrath of his colleague.
‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘and I always felt that was why it took him a time, quite a time in fact, to get his head around marriage. The real crux of the matter was that Francie had to reconcile himself with marrying an escort girl.
‘The money I earned was absolutely amazing and I put the majority of it away to secure my independence. That was also when I met Murcia. She was great fun and we became firm friends. She met someone she was escorting who fell for her hook, line and sinker. He was rich, and he chased her and chased her, until she eventually agreed to give up the work and marry him. Noah Woyda – he’s a self-made Belfast-based businessman. I’ve never been able to fully understand what business he’s in, but believe me, he’s rich. He’s so rich. Poor Francie is a pauper in comparison. I bet there’s no noisy plumbing in Mr Noah’s house.
‘Mr Noah didn’t want Murcia associating with any of her former colleagues, even Mariana, so I lost touch with her for a few years.
‘Then, late one night my phone rings and it’s poor Murcia and she’s crying saying, “Please help me, I just had to get out of there”. She’d run away and was ringing me from George Best Airport. I drove on out there and picked her up. The poor girl was black and blue. I have to tell you something here about Murcia. She’s the spitting image of a smaller version of Marilyn Monroe. She’s very quiet, doesn’t say much, but, and without even knowing it, she’s very sensual and extremely sexy. She was very popular as an escort. All the boys wanted to sleep with her. Again, like me, she would only sleep with people she liked. The men she liked would just keep on offering more and more money until she would eventually sleep with them, then she would admit to them that she would have slept with them for free because she liked them. But that night she was in a bad state and it turned out that Noah had beaten her up just once too often. Why would a man beat up his woman just because she looked like Marilyn Monroe?’
‘Most likely,’ McCusker suggested, ‘he beat her up because she wasn’t Marilyn Monroe.’
‘You know, you might be right, agency cop. Murcia told Mariana that Mr Noah wanted to better himself through the things he owned, to show people he’d made it. She figured his successful businesses, big house, big cars, big paintings – the bigger and more expensive these things, the better Noah thought it showed him to be. Yes, Murcia would say, “Big, big, big. This big, that big, everything big and then me, little wife who looked like a movie star”, and we’d both fall about laughing.
‘Anyway, long story short, we’d a lot of false starts, a lot of help initially from my husband, who was a real trooper when this all blew up. Eventually, with the help of a restraining order, we managed to get her away from Mr Noah.
‘Time passed, Murcia had started to pick up the pieces of her life again and Francie and I were looking after her and she started to fancy an ever so tiny bit of independence. Mr Noah is ensuring divorce proceedings are going nowhere, and fast, and Murcia said she wouldn’t mind doing a bit of escort work again, but she doesn’t want to do it with the agency in case she bumps into Mr Noah again. So Mariana thinks about Louis, and I introduce them and, surprise, surprise, they hit it off. They are very discreet for lots of reasons but eventually they’re… well, I’m just so jealous because they’re bonking each others brains out while Mariana appears to have grown into an old woman.’
McCusker thought, but didn’t say, ‘And?’ As in “And then what happened?” But nothing more was forthcoming. That seemed to be the end of the story, as far as “Mariana is concerned”, as she would say, in her confusing manner of frequently referring to herself in the third person.
‘So do you know how often Louis and Murcia saw each other?’ he offered instead.
‘No, I wasn’t involved in setting it up, apart from…’
‘Apart from?’ McCusker coaxed.
‘When Louis needed to get a message to Murcia, but he wasn’t sure where she was, or if Mr Noah was around, he didn’t want to land her in any trouble and he didn’t want to phone her at an inopportune moment.’
‘Like yesterday, for instance?’
‘Yes, like yesterday for instance,’ she replied.
‘Where did they meet?’
‘She would book a room in the Dukes Hotel on Botanic Avenue and pay for it in cash, give her postal address as mine. He’d meet her in the bar and if the coast was clear, they’d hook up and retire to her room. To ensure they didn’t raise the suspicions of the staff, she’d always stay there overnight
. Louis would discreetly leave after their adventure. Sometimes I’d join her afterwards for a meal and a girl’s late night.’
‘And he rang on Thursday because…?’
‘Because she wasn’t in the bar and he was checking to see if there was any change to their plan.’
‘And was there?’
‘No, Louis was just early, that’s all.’
‘Did Noah Woyda know about Louis?’ McCusker asked.
‘Well, even when there was nothing happening in Murcia’s life, Mr Noah believed there was.’
‘But did he know it was Louis this time?’
‘Mariana and Murcia believed he did; that’s why Murcia and Louis were being ultra-careful.’
‘Did Al Armstrong ever sell you any drugs?’
‘He tried. But Mariana had seen too many beautiful young women in the escort agency destroy their bodies, you know, where once they proudly wore tight-fitting jeans, the jeans no longer fitted them tightly in all the right places. And that’s before you consider what the horrible stuff does to their minds. So it’s always been a no-go area for me.’
‘Where were you, Mariana, between 9.00 on Thursday night and 1.00 on Friday morning?’ McCusker asked.
‘Francie and I were at home having dinner with two friends of ours, Ross and Samantha Wallace.’
McCusker and O’Carroll looked at each other.
‘Sorry, what? What is wrong?’
‘We know them.’
‘Really? No! How?’
‘They were also friends of two of the suspects in another case we worked on…’
‘Oh, of course,’ she gasped, ‘Ryan and Larry O’Neill. That was such a tragedy.’
‘What time were you with Mr and Mrs Wallace?’ McCusker asked.
‘They arrived at our house just before 8 o’clock and left way past midnight.’
‘How can we get in contact with Murcia Woyda?’
‘To be honest, I don’t know. She was staying at an apartment I have here in town but she wasn’t there all day yesterday, nor last night. Mariana thinks she’s gone to ground because of what happened. I’ll try and get a message to her to give me a shout, and I’ll put you in touch with each other.’