The Silver Swan

that more, of course, was something Dr. Kreutz would not understand. Now she pushed her cup away-it had a peculiar aftertaste, cloying and sickly sweet-and said that she must be going. When she stood up, however, she felt suddenly light in the head, and it seemed for a moment that she might fall over. The doctor was on his feet in a flash and holding her hand, and with his other hand under her elbow he led her to the sofa-that sofa-and lowered her gently onto the cushions and stood back, watching her, his head on one side and his lips set in that down-turned way that he had, which was the nearest he ever came to a smile.

'Rest,' he said softly. 'Rest now, my dear lady, my dear dear lady.'

She thought of all the women who had lain down there, naked and showing themselves off. She wondered what it would feel like to be exposed like that, not in front of a man, exactly, but a camera. And wondering that, she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

6

MAISIE HADDON-OR NURSE HADDON, WHICH WAS HOW SHE LIKED TO be known, in private as well as in public-had a soft spot for Quirke, and frequently assured him so, especially after a second or a third rum and black-currant cordial, which was her tipple. They had arranged to meet, as they usually did, in a murky little pub on a side street behind the Gaiety Theatre. They arrived simultaneously, he on foot and she in her open-topped miniature red sports car that always reminded him of a scuffed and slightly battered ladybird. She wore dark glasses with white frames, and was smoking a cigarette in an ebony holder. Despite the warmth of the day she sported a mink jacket and a long yellow chiffon scarf, one end of which was flung back dramatically over her right shoulder. She pulled in to the curb with a shriek of tires and the little car mounted the pavement and stopped and the engine gave a final, rivet-loosening roar before she switched it off.

'Howya, handsome,' she said, leaning over the low door and offering him a lace-gloved hand.

He bowed and brushed his lips against a bony knuckle, catching a sharp waft of her perfume. 'I tell you, Maisie,' he said, 'one day you'll end up like Isadora Duncan.'

She took up her handbag from the passenger seat and clambered out of the car. 'Who's she when she's at home?'

'Dancer. Her scarf got caught in the back axle of a sports car and broke her neck.'

'Jesus,' she said, 'what a way to go.'

They entered the pub. It was a Saturday afternoon and the usual rackety crowd was in. When Maisie paused on the threshold to scan the room through her white-framed specs a dozen heads lifted; there were few here who did not know who Nurse Haddon was. She walked to the bar with Quirke in her wake and perched herself on a high stool, smoothing her tight skirt over her knees with a demure little gesture that made Quirke smile. In his way he, too, had a soft spot for her, this preposterous creature. He wondered what age she was, exactly-it was impossible to tell from her looks or figure. Her big, square, countrywoman's face showed hardly a wrinkle, and her hair, if it was dyed, was blond to the roots, so far as he could see-he did not dare look too closely for Maisie was quick to anger and was said to have once knocked out cold a Garda detective who was trying to arrest her. It amused Quirke to think, not for the first time, that he was probably putting his professional reputation at grave risk by being seen with her, and in a public house, at that. For Maisie Haddon was the city's most notorious, most successful, and busiest back-street abortionist.

He ordered drinks, her rum and black, and a tomato juice for himself.

'Are you off the gargle?' she said, incredulous.

'Six months now.'

'Holy God.' She still had the accent, raw and flat, of wherever it was she hailed from, over in the west. 'Did you have a conversion, or what?' Their drinks arrived and she clinked the rim of her glass against his. 'Well, I hope you get a high place in Heaven.'

He offered her his cigarette case and flipped the lid of his lighter. She screwed up her mouth and blew smoke sideways, and touched the tip of a little finger delicately to one corner of her mouth and then to the other.

'So,' she said. 'What is it you're after?'

He pretended puzzlement. 'What do you mean?'

'I know you-you're always after something.'

'Only your company, Maisie.'

She flexed a skeptical eyebrow. 'Oh, sure.'

Maisie had spent two stretches in jail. The first time was twenty years before, when she had been charged with running a nursing home, so-called, where women with inconvenient pregnancies came in secret to have their babies, many of which were left for Maisie to dispose of, often in a bundle of swaddling on the side of a country road at dead of night. When her sentence was served she had promptly rented a room in Hatch Street and started in the abortion trade. Shortly afterwards her clinic, as she called it, had been raided by the Vice Squad and she had done another two-year stretch in Mountjoy. Released again, and undeterred, she had gone straight back to work. Maisie was the keeper of many secrets. She knew Malachy Griffin and claimed to have worked with him at the Holy Family hospital in the days when she was still a real nurse, a claim, Quirke reflected, that no doubt Malachy would not wish to hear too often or too loudly put about.

'How is business?' Quirke asked now.

'Never better.' She took a slug of her rum and fitted another of his cigarettes into her ebony holder. 'I tell you, Quirke, the women of this town must never have heard of a French letter.'

'Hard to come by.'

She cackled, and poked him in the chest with a forefinger. 'Hard to come by- that's a good one.' Her glass was empty already; he signaled to the barman for a refill. 'Anyway, they're not,' she said. 'I have a fellow brings them in by the suitcaseful through Holyhead. I offer them to my clients. 'Here,' I say, 'take a couple of dozen packets of them with you, for I don't want to see you here again for a good long while, and preferably never.' But will they take them?' She put on a whining tone. ''The priest will give out to me, Nurse. My fella won't hear of it, Nurse.' Bloody little fools.'

Quirke toyed with his glass. 'Ever come across a woman called Hunt?' he asked. 'Deirdre Hunt?'

She gave him an arch look. 'Oho,' she said. 'Here it comes.'

'She also called herself Laura Swan.'

She was still looking at him hard along one side of her nose.

'Do you know what it is, Quirke,' she said, 'but you're a terrible man.' Putting on a show of unwilling surrender, she rummaged in her handbag and brought out a dog-eared address book bound in leather. This was her famous little black book, which, as she declared frequently in her cups, she intended one day to sell to the People or the News of the World, to keep herself in comfort in her declining years. She flipped through the pages, reading off names under her breath. It was all show, Quirke knew: there was not a woman Maisie had treated, in the three decades and more in which she had been in business, whose name, address, and telephone number she could not recite from memory at a moment's notice. 'No,' she said, 'no Hunt. What was the other name-Swan? No Swan, either. Who is she?'

Quirke raised one shoulder an inch and let it fall again. 'Was,' he said.

'Ah. So that's the way it is.' She shut the address book with a slap and thrust it back into the depths of her bag. 'In that case, I certainly do not know and have never known any person or persons of that name or names. Right?' She finished her second drink and fairly banged the glass down on the bar.