Even the Dead (13 page)

The chip shop was closed; it only opened at nighttime. They stood back to survey the building, if a building it could be called. It was hardly more than a lean-to made of bricks. The shop was a single room with a big window and a high, steel counter at the back. Perched on top of it was another brick box, tiny, with a single window giving onto the street, and led up to by a set of concrete steps at the side. At the top of the steps was a narrow door, the bottom of which was being eaten away by wet rot. Hackett rapped with his knuckles on the wood. They waited. Quirke wondered how much of the detective’s life was spent standing at doors, stolid, patient, inexpectant.

They heard footsteps within, and a loud belch. “Who’s there?” a voice demanded.

“Open up,” Hackett said gruffly.

“Who are you?” The voice was very close to the door now. “What’s your business?”

“I’m a detective. Open up.”

There was a long silence, then a rattle of chains and bolts, and the door was opened.

Abercrombie was a large, gaunt, bald man with a stoop. He wore a collarless shirt of striped cotton and a pair of ancient black trousers, shiny with dirt, held up by a pair of brown braces. He had small dark eyes and large hairy ears, the lobes of which hung down like dewlaps. The braces were too short, so that the trousers were hoisted up tight at the crotch and the cuffs hardly reached to his ankles, showing off the bottoms of a pair of woolen long johns in obvious need of washing. He was chewing something, very slowly, his lower jaw moving in a circular motion, like the jaw of a cow chewing its cud.

“Mr. Abercrombie?” Hackett said.

The man stopped chewing. “Who are you?”

Hackett introduced himself and Quirke. Abercrombie, who had resumed chewing, looked from one of them to the other without expression.

“Do you think we might step inside for a minute?” Hackett said.

Abercrombie thought about this for some moments, then stood aside to let them enter.

The room smelled of a number of things, mainly dog. There was a table, covered with old newspapers, on which stood the remains of a meal—a smeared plate, a mug, a beer bottle, the heel of a turnover loaf. Under the table was an old tartan rug, and on this lay a small, shapeless dog with brown-and-white fur and tiny, black, feverish eyes. At the sight of the two strangers it set up a high-pitched yapping. “Shut up to hell out of that!” Abercrombie shouted, stamping his foot, and the dog stopped yapping and whimpered instead. Above the table was a large framed print of a pink-lipped, effeminate Christ coyly displaying a dripping, crimson heart bound in a wreath of thorns and shooting out flames at the top. Below it, mounted on a small wooden bracket, was a perpetual Sacred Heart bulb, the glowing element of which was in the shape of a cross.

Abercrombie picked up the bread and tore off a lump and tossed it to the dog. He turned to Hackett. “You’re a detective, you say?” He sounded skeptical.

“That’s right,” Hackett said.

The dog gave the crust a disdainful sniff and went back to staring vengefully at the two intruders.

“Is it about them bikes?” Abercrombie asked.

“No,” Hackett said, “it’s not about bikes.”

“It must be the darkie, then, is it? He told me he was a medical student. You know he skipped off with three months’ rent owing?”

Hackett had a way of standing with his feet planted somewhat apart and his chin sunk on his chest, his thin lower lip protruding. It made him look all the more like a squat, blue-skinned frog. “What I’m here about,” he said, “is a young woman by the name of Lisa Smith. She’s a tenant in number seventeen, around the corner.”

“Lisa who?” Abercrombie growled. “Never heard of her.”

Hackett glanced at Quirke.

“She does have a flat there,” Quirke said.

Abercrombie glowered at him. “Who says?”

“She was there last night, briefly.”

“Oh, she was there
briefly,
was she?” Abercrombie said, with large sarcasm. “Well, whether she was or not, she don’t live there. There’s no one by that name in number seventeen.”

Quirke could not decide which was the more unsettling, the dog’s venomous regard or Christ’s wistful, wounded gaze.

“You collect the rents there, is that right?” Hackett said.

“I do,” Abercrombie answered. “I look after the place generally, to make sure the bowsies living there don’t tear it apart. They’re a crowd of savages, the lot of them. The Trinity students are the worst.” He glanced at Quirke for a second with sour amusement, taking in his handmade shoes, his silk shirt, his expensive linen jacket. “The quality never has any respect for other people’s property.” He turned to Hackett again. “Who is she, this one—what’s her name, Smith?”

“She’s someone we need to have a word with,” Hackett said. “Are you sure you don’t know her? Dr. Quirke here will describe her.”

Quirke tried to remember what Phoebe had said. Dark hair, green eyes, pale complexion. “She’s in her early twenties,” he said. “Probably works as a secretary, something like that.”

Abercrombie was eyeing him again with lively contempt. “A secretary in her twenties,” he said. “That narrows it down, all right, here in Rathmines.”

Quirke took out his cigarette case. He saw Hackett’s look of longing, and lifted an inquiring eyebrow. Hackett nodded. Quirke gave him a cigarette.

“I’ll take one of them,” Abercrombie said. “Then it’ll be a real powwow.”

The dog under the table sneezed, making a curiously prim, muffled sound.

“How many tenants are there in the house?” Hackett asked.

Abercrombie, savoring his cigarette, gazed at the ceiling for a moment, his lips moving as he counted silently. “Sixteen,” he said. “Four of them are sharing, and there’s a married couple—they say they’re married, anyway. The darkie made seventeen, but he did a flit, like I said.”

“Are there any females at all, in their early twenties, living there?” Quirke asked.

Abercrombie, glancing aside, shook his head. Quirke was convinced he was lying. But why would he lie? Abercrombie looked at Quirke again, then at Hackett. “What do you want her for, anyway?” he asked.

“It’s a serious matter,” Hackett said. “Did you hear it on the news, or see it in the paper, about that crash in the Phoenix Park on Thursday night? Lisa Smith was acquainted with the young man who died.”

Abercrombie’s expression did not change. Quirke and the detective watched him closely. “I told you,” Abercrombie said, “there’s no one by that name in number seventeen. Now, can I finish my dinner?”

Hackett sighed. He knew this moment well: the frustrating, the infuriating, moment when, convinced he was being lied to, he could do nothing about it except retreat and try to devise some way of catching out the liar another time, by some means other than straightforward questioning.

“Thanks for your time,” he said, turning away.

Abercrombie made no move to accompany them to the door, only stood there at a stoop in the middle of his foul-smelling domain and watched them with a sardonic eye as they filed out. The last thing Quirke saw as he shut the door behind them was the sickly, candy-pink glow of the Sacred Heart light and the soft-bearded image above it, following him with its sorrowfully accusing gaze.

They went down the steps to the street, and Hackett looked about. “We forgot about Wallace,” he said. “He’s probably after driving around half of south County Dublin, looking for us.”

They walked back to the corner and turned into the street of red-brick houses. The squad car was double-parked outside No. 17. Wallace, spotting them in the rearview mirror, hopped out eagerly and began opening doors for them.

“Did you believe him—Abercrombie?” Quirke asked, as they settled themselves again in the back seat.

“No. Did you?”

They turned away from each other, as the car pulled ahead, and each gazed out of his window, wondering why they had been lied to.

“Abercrombie,” Hackett said. “If you’d seen that joker in the street, now, would you have imagined he had a name like that?”

Quirke smiled, and didn’t bother to reply.

10

That evening Quirke took Phoebe to dinner at the Russell Hotel. It was their favorite place in town, although Phoebe always fretted about the cost. They went through a routine each time they came there to dine. Phoebe would scan the menu and shake her head at the prices and say they were disgraceful, to which Quirke would reply that they were exactly the same as they had been the last time they were here, and that anyway a lady should never read a menu from right to left. If she persisted, he would close the exchange by pretending to take umbrage and saying that it was his money and he would spend it as he wished, and that one of the ways he wished to spend it was on treating his daughter to a decent dinner. And then they would smile at each other, and the evening would have officially begun.

The waiter came and they ordered, grouse for Quirke and fish for Phoebe.

“You remind me of your mother when you argue with me about money,” Quirke said to her. “You narrow your eyes and purse your mouth in just the way she used to do.”

“I wish you’d talk about her more,” Phoebe said.

“Do you? I don’t know what I could tell you. I remember her in a strange way.”

“Strange?”

“I’m not sure it’s really her I’m remembering. In my memory she has become a kind of—I don’t know—a kind of mythical figure.” He smiled, a touch sheepishly. “She’s my legend, you could say.”

“She’s very beautiful, in her photographs.”

“Yes, she was lovely.” He frowned, running his fingers over the tablecloth, feeling its texture. “She had the most wonderful skin, smooth as silk, and always cool, somehow, even in the hottest weather.”

The waiter brought the bottle of Chablis that Quirke had ordered, displayed the label and drew out the cork and tipped a drop into Quirke’s glass. Quirke tasted, nodded, the wine was poured, the waiter went away. Quirke always savored this little ritual; it was like a children’s game that grown-ups were still allowed to play.

Father and daughter clinked glasses. Phoebe had on her black dress with the lace collar. She never wore jewelry.

“This is the first drink I’ve had all week,” Quirke said; it was only a white lie. “I hope you’re proud of me.”

Their first course arrived. They were both having smoked salmon.

“Did you know the Russell started up as a temperance hotel?” Quirke said. “Sir Somebody Russell opened it in—I can’t remember when. He was very hot on the fight against the demon drink.”

Phoebe arched an eyebrow. “Well,” she said, “I imagine Sir Somebody has been doing a lot of turning in his grave in the meantime.”

Quirke pushed his plate away and leaned back in his chair, the wine already spreading its warm tendrils along his veins. “This is about the last place in Dublin that makes real turtle soup,” he said, “did you know that?”

He could see she wasn’t listening. Her mood had darkened suddenly. She too had pushed her plate away, and sat with her eyes lowered, fiddling with the remains of a bread roll.

“What are we going to do?” she said in a low, urgent voice. “Whatever that man said to you, Lisa does live there. I was in her flat—her things were there.”

He had told her how he and Inspector Hackett had gone to Rathmines, how they had talked to the young man in the dirty undershirt and afterwards to Abercrombie, and how both men had insisted they knew nothing of any Lisa Smith.

“If she does live there,” Quirke said, “she must have given you a false name. You said yourself her name didn’t sound convincing.”

They drank their wine. A waitress came and took away their plates, and the waiter returned and refilled their wine glasses. The dining room had no windows, and the air was close and uncomfortably warm. Quirke loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt collar. His thoughts went back to Delia and her pale, cool skin. His brief time with her had been a kind of ecstatic torment. She had been his obsession; he couldn’t get enough of her. She knew it, and would withhold herself, just for the pleasure of seeing him squirm, of having him plead. Had she ever loved him? For a brief time, he supposed; otherwise why would she have married him? He had never understood her. What he had said to Phoebe wasn’t really true. Delia wasn’t a legend; she was an enigma. His sphinx, beautiful, desperately loved, and malign.

Their main courses arrived.

“Will you see if you can get a list of the people who were in that course with you?” Quirke said. “Maybe one of the names will jog your memory.”

Phoebe hadn’t touched her main course. “I’m convinced something bad has happened to her,” she said.

“You don’t know that. Maybe she changed her mind about staying at the house. Maybe she was frightened there, more frightened than she already was, and left and went somewhere else—maybe she even came back to Dublin.”

“How could she? She had no car—I drove her down, remember.”

“She could have got a hackney cab.”

Phoebe shook her head. “No, no,” she said. “There wasn’t a trace of her having been there. She wouldn’t have done that herself, would she?”

“Maybe she’s obsessively tidy?”

“No,” Phoebe said again, more vehemently this time. “Someone had made sure there wasn’t a mark left to show she’d been there. She just disappeared, as if—”

A couple had appeared in the doorway, and stopped there a moment to survey the room. The man was in black tie. He was in his late twenties, perhaps, boyish-looking, with thin fair hair and a sharp, clever-seeming face. The woman was older, in her forties, a little on the heavy side, but attractively so, with a broad face and large, dark eyes. Her hair was prematurely streaked with gray, and cut in an untidy line just below her ears. She had, to Quirke’s eye, what he could only define as a dignified beauty. Her gaze fell on Phoebe, and she smiled.

“Oh,” Phoebe murmured, “it’s—”

The woman said something to the young man, and together they approached the table. Phoebe stood up. “Dr. Blake!” she said. “What a surprise!”

“Good evening, Phoebe,” the woman said. “How nice to see you.”

She had a slight foreign accent. She looked at Quirke. He stood up.