“Go to the Guards?”
“And say what?”
“Well, that- that April hasn’t been heard of, that we went into her flat and it was empty, that there was a bloodstain in the sink.” She stopped. She could hear herself how weak it sounded, weak and fanciful.
Jimmy turned away and paced the floor, weaving a path among April’s scattered underthings. “She could be anywhere,” he said, almost impatiently. “She could be on a holiday- you know how impulsive she is.”
“But what if she’s not on a holiday?”
“Look, she could have got sick and gone home to her mother.” Phoebe snorted. “Well, she could,” he insisted. “When a girl is sick her first instinct is to fly back to the nest.” Where, she wondered, was the nest that Jimmy would fly home to, if he was sick, or in trouble? She imagined it, a cramped, whitewashed cottage down an unpaved road, with a mountain behind, and a dog at the gate growling, and a figure in an apron wavering uncertainly in the dimness of the doorway. “Why don’t you call her?” he said.
“Who?”
“Her mother. Mrs. Latimer, old ironsides.”
It was, of course, the obvious thing to do, the thing she should have done first, but the thought of speaking to that woman daunted her. “I wouldn’t know what to say,” she said. “Anyway, you’re right, April could be anywhere, doing anything. Just because she hasn’t called us doesn’t mean she’s- doesn’t mean she’s missing.” She shook her head and winced as the pain pulsed anew behind her eyes. “I think we should meet, the four of us, you, me, Patrick, Isabel.”
“A conference, you mean?” he said. “An emergency council?” He was laughing at her.
“Yes, if you like,” she said stoutly, undeterred. “I’ll call them and suggest we meet up to night. The Dolphin? Seven thirty, as usual?”
“All right,” he said. “Maybe they’ll know something; maybe one of them will even have heard from her.”
She rose and went out to the kitchen, carrying the teacup. “Who knows,” she said over her shoulder, “they might have gone off somewhere together, the three of them.”
“Without telling us?”
Why not? she thought. Anything is possible- everything is. After all, April had not told her about the key under the stone. What else might she have kept secret from her?
4
QUIRKE’S FLAT HAD THE SHEEPISH AND RESENTFUL AIR OF AN unruly classroom suddenly silenced by the unexpected return of the teacher. He put down his suitcase and walked through the rooms, peering into corners, examining things, not knowing what he expected to find, and found everything as it had been on the morning of Christmas Eve when the taxi had come to take him, sweating and shaking, to St. John’s. This was obscurely disappointing; had he been hoping for some outrageous violation, the windows smashed, his belongings plundered, his bed overturned and the sheets shat on? It did not seem right that all here should have remained intact and unaffected while he was away suffering such trials. He returned to the living room. His overcoat was still buttoned. There had been no fire lit in the flat for nearly two months, and the air felt colder in here than it had outside. He plugged in the one-bar electric fire, hearing himself grunt as he leaned down to the socket; immediately there was a scorched smell as the reddening coil burned off the weeks of dust that had accumulated on it. Then he went into the kitchen and turned all four burners of the gas stove on to full, and lit the oven, too, and set it to high. Malachy Griffin had not ventured past the front doorway, where he stood now framed with the landing behind him, in his gray mackintosh and woolen muffler, watching Quirke grimly claiming back his territory. Malachy was tall and gaunt with thinning hair; his rimless spectacles gave to his eyes a teary shine.
“Can I get anything for you?” he asked.
Quirke turned. “What?” He was at the big kitchen window, with his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. He had a lost, vague look. Fogged light fell down on him from the window, a thin, silvery misting.
“You’ll need provisions. Milk. Bread.”
“I’ll go up in a while to the Q and L.”
A faintly desperate silence fell. Quirke wished his brother-in-law would either leave or come inside and shut the door. Yet at the same time he did not want him to go, not yet; even Malachy’s company was preferable to being left alone with himself in these suddenly estranged and sullen surroundings. He began to open a cupboard door, then stopped. He laughed. “Christ, I was about to pour us both a drink!”
“Why don’t we go to the Shelbourne?” Malachy said. “You probably didn’t have any breakfast, did you?” He was thinking how Quirke’s largeness- that great head, those massive shoulders- made him seem all the more vulnerable now.
“I don’t eat much, these days. The metabolism changes when the booze is taken away. Like a baby that’s been weaned, I suppose.”
The gas jets hissed and spluttered, spreading a faint, flabby warmth on the air.
“All the same,” Malachy said, “you have to-”
“Don’t say I have to keep my strength up.”
There was another silence, this time offended a little on Malachy’s side. Quirke waved a hand in irritated apology, shaking his head. He turned off the gas. “All right, let’s go,” he said.
The atmosphere outdoors had the texture of wetted, cold cotton. Malachy’s car was parked at the curb; although Malachy had picked him up in it from St. John’s, it was only now that Quirke recognized it, with a dull shock, as the big old black Humber once owned by Judge Garret Griffin, his adoptive father. The Judge, now dead, was Malachy’s natural father; he had done them both great wrong. Why was Malachy driving the wicked old man’s motorcar- what was it, a gesture of forgiveness and filial piety?
Quirke suggested that they walk. They set off along Mount Street, their footsteps rising up a beat late behind them. There was coal dust from the city’s fireplaces suspended in the fog; they could feel the grit of it on their lips and between their teeth. At the corner of Merrion Square they turned left in the direction of Baggot Street.
“By the way,” Quirke said, “do you know that young one at the hospital, Conor Latimer’s daughter?”
“Latimer? Which department is she in?”
“I don’t know. General, I imagine. She’s a junior.”
Malachy pondered; Quirke could almost hear the sound of his brain working, as if he were flicking through a set of file cards; Malachy prided himself on his memory for detail, or used to, before Sarah died and he lost interest in such things. “Latimer,” he said again. “Yes. Alice Latimer- no, April. I’ve seen her about. Why?”
The traffic lights at the corner of Fitzwilliam Street, turning red, pierced through the mist with an unnatural and almost baleful brightness.
“Phoebe knows her. They’re friends.” Malachy was silent. Mention of Phoebe always made for constraint between the two men; after all, Phoebe had grown up thinking Malachy, not Quirke, was her father. “It seems,” Quirke said, clearing his throat, “she hasn’t been heard from for some time.”
Malachy did not look at him. “Heard from?”
They turned right onto Baggot Street. A tinker woman in a tartan shawl accosted them, doing her piteous whine; Quirke gave her a coin, and she gabbled a blessing after them.
“Phoebe is worried,” Quirke said. “It seems they’re in the habit of speaking every day on the phone, she and the Latimer girl, but it’s been a week or more since she had a call from her.”
“Has she been at work, April Latimer?”
“No-sent in a sick-note.”
“Well then.”
“Phoebe is not convinced.”
“Yes,” Malachy said after a pause, “but Phoebe does worry.” It was true; for one so young, Phoebe had known a disproportion of misfortune in her life- betrayal, rape, violent deaths- and how would she not fear the worst? “What about the family?” Malachy asked. “Bill Latimer would be her uncle, yes? Our esteemed Minister.” They both smiled grimly.
“I don’t know,” Quirke said, “I don’t think Phoebe has spoken to them.”
