Holy Orders A Quirke Novel (6 page)

Harry did not like policemen; they made him nervous, as if he had a guilty secret he had forgotten about that they were going to remind him of. Hackett was one of the sly ones, pretending to be a simple fellow up from the country while in reality he was as sharp as a tack. He came in now with his hat in his hand, wearing his bland, froggy smile. He nodded to Archie, who nodded back. All three had known each other for a long time.

“This is a bad business,” Hackett said, and put his hat down on the corner of Harry’s desk.

Harry, who had not risen from his chair, looked at the hat, then glanced up at the detective narrowly. “Yes,” he said. “A tragedy. Terrible for the paper, too—for all of us.”

Hackett was still smiling, his tongue stuck at the corner of his wide, thin mouth. “Oh, aye,” he said, with only the faintest hint of irony, “a tragedy indeed. His family is fairly upset too.”

Archie Smyth watched the two men with a keen eye. Archie was a peaceable soul, and it fascinated him how suddenly animosity could spring up between two men, especially men such as these. Harry, the working-class boy made good, was always on the lookout for slights. It was obvious he found Hackett’s smile irritating, and resented his air of prizing and deeply enjoying a private joke. Now Hackett took a chair that had been standing by the wall and brought it to the desk and sat down. Archie noted his lumpy, bright blue woolen socks; his missus must have knitted them for him.

“Do you know who did it?” Harry Clancy asked.

“I do not,” Hackett said, almost complacently.

Harry scowled. “You must have some idea.”

The detective shook his head, still easy, still smiling. There was a silence. From deep down in the bowels of the building a low drumming sound began to build that made the floor vibrate under their feet. The presses had started up, and would soon be printing the early edition of the
Evening Echo
, the
Clarion
’s sister paper, which came out in the late afternoon.

“I’d like,” Hackett said, “to have a look at Jimmy Minor’s desk.”

Harry Clancy glanced at Archie. “Has he got a desk?”

“Shares one,” Archie said. “With Stenson—Stenson is on the
Echo
. He has it during the day, Jimmy at night.”

Hackett turned to him. “Can I see it?”

Archie hesitated, but Harry Clancy waved a hand dismissively and said to Hackett that of course he could see the bloody desk, that they had no secrets here. He was getting into one of his tempers, Archie saw, and was glad of the excuse to make an exit. “This way,” he said to Hackett.

The detective rose and moved towards the door Archie had opened for him. “Don’t forget your hat,” Harry said sourly.

Hackett turned and grinned at him. “Can I leave it with you for the minute?” he said. “I’ll be back.”

*   *   *

The desk Jimmy Minor had shared with Stenson of the
Echo
was a scarred and ink-stained table with a big old Remington typewriter standing on it in state. There was a U-shaped plywood contraption with pigeonholes, all of them full, stuffed with out-of-date press releases and yellowing cuttings. “I’d say this is all Stenson’s,” Archie said. “Jimmy was the tidy type.”

“Is Stenson around?”

“Gone home. Will I call and tell him to come back in?”

The detective seemed not to be listening. He sat down at the table and ran a finger along the brittle edges of the old papers in the pigeonholes. “Would you know Jimmy’s handwriting?” he asked.

“Stenson would, probably.”

Hackett nodded, then looked up at the news editor. “You think there’d be anything here?”

“I doubt it. As I say, Jimmy kept things tidy.”

“He was secretive, you mean?”

“I don’t know that I’d say secretive. But he had notions of himself—saw too many Hollywood pictures, thought he was Humphrey Bogart.” He smiled, remembering. “He was a bit of a romantic, was young Jimmy.”

Now Hackett was fingering the keyboard of the Remington, like a blind man reading braille. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Ask Stenson, when he’s in again, to have a look through all this stuff and separate off anything of Jimmy’s. Notes, I mean, memos, that kind of thing.” He looked up at Archie again. “He wasn’t that tidy, was he, that he wouldn’t have left a few bits and scraps?”

“I’ll put Stenson onto it,” Archie said. “Maybe there’ll be something.”

Hackett continued gazing at him, still distractedly playing with the typewriter keys. “Is there anything you can tell me, Mr. Smyth,” he asked, “anything at all?”

The noise from the presses in the basement was now a steady, thunderous roll.

“Like what, for instance?”

Hackett smiled. He really did have the look of a frog, Archie thought, with that broad head and doughy face and the mouth a bloodless curve stretching almost from ear to ear.

“You’re an experienced chap,” Hackett said. “You must have some sort of an idea of what could have happened. It’s not every day of the week a reporter in this town is murdered. Did Jimmy have any dealings with subversives?”

“You mean the IRA?” Archie said, and gave a small laugh. “I doubt it. He’d have considered them a crowd of half-wits, playing at soldiers and blowing themselves up with their own bombs.”

Hackett considered. There was a curved line across the detective’s forehead, a match for his mouth, where the band of his hat had left its mark. “What about the criminal fraternity?” he asked. “The Animal Gang, or their cronies?”

“Look, Inspector,” Archie said, opening his hands before him, “this is a newspaper office. We cover fires, traffic accidents, politicians’ speeches, the price of livestock. Whatever Jimmy might have dreamed of, we’re not in the movies. God knows what he was up to. People have their secrets, as I’m sure you’re only too well aware. How he ended up in that canal I don’t know, and furthermore don’t like to speculate. As far as I’m concerned he can rest in peace.”

He stopped, with a sheepish expression, surprised at himself: he was not known for loquaciousness. He supposed he must be more upset by Jimmy’s death than he had thought. The detective, still seated, was studying him, and now again he let that broad, lazy smile spread across his face. “The thing is, Mr. Smyth,” he said, “my job is just that—to speculate. And so far I’m staring at a blank wall.”

Archie looked away. He scratched the crown of his head with the little finger of his right hand, making Hackett think of Stan Laurel. Hackett was feeling a faint stirring of annoyance. He had slipped many a morsel of useful information to Archie Smyth over the years, and now it was time for Archie to return the compliment. He waited. It was his experience that people always knew more than they thought they did. Things lay torpid at the bottom of their minds like fat pale fish in the depths of a muddy pond, and often, with a bit of effort, those fish could be made to swim up to the surface.

Sure enough, a light dawned now in Archie’s expression. “There was something he mentioned, all right,” he said, “I’ve just remembered it—something about tinkers.”

“Tinkers?”

“Yes. He’d been out to someplace where they were camped, out in Tallaght, I think it was. Yes, Tallaght.”

“Why?”

Archie blinked. “What?”

“Why did he go out to Tallaght? I mean, what brought him out there?” For a news editor, Hackett thought, Archie was not exactly fast on the uptake.

“I don’t know. Someone must have given him a tip-off.”

“About what?”

“I told you—tinkers.”

“That’s all?”

Archie shrugged. “I was only half listening.”

“When was this?”

“Last week sometime. He wanted me to sign a taxi docket, I asked him what was wrong with the bus. Jimmy thought he was too good for public transport.”

“He took a taxi to Tallaght?”

“Ten or fifteen shillings it would be, for that distance. And of course he had to taxi back in again.”

Hackett was gazing at Archie’s blue pullover. He knew better than to try to hurry people, but sometimes he felt like grabbing the Archies of this world by the throat and shaking them until their cheeks turned blue and their eyes popped. “Did he say where the tinker camp was?”

“I told you—in Tallaght.”

“Yes, Mr. Smyth, you did. But there’s a lot of tinkers in Tallaght, or there were, the last time I was out there. Did Jimmy mention a name?”

Archie laughed. “What use would that have been? They’re all called either Connors or Cash.”

Hackett suppressed a sigh. “So, no name, then. Anything else?”

“Sorry. No.”

“And when he came back from Tallaght, did you see him? Did he have anything to say then?”

Archie shook his head. “I heard no more about it, about tinkers or Tallaght or anything else.”

“But he’d have kept notes, wouldn’t he?”

“I suppose so, if he thought there was a story. You haven’t found his notebook, I take it.”

“We found nothing—the poor fellow was stripped of everything he had.”

“What about his flat?”

Hackett stood up; he seemed suddenly weary. “That,” he said, “is my next port of call.” He paused. “Mr. Smyth,” he went on, “can I ask you a favor? Would you ever mind fetching me my hat from your boss’s office? I think Mr. Clancy and I have said all we have to say to each other, for the present.” He smiled. “Sufficient unto the day, eh, Mr. Smyth?”

“—is the newspaper thereof,” Archie said.

They both chuckled, without much conviction.

*   *   *

The landlord’s name was Grimes. He was a large pale smooth man with a hooked nose and a condescending smile. He wore a dark three-piece suit with a broad chalk stripe and a camel-hair overcoat with a black velvet tab along the collar. His manner was slightly pained, as if he were being compelled to take part in something he considered beneath him. He made a show of having difficulty with the front-door key, to demonstrate, Hackett assumed, how little familiarity he had with such a down-at-heel establishment, despite the fact that he was the owner. The house, in a russet-and-yellow-brick terrace on Rathmines Road, was of three stories over a basement. Mr. Grimes said he was not sure, actually, how many flats there were. Hackett nodded. He could guess how inventive Mr. Grimes would have been in the disposition of partition walls. Despite his disclaimer he would know exactly how many cramped little boxes he had managed to divide the old house into.

In the high-ceilinged, gloomy hall the very air seemed dejected. There was a smell of must and of cooked rashers. A large rusty bicycle stood propped against the hall table. Mr. Grimes clicked his tongue. “Look at that,” he said testily, glaring at the bike. “They have no respect.”

They climbed the stairs, their footfalls sounding hollow on the worn and pitted lino. Above them somewhere Nat King Cole was crooning creamily on a gramophone about the purple dusk of twilight time; elsewhere a baby was crying, giving steady, hiccupy sobs, sounding more like a doll than a real child. Mr. Grimes wrinkled his great pallid beak.

When they had climbed to the third-floor landing they were both breathing heavily. The door of the flat had the number 17 nailed to it, the enamel 7 hanging askew. Again Grimes fussed with the key, then paused and turned to the detective. “Shouldn’t I be asking to see a search warrant or something?” he said.

Hackett did his slow smile. “Ah, that’s only in the pictures.” Still Grimes hesitated. The detective let his smile go cold. “It’s a murder investigation,” he said. “Your cooperation will be greatly appreciated, Mr. Grimes.”

Inside the flat the air was chilly. Hackett knew he was imagining it, yet he had a distinct sense of desolation in the atmosphere. He felt constrained, tentative, almost ashamed to be here. Places where the recently dead had lived always made him feel this way—he supposed it was a very unprofessional reaction. He remembered the first corpse he had dealt with. A tramp, it was, who had died in a doorway in a lane behind Clery’s department store on O’Connell Street. He had been a big fellow, not old, and there was no sign of how he had died. Hackett at the time was a uniformed rookie, not long out of Templemore. It was summer, and he was at the end of his beat when the early dawn came up, a slowly spreading grayish stain above the jagged black rooftops. The look of the corpse, the shabbiness of it, made him feel doubly alone and isolated, as he squatted there amid the smell of garbage, with scraps of paper blowing to and fro and making a scraping sound on the cobbles. An oversized seagull—gulls always seemed huge at that time of the morning—alighted on the rim of a nearby dustbin and watched him with wary speculation. The tramp was not long dead, and when Hackett put his hand inside the dirty old coat in search of some form of identification he felt as if he had reached not just inside the fellow’s clothes but under a flap of his still-warm flesh.
You’re too sensitive for that job you’re in,
his wife would tell him scoldingly.
You’ve too much heart
.

“It must be a trouble to you,” he said to Grimes, “losing a tenant.”

Grimes shrugged dismissively. “As swallows they come, as swallows they go, as the poet says.”

The flat consisted of one big room that had been divided in two by a thin plaster partition. In the front half there was a further subdivision where a galley kitchen was separated off behind another sheet of plasterboard. The sink contained crockery and a couple of blackened pots; a frying pan with congealed grease in it was set crookedly on the gas stove. On the small square table before the window in the main part of the room lay the remains of what must have been breakfast, or supper, maybe: tea things and a teapot, a smeared plate, a turnover loaf with two uneaten slices beside it on the breadboard. Hackett touched the bread: stale, but not gone hard yet.
The condemned man ate his last meal …
He thought again of the dead tramp huddled in that doorway behind Clery’s.

Grimes waited at the mantelpiece, fitting a cigarette into an ebony holder. “There’s a month’s rent owing,” he said thoughtfully. “I wonder what I can do about that.”

Hackett went into the back room. Single bed, unmade, with a hollow in the middle of the mattress; a rush-bottomed chair; a big mahogany wardrobe that must have been there since before the partitions were put up. A shirt with a soiled collar was draped over the back of the chair. On the floor beside the bed books were stacked in an untidy pile: Hemingway, Erle Stanley Gardner, Orwell’s
Homage to Catalonia
, a selected Yeats. Beside the books was a tin ashtray advertising Pernod, heaped high with crushed butts that gave off an acrid smell.