The Silver Swan

'How can I tell you?'

'You were the second-last person to see her alive. Unless…'

'Unless what?' He would not reply, and looked aside. 'Unless,' she said, 'I was the last? My God, Quirke. My God.' In a strange movement, like a participant in a ritual, she folded her arms before her on the table and laid her forehead down on them and rolled her head from side to side slowly, her body swaying. Despite everything, he had an urge to walk forward and place his hand on the nape of her neck, so pale, so vulnerable. When, after a time, she raised her head again he saw that she was weeping, though she seemed unaware of it, and brushed the tears from her cheeks with a distracted gesture. 'Tell me what happened,' she said, in a new, hollow voice.

Quirke, his thirst raging on, filled the cup again, drank again. 'What happened when?'

'With Leslie. With Billy Hunt.'

'He was in my daughter's flat-'

'Who was?'

'Leslie.'

'What was he doing in your daughter's flat?'

'I suspect it was the only place he could think to go.'

'Why, what was the matter?'

'A man he knew was murdered.'

She swiveled on the seat to stare at him. Her tears had stopped. 'What man?'

'Kreutz. Leslie's pal. He called himself a spiritual healer. He also took compromising pictures of his women clients, though mostly, it seems, with their consent, or more than consent.'

'They were the photographs I found?'

'I imagine so. When Leslie happened on them, he began to blackmail Kreutz.'

'What would Leslie have wanted from him?'

'Money, of course.' He paused. 'Drugs. You knew of Leslie's drug habit, didn't you? His morphine habit? You knew he was an addict.'

'An addict? I knew he took stuff, anything he could get his hands on. He had'-she smiled, sadly, bitterly-'he had a craving for experience. That's what he used to say, 'I have a craving for experience, Kate, that can't be satisfied.' Is that what it means, being an addict?'

'Did you take morphine?'

She seemed to have known the question was coming. 'And did I use up my supply on Laura Swan, is that what you mean?' She turned from him, and leaned back on the chair, squaring her shoulders as if they had grown suddenly stiff. 'You have quite a mind, Quirke,' she said, almost admiringly. 'Quite a mind.' She rose and went to the stove and took the kettle and carried it to the sink, forcing him to move to the side. She filled the kettle and carried it back and set it on the stove and lit the gas flame. She took down the coffee tin and found a spoon in a drawer and spooned the coffee into the lid of the percolator. 'This is my addiction,' she said. 'Coffee.' She turned to him. 'You were telling me what happened, between Leslie and Billy Hunt.'

'He thought Leslie was going to harm my daughter. He tackled him. Leslie fell through the window. It was an accident.'

'And what was he doing in your daughter's flat? Billy Hunt, I mean. She must be a hospitable girl, with all these men coming and going.'

'He had been watching the flat,' Quirke said. 'He had seen Leslie go in. My daughter didn't know who he was. She attacked him, tried to stab him.'

'To stab him?'

'In the shoulder. With a pencil. A metal propelling pencil. Mine, as it happens. She had it in her bag.' He put the cup down on the draining board. 'It's possible he saved her life.'

'Saved her from who-from Leslie?' He did not answer. Suddenly she saw it. 'You think Leslie and I killed them, don't you? Laura Swan and this doctor fellow. Don't you?'

'Your husband was on morphine. He didn't know what he was doing.'

She gave a shout of laughter, a derisive hoot. 'Leslie always knew what he was doing, especially if he was doing something wrong.'

The air in the room seemed to Quirke suddenly heavy and thick, and he realized how weary he was. 'You lied to me,' he said.

Kate was pouring water from the kettle into the coffeepot, measuring the level carefully with her eye. 'Did I?' she said distractedly. 'What did I lie about?'

'You lied about everything.'

She glanced at him and then turned her attention back to the coffeepot and the gas ring on which she had set it. She struck a match, drawing the head slowly along the emery paper, the sound of it setting his teeth on edge. 'I don't know what you mean,' she said. He caught hold of her wrist, making her drop the match. She looked at his hand where it held her as if she did not know what it was, this hooked thing of meat and bone and blood. 'You know very well what I mean,' he said. 'You pretended to be brokenhearted that your husband had gone, that he'd taken up with another woman, all that. But it was all pretense.'

'Why?'

'Why what?'

'Why would I pretend?'

'Because…' He did not know. He had thought he knew, but he did not. His anger was turning to confusion. What had he come here to say to her? What did she mean to him, this tough, injured, desirable woman? He let go his grip on her. She held up her wrist and examined the white furrows his fingers had left there, to which the blood was rapidly returning. Everything rushes back, everything replaces itself. 'I'm sorry,' he said, and turned away.

'Yes,' Kate said, 'I'm sorry, too.'

At the front door she stood and watched him walk away hurriedly into the rain, with his hat pulled low and holding the lapels of his jacket closed against the chill sea air. There were gulls somewhere above her in the gray murk, cawing and crying. She shut the door. When she turned back to the hall the emptiness of the house rushed at her, as if she were a vacuum into which everything was pouring, unstoppably.

IT WAS THE CLOSEST HE HAD COME IN THE PAST SIX MONTHS TO FLINGing himself off the wagon. At the seafront he even turned and set off in the direction of the Sheds, at the bottom of Vernon Avenue, but made himself turn back. His throat ached for a drink. Despite the rain and the chill in the air he seemed to be smoldering all over, like a tree that has been hit by lightning. He stood waiting on the corner at the seafront for almost half an hour, but there were no taxis to be had, and in the end he was forced to get on a bus. He stood on the running board, holding on to the metal pole. The sad, wet stretch of seafront swayed past, the stunted palm trees glistening in the rain. Dublin, city of palms. Quirke grinned joylessly.

In Marlborough Street a cart horse had fallen between the shafts of a Post Office dray, and there were lines of held-up buses and motorcars in both directions. The horse, a big gray, lay with its legs splayed, looking oddly calm and unconcerned. No one seemed to know what to do. A Guard had his notebook and pencil out. A cluster of schoolboys, idle at lunchtime, stood by and gazed in awe upon the fallen animal. Quirke got off the bus and walked along to the river, and then up the quay and crossed the bridge and into D'Olier Street and then crossed again and went into the Garda station. At the desk in the day-room he asked for Inspector Hackett and was told to wait.

He thought of the horse, fallen between the shafts, its great black eyes glistening.