The Silver Swan

'Kreutz,' Billy said. He spelled it.

'Doesn't sound Indian to me.'

Billy looked as if this had not occurred to him. But he answered nothing, only nodded once and went out, shutting the door softly behind him. For a long moment the inspector stood motionless; then slowly he sat down. He took a pencil from a cracked mug on the desk and in the looping, rounded handwriting that had not changed since he was in fourth class he wrote out the name on the back of a manila envelope: Kreutz.

14

PHOEBE HAD NOT SEEN LESLIE WHITE AGAIN AFTER THAT AFTERNOON in her flat when they had gone to bed together; nor had she telephoned him. Yet the thought of him haunted her. She had only to close her eyes to see his long, pale body suspended above her in the velvet dimness of her mind. Half a dozen times at least she had picked up the telephone and begun to dial his number but had made herself put the receiver down again. Was she in love with him? The notion was preposterous-it almost made her laugh. She cursed herself for her foolishness, yet there he was, the memory of him, the image of him, trailing her everywhere like that other phantom watcher she was convinced was following her in the streets. This was the state of mind she was in-on edge, bewildered, caught up in a tangle of half memories and weird fancies-when she stopped that night on the pavement in the grayish dark of eleven o'clock and peered at the crumpled figure on the steps.

Her first thought was to turn and flee. Then she saw who it was. She hesitated. She was sure he was dead, lying there like that, like something broken. Why did you come here? she wanted to ask him. And what was she to do? The Garda station was not far: should she go there now, straightaway, summon help? The street was deserted. For a moment she was back again in the car on the headland with the steel blade against the vein that was beating in her throat and that maddened creature gasping foul endearments in her ear. Her hands were shaking. Why did you come to my door, why? She held her breath and forced herself to take a step forward. She knew instinctively he would not want her to call the Guards. She reached out a hand and touched his shoulder. He flinched, then groaned. Not dead, then; she was conscious of a fleeting pang of regret. Her fright was abating. Perhaps he was only drunk.

'Leslie,' she said softly-how strange it felt to say his name!-'Leslie, what is it, what happened to you?' With another, long-drawn groan he lifted his head and tried to focus on her, licking his swollen lips. She drew back with a gasp. 'My God-have you been in an accident?'

His face was so badly battered she would hardly have recognized it. The narrow gleam of his eyes between the puffed-out lids seemed to her devilish, as if there were someone else crouched inside him, someone different, peering furiously out. 'Get me inside,' he muttered hoarsely. 'Get me inside.'

It was a grim coincidence that in the film she had been to see, a violent tale about the French Resistance, there had been a scene in which a young woman, a member of the Maquis, had helped a wounded English soldier out of a burning building. Draping his arm over her shoulders, the dauntless girl, scornful of falling rafters and blazing floors, had walked the Tommy with unlikely ease and dispatch out into the night, where a band of her comrades was waiting to receive them both with cheers. Now Phoebe learned just how heavy a weight an injured man could be. By the time she got to the fourth floor, with him clinging to her and her arm supporting him about his waist, she had an agonizing ache across her back and her face was dripping sweat. In the flat she kicked the door shut behind them and they hobbled to the sofa and fell down on it together in a scramble, and his right knee bashed her left knee and they both cried out in pain simultaneously.

When she was able to stand upright at last she limped into the kitchen and found the gin bottle in the cupboard and poured a quarter of a tumblerful and brought it back to him. He took a greedy swig, wincing as the liquor hit his broken lips. She busied herself finding a cushion for his head and helping him to stretch his legs out on the sofa, not only in an effort to make him comfortable but also to avoid having to look directly at his bashed and bleeding face. When she bent over him she could feel the heat from his bruises. He finished the gin and let the glass fall to the carpet, where it rolled in a half circle, drunkenly. She felt that she was about to cry, but stopped herself. Leslie put his head back against the cushion and closed his eyes and lay there breathing with his mouth open. She hoped he would not go to sleep, for she did not want to be alone in the room with him, and for a moment she even considered slapping his face to keep him awake, but she could not bear the thought of even touching those terrible bruises. All sorts of things crowded together in her mind, a jumble of random thoughts, jagged and senseless. She must get control of herself, she must. She rose and went to her handbag for her cigarettes, lit two, and fitted one between Leslie's lips. He mumbled something from the side of his mouth, blowing a bubble of bloodied spittle, but did not open his eyes. She stood over him, smoking nervously, an elbow clutched in a palm.

After a while he began to speak, with his head thrown back against the cushion and his eyes still closed, and slurring his words. There had been a gang of them, he said, three at least. They had set on him in a laneway beside the College of Surgeons. They must have been following him since he left the Stag's Head, where he had been drinking with a pal. One of them had stuck a solid rubber ball into his mouth to gag him; then he had been hustled into a doorway down the lane and they had gone to work on him with fists and some kind of sticks, or bats. Not a word had been spoken. He did not know who they were, or why they were beating him. But they had known who he was.

They had known who he was. And at once she thought: Quirke.

She wanted to ask why he had come to her, and he read her mind and said hers was the nearest place he could think of, and anyway he had been on the way here when his attackers caught up with him. He closed his swollen eyelids. 'Christ,' he said, 'I'm tired,' and fell asleep at once.

She did not believe he had been on his way here. She believed very few of the things he said. But what did it matter, truth or lies-he was so hurt, so hurt.

She went and sat in an armchair by the fireplace, and for a long time kept a silent vigil there. She recalled the night two years previously when she had been brought to see Quirke in the Mater Hospital; he, too, had been beaten up by people he did not know and for reasons that were, so he claimed, beyond him. He had tried to convince her he had fallen down a set of steps but she had known he was lying. Now she was certain it was he who had set those fellows onto Leslie. Why? To warn him to keep away from her? And it was Quirke, too, who had been watching her, and following her, snooping into her life, she was convinced of it. She looked at her knuckles: they were white. Would that man-she did not permit herself to call Quirke her father, even, or especially, in her own mind-would he never leave her be, would he continue to interfere in her life and what she did, ruining things, blackening things, soiling all he touched? She hated him with passion, and loved him, too, bitterly.

She must have fallen asleep, for when Leslie spoke-how much time had passed?-she started up in the chair in fright. He said her name, weakly. She went to him and before she knew what she was doing-was she still thinking of Quirke?-she had fallen to her knees beside the sofa and taken his hand in both of hers. The knuckles were horribly grazed; two of the nails were broken and bleeding. His eyes were open and he was looking at her. He licked his dry and swollen lips. 'Listen, Phoebe,' he said, 'I want you to do something for me.' He tried to pull himself up against the cushion and grimaced in pain. 'There's a man, a doctor. I want you to go to him. He'll give you something for me, some medicine. I need it.'

'Who is he?'

'His name is Kreutz.' He spelled it for her. 'He has a place in Adelaide Road, opposite the hospital. There's a plaque on the railing, with his name.'

'Do you want me to go now?'

'Yes. Now.'

'But it's-I don't know-it's the middle of the night.'

'He'll be there. He lives on the premises.' He made a rattling sound in his