Even the Dead (7 page)

“I don’t understand any of this,” he said, suddenly plaintive. “I don’t know what you’re saying to me, what you’re asking.”

“I’m sorry,” Hackett said. “I understand. We should leave you in peace.”

He glanced at Quirke, who nodded.

In peace, Corless thought. In peace.

The two men moved towards the door. Corless didn’t get up from where he was sitting. He had the impression that if he tried to stand he would fall back again, and slump into himself, like a half-filled sack.

The sea. The waves. The child with the sunlight behind him, featureless now.

*   *   *

As they came out into the street the heat hit them again, a smoky miasma, and for a second they could hardly breathe. Hackett consulted his watch. “The Holy Hour is past.” He nodded in the direction of a marble-fronted public house on the other side of the street. “That place looks cool enough, and we could do with something to sustain us.”

They crossed the road, dodging the traffic, and dived through the double swing doors into sanctuary, dim and tranquil. Quirke never ceased to marvel at the palatial grandeur of Dublin pubs. This one, with its big stained-glass window and pink marble counter, had a churchly aspect. They entered the wood-paneled snug and felt as if they were slipping into a vestry. Quirke longed for alcohol—a gin and tonic, say, with joggling ice cubes and a frosted mist down the side of the glass—but settled instead for soda water with a slice of lime; Hackett ordered a bottle of Bass. The barman too had an ecclesiastical air, being tall, emaciated, and of a mournful cast. He served them through a little square hatch, leaning down his monsignor’s long, gaunt face and taking their money as if it were a tithe.

“Corless, that poor man,” Hackett said. “I’ve never had time for him and his socialist mumbo jumbo, but you’d have to admire the way he took the news we brought him today.”

Quirke selected a cigarette from his silver case and lit up. It struck him again how pungent the smell of drink was when you weren’t drinking yourself. Hackett’s glass of beer had the reek of bilgewater.

The barman came with the change. “Isn’t that powerful weather,” he said in tones of mourning.

They drank their drinks, glad of the stillness of midafternoon. They seemed to be the only customers. A wireless was playing somewhere, an incomprehensible buzzing.

“Well,” Quirke said, “what do you think?”

“What do I think of what?”

Quirke knew this wasn’t a question; they had their rituals, he and Hackett. “Would Corless have enemies vengeful enough to kill his son? I can’t believe it. Nobody takes Sam Corless seriously except the Archbishop and a few Holy Joes like our old friend Mr. Costigan.”

Hackett chuckled. “Aye, he’s a godsend to the likes of Costigan. What would they do without each other? Laurel and Hardy.”

Joseph Costigan, a zealous Catholic of obscure origins and secretive intent, had cropped up in Quirke’s life at certain critical moments, to ill effect. Quirke was sure that Costigan, even though he had been a close associate of Quirke’s adoptive father, the late Judge Garret Griffin, had some years before sent that pair of thugs to kick the living daylights out of him, when he’d had the temerity to meddle in the murky affairs of the Knights of St. Patrick, the semi-secret society that Costigan seemed to run single-handed. Costigan was forever railing, in the newspapers and on the wireless, against Sam Corless and his tiny and surely harmless Socialist Left Alliance. No doubt he would be gratified to hear of Corless’s tragic loss, and would imply, or maybe even say outright, that his son’s death was God’s judgment and vengeance on the atheistic Samuel Corless.

“What will you do now?” Quirke asked.

“What’ll I do?” Hackett considered the question. “I’ll wait and see what the forensics boys have to say about the car. If it did have petrol poured over it and set alight, they’ll probably be able to say so, unless they make a bags of it, as they’re well capable of doing.” He drank the last of his beer in one long swig, and put down the glass and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “And what about you, Doctor?”

“Me? What about me?”

“How are you feeling, really? In yourself, like. Are you mended, do you think?”

“Well now,” Quirke said, with a wry smile, “that’s a large question. My head is better, certainly, or not as bad as it was, anyway. I’ve stopped seeing things, or I think I have. I mean, how would I know, if the things I’m seeing are convincing enough to seem real? I have the odd blank, the odd moment of separation from myself. ‘Absence seizures’ is what they’re called, so I’m told. It’s always comforting, to have a name to put to a condition.”

Hackett was only half listening, nodding to himself. “And how’s that girl of yours?” he asked.

For a moment Quirke was confused—did Hackett mean Phoebe or his sometime lover Isabel Galloway? It must be Phoebe, he decided. He hadn’t seen Isabel for a long time, and probably wouldn’t for another long time. He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. “Phoebe is very well, so far as I know,” he said. “She left the hat shop. She’s working for a doctor in Fitzwilliam Square—a psychiatrist.”

“Is that so?” Hackett said, leaning his head back and giving Quirke one of his large, slow stares. “A psychiatrist! Well now.”

It was impossible to know what he thought of this news. Quirke didn’t think Hackett would approve of Dr. Evelyn Blake, but on the other hand, perhaps he would. Quirke had been acquainted with the policeman for years and knew as little about him now as he had the first time they met. He wasn’t even sure where he lived. He knew he had a wife, and two grown sons who lived in England, was it, or America?

They rarely spoke of personal matters, he and Hackett, and when they did, each one kept safely to his side of the invisible barrier between them. Their friendship, and Quirke could not think what else to call it, was of a special, and limited, variety. This suited them both. They had been through half a dozen cases together; did this mean they constituted a duo, a team? There was something faintly absurd about the notion, and Quirke dismissed it. He had never been part of a team in his life, and it was too late to start now.

“Did I tell you I’m lodging with Malachy Griffin and his wife?” he said.

“You did,” Hackett answered. “You must be very comfortable there.”

Yes, Quirke told himself, that’s the word—
comfortable
. “I want to go back to work,” he said.

He hadn’t thought about work for a long time. He supposed it was Sinclair calling him in to look at the body of Leon Corless that had put the thought into his head. Anyway, he would have had to go back, sooner or later. Or had he imagined he was retiring? Quirke was never fully sure of what was going on inside him, and was forever surprising himself when decisions popped up that he had no knowledge of having made. But yes, yes, he would go back to work. Sinclair would be disappointed; Sinclair, he knew, had written him off long ago. That alone was sufficient reason to turn up on Monday morning at the Hospital of the Holy Family and lay claim to his former position, his former authority, to inhabit again his little domain. What else was there for him to do?

He stood up and went to the hatch and leaned down and spoke to the cadaverous barman. “I’ll take a gin and tonic, when you’re ready,” he said. “A double. Oh, and another bottle of Bass for my friend here.”

5

Ballytubber was one of those little coastal townlets that have no obvious reason for being where they are or, indeed, for being anywhere. It was situated some ten miles inland from the sea, sleeping peacefully in a fold between sandy hills. No major roads passed through or even near it. It wasn’t on the way to anywhere, except to a couple of other, similar towns. In the years immediately after the war it had enjoyed a brief boom as a summer resort, and a few well-off families from Gorey and Arklow, and even one or two from Dublin, had built holiday homes there. It had three pubs, one general grocery store, a rather lovely little Protestant church—that was how its parishioners liked to describe it, with muted, proprietorial satisfaction—but no matching facility for Catholics, a source of resentment and even, on occasion, communal tension. In the civil war, an ambush had taken place there, at the crossroads just north of the town, which had resulted in the shooting to death of a local young man, celebrated in song and story in many an after-hours session in the Ballytubber Arms or one of its sister establishments. Other than that one moment of blood-stained glory, nothing ever happened in Ballytubber, so Ballytubberians said, unsure whether in boast or lament.

Malachy Griffin was one of the Dublin grandees who had built a house in the town. It wasn’t really a house but a one-story wooden chalet, with a tarred roof and tongue-and-groove walls and a glassed-in porch that leaked in the winter and spread a smell of damp through the rooms behind it that even the hottest summer weather couldn’t eradicate. It had two bedrooms, one with a real double bed, while the other had a sort of large cot, with springs that jangled every time the sleeper in it stirred but that nevertheless had long ago lost their springiness.

When they arrived at the house, Phoebe attempted to show Lisa around, though Lisa was too distracted to pay attention. They went into the larger bedroom, but Lisa insisted she would take the smaller one. Phoebe said that would be ridiculous, since she would be the only occupant of the house, and in the end she reluctantly agreed, and carried her suitcase into the double-bedded room.

They had stopped at Mahon’s General Store, on the Wexford Road, to buy provisions, and while Lisa was unpacking, Phoebe stowed the butter, milk, and eggs in the mesh-fronted larder, a pan loaf in the bread bin, the tea in the tea canister. She put away slices of cooked ham wrapped in greaseproof paper, tomatoes, lettuce and spring onions, and a bag of assorted chocolate biscuits. She was sure they had forgotten something essential. She checked the bathroom for soap and other things, laid out clean towels, lit the geyser above the bath. She felt like a little girl again, playing house.

Wine! They should have bought wine, before they left the city. Too late now, for certainly they wouldn’t find any in Mahon’s. Anyway, she didn’t know if Lisa drank. It was only one of the very many things she didn’t know about Lisa.

They made tea, and sat at the kitchen table to drink it. An awkward silence fell, neither of them knowing what to say. There were ants in the sugar bowl.

“You’re so kind,” Lisa broke out at last. “I mean, here I am, a complete stranger, practically, and yet you lend me your house.”

“Well, it’s not mine. It belongs to my uncle. I used to live with him and my aunt. In fact, I lived with them until I was nineteen. I thought they were my parents, you see.”

“You thought—?”

Phoebe laughed. “Oh, it’s a complicated story. Maybe I’ll tell it to you one day.”

They were silent again; then Lisa asked timidly, “Does your uncle know I’m here?”

“No. But he wouldn’t mind if he did. His name is Griffin, Malachy Griffin.” She stopped. Something had flickered in Lisa’s eyes; had she recognized the name? “He used to be a doctor—I mean, he’s retired. He hardly comes here anymore, except to check on the place now and then. His first wife died some years ago.” She paused, and looked aside with a dreamy expression. “We used to have such times here. It seems like a world away, now.”

Yet again the silence fell. Lisa sat crouched over her tea. Despite all the activity of traveling, of buying the things at Mahon’s, of arriving at the house and unpacking, Lisa’s terror had not abated for a moment. When they had come into the house, first she had gone from window to window and peered out, though Phoebe could not think what she might be expecting to see—pursuers lurking in the shrubbery, potential attackers hiding behind tree trunks?

“Listen, Lisa,” she said, “I can see how frightened you are. You’re going to have to tell me what’s going on. What happened? Did someone do something to you? Why do you think you’re being followed?”

Lisa was gazing wide-eyed at the tabletop, so that it wasn’t clear if she had even been listening. Then she stirred herself, and sighed, and pushed away the half-drunk mug of tea.

“Someone was hurt,” she said, picking her way over the words as if they were so many stepping stones, slimed and treacherous. “It was someone I knew.”

“When? I mean, when was he hurt?”

“Last night.”

“Last
night
?”

“Yes.”

“Is he in hospital?”

“No.” A long pause. “No, he’s not in hospital. He died.”

Phoebe’s hand flew to her mouth.

“Died?”
she said in a whisper. “But how?”

“There was a car crash. He was the only one in the car. It ran into a tree and caught fire. That’s what they said on the news.”

“And this happened just last night?”

“Early this morning. I’d been with him. I ran away.”

Lisa was gazing at the table again, as if mesmerized. She’s in shock, Phoebe thought. “What do you mean, you ran away?”

“I can’t say any more. I shouldn’t even have told you this much.”

Phoebe remembered that there used to be a bottle of brandy somewhere in the house. She rose from the table and searched through the cupboards, then went out to the living room and searched there. At last she found the bottle, on a shelf behind the wireless set that no longer worked. There was only a drop of brandy left. She went back to the kitchen and got down a wine glass and emptied the bottle into it and set it in front of Lisa. “Drink that,” she said.

Lisa frowned. Fear had filled her with helpless bewilderment; she was like a sleepwalker who had been wakened too suddenly. “What is it?” she asked.

“It’s brandy. It’s only a little—look. Drink it, now.”

Phoebe went to the sink and filled a glass of water from the tap. Ballytubber water was the best and sweetest in the county, everyone said so. There used to be a holy well outside the town, on the road to Enniscorthy; sick people and cripples had come to it from all over, in the old days, and maybe they still did. Also in the town there had been a famous bonesetter; people came to him, too, women especially, not just from round here but from Dublin, and even London. There was a world—there were worlds!—beyond the one she knew, the world of the city, where life was supposed to be so broad and sophisticated but in fact was narrower, in its way, than the life of this little town. There were old, secret ways here, stretching back to times before history began. It was a place of ritual, of sacrifice and slaughter.