Elegy for April (8 page)

 

 

 

6

 

THE LOUNGE OF THE HIBERNIAN HOTEL WAS ALMOST FULL AT MID-morning, but Quirke found a table in a corner, beside a palm in a tall, Ali Baba urn standing on the floor. He was ten minutes early and was glad he had brought a newspaper to hide behind. After only six weeks in the cotton-wool atmosphere of St. John’s he had become accustomed to the regulated life there, and now he wondered if he would ever readjust to the real world. Two pinstriped businessmen at a table next to his were drinking whiskey, and the sharp, smoky smell of the liquor came to him in repeated wafts, suggestive and blandishing. He had not thought of himself as an alcoholic, just a heavy drinker, but after the latest, six-month binge he was not so sure. Dr. Whitty at St. John’s would offer no judgment—”I don’t deal in labels”— and probably it did not matter what his condition was called, if it was a condition. Only he was afraid. He was already past the middle of his life; up to now there had seemed nothing that he could not influence or alter, with more or less effort; to be an alcoholic, however, was an incurable state, whether he were to drink or not. That is a sobering thought, he told himself, and grinned behind his paper and bared his teeth.

 

When he saw Inspector Hackett come into the lounge he knew he had chosen the wrong meeting place. The detective had stopped just inside the glass doors and was scanning the room with an air of faint desperation, nervously clutching his old slouch hat to his chest. He was wearing a remarkable overcoat, more a longish jacket, really, black and shiny, with toggles and epaulets and lapels six inches wide with sharp tips. Quirke half rose and waved the newspaper, and Hackett saw him with evident relief and made his way across the room, weaving between the tables. They did not shake hands.

 

“Dr. Quirke— good day to you.”

 

“How are you, Inspector?”

 

“Never better.”

 

“I wish I could say the same.”

 

They sat. Hackett put his hat on the floor under his chair; he had not taken off his coat, which at close quarters was even more extraordinary; it was made of a synthetic, leather-like material and squeaked and creaked with every move he made. Quirke signaled to a waitress and ordered tea for them both. The detective had begun to relax, and sat with his knees splayed and his hands clamped on his thighs, regarding Quirke in that familiar, genially piercing way of his. These two had known each other for a long time.

 

“Were you away, Doctor?”

 

Quirke smiled and shrugged. “Sort of.”

 

“Have you not been well?”

 

“I was in St. John of the Cross, since Christmas.”

 

“Ah. That’s a hard place, I hear.”

 

“Not really. Or at least it’s not the place that’s hard.”

 

“And you’re out, now.”

 

“I’m out.”

 

The waitress brought their tea. Hackett looked on dubiously as she set out the silver pots, the bone-china cups, the plates of
bread-and-butter, and an ornamental stand of little cakes. “By the Lord Harry,” he said, “here’s a feast.” He stood up and struggled out of his coat; when the waitress made to take it from him he instinctively resisted, clutching it to him, but then bethought himself and surrendered it, his forehead reddening. “Herself at home makes me wear it,” he said, sitting down again, not looking at Quirke. “The son sent it to me for a Christmas present. He’s in New York now, making his fortune among the Yanks.” He picked up the silver tea strainer and held it gingerly between a finger and thumb, inspecting it. “In the name of God,” he murmured, “what is this yoke?”

 

In all the time that Quirke had known Inspector Hackett he had not ever been able to decide if what he presented to the world were truly himself or an elaborately contrived mask. If it was, then it was fashioned with cunning and subtlety— look at those boots, those farm laborer’s hands, that shiny blue suit of immemorial provenance; look at those eyes, merry and watchful, that thin-lipped mouth like a steel trap; look at those eyebrows. Now he lifted his teacup with a little finger cocked, took a dainty slurp, and set it down again in its saucer. There was a shallow pink dent across his forehead where his hatband had pressed into the skin. “It’s grand to see you, Dr. Quirke,” he said. “How long has it been now?”

 

“Oh, a long time. Last summer.”

 

“And how is that daughter of yours?— I’ve forgotten her name.”

 

“Phoebe.”

 

“That’s right. Phoebe. How is she getting on?”

 

Quirke stirred his tea slowly. “It’s her I wanted to talk to you about.”

 

“Is that so?” The policeman’s tone had sharpened, but his look was as bland and amiable as ever. “I hope she’s not after getting herself into another spot of bother?” The last time Hackett had
seen Phoebe was late one night after the violent death of a man who had been briefly her lover.

 

“No,” Quirke said, “not her, but a friend of hers.”

 

The detective produced a packet of Player’s and offered it across the table; the look of the cigarettes, arrayed in a grille, made Quirke think, uneasily, of the Alvis.

 

“Would that,” Hackett asked delicately, “be a female friend, now, or … ?”

 

Quirke took one of the offered cigarettes and brought out his lighter. The men at the next table, who had been sitting forward almost brow to brow and murmuring, suddenly threw themselves back in their chairs, purple-cheeked and raucously laughing. One of them wore a bow tie and a wine-colored waistcoat; both had a shady look about them. Strange to think, Quirke thought, that the likes of these two were free to knock back all the whiskey they wanted, in the middle of the morning, while he was not to be allowed a single sip.

 

“Yes,” he said to the policeman, “a girl called April Latimer— well, a woman, really. She’s a junior doctor at the Holy Family.” The frond of palm leaning beside him was distracting, giving him the sense of an eavesdropper attending eagerly at his elbow. “She seems to be … missing.”

 

Hackett had relaxed now and seemed even to be enjoying himself. He had eaten four fingers of bread-and-butter and was eyeing the stand of cakes. “Missing,” he said, distractedly. “How is that?”

 

“No one has heard from her in nearly a fortnight. She hasn’t been in contact with her friends or, it seems, anyone else, and her flat is empty.”

 

“Empty? You mean her stuff is cleared out of it?”

 

“No, I don’t think so.”

 

“Did someone get in to have a look?”

 

“Phoebe and another friend of April’s got in— April leaves a key under a stone.”

 

“And what did they find?”

 

“Nothing. Phoebe is convinced that her friend is— that something has happened to her.”

 

The detective had started on a cream cake and ate as he spoke. “And what about … um … this girl’s … ah … family?” A dab of whipped cream had attached itself to his chin. “Or has she any?”

 

“Oh, she has. She’s Conor Latimer’s daughter— the heart man, who died?— and her uncle is William Latimer.”

 

“The Minister? Well.” He wiped his fingers on a napkin. The fleck of cream was still on his chin; Quirke was wondering if he should point it out. “Have you talked to him— to the Minister— or to her mother? Is the mother alive?”

 

“She is.” Quirke poured more tea and gloomily added milk; he could still smell that whiskey from the next table. “I went with Phoebe to see her brother this morning— Oscar Latimer, the consultant.”

 

“Another doctor! Merciful God, they have the market cornered. And what had he to say?”

 

The whiskey drinkers were leaving. The one in the bow tie gave Quirke what seemed to him a smirk of pity and contempt; were his troubles written so starkly on his face?

 

“He said nothing. It seems his sister is the black sheep of the family, and there’s little contact anymore. Frankly, he’s a sanctimonious little bastard, but I suppose that has nothing to do with anything.”

 

Hackett had at last located the cream on his chin and wiped it off. His tie, Quirke noted, was a peculiar, dark-brown color, like the color of gravy. The hat-line across his forehead had still not faded. “And what,” he asked, “would you be expecting me to
do? Would your daughter, maybe, want to report her friend to us as missing? What would the family think of that?”

 

“I strongly suspect the family would not like that at all.”

 

They pondered, both of them, in silence for a time.

 

“Maybe,” the Inspector said, “we should go round and have a look at the flat ourselves. Do we know where the key is kept?”

 

“Phoebe knows.”

 

Hackett was idly examining a loose thread in the cuff of his suit jacket. “I have the impression, Dr. Quirke,” he said, “that you’re less than eager to let yourself get involved in this business.”

 

“Your impression is right. I know the Latimers, I know their kind, and I don’t like them.”

 

“Powerful folk,” the Inspector said. He glanced at Quirke from under his thick brows and gently smiled, and his voice grew soft. “Dangerous, Dr. Quirke.”

 

Quirke paid the bill, and Hackett’s storm-trooper’s coat was returned to him. They walked through the lobby and out onto the steps above Dawson Street. Either the fog was down again or an impossibly fine rain was falling, it was hard to tell which. Motorcars going past made a frying sound on the greasy tarmac.

 

“I’d say now, Dr. Quirke,” Hackett said, fitting his hat onto his head with both hands as if he were screwing on a lid, “I’d say it’s power you don’t like, power itself.”

 

“Power? I suppose it’s true. I don’t know what it’s for, that’s the trouble.”

 

“Aye. The power of power, you might say. It’s a queer thing.”

 

Yes, a queer thing, Quirke reflected, squinting at the street. Power is like oxygen, he realized, being similarly vital, everywhere pervasive, wholly intangible; he lived in its atmosphere but rarely knew that he was breathing it. He glanced at the dumpy little man beside him in his ridiculous coat. Surely he knew all there was to know about power, the having of it and the lack of
it; together they had tried, some years back, to bring down another influential family in this city, and had failed. For Quirke, the memory of that failure rankled still.

 

They went down into the street. Quirke said he would call up Phoebe and arrange for her to meet them at April Latimer’s flat when she left work that evening, and Hackett said he would make sure to be there. Then they turned and went their separate ways.

 

MALACHY ARRIVED AT QUIRKE’S FLAT AT TWO, AND THEY WALKED round to the garage in the lane off Mount Street Crescent and met Perry Otway, who handed over the key to the lock-up garage where the Alvis was waiting. The galvanized-iron door opened upwards on a mechanism involving a big spring and sliding weights, and when Quirke turned the handle and pulled on it the door resisted him at first but then all at once rose up with an almost floating ease, and for a moment his heart lifted too. Then he saw the car, however, lurking in the shadows, agleam and motionless, fixing him with a silvery stare from its twin headlamps. Childish, of course, to be intimidated by a machine, but childishness was an unaccustomed luxury for Quirke, whose real childhood was a forgotten bad dream.

 

He had thought that for Malachy too the Alvis would revive something from his youth, some access of daring he must once have had, but he drove it as he did the old Humber, at arm’s length, muttering and complaining under his breath. They went by way of the Green to Christ Church and down Winetavern Street to the river and turned up towards the park. The mist was laden with the doughy smells of yeast and hops from Guin-ness’s brewery. It was the middle of the afternoon, and what there was of daylight had already begun to dim. Even Malachy’s driving could not subdue the power and vehemence of the car,
and it swished along as if under its own control, gliding around corners and bounding forward on the straight stretches with a contained, animal eagerness. They crossed the bridge before Heuston Station and went in at the park gates and stopped. For a time neither of them stirred or spoke. Malachy had not turned off the ignition, yet the engine was so quiet they could hardly hear it. The trees lining the long, straight avenue in front of them receded in parallel lines into the mist. “Well,” Quirke said with forced briskness, “I suppose we better get on with it.” He was suddenly filled with terror and felt a fool already, before he had even got behind the wheel.

 

Learning to drive, however, turned out to be disappointingly easy. At first he had trouble operating the pedals and more than once mistook the accelerator for the brake— the engine’s howled rebuke quickly taught him the distinction— and getting the hang of the knight’s move on the gear stick when shifting into third was tricky, but he soon mastered it. Of course, Malachy cautioned, in a faintly aggrieved tone, he would not find it all such smooth going when he had to deal with traffic. Quirke said nothing. His hour of excited anticipation and anxiety was over; now he was a driver, and the car was just a car.

 

They came to the Castleknock Gate, and Malachy instructed him in how to make a three-point turn. As they drove back the way they had come they passed by another learner driver, whose car was executing a series of jumps and lurches, like a bucking horse, and Quirke could not suppress a smug smile and then felt more childish still.

 

“When are you coming back to work?” Malachy asked.

 

“I don’t know. Why— have there been mutterings?”

 

“Someone asked a question at a board meeting the other day.”

 

“Who?”

 

“Your chap Sinclair.”

 

“Of course.” Sinclair was Quirke’s assistant and had been
running the department on his own for the past half year while Quirke was first drinking and then drying out. “He wants my job.”

 

“You’d better come back and make sure he doesn’t get it, then,” Mal said, with a faint, dry laugh.

 

They came to the gates again and Malachy said it would be best if he were to take over and drive them back to Mount Street, but Quirke said no, he would go on, that he needed experience of real road conditions. Had he a license, Malachy inquired, was the car insured? Quirke did not answer. A bus had swerved out of the CIE garage on Conyngham Road and was bearing down on them at an angle from the right. Quirke trod on the accelerator, and the car seemed to gather itself on its haunches for a second and then leapt forward, snarling.