Even the Dead

by Benjamin Black

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Corless,” Sinclair said. “I know how hard this is.”

  How many times, he wondered, had he uttered those selfsame words, in this same place?

  Sam Corless said nothing. He appeared physically sick: his skin was puffy and his eyes were bloodshot. They walked along the airless, green-painted corridor, Sinclair and Sam Corless ahead and Hackett following close behind. Sinclair opened the door to the lab. When they came in, Bolger, the porter, whipped a half-smoked cigarette from his mouth and hid it behind his back.

  The charred remains of Leon Corless lay on a trolley under a white nylon sheet. A faulty tap was dribbling into one of the big metal sinks. Sam Corless rubbed his reddened eyes, which were stinging already from the harsh light falling from the lamps in the ceiling. Bolger was eyeing him with undisguised interest, the infamous Sam Corless; right now he certainly didn’t look like much of a threat to the institutions of the state.

  Sinclair lifted back a corner of the sheet. For a second Corless’s broad face seemed to fold in on itself.

  “This is your son, yes, Mr. Corless?” Sinclair said.

  Corless nodded. “Yes,” he said. He seemed to be having difficulty swallowing. Hackett stepped forward and put a hand on his arm, just below the elbow. Sinclair let the corner of the sheet fall back.

  * * *

  There was a café opposite the gates of the hospital. Half a dozen Formica-topped tables, some metal chairs, a high counter with glass-fronted compartments that displayed assorted sandwiches and sticky buns. Behind the counter a girl of seventeen or so, fair-haired and nervous, tended a tea urn and a complicated coffee-making machine with many levers and nozzles.

  Hackett and Sam Corless sat at a table by the window. Corless said he didn’t want anything, but Hackett went to the counter and ordered a cup of tea for him anyway, and one for himself. He hung his hat on a hat stand in the corner and sat down again. Corless was hunched forward at the table, empty-eyed, his hands clasped before him.

  “Are you all right?” Hackett asked.

  Corless looked at him as if he couldn’t remember who he was. “Yes,” he said. “I’m all right.”

  Taking out a packet of Woodbines and a Zippo lighter polished with age, he offered Hackett a cigarette. Hackett shook his head. “I’ll smoke my own,” he said, “if you don’t mind. Them things are too rough for my poor old bronchials.” He picked up the lighter and turned it over in his fingers.

  “February 1937,” Corless said, “the Battle of Jarama, outside Madrid.”

  “Oh, yes?” Hackett said. “You were in Spain?”

  “I was with the Connolly Column. We were at Pingarrón—Suicide Hill, we called it—up against the Thälmann Battalion. I was lying in a ditch with my friend Charlie McRory beside me. One of the German snipers got Charlie in the throat.” He nodded at the lighter. “He gave that to me, before he died. Maybe he wanted me to bring it back and give it to his parents, as a keepsake, or maybe he wanted me to have it. He couldn’t speak, with the blood in his throat, so I don’t know.”

  Hackett set the lighter down on the table between them.

  “That was a brave fight,” he said. Corless glanced at him sharply. “The Battle of Jarama. I read up the history of it. It’s a hobby I have.”

  Corless nodded, with a thin smile. Corless would not be a man who would go in for hobbies, Hackett guessed.

  “Aye, it was a brave fight,” Corless said, “but we lost it. It was hand to hand at the end.” He held up both his hands. “I killed men with these. Kill a man up close and nothing in your life is ever the same again. A lot of good comrades died in those few days, Bill Beattie and Bill Henry—the two Bills—and Liam Tumilson and Charlie Donnelly, others, too. I was lucky to get out of it alive. I had a wife at home, and a child.” He stopped, and had to clench his mouth to keep his lip from trembling.

  “Was Leon your only son?” Hackett asked quietly.

  Corless cleared his throat. “Yes, my only boy. His mother died three years ago. So that leaves just me. Maybe it would have been better if it was me that sniper got, on the heights of Pingarrón.”

  He sipped his tea and smoked the last of his cigarette. There was sunlight in the window beside them, the smoke rolling through it in gray-blue coils.

  “Tell me,” Corless said, “do I know you? Your face is familiar.”

  Hackett did his froggy grin, his thin mouth stretching wide. “I arrested you one time, years ago.”

  “Oh, yes?” Corless said, with no surprise and not much interest; he had been arrested more often than he remembered. “For what?”

  “You were mounting a one-man protest outside the Department of External Affairs. I can’t remember what the government had done to displease you. I was a sergeant then, in uniform. You threw an egg at the Minister’s car. That was a step too far, and I had to take you in.”

  Corless grinned too. “I got off, though,” he said. “I remember now.”

  “That’s right. The judge let you go with a caution. You shook my hand on the way out of the court. I appreciated that.”

  “I hold it against no man for doing his job.”

  “Even a capitalist lackey wielding a truncheon?”

  “I saw no truncheon.”

  They smoked in silence for a while, idly looking out the window at the passersby in the street. Hackett wondered what it would be like to lose a son. His two boys, men now, were in America, doing well for themselves. What if a telegram were to arrive with news that one of them had been found in a wrecked car, burnt to a shell of parchment wrapped around a few scorched bones? He pictured himself standing in the hall, with the telegram shaking in his hand, and May behind him crying her eyes out. Would he have to go over to America to identify the body? No, the surviving brother would do that, probably. They would fly the body back home, for burial in the graveyard at Lissenard, where all his people were buried, and where in time Hackett’s own bones would be laid to rest.

  Corless was lighting another Woodbine but had to stop first for a long bout of coughing. When he had got his breath back, he lit up and inhaled deeply. Nothing like a lungful of smoke to treat a cough like that, Hackett thought grimly.

  “Can I ask, Mr. Corless,” he said, “if you’ve given any more consideration to what Dr. Quirke said yesterday?”

  “Dr. who?”

  “The pathologist—he was with me yesterday when we came to your place to break the news.”

  “Oh, right. Him. What did he say? My memory of the past twenty-four hours is hazy.”

  “I’m sure it is, Mr. Corless.” Hackett brought out a packet of Player’s and lit one. “He mentioned the bang on the head that your son got, that seemed to him, well, highly suspicious.”

  Corless’s eyes narrowed. When he shifted in his chair a waft of his smell came across the table. Hackett recognized it: it was the smell, clammy, dense, and hot, given off by every newly bereaved person he had come across in his long career.

  “Tell me the truth,” Corless said, his voice turned gravelly. “Was my son killed deliberately?—was he murdered?”

  It was some moments before Hackett replied. “I will tell you the truth,” he said. “The fact is, it’s not clear. Initial word is that it’s possible there was petrol splashed into the car and set alight, but that’s always a tricky judgment. The car had hit a tree, not very hard, it’s true, but all the same it’s possible the petrol tank burst on impact, which would explain why there were traces of fuel inside the car, on the seats.”

  “And what about this wound on his head, the one Dr. what’s-his-name thinks was suspicious?”

  “Aye, there’s that. But again, we can’t be sure. Your son might have had his head turned that way at the moment of impact, and it could be the mark of the steering wheel after he hit against it. But Dr. Quirke doesn’t think that’s the case, nor does Dr. Sinclair, his second-in-command.”

  “And what about you? What do you think?”

  Hackett gave an elaborate shrug. “
I’m not a medical man, Mr. Corless. I can only deal with hard evidence—with facts.”

  “What about—I don’t know—footprints? Wouldn’t there be footprints around if Leon was knocked out and had to be lifted into the car?”

  “We’ve looked into that, of course, but there’s nothing conclusive. The car left the road at a sharp angle and ran down a slope. If your son was the victim of a violent attack, it probably happened on the road, so there’d be no marks left behind, or not ones we could distinguish from the usual wear and tear—that road through the park is a busy one. And then again, your son might have been knocked unconscious elsewhere, and driven in his own car up to the park and transferred to the driving seat unconscious. This is all speculation, you understand. If there was firm evidence of foul play, the fire saw to it that it didn’t survive. There’s only the blow to the head, if it was a blow, and the possibility that petrol was poured into the car before it was let go running down the slope.” He rolled the tip of his cigarette on the rim of the ashtray, sharpening the burning ash to a pencil point. “So the question we have to concentrate on is the question of motive. Your son doesn’t seem to me the kind of young fellow that would have enemies, or at any rate enemies of a kind that would want to kill him, and have the nerve to do it.”

  Corless was gazing into his cup, where the tea, cold now, had developed a shiny skin on the surface, like a miniature petrol spill. Hackett was impressed by the man’s self-control, more impressed today, indeed, than he had been yesterday when he’d first broken the news to him of his son’s death.

  Hackett was familiar with the grief of others, for he had seen much of it, too much, in his time. It took many forms. Some people wept, some cried out, a few even tore open their clothes and clawed at their own flesh. One woman, newly widowed after a burglary, had thrown herself violently at Hackett and beat at his face with her fists, and he had been forced to restrain her. Others, a rare few, held on to themselves as if they were holding on for dear life to a thrumming rope or a heavy hawser; Corless was among them. He was a tough man, a stalwart man; Hackett saw that clearly.

  Now Corless stirred himself. “So what you’re thinking,” he said, “is that if someone murdered Leon, it must have been an enemy not of his, but of mine. Am I right?”

  Hackett gave him a level look. “Would you say you have that kind of enemy, Mr. Corless?”

  Corless leaned back in his chair and lit yet another Woodbine. He had the workingman’s furtive way of smoking, cupping the cigarette in his palm with the lighted end turned inwards.

  “The thing about enemies,” he said, “is that half the time you don’t even know you have them. Three months before Trotsky was assassinated, there’d been an armed attack on his house in Coyoacán, outside Mexico City, by Stalin’s agents. You’d think that would have made him take care who he trusted, wouldn’t you. Then a fellow called Ramón Mercader turned up and wormed his way into the Trotsky household, saying he was a committed revolutionary, and all the rest of it, though in fact he was one of Stalin’s agents. One day, while Trotsky was sitting at a table reading some article Mercader had pointed out to him, Mercader whipped an axe out of his raincoat pocket and split open Trotsky’s skull.” He took a deep drag on his cigarette, shutting one eye against the smoke. “Are there people who hate me enough to kill my son? I don’t know. Probably there are. But if you’re asking do I know someone in particular who has that kind of a grudge against me, the answer is no. I’m no Trotsky, whatever Archbishop McQuaid and his big battalions may say.”

  He crushed his half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray on the table and stood up. “And now,” he said, “if you don’t mind, I’m going home.”

  “Will you be all right?”

  “All right? I doubt it. I’ve lost my son. It doesn’t leave me much to live for, but I suppose I’ll survive.”

  Hackett went to the counter and paid the bill, then fetched his hat from the hat stand. They went out into the sunlight. Car roofs gleamed; the tarred road shimmered.

  “You know,” Hackett said, “you lost that battle, over in Spain. But your people won the war—the real one.”

  Corless didn’t look at him, and glanced about the street instead. He was turning the Zippo lighter in his fingers.

  “I suppose they did,” he said. “But what did it mean, in the end?”

  “It meant, Mr. Corless, that you and I, and a lot of others, are free men today.”

  Corless did his thin smile.

  “Free?” he said. “My son, Leon, thought he was free. And look at him now.”

  He began to turn away, but not before Hackett had put out a hand. Corless looked at it, then at Hackett. “It’s not often I’m invited to shake the hand at the end of the long arm of the law,” he said.

  Hackett grinned. “You did it once before, why not again?”

  Self-consciously they shook hands.

  “The heights of Pingarrón,” Hackett said. “I’ll remember that.”

  9

  Quirke could not remember when he had last been in Hackett’s office, a cramped, wedge-shaped room high up under the roof of the Garda station in Pearse Street. Nothing had changed in the meantime. The desk was still cluttered with what seemed the same papers that had always been there, the calendar hanging by a nail on the wall was still years out of date, the window behind Hackett’s chair was still painted shut. There was even that same brownish smudge high up on the wall where someone had once squashed a bluebottle. Hackett’s shiny blue suit, too, seemed the one he had been wearing since Quirke had first known him. Now he had taken off his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair, and was sitting in his shirtsleeves, leaning back with his feet on the desk.

  “So anyway,” he said, “this girl, this Lisa Smith, has disappeared, right?”

  “She spotted Phoebe in a café. According to Phoebe she was terrified, but wouldn’t say why. Phoebe brought her down to Malachy Griffin’s holiday place in Wicklow, in Ballytubber, and left her there, safe, so she thought. Then I don’t know what happened—Phoebe got nervous, had a premonition, I don’t know, but she went back down, and when she did, the girl was gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “I told you—vanished.”

  “And didn’t go of her own free will, you think.”

  “I don’t know what to think. Phoebe believes someone came and got her, someone she knew—probably the person she was terrified of, would be my guess.”

  “Why would she go with someone she was afraid of?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Hackett nodded, thinking. “And Lisa Smith was with Leon Corless before he drove up to the Phoenix Park?”

  “They were coming home from a party and had a fight, and she made him let her out of the car, and he drove on, going home to Castleknock, I suppose, on the other side of the park. She was waiting for a taxi when the car went on fire—she saw the glow of the flames and went up to look, but then got frightened when she saw what had happened, and ran off.”

  Hackett joined the fingers and thumbs of both hands at the tips in front of himself and gazed off dreamily at a corner of the ceiling. “And she’s in the family way, with Corless’s child?”

  “Phoebe believes it’s Corless’s, yes.”

  Hackett nodded slowly, his lower lip pushed far out. “And tell me, Doctor,” he said, “what are we supposed to make out of all this?”

  “Well, that’s the question, isn’t it.”

  Quirke got out his silver case and his lighter and lit a cigarette. Hackett watched him. “Do you know what,” he said, “I’m thinking of giving up the fags.”

  Quirke stared at him. “Why would you do that?”

  “The lungs are in a terrible state. You should hear me in the evening, before I go to bed, wheezing like an old steam train, and then next day I have a cough that shakes the windowpanes. Plus the wife is at me night, noon, and morning to give them up.”

  “Not easy,” Quirke said, blowing smoke towards the ceiling. “Not ea
sy giving anything up.”

  Hackett took his feet from the desk and leaned forward, fiddling among the raft of papers in front of him. “No,” he said, “no, we like our little indulgences, don’t we.” They were both thinking of Quirke’s drinking, and his repeated sojourns at the Hospital of St. John of the Cross.

  “The girl lives where, did you say?” Hackett said. “Rathmines, was it? Have you the address? Maybe we should take a gander at the place. I’ll get Jenkins to bring the car round.” He stood up and put on his jacket, then stopped. “Or no, I won’t—it’s Saturday—young Jenkins will be at home with the wife and kiddies. I’ll see who else is on.”

  They went downstairs to the duty office.

  “Is Jenkins married?” Quirke asked. “He looks about nineteen.”

  Hackett chuckled. “He’s young, right enough. He must have been a child bride.”

  Eventually a driver was found. He was a thin-faced fellow with bad teeth and an unruly slick of fair hair raked back along his skull. He looked even younger than Jenkins, and the outsized uniform he was wearing made him seem younger still.

  “Who are you?” Hackett said.

  “Wallace, sir.”

  “Is that your first name or your last?”

  The young man frowned warily. “That’s my second name, sir.”

  “Right, then, Garda Wallace. I hope you’re old enough to have a driving license?”

  “I am, sir.”

  Hackett sighed. “That was a joke,” he said. “Come on.”

  Quirke and the detective sat together in the back seat. It was hot, and the air was laden with dust and the smells of the city.

  “The farmers are praying for rain,” Hackett said. “No doubt the good Lord will heed them, sooner or later. They have a powerful voice in heaven, the tillers of the soil.”

  They came to the canal, and soon were passing by Portobello Bridge. Quirke looked across the water and saw Isabel Galloway’s little house. He thought of the first night he had spent there. At a late hour, while Isabel slept, he had got up from her bed and leaned by the window, looking out into the moonlit night, and had seen two swans paddling these waters side by side, unreal-seeming creatures, pale enough to be their own ghosts.