Even the Dead

by Benjamin Black

  “And what became of it, all this information?”

  “Ah, that’s the question. If I were to guess, I’d say it’s likely to have been mislaid by now, or it might even have disappeared, mysteriously. Costigan and his pals tend to be thorough, where incriminating documentation is concerned.”

  They were silent for some paces; then Quirke spoke. “You know what we’re talking about here,” he said. “We’re talking about the distinct possibility—in fact, the distinct probability—that Joe Costigan was behind the murder of Leon Corless.”

  Hackett had begun nodding while Quirke was still speaking.

  “Yes,” he said, “that is what we’re talking about, Dr. Quirke.”

  They walked on in somber silence. Gulls were wheeling above the river, ghostlike in the twilit air. Why, Quirke wondered, do they go silent as night approaches? Making no sound, they seemed even more eerie.

  “I’ve just realized something,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m tired of this country, of its secrets and its lies.”

  “That’s easily understood. But tell me this, Doctor: where is there a place with no secrets, and where people all tell the truth?”

  Faint wisps of music came to them on the breeze. “It’s the dance band in the ballroom in Jury’s Hotel, over on Dame Street,” Hackett said. “Did you ever go to a dance there, in the day when you were sowing your wild oats? Wild stuff, it is—shoe salesmen and solicitors’ clerks, and nurses from the Mater and the Rotunda, looking for a husband.”

  Quirke tried to picture the detective, younger, slimmer, in a sharp suit and a loud tie, gliding round and round the dance floor, in the spangled light and the blare of the band, with a girl in his arms.

  “What’s funny?” Hackett asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” Quirke said.

  He wanted another whiskey. He craved another whiskey. Why hadn’t he finished the one he had?

  In fact, he recalled, he had been to one of those dances in Jury’s, a long time ago. And it was a nurse he had gone with, on a date. He tried to remember her. Tall, with dyed black hair. Her hand cool and damp in his. When he stepped on her toes—he was always a terrible dancer—she put on a brave face and said it was all right, that he was not to worry, that she was used to farmers’ sons walking all over her at harvest festival dances, when she went home for the weekend to—to where? Where had home been? Somewhere down the country. That was where home was for most of them, the women he had known in those early days. The nurse that night had explained to him, as they sat at the bar, that for a girl like her there were three choices: be a wife, be a nun, or be a nurse. The first and third options were not mutually exclusive, except that of course you couldn’t be both at the same time; either you worked and looked after your patients, or you stayed at home and looked after your man. The nunnery she hadn’t fancied. In the taxi back to the nurses’ hostel she had let him put his hand on her leg, above her stocking, but that had been the limit.

  He thought of Evelyn Blake. I want to swallow you, all of you, into me.

  “The thing is,” Hackett said, breaking in on his thoughts, “I’m not sure at all that there’s much we can do. I could bring in Costigan and question him, but on what grounds? And then think of the ructions he’d kick up, afterwards. The Commissioner, by the way, is a Knight of St. Patrick. It’s a thing to keep in mind.”

  “Maybe the girl, Lisa Smith, will know something, if we can get her out of that damn place. She was Leon Corless’s girl, after all, and she’s going to have his baby.”

  They came to O’Connell Bridge. It was night now, yet still the sky retained a delicate glimmer above the western rooftops.

  “Aye, maybe she’ll be able to help us,” Hackett said. He sighed. “I can tell you, Doctor, you’re not the only one tired of this place.”

  They had stopped on the corner by the bridge. Crowds were going home after the pictures, and there were long queues at the bus stops. Somewhere unseen a drunk was singing “Boolavogue” in a quavery, tearful wail. “Will you come for a nightcap?” Hackett asked. “There’s a good twenty minutes to go before closing.”

  “No, thanks,” Quirke said. “I have an early postmortem in the morning.”

  “Right, so. Good night to you, Doctor. Oh, and let me know how that young one, Maisie, gets on at the Mother of Mercy.”

  They turned from each other and went their separate ways.

  Quirke, on Westmoreland Street, thought again of Evelyn, of her pale smooth flesh and huge dark eyes, of her lovely, mismatched breasts. Was he making a mistake? Probably. He didn’t care. How often again in his life would he be offered love?

  * * *

  The postmortem proved difficult, he wasn’t sure why. Some were like that. The corpse was that of a girl of nineteen, a shop assistant in Lipton’s, who had been taken ill behind the counter and was rushed to the Holy Family but was dead on arrival. He searched first for the likeliest causes of death, an embolism or a cerebral hemorrhage, but found neither. Sinclair, assisting him, was puzzled too. At last they decided on ventricular fibrillation—the poor girl’s heart had stopped, for reasons unknown to reason.

  “Maybe she was crossed in love,” Sinclair said.

  Quirke gave him a searching look, to see if this had been meant as a joke. But Sinclair’s face, as usual, gave nothing away.

  Afterwards they went up to the canteen and drank mugs of bitter tea sweetened with too much sugar, and sat in silence for a long time. Then Sinclair began to talk of his plan to go to Israel. Quirke was only half listening.

  “Israel?” he said vaguely, as if he had never heard of the place. “How long would you stay? Haven’t you used up all your holidays for this year?”

  “I’m not talking about a holiday,” Sinclair said, making patterns with the tip of his cigarette in the ash in the ashtray.

  “What, then?” Quirke asked, trying to seem interested.

  The Tannoy speaker in the corner of the ceiling behind them crackled into life, summoning Quirke to the telephone. He groaned. “Christ,” he said, “what now?”

  He stubbed out his cigarette and went down the stairs to his office, taking his time. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone. Then it occurred to him that it might be Evelyn, and he quickened his pace. He shut the office door behind himself and sat down at his desk and picked up the phone. The new girl at Reception hadn’t got the hang of how to transfer calls, and he had to wait for fully a minute before at last he heard Phoebe’s voice. She sounded breathless.

  “What is it?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” she said. “I just spoke to Maisie. She went to the laundry.”

  “Oh, yes? And what happened?”

  “She saw her friendly nun. She didn’t know of any Lisa Smith.” Quirke began to say something, but she interrupted him. “No, listen. There is a Lisa there, but she’s not Lisa Smith.”

  “Then who is she?”

  There was a rattling noise on the line and he didn’t catch her answer, and had to ask her to repeat it.

  “Her name is Costigan,” Phoebe said. “Elizabeth Costigan.”

  20

  In the end it was decided that Phoebe should go with Quirke to the Mother of Mercy Laundry, since it was she who knew or at least had seen Lisa Smith, or Elizabeth Costigan, as they now knew her to be. Quirke and Phoebe had come to the house on Ailesbury Road to talk to Maisie. Mal and Rose met them, and they went, the four of them, and sat in the conservatory, at the little metal table in front of the somehow lost-looking miniature palm. It was cooler today, and now and then a breeze would wander in from the garden through the open French doors. Maisie was summoned, and repeated her account of her meeting with Sister Agnes. She had nothing to add to what she had already related to Phoebe, and Rose told her she could go.

  “Costigan has a daughter called Elizabeth,” Quirke said. “I checked. She’s the youngest of three.” He turned to Phoebe. “There was an Elizabeth Costigan o
n the list of names from the secretarial course. It has to be your Lisa Smith.”

  “I was sure Smith wasn’t her real name,” Phoebe said.

  Mal took off his glasses and pressed a finger to the bridge of his nose. He was pale, and his eyes had a slightly stupefied look, as if he been straining for a long time to see something too far off to be made out. “You say she’s pregnant?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Phoebe answered.

  Mal nodded. “So that’s why she’s in the laundry.”

  “Costigan would have put her there,” Quirke said.

  “Yes, one of the parents would have had to bring her in.” Mal glanced at Quirke. “It’s usually the father who does it.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “What will we say?” Phoebe asked. “How will we go about getting in to see her?”

  “I don’t know,” Quirke said. “You should be the one to call the laundry. Maybe pretend you’re a relative. You could even say you’re Lisa’s sister.”

  “Why should we lie? It’s not a prison, after all. I’ll tell them I’m her friend and insist on seeing her.”

  Yes, Quirke thought, it might work. The Griffin name would carry significant weight in the Mother of Mercy Laundry. But it would be he who would have to do the talking. He had been to the laundry before, he knew what it was like, he knew the obstacles.

  Rose stood up. “Anyone care for a drink?” she asked. “It’s practically lunchtime. No? Well, I’ll leave you conspirators to hatch your plans. I’m going to fix myself something tall and cool.”

  She walked off, into the house. Somehow Rose’s departure from a room was always followed by an uneasy silence, as if the people she had left behind were convinced that if they spoke she would still be able to hear them.

  Mal was fiddling with his spectacles again. “Joseph Costigan,” he said musingly. “How that man has haunted my life.” He turned to Phoebe. “You know, don’t you, that your grandfather did many bad things?” Phoebe, with a quick glance in Quirke’s direction, nodded. “Joe Costigan was his right-hand man—or left-hand, I should say. A sinister person.”

  “Why isn’t something done about him?” Phoebe asked. “Why isn’t he in jail?”

  Mal smiled sadly. “Why not, indeed. Because he has powerful friends, who protect him. Indeed, I used to be one of his protectors. Does that shock you, my dear?”

  Phoebe only looked at her hands and frowned. She knew the ways in which Mal had helped shield his father and his associates from being called to account for their misdeeds; she knew more than anyone imagined she knew.

  “You can’t blame yourself for looking after Grandfather,” she said, still with her eyes cast down. “He was your father, after all.”

  “Ah, yes,” Mal said, “that fine excuse.” He turned to Quirke. “You know they’ll resist you, at the laundry.”

  “Yes,” Quirke said, “I know that.”

  Mal was regarding him keenly. “And then there’s Joe Costigan. He’s very dangerous, though you hardly need me to tell you that.”

  “Yes, I know,” Quirke said. “But maybe this time he’s gone too far. Locking his daughter away in that place is one thing. Murder is another.”

  Mal shook his head. “You know Costigan. If he was responsible for that young man’s death, you won’t trace it back to him. And even if you do, his friends will pull the usual strings. The Joe Costigans of this world can indeed get away with murder.”

  Quirke turned to Phoebe. “Go and make the phone call,” he said. “Don’t say that I’ll be with you. We’ll just turn up. They won’t be able to send us away.”

  Phoebe rose and went into the house. When she had gone, Mal and Quirke sat for a time in a strained silence. Mortal illness, Quirke reflected, is always, at some level, an embarrassment. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’m all right,” Mal answered. “Terrified, of course, terrified all the time. It’s an odd sensation. I feel as if I’m floating, as if there’s a balloon inside me, filled with hot air, buoying me up. Breathless, too, as if I’m constantly running away from something.” He smiled. “Which, of course, I am.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “For me? No. Come round of an evening and talk to Rose. This is hard on her. First Josh, now me. It’s less than fair.”

  Quirke got to his feet. “I’d better go,” he said.

  “Yes. And take care, Quirke.” Mal turned to look out at the garden. “It seems so strange, doesn’t it, talking about these things, while the world goes on as if nothing mattered.”

  “We’ll get Costigan this time,” Quirke said. “I promise you.”

  Mal looked up at him. “Maybe you will,” he said. “It won’t change the past. I used to believe in redemption. Not anymore.”

  “It’s too big a word, Mal. Let’s aim for something more modest.”

  Mal stood up, and together they walked through the house. They met Rose in the front hall, with a glass in her hand. She gave Quirke a sardonic smile. “Off you go, Sir Galahad,” she said. “Watch out for dragons.”

  * * *

  Quirke had met Sister Dominic before. He could still see, and he had seen then, the distaste she felt for him. They faced each other across the broad expanse of her desk, while Phoebe sat off to the side—put in her place, as she had ruefully to acknowledge. Sister Dominic was tall and gaunt and strikingly handsome. She wore a floor-length habit, with an outsized set of wooden rosary beads knotted loosely around her waist. She had piercing eyes of bird’s-egg blue, and long, bloodless hands, the slender fingers of which were rarely still. The close-fitting black wimple gave her the look of a compellingly lifelike statue peering out of a niche. Despite the warmth of the day she looked cold, and the tip of her nose was bone-white.

  “So, Dr. Quirke,” she said, “this is an unexpected pleasure. What can I do for you?”

  Quirke was lighting a cigarette; deliberately he had not asked the nun’s permission. “I’m told, Sister, that there’s a young woman in the laundry by the name of Elizabeth Costigan. She would have come here recently.”

  Sister Dominic blinked, her eyelids dropping slowly and slowly rising again, like the shutter of a camera set to a long exposure. She looked down at the desk and moved a pencil an inch to one side and straightened a leather-bound blotter.

  “Elizabeth Costigan,” she said, isolating and, as it were, examining closely each syllable of the name. “I’m not sure that I know her. She came to us recently, you say?”

  “Yes. Sometime in the past week. Perhaps you haven’t had the opportunity to meet her yet.”

  Sister Dominic’s faint smile was condescending. “I know all my girls, Dr. Quirke, be assured of that.”

  “Good,” Quirke said blandly. “Then you must know of Miss Costigan.”

  “She calls herself Lisa,” Phoebe said. “Perhaps that’s the name you know her by.”

  Sister Dominic did not even glance in her direction. Her eyes were still fixed on Quirke. He could almost hear the delicate mechanism of her brain at work as she calculated how much he might know about Lisa Costigan and to what extent he might be bluffing. Then she came to a decision.

  “Ah, yes,” she said. “Of course. Lisa. Yes.”

  There was a long pause. Quirke went on gazing at the nun, putting on an expectant look, one eyebrow cocked.

  “I’d like to see her,” he said. “Do you think that would be possible?”

  Sister Dominic again touched the pencil and the blotter, lightly, with the tips of her unquiet fingers. How they must torment her, those fingers, Quirke thought; she had spent her life shedding all signs of inner conflict and agitation, yet here, at the very extremities of her hands, she still betrayed herself.

  “May I ask,” she said, “what it is you want to see her about?”

  “Well, she’s a friend of Miss Griffin’s, you see. We thought we’d come up and see her, have a word with her, you know.”

  “I’m told you’re not the first one to
ask after her,” the nun said. “One of our former girls, Maisie Coughlan, was here, making inquiries, asking questions. Did you know that?” she turned to Phoebe. “Maisie works at your—at Dr. Griffin’s house now, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes, she does,” Phoebe said. “It was she who told us that Lisa was here.”

  Again there was a silence; again Quirke could almost hear the nun’s brain busy at its calculations.

  “We all wonder how she’s getting on, you see,” Quirke said.

  “I can tell you that she’s getting on very well,” the nun snapped back at him. “All our girls get on well.”

  “I’m sure they do, Sister, I’m sure they do. But I’m sure also that she’d welcome a visit from Phoebe. Everyone, always, likes a visit, don’t you find? Especially when they’re cut off from the outside world, as you all are here, at the laundry.”

  “I’d hardly put it that way,” Sister Dominic said frostily.

  “Wouldn’t you?” Quirke smiled.

  Sister Dominic looked over the desk again, like a general surveying a set of campaign maps, eyeing in turn each of the things that were on it: the pencil, the blotter, an inkwell, a box of paper clips, a big black telephone, the cut-glass ashtray, into which at intervals Quirke insouciantly flicked his ash, to her obvious, tight-lipped irritation. Sister Dominic was not a tolerant woman. She had her standards. Her church was the Church Militant; not for her those pale, languishing saints, the ones clutching lilies and prayer books, their eyes cast upwards in meek devotion, their pink little mouths open in adoration and awe, to whom so many of her fellow nuns had dedicated themselves. No, give her vigor and certitude. Her favorite passage in all of Scripture was the one in which Christ made a whip of cords and drove the money lenders out of the Temple.

  “The thing is, Dr. Quirke,” she said, “we don’t really welcome—that’s to say, we can’t really accommodate unannounced visits. Our day here is highly structured, as it must be. You’ll know that from your own work, at the hospital. Institutions have their rules, which must be observed.”