The Dark Eye (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 2) (31 page)

Because he knew who really had killed Lucy Toner?

And even say he had, what did that have to do with the Marxman?

I took out my cellphone and called Fitzgerald. She was en route now from George Dyer’s house to Dublin Castle for another scheduled press conference, at which she intended releasing a photograph of Dyer’s face in time for the evening TV news in the hope that someone could identify the real man. I told her about the photographs, and she whistled softly.

‘If Dyer is the Marxman,’ I said, ‘at least this might explain why there’re no pictures or mementoes in his house connecting him to the killings. Because Felix managed somehow to get hold of them. To hide them.’

‘Not so fast,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘You haven’t heard my news. Remember the sergeant this morning wanted me to look at something in the house? Well, remind me to recommend the boy for promotion, because he’d taken a closer look at Dyer’s passport and noticed there was a stamp for the date of Enright’s murder showing that Dyer was out of the city on business at the time.’

‘That can’t be right.’

‘According to his passport,’ Fitzgerald said bluntly, ‘he was in Vienna that night. Which doesn’t mean he
was
there, I know, but if he really doesn’t check out for that killing—’

‘Then there might still be a vacancy for the Marxman,’ I finished for her. ‘But why should Dyer kill himself if he didn’t do it? Why try to kill Dalton? It makes no sense.’

I was remembering, though, what he’d said last night when I’d caught up with him in the derelict house and taunted him that he liked killing people.
I’ve killed enough of them
, he’d said. And laughed. As if this was funny because Felix was the only one he had killed.

Or because – could it be? – he wasn’t a killer at all.

But why kill himself if he was innocent?

Was he covering up for someone else?

‘What we need to do is track down the people in these photographs,’ said Fitzgerald, sensing my renewed despondency down the line and obviously feeling I needed to be given something positive to do to stave it off. ‘We need to know why pictures of them have turned up alongside the pictures of the Marxman’s victims. You can help me there.’

‘Whatever you want, I’ll do it.’

‘Then you can start by dropping the rest of the photographs off in Dublin Castle. Healy’s holding the fort there. I’ll give him a call and explain what you found. I’ll try and get a start made on having the people identified so they can be interviewed. After that, why don’t you follow up with Miranda Gray? She might be able to tell you more about whoever took those pictures.’

Only when the call ended did I realise I’d forgotten to tell her about Felix’s journal too.

Absently, I opened it up again and noticed for the first time that there were two pages stuck together right at the front. I eased a nail between them and prised them apart. Inside there was an inscription, scrawled untidily in pen and written out like a poem. I began to read it.

What in Christ’s name was that all about?

I tried calling Miranda Gray’s office, but Elaine, the incompetent secretary she’d told me about, said she was out and she didn’t know when she’d be back.

I tried calling her cellphone, but it must have been switched off.

Tried Fisher but he didn’t have any idea where she was either.

Eventually I called back the secretary to ask if she’d any idea where Miranda could be and was told I could always try the Forty Foot.

‘The bar?’

‘No, the place where people go swimming, you know?’ Elaine said. ‘She often goes there if she’s free.’

Now she tells me.

I did know the Forty Foot. I remembered reading something about it once. It was a heap of wild rocks a couple of miles further out along the road on which Fitzgerald lived, originally known as the Gentlemen’s Bathing Place but now open to all, where people went swimming in the sea all year round, risking drowning and hypothermia in the name of tradition. They even used to do it naked, Fitzgerald once told me. Takes all sorts.

I drove out there and parked by a No Parking sign.

Trusting to luck on both accounts because I had no way of knowing if Miranda was actually here.

There was a gate in a wall with the words
Forty Foot
woven in wrought iron in an arch across the top, and beyond that a stony path leading down towards a rough shore where I could see a few old men towelling their hair dry, their skin wrinkled.

Near the gate was a sign:
Togs Required By Order
.

That was a relief.

I pushed open the gate and walked down the narrow path towards the rocks. To one side was a flight of rough-hewn stone steps with a yellow railing up the side where swimmers could clamber out, and where a dripping old man was now stepping gingerly back on to shore.

A wind was whipping off the sea, too cold to be quite right for summer, not quite vicious enough for winter, and there was a dullness to the water. It would rain later. Clouds were gathering like a lynch mob on Howth Head across the bay.

A few heads lifted to look at me as I approached. I was looking round with a sort of lost expression, I guess, I didn’t know where to start looking. Rocks fringed the sea and people sat about talking, but I couldn’t hear their words. Rather there was a heavy silence like prayer enveloping everything. Every sense was dominated by the sea.

In the end, I asked the old man I’d seen clambering out.

‘I’m looking for someone. Miranda Gray?’

‘I know Miranda,’ he said. ‘That’s her out there.’

He pointed back to the sea, where I could just make out a head bobbing like a buoy, or like a seal perhaps, lifting its snout and regarding the land like it was an alien element.

Was that her?

It must have been. She was the only presence I could see in all that waste of water. I considered shouting to her that I was here, but I would have felt foolish, and anyway the wind would only have snatched my words away and dashed them against the rocks; so instead I sat down with my back to a boulder and waited and watched her.

She must have been a strong swimmer to manage out there. She seemed so far away, and sometimes the waves rose around her and she disappeared entirely from sight and I was almost convinced she’d slipped below the surface too long – and then she’d appear again.

‘It’s rough, isn’t it?’ I said to the old man, but he only chuckled.

‘This isn’t rough,’ he said. ‘A milder day you couldn’t have asked for.’

Was that what he called it? Mild?

It was only a few more minutes probably before the bobbing head began to make its way back towards the shore, and soon a figure was emerging from the water in a black bathing costume, smiling, hair in a swimming cap so that she was hard to recognise, climbing out with the same faltering steps as the old man, holding on to the yellow railing.

I rose as she got nearer.

The smile vanished when she saw me.

‘Saxon? What are you doing here? Is everything all right? It’s not Fisher, is it?’

‘Fisher?’

‘Something hasn’t happened to him?’

‘No. No. Nothing like that.’

She tiptoed past me and reached to another rock, where her towel was waiting. Wrapped herself in it and pulled the cap off, letting her hair tumble out.

‘I just wanted to talk to you,’ I said. ‘I have to ask you something.’

‘It’ll only take me a moment to get dressed,’ she said.

‘I’ll wait outside then, shall I?’ I said. ‘My Jeep’s there.’

‘I’ll be quick.’

I made my back through the iron gate to the Jeep and sat inside, keeping watch. The old man I’d spoken to came out presently, then a woman I hadn’t seen down by the rocks but who must have been there since there was no other way in or out that I could see.

I waited a while longer, and still there was no sign of her.

Eventually I climbed out of the Jeep again and began to hurry back. I reached out to the gate to push it open – but before I could touch it, it jerked back, and there was Miranda.

We both jumped.

The view behind her was dark with the sea.

There’d be no more swimming today.

‘I’m sorry for keeping you,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t find my shoes, and then I spilled my purse and there were coins everywhere and I was scrambling about for them.’

‘You don’t have to explain.’

‘Sorry. Force of habit. I always explain myself too much.’

‘And apologise.’

‘Yes, I always do that too much as well. Sorry.’ She smiled nervously. ‘You made me feel a little shaky. When you appeared. I thought something awful must have happened.’

‘Being in that water would be enough to make anyone shaky,’ I said.

‘You get used to it,’ she said. ‘It’s the first shock. After that, it becomes easier. Every time it’s easier. I find it takes my mind off things. I’ve been thinking about Alice a lot.’

I nodded. I knew what she meant.

‘Let’s get inside,’ I said.

Soon as we were seated, I asked her straight out.

‘Did Felix ever take your photograph?’

‘Felix? Absolutely not. I wouldn’t have allowed it. I was his therapist, he was my patient. It wouldn’t have been right for me to start posing for him.’

‘I don’t mean posing. Just a snapshot. In the street.’

‘No,’ but a hesitant no now. ‘I’m sure I would’ve remembered. Why do you ask?’

‘It’s probably nothing. Just a dangling thread that needs to be pulled. I only want to know if anyone ever took your photograph in the doorway of the Abbey Theatre.’

‘How – how did you know about that?’ she said.

‘I’ve seen the photograph. Felix had a copy.’

‘Felix? That can’t be right. It wasn’t Felix. I had a call, it must have been over a year ago. Someone called me and told me they were doing a series of photographs of people in the city who didn’t belong, who came from elsewhere, who didn’t quite fit in. They were going to call it
Strangers
, they said. There was to be an exhibition. They mentioned some people I’d heard of who’d already had their photographs taken. I was flattered.’

‘So you agreed to have yours taken too?’

‘Not at first. The man refused to say who he was, refused to give any details. That was part of the mystery, he said. All he would say was that it would take no time at all. All I had to do was be at the Abbey Theatre, it would be one shot and that was it.’

One shot.

‘Finally,’ she said, ‘I agreed. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I’m a bit of a camera buff myself. The idea intrigued me. So I went there at the appointed time but he never showed. I hung around for half an hour, perhaps not even that, then I left. I was annoyed about it, as you can imagine. But I had no number to call, no name, no one to complain to.’

‘And you never heard from him again?’

‘Not a word.’ She looked confused. ‘And now you’re saying a picture
was
taken?’

‘One shot, like you said. It was among a collection of snapshots Felix had hidden in a locker at Central Station.’

‘How did Felix get it?’

‘You don’t think
he
could’ve been the photographer?’

‘Absolutely not,’ she said firmly. ‘How could I not know Felix’s voice? The accent, the inflection, everything about it was all wrong. It couldn’t be.’

‘Maybe he got someone to call on his behalf.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘You weren’t the only one,’ I said. ‘There were scores of similar photographs. Each person must have had the same call, inviting them to be at a particular place at a particular time, only to turn up and find no one there, not realising a picture had been taken.’

And all of them
strangers
.

People who came from outside the city.

That was what the people in the pictures had in common.

And maybe Felix was one of them? He didn’t come originally from the city either. Maybe he’d been told to go to Howth lighthouse; he turned up; his photograph was taken – albeit at a much greater distance than the others, which was why I’d needed to blow up his image before he could be recognised; and then – what?

Had it been sent to him? Had the Marxman made contact with Felix after all? All along I’d assumed it was Felix who had stumbled upon the identity of the killer, but maybe it was the Marxman who had chosen Felix, picked him for some role.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘either Felix took the picture of you or he knew who did. That’s why it’s so important if you can remember anything about the man who called you.’

‘I’m sorry. He wouldn’t give me his name,’ Miranda said. ‘I know, it sounds stupid going along to a meeting with someone you don’t know, but at the time the idea connected with something inside me. I’ve never felt I really belonged here. I liked the idea of being one of those strangers. Maybe you think it was silly of me to go.’

‘I went out myself to meet Felix at Howth,’ I pointed out. ‘I have no right to be lecturing you about what you should or shouldn’t have done.’

‘I only wish I could help.’

‘Think about it later when you get home, yeah?’ I said.

‘I won’t be able to think about anything else.’