Elegy for April (26 page)

 

 

 

 

 

18

 

THE TELEPHONE WAS RINGING IN THE FLAT; QUIRKE COULD HEAR it as he came up the stairs. The sound provoked in him its usual, vague dread. He did not quicken his step; whoever it was could wait or call back. He plodded; he was tired. The phone was still ringing when he walked into the living room. He took off his overcoat and hung it up, and hung up his hat, too. He thought of going into the bedroom and crawling under the blankets. Still the thing went on, shrilling and shrilling, and there was nothing for it but to pick up the receiver. It was Phoebe. “What’s the matter,” he asked, “are you all right?” She said she had called him earlier, much earlier, in the middle of the night, in fact, and that she had been worried when he did not answer. Had he got home from the Russell all right? He said he had. He did not tell her about going out again, about the party at Jury’s; he did not tell her about Isabel Galloway. “ Are
you
all right?” she asked. He put up a hand and rubbed his eyes. Then she told him about the watcher in the street.

 

HE MIGHT HAVE WALKED TO HADDINGTON ROAD—IT WAS TEN minutes away, across the canal— but he drove instead, the car
seeming to him even more sullen and obstinate than usual. Phoebe was wearing the silk dressing gown that had once belonged to Sarah. She said she had probably imagined it, that shadowy presence in the lamplight.

 

“When was this?” he asked.

 

“I told you, in the middle of the night. It must have been— I don’t know— three o’clock, four?”

 

“Why were you up so late?”

 

She went to the fireplace and took a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from the mantelpiece. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. She blew a quick stream of smoke at the ceiling. “I often can’t sleep.”

 

He took off his overcoat and put it on the back of a chair. “I see you’re smoking again,” he said.

 

She held the cigarette away from her and looked at it as if she had not noticed it until then. “Not really,” she said. “Just once in a while. Good for the nerves, they say.”

 

He came to her and took the packet from her hand and looked at it. “Passing Cloud,” he said. “Your old brand.”

 

She puffed again and grimaced. “They’re so old they’re stale.”

 

He helped himself to one and lit it with her lighter. The gas fire was muttering in the grate; they sat down on either side of it.

 

“So,” Quirke said, “tell me.”

 

“Tell you what?”

 

She was smoothing the silk drape of the dressing gown over her knee. Not a dressing gown— what was it called? A tea gown? Sarah used to go and put it on after dinner, even when there were guests. He pictured her leaning back in the chair by the fireplace in the house in Rathgar, while the talk went on and Mal fussed with the drinks. Everything had seemed simpler, then.

 

He thought of Isabel Galloway, in her peignoir.

 

Phoebe was pale, and her temples seemed sunken, as if something had been pressing on them.

 

“You’re frightened,” Quirke said. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”

 

She picked up an ashtray from the grate and rolled the tip of the cigarette on it, sharpening it, like a pencil. “Do you want anything?” she asked. “Tea? Coffee?” He did not reply, only sat watching her. She gave a vexed shrug. “I just thought there was somebody down there, standing by the streetlamp.”

 

“Who do you think it was?”

 

“I don’t know. I told you, I’m not even sure there was anyone— I may have imagined it.”

 

“But it’s not the first time, is it?”

 

She compressed her lips and looked down into her lap. After a moment she gave a rapid shake of her head. “No,” she said, so quietly he could hardly hear her. “I thought there was someone there before, in the same place.”

 

“When was that?”

 

“I don’t know— the other night.”

 

“You didn’t call the Guards?”

 

“No. What would I have told them? You know what they’re like; they never believe anything.”

 

He thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll talk to Hackett.”

 

“Oh, no, Quirke, please don’t,” she said wearily. “I don’t want him poking about here.”

 

“He can put someone on the street, a plainclothes man, to keep watch, for a night or two. If there’s anyone, they can collar him.”

 

She laughed. “Oh, yes, the way they did with—”

 

She looked away. That other nightwalker who had watched her window, no one had collared him, until it was too late. He reached for the ashtray, and she handed it to him, and he stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette. “You’re right,” he said, “they are stale.”

 

She stood up and went out to the kitchen, where he heard her
filling a kettle. “I’m going to make a cup of Bovril,” she called to him. “Do you want some?”

 

Bovril. That brown taste, the very taste of Carricklea Industrial School. “No,” he called back. “I suppose you wouldn’t have a drink, would you?” She pretended not to hear.

 

When she returned, carrying her mug, he had risen from the chair and was standing by the window, looking out. The air in the street was gray with frost-smoke, and there was ice on the windscreens of the cars parked on the other side of the road. The dusty smell of the cretonne curtain was a smell from the far past. “Have you settled in here?” he asked.

 

“I suppose so,” she said. “It’s not as nice as Harcourt Street, but it will do.” She was thinking how in any room Quirke always, eventually, headed for the window, looking for a way out. She sat down by the fireplace again, her knees pressed together and her shoulders hunched, clutching the steaming mug in both her hands. She was cold.

 

“You could come and live with me, you know,” Quirke said.

 

He turned from the window. She was staring at him. “In Mount Street?”

 

“I don’t think there’d be room there. I could buy a house.”

 

Still she stared. Had Rose spoken to him? Was the thing decided, already— was this what he meant, that he would buy a house and the three of them would live in it together?

 

“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I don’t know what to say. It would be lovely, of course, but—”

 

“But?”

 

She stood up, holding the mug; everything seemed to be happening at half speed. “You can’t just ask me something like that and expect me to answer straightaway,” she said, “as if it was nothing more than— than—I don’t know. I have to think. I’d have to … I don’t know.”

 

He turned to the window again. “Well,” he said, “it was just a thought.”

 

“A
thought
?” she cried. “Just a
thought
?” She put the mug down on the mantelpiece with a bang. “I don’t know why I drink this stuff,” she said, “it’s disgusting.”

 

Quirke crossed the room and took up his coat and his hat. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

 

“Yes, all right. Thank you for coming.”

 

He nodded, pinching the dents on either side of the crown of his hat. “I’ll always come,” he said. “You know that.”

 

“Yes, I know. But please, Quirke”— she lifted a hand—”please don’t talk to Hackett. I really don’t want you to.”

 

“All right. But the next time there’s someone there you’ll call me straightaway, won’t you?”

 

She did not reply. She had called him straightaway, and he had not been there. She wanted him to go, now, and yet did not. She would have to tell him. He walked to the door. “Quirke,” she said, “wait. I lied to you.”

 

He stopped, turned. “Yes? About what?”

 

She swallowed. She felt colder now in her thin silk wrap. “When you asked me about April, if she knew anyone who was— who was black.” He waited. “There’s a friend, a friend we all have, he’s Nigerian. A student at the College of Surgeons.”

 

“What’s his name?”

 

“Patrick Ojukwu.”

 

“I see.”

 

“I suppose he might be the one that the old woman saw with April, in the house. It’s possible.” She was watching him. “You don’t seem surprised.”

 

“Do I not?” He stood there, looking at her, fingering his hat. “This fellow— what did you say he’s called?”

 

“Patrick. Patrick Ojukwu.”

 

“What was he to April?”

 

“What I said, a friend, that’s all.” He turned again to the door. “You’re going to go to Hackett, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re going to tell him about Patrick.”

 

Again he stopped, again he turned and looked at her. “If there’s someone watching the house, we’ll have to find out who it is.”

 

“I’m sure there’s no one; I’m sure I imagined it.” She went to the mantelpiece and took another cigarette from the packet and lit it. “Don’t go to Hackett,” she said, looking at the fireplace. “Please.”

 

“It was you who came to me about April Latimer,” he said. “You can’t expect me to give it up now.”

 

ON THE WAY TO THE HOSPITAL HE STOPPED AT THE POLICE STATION in Pearse Street and asked at the desk to see Inspector Hackett, but he was not there. The carrot-haired young Guard— what was his name?— said the Inspector would not be back until the afternoon. Quirke’s headache was beating a slow drum between his temples. Outside the station a Guard was standing in front of the Alvis and writing in a notebook with the stub of a pencil. He was large and not young, and had a bony, mottled face. He pointed a finger at the windscreen. “You’ve no tax or insurance showing there,” he said.

 

Quirke told him the car was new, that it was taxed and insured, and that the papers were on their way, which was not true; he had got the forms but had not yet filled them out. “I’m a doctor,” he said.

 

“Are you?” the Guard said, looking him up and down. “Well, I’m a Garda sergeant, and I’m telling you to get your insurance and your tax disks and display them on your windscreen.” He shut his notebook and put it into the top pocket of his tunic and sauntered away.

 

 

 

WHEN QUIRKE GOT TO THE HOSPITAL THERE WAS A MESSAGE WAITing for him at Reception. Celia Latimer had telephoned. She wished to speak to him, and asked if he would come out to Dun Laoghaire. He crumpled the note and put it into the pocket of his overcoat. He felt bad; he was raw all over, his skin crawled, and there was a sour burning in his belly. Yet it was strange, he never seemed more surely himself than when he was hungover like this. It brought out a side of him, the Carricklea side, splenetic and vindictive, that he did not like but had a sneaking admiration for. He wanted to know who it was that had been spying on his daughter. He was in the mood to crack someone’s head.

 

In the office the telephone rang. It was someone whose voice he did not recognize. “I’m a friend of your daughter, a friend of Phoebe’s.” The line was bad, and Quirke had to ask him twice to repeat what he had said. “I’m just round the corner; I can be there in a minute.”

 

He was tiny, an intricate scale model of someone much larger. He had red hair and a stark-white, freckled face, sharp and thin, like the face of an Arthur Rackham fairy. “Jimmy Minor,” he said, coming forward with a hand extended. His plastic coat crackled and squeaked and gave off a faint, sharp, rubbery stink.

 

“Yes,” Quirke said, “Phoebe has mentioned you.”

 

“Has she?” He seemed surprised and a little suspicious.

 

Quirke searched on the desk and came up with a packet of Senior Service, but Minor had already produced his own Woodbines. The top joints of the first and second fingers of his right hand were the color of fumed oak.

 

“So,” Quirke said, “what can I do for you, Mr. Minor?”

 

What a name.

 

“I’m a reporter,” Minor said. “
Evening Mail
.” Quirke would not have needed to be told; the cheap fags and the plastic coat were as telling as a press badge in his hatband. “I knew— I mean, I
know
April Latimer.”

 

“Yes?” There was a faint tremor in his hands. He reminded Quirke of someone, though for the moment he could not think who.

 

“I know you know she’s missing.”

 

“Well, I know no one has heard from her for two or three weeks. She’s sick, isn’t she? She sent in a sick cert, here, to the hospital.”

 

The little man pounced. “Have you seen it?”

 

“The cert? No. But I know she sent it.”

 

“Did she sign it? Is her handwriting on it?”

 

“I told you, I didn’t see it.” He did not care for this doll-like little fellow; there was something too vehement about him, he was too pushy, and sly, too. He realized who it was he reminded him of— Oscar Latimer, of course. “Tell me— Jimmy, is it? Tell me, Jimmy, what do you think is going on with April?”

 

Instead of answering, Minor stood up and in his bantam strut walked with his cigarette to the window of the dissecting room. Beyond the glass the light was a baleful, ice-white glare, and a porter in a dirty green house coat was halfheartedly dragging a mop back and forth over the gray-tiled floor. Minor was staring at the dissection table; there was a cadaver there, covered with a plastic sheet. He glanced back over his shoulder at Quirke. “You keep them here, just like this, the bodies?”