Even the Dead (3 page)

“How am I feeling?” Quirke, annoyed that Sinclair should ask, was playing for time. He took out his cigarette case and lit one for himself. “I’m all right,” he said. “I still get headaches and the odd blank second or two. No hallucinations, though. That all seems to be past.”

“That’s good then, yes?”

Sinclair was not the demonstrative type, and his tone was one of polite inquiry and nothing more.

“Yes, it’s good, I suppose,” Quirke said, feeling slightly defensive. “It’s the fuzziness that gets me down, the sense of groping through a fog. That, and the uncertainty—I mean, the uncertainty that I’ll ever be any better than I am now. And how do I even know if how I am isn’t just how everyone else is, the only difference being they don’t complain? You ever see things, or wake up out of a trance and realize you have no memory of what happened in the past half hour?”

“No,” Sinclair said, dabbing the tip of his cigarette on the rim of the tin ashtray on the table between them. “Maybe that just means I’m not very imaginative. Also I don’t drink the way you do—”

He broke off abruptly, his forehead coloring.

“Don’t worry,” Quirke said. “You’re probably right—probably there’s nothing at all the matter with me except that I’ve been a soak for so many years that half the brain cells are dead.”

“I’m sorry,” Sinclair said awkwardly, looking down. “I didn’t mean—”

Quirke sat forward and ground his half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray, clearing his throat.

“About this poor bugger in the car,” he said. “Let’s face it, we’re both convinced he was hit on the head and shoved in the car and the car was then run into a tree to make it look like an accident, or suicide.”

“Did you notice the strong smell of petrol?”

“Yes, but what of it? Petrol explodes—car fires always smell of it.”

“That strongly? It was as if he’d been doused in petrol himself.”

Quirke thought for a moment, tugging at his lower lip. “Someone definitely wanted him dead, then.”

Sinclair tasted the tea, grimaced, pushed the mug aside. Quirke offered his cigarette case and Sinclair brought out his lighter. Simultaneously they both expelled a cone-shaped stream of smoke towards the ceiling.

In a far corner of the room a middle-aged woman with a bandaged leg began quietly to cry, though not so quietly that she could not be heard. Everyone carefully ignored her. The young man with her, who must have been her son, glanced about quickly, looking anxious and embarrassed.

“So, what do we do?” Sinclair asked.

Quirke smiled. “There’s an old friend I think I’ll drop in on,” he said.

*   *   *

Inspector Hackett was at his lunch at a sunny table in the front dining room of the Gresham Hotel. It was a treat he occasionally indulged in. He had often promised himself that this was how he was going to live when he retired: lunch at the Gresham, a stroll down O’Connell Street to the river and then right, onto the quays, to browse through the book barrows, or left towards the docks to spend a half hour watching the boats unloading. If the weather was inclement, he would drop into the Savoy Cinema and doze in front of a war picture or a Western. He had never much cared for the pictures, finding the stories unbelievable and the characters unreal, but he liked to sit in the velvety darkness, in a nice comfortable seat, and let himself drift off. He always sat near the back, where the sound of the projector was a soothing whirr and the courting couples were too engrossed in each other to distract him with their chatter. Then when the picture was over he could walk over to the Prince’s Bar in Prince’s Street, or the Palace farther on, and drink a quiet pint before boarding the bus for home and his tea.

Idle dreams, idle dreams. Retirement was a long way off yet—and a good thing, too. There’s life, he told himself, in the old dog yet.

To eat he had a bowl of oxtail soup that turned out to be a bit too thick and heavy, a plate of cold ham with cold potato salad—made with genuine Chef Salad Cream; he had checked with the waitress to make sure—and, to follow, a bowl of fruit cocktail with custard. He liked especially the coldness of the tinned fruit against the warm, silky texture of the custard. With the food he drank a glass of Jersey milk, for the sake of his lungs—TB was still on the increase—and, at the end, with his cigarette, a cup of strong brown tea with milk and four lumps of sugar—four lumps which, had his wife been there, would have been strictly forbidden.

In fact, he was spooning up the hot sweet sludge the not-quite-melted sugar had left in the bottom of the cup when he heard his name spoken and looked up guiltily—but it wasn’t May, of course it wasn’t—and saw a familiar figure making his way towards him across the room.

“‘The dead arose and appeared to many’!” he exclaimed, with a broad smile. “Dr. Quirke—is it yourself, or am I seeing things?”

“Hello, Inspector,” Quirke said, stopping in front of him and smiling too, though not so broadly.

“Do you know what it is,” Hackett said. “When I saw you I nearly swallowed the teaspoon, I was that surprised. ’Tis fresh and well you’re looking.”

Quirke was pleased to see his old companion-in-arms, more pleased than he had expected he would be. He was amused, too: he had noticed before how Hackett, when he was startled or unsure, fell at once into his stage-Irish act, lisping and winking, bejapers-ing and begorrah-ing, all his usual stealth and watchfulness shrunk to a gleam in the depths of his colorless little eyes.

“May I sit?” Quirke inquired. It was always the way: when Hackett started Syngeing, Quirke’s response was to turn into Oscar Wilde. Well, they were a pair, no doubt of that, though what they were a pair of, he wasn’t sure.

He sat down.

“What will you have?” Hackett asked. “A glass of wine, maybe, or a ball of malt—or is it too early in the day for the juice of the barley?”

“I’m afraid it’s always too early, these days,” Quirke said, putting his hat on the floor under his chair.

Hackett threw himself back with an exaggerated stare of amazement. “What? You’re not telling me you’re after taking the pledge?”

“No, of course not. I have a glass of dry sherry at Christmastime, and on my birthday a snipe of barley wine.”

The Inspector laughed, his paunch heaving, and flapped a dismissive hand. “Get away with you,” he said, “and stop pulling my leg. Miss!” He waved to a passing waitress, who veered towards them. “This man,” he said to her, “will take a glass of the finest white wine you have in the shop—am I right, Dr. Quirke? A nice Chablis, now, if I remember, would be your lunchtime preference.”

Quirke smiled at the waitress. She was tall and fair with pale pink eyelids and pale blue eyes. “Tomato juice,” he said. “With Worcester sauce and—”

“Is it a Virgin Mary you’re after?” she said tartly.

“The very thing.” A Virgin Mary, no less! He wouldn’t have thought such a drink was known on this side of the Atlantic. What next? Gin slings? Whiskey sours? Highballs? Maybe the country was changing, after all.

Hackett was still regarding him with his broadest frog grin, the arc of his mouth stretching almost from ear to ear. He seemed to have, of all things, a suntan—below the line of his hat brim, anyway, above which his high, flat forehead was its accustomed shade of soft and faintly glistening baby pink.

“Have you been away?” Quirke asked.

Hackett stared. “How did you know?”

“The bronzed and fit look.”

“Ah. Well. Now. I was off,” he said, his pale forehead flushing and even his tan darkening a little, “in a place called Málaga, down in the south of Spain. Have you been there?” Quirke shook his head, and Hackett, glancing to right and left, leaned forward conspiratorially. “To tell you the truth, Doctor,” he murmured, “it’s a terrible place. People rooking you right and left, and all the women half naked on the beach and even in the streets. I couldn’t wait to get home. Mrs. Hackett”—he gave a discreet little cough—“Mrs. Hackett thought it was grand.” He poured cold tea into his cup and took a slurp of it. “And what about yourself?”

“Oh, I was away too,” he said. “Not in the sunny south of Spain, however.”

Hackett frowned. “You weren’t off again in—in that drying-out place, I hope?”

“John of the Cross?” The Hospital of St. John of the Cross was where Quirke had sequestered himself on more than one occasion to give his liver a chance to recover from the alcoholic insults he had been subjecting it to for more years than he cared to count. “No, not there. I was in a cottage hospital, out beyond the Strawberry Beds. Small, quiet, nice. Very restful.”

The Inspector was still regarding him with concern. “Nerves, was it?”

“Sort of. It seems my brain took a bit of a bashing that time those two knocked me down the area steps and kicked the stuffing out of me.”

“But sure that was years ago!”

“That’s the past for you: it comes back to haunt.”

The waitress brought Quirke’s drink, and Hackett asked her if he could have a jug of boiling water to revive the tea leaves in the pot. She offered to bring a fresh pot, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “‘A pot of tay will take two goes’—that’s what my old mother always said.”

Quirke smiled, covering his mouth; Hackett by now was well on his way down the Old Bog Road. The eyes, though, were sharp as ever.

“By the way,” Hackett said, when the waitress had gone, “how did you know where to find me? Or was it just a happy coincidence?”

“I went round to Pearse Street. Your man, Sergeant Jenkins, whispered to me that you might be here. He made me swear not to tell you it was him gave you away, so not a word, right? I must say, you do yourself well. Lunch at the Gresham, no less!”

“Ah, now you’re teasing me, Dr. Quirke, I know you are.”

The hot water came and he slopped it into the pot. Quirke was always fascinated by Hackett’s clumsiness, which, mysteriously, tended to come and go, depending on the circumstances. Did he put it on, as a diversionary tactic, or was it a sign of mental agitation? No doubt he was itching to know just what it was that had brought Quirke here to seek him out. Right now he was watching Quirke over the rim of his refilled cup, those little eyes glinting.

“I came to consult you about something,” Quirke said. “There was a crash in the Phoenix Park early this morning. You heard about it?”

“I did. Some poor young fellow, ran into a tree and got burnt to a crisp. Suicide, by the look of it, my fellows are saying.”

He put down his cup. No clumsiness now.

“Well, my second-in-command,” Quirke said, “and probably soon to be commander in chief, young Sinclair, came to see me earlier.”

“Did he go all the way out to the Strawberry Beds?”

“No, no, I wasn’t in hospital. I’m staying for the moment with my—with Malachy Griffin and his wife, at their place on Ailesbury Road. They very kindly offered to take me in and look after me while I convalesced from whatever it is I’m supposed to be convalescing from.”

“Ah, right. And how is Dr. Griffin? Is he enjoying his retirement?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you tell me? That’s a pity, now, a real pity.”

“He has taken up gardening,” Quirke said.

“Gardening, is it! That’s a fine pastime. Will you give him my best regards? He’s a decent man, the same Dr. Griffin.”

They eyed each other in silence for a moment. Mal Griffin had not always been the decent man he had since become, and for a long time had covered up things that should not have been covered up. Old water, Quirke thought, under old bridges.

“Anyway,” he said, taking a sip of his glutinous, brownish-red drink, “what Sinclair had come to talk to me about was this poor chap who hit the tree up in the park.”

“Is that so?” Hackett said mildly, looking into his cup. Cautious, now, Quirke thought, cautious yet keen, an old dog sniffing blood on the air.

“There’s a contusion on the side of the skull, just here.” He pointed to a spot behind his temple and just above his ear. “Sinclair thought it seemed suspicious, and called me in to have a look at it.”

“And did you?”

“I did. And I agreed with him.”

Hackett leaned back slowly in his chair, with his lips pursed and his chin lowered. “Suspicious in what way? In a way that made it seem the poor fellow didn’t come by it due to his unfortunate meeting with that mighty oak?”

“Exactly.”

Now Quirke leaned back too, and they reclined thus, watching each other. A strong shaft of sunlight through the window beside them had reached a corner of their table and was striking down through the polish and into the wood itself. Like a trout pond, Quirke idly thought, heather brown and agleam, the grain in the wood like underwater weeds drawn out in streels by the slowly moving current. A fish flashing, white on the flank, a fin twirling. Stones, small stones, washed small over the years, the years. Connemara, a sun-struck noon. Lying on the bank, trying to tickle a trout, the fish torpid in the midday heat, its tail fin barely stirring. Then a call, a far shout.
Run, Quirke—Jesus, run!
And then Clifford, Brother Clifford, dean of discipline, so called, pounding towards him in his big boots, over the heather, his soutane flying.

What?

“I’m sorry,” he said, blinking. “My mind—my mind was wandering. What were you saying?”

“I was asking,” Hackett said, speaking slowly, as if to a child, “if we know the identity of the unfortunate young man, the one with the bump on his head.”

“I thought maybe you might know. Someone said your people were tracing the registration number of the car.”

Hackett sat forward and wiped his mouth with a linen napkin. “Well, if you’d care to accompany me back to the station, we can make inquiries and see what the tirelessly laboring hordes have been able to turn up.”

He signaled to the tall pale waitress and asked her to bring the bill. While they waited for her to return with it, they looked about vacantly. At a nearby table a woman in a hat with a half veil of black lace smiled at Quirke, and he marveled, as so often, at how women could smile like that, with such seeming openness and ease. Was it a trick they had learned? Surely not. It seemed spontaneous, and always touched something in him, a deeply buried seam of wistful longing.