“And the accent?”
“Dublin.”
“And the second one, who came up behind you?”
“Him I didn’t see at all,” Sinclair said. He lifted his good hand to touch the aching place behind his ear. “Felt him, though.”
Quirke offered Sinclair a cigarette but he said he would prefer one of his own. “In my jacket, in the locker there.”
Quirke brought the packet of Gold Flake and held out the flame of his lighter.
“The one on the phone,” Hackett said, “you had no idea what he meant by ‘other people’s business’? What did he say, exactly?”
Sinclair was growing tired of what felt like an interrogation, and besides, the effect of Nurse Bunny’s magic purple philter was wearing off. “I can’t remember,” he said shortly. “I thought it was just some joker playing tricks.”
The detective glanced at his bandaged hand. “Some trick, though,” he said.
An old man in one of the beds opposite began to cough, making a noise like that of a suction pump hard at work in some particularly deep and viscous sump.
“Was there no one around, when these two buckos tackled you?” Hackett asked.
“I saw no one. When I woke up there was a tramp there, a wino, trying to get my wallet.”
“You still had your wallet?” The detective looked surprised. “The other two hadn’t taken it?”
“They took nothing. Except my finger, of course.”
“So there was this tramp,” Quirke said, “that’s all?”
The old man had stopped coughing and was gasping for breath. No one seemed to be paying any heed to him.
“There was a girl,” Sinclair said.
“A girl?”
“On the corner, waiting for business. It was her that phoned for the ambulance.”
“What was her name?” Hackett asked.
“She didn’t say.” One r and an i. He wished she had taken the fiver he had offered her, the whore with the heart of gold.
The two men left shortly after that, and a nurse came to look at the ancient cougher opposite, and then a doctor was fetched and the curtain was pulled around the old man’s bed and everyone else lost interest.
He fell into a restless doze and dreamed of being chased down an endless broad street in the dark by unseen pursuers. Teri with an i was there, too, standing on the corner by the railings in her little black hat and yet at the same time somehow keeping pace with him as he ran, chatting to him, the pennies in her handbag jingling.
It was Bunny the nurse who put a hand on his shoulder and woke him, telling him he had another visitor-“You’re fierce popular, so you are.” His arm had gone numb but the hand at the end of it was throbbing worse than ever. The curtain was no longer around the bed opposite, and the old man was no longer in it. How long had he been asleep? The nurse moved back and Phoebe Griffin stepped forward tentatively, with a pained and sympathetic smile. “Quirke told me what happened,” she said. “You poor thing.”
He was not glad to see her. He was tired and dazed and in pain and wished to be left alone, to deal with himself and sort out his thoughts. That fitful sleep had only served to bring home to him more sharply how dreamlike and implausible all this was-the abusive phone call, the attack in the street, his lost finger, this bed, that old man dying in the bed across the way, and now Phoebe Griffin with her jittery smile and her handbag clasped to her breast and her hat that reminded him of the one the whore had worn. “I’m all right,” he said gruffly, forcing a smile of his own and struggling to raise himself on his elbow.
“But your finger,” Phoebe said, “… why?”
“I can only tell you what I told Quirke: I don’t know.” Oh, he was tired, very, very tired. “How are you?”
She shrugged that aside. “I’m all right, of course. But you-my God!”
He sank back against the pillows. He was thinking again of the infirmary at Newtown school, and of his mother at her lavish weeping and his father standing back looking bored. He had believed for a while that he was falling in love with Phoebe Griffin, and now the awful realization that he must have been mistaken clanged in him like a cracked bell. At once, of course, he felt a rush of tender concern for her; had he been able he would have taken her in his arms and rocked her like a baby.
“You were good to come,” he said weakly, trying for another smile.
She was still leaning over him, but now she stiffened and drew back an inch. She too was seeing the realization that had come to him; he saw her seeing it, and he was sorry.
“Well, why wouldn’t I come!” she exclaimed, with a breathily unsteady little laugh. She hesitated a moment, then sat down on the metal chair where Quirke had sat. “You needn’t tell me about it, if you don’t want to. It must have been dreadful.”
“I can’t remember much.”
“That’s good, I’m sure. The mind protects itself, by forgetting.”
“Yes.” Was she thinking, he wondered, of the things that she, for her part, needed to be protected against remembering? He knew so little about her-how could he have thought he loved her? Again he felt a hot rush of tenderness and pity. What was he to do with her? How was he to be rid of her? “I spoke to Dannie,” she said.
This brought a cold stab of alarm that he could not quite account for. “Oh?” he said. The thought of Phoebe and Dannie in communication, without him present, was unsettling. How did Phoebe come to have Dannie’s number, even?
“I hope it wasn’t a mistake,” Phoebe said. She had caught his look. “I thought she’d want to know.”
“It’s fine,” he said, “fine.” He looked away distractedly. “What did she say?”
“She was upset, of course. And of course she was baffled, as we all are.”
“Yes. She gets… excited.”
“I know.”
There was a pause. The hubbub in the ward had been steadily growing as the morning advanced, and by now they might have been conversing on the corner of a busy city street. It always fascinated him, the noises that hospitals made-for it seemed as if the place itself were producing all this clamor, this ceaseless buzz of talk, these distant hortatory calls and unsourced crashes, as if whole drawersful of cutlery were being dropped on the tiles.
“You don’t think,” Phoebe said tentatively, “… you don’t think this attack had something to do with Dannie’s brother’s death?”
He stared at her. That was exactly what he thought, although until this moment he had not known that he was thinking it. “How?” he said. “What connection could there be?”
“I don’t know.” Her hands were in her lap, the two sets of fingers plucking at each other, making him think of underwater creatures meeting and mating. “Only it seemed so odd, that day, on Howth Head…”
“What seemed odd?”
“I don’t know-I don’t know what I mean. I just felt there was something-something neither of us knew, you or me.” She looked at him. “David, who was it that killed her brother? Do you know?”
He said nothing. He was struck less by the question than by the plangent way she spoke his name. He should never have let himself become even this much involved with her. It was bad enough to be burdened with Dannie Jewell and her problems; now somehow in addition he had acquired this second, troubled girl.
Bright-faced Bunny arrived then to take his temperature. Phoebe she pointedly ignored. “I hope you’re not letting yourself get overexcited,” she said to Sinclair, her bright look marred by a sour little smile.
When the nurse had gone the two of them were left at a loss, like a pair of strangers who had been thrust briefly into intimate contact and now did not quite know how to disengage and step back and reinstate a proper distance.
“I should go,” Phoebe said. “The nurse is right, I’m sure you’re tired. I’ll come again, though, if you like.”
He caught the faint plea in those last words, but ignored it. “I’ll be out in a day or two,” he said. “Maybe even
