Christine Falls

her stockings, which were still grayly wet at heel and toe, and in the other her high-heeled slingback shoes; Quirke’s corduroy trousers were draped over her arm. “What are you doing here?” she said.

Carrington gave her back a baleful look. “Mr. Quirke telephoned me,” he said. It came out flat and ineffectual- sounding. He dropped his voice to a huskier level. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

“Oh, will you, now.”

“Please, Phoebe,” he said to her, in a brusque, reproving murmur.

Quirke had positioned himself by the fireplace again and was regarding each in turn, like a spectator at a tennis match. He said:

“I’d put her in a taxi, if I were you, old boy. Won’t go down too well chez Griffin when you pull up in the old roadster at three in the morning with Honoria Glossop here slumped beside you drunk and singing.”

Phoebe gave him a quick, sly, complicitous smile.

“Come on,” Carrington said to Phoebe, his voice shrill again and a little desperate, “put on your shoes.”

But Phoebe was already putting them on, standing unsteadily storklike on one leg with the other crossed and supported on her knee, her face going through contortions of discomfort and vexedness as she worked her foot into the wetly resistant leather. Carrington took off his overcoat and laid it over her shoulders, and Quirke despite himself was touched by the tender solicitude of the gesture. Where was it Carrington was from-Kildare? Meath? Rich land down there, rich heritage. Probably when he had played at the law for a few years he would return happily to tend the ancestral acres. True, he was young now, but that would be remedied presently. There were, Quirke considered, worse choices that Phoebe could make.

“Conor,” he said. The couple stopped and glanced back in unison, two clear, young, expectant faces. Quirke lifted an admonishing finger. “You should fight them,” he said.

19

QUIRKE HAD ARRANGED TO MEET BARNEY BOYLE AT BAGGOT STREET bridge. They strolled along the towpath where Quirke had walked with Sarah the Sunday that seemed so long ago now. It was morning, and a vapid sun was struggling to shine through the November mist, and there was a ghostly silence everywhere, as if the two men were alone in all the city. Barney wore a black overcoat that reached almost to his heels; beltless and buttonless, it swirled about his short fat legs like a heavy cloak as he toddled along. Outdoors, in daylight, he had a slightly dazed and bashful air. He said it was a long time since he had seen the world in the morning, and that in the interval there had been no improvement at all that he could make out. He coughed raucously. “Too much fresh air for you,” Quirke said. “Here, have a cigarette.” He struck a match and Barney leaned forward and cupped a babyish fist around the flame, his fingertips touching the back of Quirke’s hand, and Quirke was struck as he always was by this peculiar little act of intimacy, one of the very few allowed among men; it was rumored, he recalled, that Barney had an eye for the boys. “Ah, Jesus,” Barney breathed, blowing a trumpet of smoke into the mist, “that’s better.” Barney, the people’s poet and playwright of the working class, in fact lived, despite those rumors of queer leanings, with his long-suffering wife, a genteel water-colorist and something of a beauty, in a venerable white-walled house in leafy Donnybrook. But he still had his contacts in the old, bad world that had produced him. Quirke wanted information and Barney had been, as he put it, asking around the place.

“Oh, all the brassers knew Dolly Moran,” he said. Quirke nodded. Brassers were whores, he assumed, but how? Brass nails, rhyming with tails, or was it something to do with screws? Barney’s slang seemed all of his own making. “She was the one they went to when they were in trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“Up the pole-you know.”

“And she’d fix it for them? Herself?”

“They say she was a dab hand with the knitting needle. Didn’t charge, either, apparently. Did it for the glory.”

“Then how did she live?”

“She was well provided for. That’s the word, anyway.”

“Who by?”

“Party or parties unknown.”

Quirke frowned ahead into the mist.

“Look at them fuckers,” Barney said, stopping. Three ducks were paddling through the sedge, uttering soft quacks of seeming complaint. “God, I hate them yokes.” He brightened. “Did I ever tell you the one about my Da and the ducks?”

“Yes, Barney, you did. Many times.”

Barney pouted. “Oh, well, excuse me.” He had finished his cigarette. “Will we go for a pint?” he said.

“For God’s sake, Barney, it’s eleven o’clock in the morning.”

“Is it? Jesus, we better hurry up, then.”

They went to the 47 on Haddington Road. They were the only customers at that hour. The stale stink of last night’s cigarette smoke still hung on the sleepy air. The barman in shirtsleeves and braces leaned on his elbows on the bar reading the sports pages of yesterday’s Independent. Barney ordered a bottle of porter and a ball of malt to chase it. The porter reek and the stinging scent of the whiskey made Quirke’s nostrils flinch.

“And the pair that came after me,” he said, “did you manage to find out anything about them?”

Barney lifted his baby’s little red mouth from the rim of his glass and wiped a fringe of sallow froth from his upper lip. “The one with the nose sounds like Terry Tormey, brother of Ambie Tormey’s that used to be with the Animal Gang.”

Quirke looked at him. “Ambie?”

“Short for Ambrose-don’t ask me.”

“And the other one?”

“Name of Callaghan-is it Callaghan? No: Gallagher. Bit slow, not the full shilling. Dangerous, though, when he gets going. If it’s the same fellow.”

Now he lifted the whiskey glass with a dainty flourish, a stiff little finger stuck out, and drank off the whiskey in one gulp, grimaced, sucked his teeth, set down the glass, and looked at the barman. “Aris, mo bhuachailin,” he said. Slow-moving, mute, the barman poured another go of the amber liquor into a pewter measure and emptied it, tinkling, into the tumbler. The two watched in silence the little ceremony, and Quirke paid. Barney told the barman to leave the bottle. He said, “I’d rather a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy,” and gave Quirke a quick, shy, sideways glance; by now all Barney’s jokes were secondhand. The thought came to Quirke: He’s Falstaff grown inconvenient, which did not, he knew, make himself the king. He ordered what was called a coffee: hot water and a dollop of tarry syrup from a square bottle: Irel, the Irish Coffee! He stirred into the brew three heaping spoonfuls of sugar. What am I doing here? he asked himself, and Barney, as if he had read his mind, turned on him a quizzical eye and said, in his Donnybrook voice: “Bit out of your depth here, aren’t you, Quirke? Terry Tormey and his loony pal, that crowd-Dolly Moran that got murdered. What are you up to?”

IT WAS ANOTHER MISTY MORNING WHEN QUIRKE IN HIS BLACK COAT and carrying his hat stepped out of the front door of the house in Mount Street and encountered Detective Inspector Hackett, also hatted and in his policeman’s gabardine, loitering on the footpath, smoking a cigarette. At the sight of the policeman, with his big flat face and deceptively affable smile, Quirke’s heart gave a guilty joggle. Three young nuns on high black bicycles went past, three sets of shrouded legs churning demurely in unison. The wettish morning air reeked of smoke and the fumes of car exhaust. It was winter, Quirke gloomily reflected, and he was on his way to cut up corpses.

“Good morning Mr. Quirke,” the detective said heartily, dropping the last of his cigarette and squashing it under his boot. “I was just passing, and thought I might catch you.”

Quirke descended the steps with measured tread, putting on his hat. “It’s half past eight,” he said, “and you were just passing.”

Hackett’s smile broadened into a lazy grin. “Ah, sure, I’ve always been an early riser.”