Even the Dead

by Benjamin Black

  “I never knew what I wanted, Rose. That was always my trouble.”

  She nodded dismissively. “But you know what you want now, don’t you.”

  “Do I?”

  “I can see it in your eyes. You’re not doing that silent howl anymore. I’m glad for you, but I can’t say I didn’t prefer you the old way.” She sipped her drink, studying him. “You going to tell me about her?”

  He knew she meant Evelyn. He shook his head.

  “Oh, well. I guess you will, in time.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Tell me about the girl, then.”

  “She’s staying at Inspector Hackett’s house.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Her father had somebody watching her, a fellow by the unlikely name of Abercrombie. He followed Phoebe and her down to Ballytubber, with a couple of his heavies, and took Lisa from the house and brought her to the Mother of Mercy Laundry.”

  “What a name that place has,” Rose said. “How did you get her out? Beat some poor nun into submission, did you?”

  “Something like that. I don’t think you realize what those places are like, Rose, that Mal’s father and your first husband set up.”

  “Yes, they were a pair of rascals, weren’t they, Garret and old Josh. They thought they ruled the world on direct instructions from the good Lord above.” She had finished her own drink, and now she took the glass from his hand and drank from it, and gave it back. “Sorry,” she said, “lipstick yet again.”

  He took out his cigarette case and lit two cigarettes and gave one to Rose. She watched him, amused. “You see too many movies,” she said. “You think you’re Cary Grant.”

  They smoked in silence for a while, companionably. Something in the dimmed light outside communicated itself to them, a sense of loss and sweet melancholy.

  “What will you do?” he asked.

  “You mean, after Mal is gone?” A thrush was whistling somewhere outside, a limpid, liquid warbling. “Maybe I’ll go back to the States,” she said. She waved a hand at the room. “I’m sure as hell going to get rid of this white elephant. Can’t think why I bought it in the first place. Delusions of grandeur, I guess. I liked the idea of a girl from the backwoods living amongst so much gilt.” She laughed, then said, “The girl’s father, Costigan—he was Garret’s bagman, if I remember rightly?”

  “Among other things.”

  “Why did he put her away? Because she was going to have a child?”

  “That, and the fact that she’d found out about some things he was up to, and told her boyfriend, and her boyfriend started poking around, and ended up in a burning car with his head bashed in.”

  She nodded. “That sounds like Costigan, all right.” She took his glass, which was empty now, and went to the sideboard and made new drinks for them both. “So what are you going to do?” she asked over her shoulder. “You and that detective friend of yours going to put old Joe in the slammer? If that’s your plan, you better have all your ducks lined up in a nice neat row. Joe is a slippery customer. You too could find yourself in a burning car with a bump on your head the size of an egg.” She came back, and handed him his glass, and sat down. “What about Phoebe?” she said. “You think Costigan might go after her?”

  “He might.”

  “She really should come here, stay with us, like you suggested. I’ll hire in some serious people to look after her. Costigan is not the only person with contacts.”

  He shook his head. “No good. When I tried to persuade her to come here she laughed, and then got annoyed. She has her mother’s spirit—her stubbornness, too.”

  “She’s a damn fool,” Rose said mildly. She stirred her drink with an index finger. “So how are you going to protect her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you worried? I mean, are you seriously worried?”

  “You said yourself, Costigan is a dangerous man. He’ll want his daughter back.”

  “But you, and your detective, you’re not going to give her back, right?”

  “No, we’re not.”

  She sat and gazed at him, smiling to herself, then leaned forward suddenly and put a hand against his cheek, as she so often did.

  “Oh, Quirke,” she said, “you’re just hopeless, ain’t you. You’re like a little boy in the playground, saving some girl you’re sweet on from the school bully.”

  Quirke sipped his drink. “According to Costigan,” he said, “there are two worlds, the fantasy one where people like me live and the real one, where he carries on his business. He’s right, of course. But being realistic is a great excuse for doing all the bad deeds you want to do and then saying it’s a result of the way things are, the way things really are.”

  “Oh, phooey,” Rose said. “You think you can choose how to live? So does Mal, or he used to, anyway, until recent developments showed him how wrong he was. We drift, Quirke. You know that yellow foam at the edge of the waves at the seashore, that stuff that looks like tobacco spit mixed with soda water? That’s us. The wave rolls in, the wave rolls out”—she demonstrated, moving a hand languidly back and forth in front of her—“and we roll with it. I bet that yellow stuff, too, thinks it’s moving itself about, just like you do.”

  She stood up, stretching. “Ah! My back aches,” she said. “I’m getting old.” She drained the last of her drink and took an ice cube into her mouth and cracked it between her teeth. She looked down at him, still crunching. “Only one thing to be done with the Joe Costigans of this world, Quirke,” she said. “And you know what that is, just as well as I do. Now I’m going up to check on my poor Mal. One thing I hate to see is a man dying. You want to have some lunch with me when I come down?”

  Quirke stood up. “Thank you, no,” he said.

  “You have things to do?”

  “Yes,” he said, “yes, I have things to do.”

  She drew close to him, looking up into his face. “Kiss me,” she said, “will you, Quirke, for old times’ sake?”

  She put her arms around him. They were both holding empty glasses. Her lips were cold, from the ice. She drew her head back, smiling. “We did love each other, a little, didn’t we, Quirke? Say we did. Lie, if you have to, I don’t care.”

  He said nothing, but kissed her cold lips again, lightly, then stepped away from her, and put his empty glass down on the mantelpiece and walked out of the room. She stood for a moment, gazing at the floor, then went to the bay window. Big drops of rain had begun to fall.

  Quirke was already on the front steps. She watched him all the way to the gate. He didn’t look back.

  * * *

  At the hospital he went to his office and shut the door and sat down behind his desk and picked up the phone and dialed the girl at Reception and asked her to find Sam Corless’s number for him. He waited, drumming his fingers on the desk.

  Corless, when he came on, was hoarse and sounded exhausted. Faintly in the background there was the sound of dance band music. “You have to put up with that all day long?” Quirke asked.

  “All day,” Corless said grimly, and coughed. “What can I do for you?”

  “I was just calling to see how you’re faring.”

  There was a brief silence; then Corless coughed again. “No, you weren’t,” he said. “But I’m doing all right, I suppose.”

  With his free hand Quirke fumbled a cigarette out of his case, fitted it in the corner of his mouth, and lit it. “I have some information that will interest you,” he said.

  “Oh? What sort of information?”

  “I believe I know who murdered your son.”

  22

  Coming up the stairs to his flat he brushed at the raindrops on the shoulders of his jacket. The bottoms of his trouser legs were wet, too, and his feet felt damp. When he got to the door he saw at once where the wood was splintered beside the lock, and when he put a hand against the door it swung open easily. He smelled cigarette smoke, not his brand. He wasn’t surprised, and yet he hesitated. It was interestin
g, how calm he felt, and how little afraid he was. He knew he shouldn’t be calm; he knew he should be afraid. He could turn and walk quietly back down the stairs, he could go to the phone box at the corner and call Hackett, and Hackett would send a squad car, or come himself with Jenkins and a couple of uniformed Guards. Instead he took two or three slow, shallow breaths, and stepped inside.

  Costigan was standing by the window, looking out into the rain. He wore a dark blue suit, with all three buttons of the jacket fastened, so that the flap at the back rode high. He was smoking a cigarette. There was a scattering of ash on the floor at his feet. He was a big man—Quirke always forgot how big he was—with a big square head and a broad forehead and a nose like a stone axe. His hair was thick and oiled and swept back smoothly from his brow. His glasses were heavy black horn-rims. He didn’t turn at the sound of Quirke’s step behind him.

  “Where is she?” he said.

  “Where’s who?”

  Costigan took a deep drag from his cigarette.

  “I had people here with me,” he said. “They’re the ones I needed to get the door open. I could have kept them, they could still be here. Instead, it’s just me.” He glanced over his shoulder. “You can’t say I’m not a reasonable man.”

  “No,” Quirke said, “I suppose I can’t.”

  Costigan had turned to the window again. “So in all reasonableness, I’ll ask you again: where is she?”

  Quirke took his cigarette case from the pocket of his jacket and freed one of the neat row of cigarettes from under the elastic strap holding them in place and put it between his lips and lit it. His fingers were steady, he was glad to see.

  “You could say,” he said, “that she’s in the hands of the law.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Mr. Costigan, you don’t really think I’m going to tell you where she is, do you? What would have been the point of getting her out of the laundry in the first place, if I was going to hand her over to you?”

  Rain whispered against the window.

  “You know I’ll find her, sooner or later,” Costigan said. “We could behave like civilized men and sort this out between us, here and now. Don’t you think that would be the best thing to do, the simplest thing? What’s the point of fuss and bother and all the rest of it?”

  “Why don’t we sit down?” Quirke said.

  Costigan still had his eye on the street. “I’d rather stand,” he said.

  “Suit yourself. I’m going to have a drink. Do you want one? Oh, I forgot—you never touch the stuff.”

  He went into the kitchen, taking his time, and reached up for the bottle of Jameson at the back of the wall cupboard beside the window. As he did, he glanced down into the street. He was sure Costigan was lying; his men were bound to be down there somewhere, waiting for word from their boss to come clattering back up the stairs, carrying whatever it was they had used to break open the door. He could see no one, however, and there were no cars parked at the curb.

  He took a tumbler from the draining board and polished it with a tea towel. He had balanced his cigarette on the edge of the sink. Why, he wondered, did cigarettes always seem to send up a thicker stream of smoke when they were set down on something cold, like the porcelain of the sink, or a marble shelf? Or was it just something he imagined? The world was full of things he didn’t know the reason for.

  Costigan appeared in the doorway and stood there with his hands in his pockets. Quirke poured himself a tot of whiskey, measuring it carefully.

  “Watching your intake, are you?” Costigan said. “Have you been back to St. John of the Cross since we last ran into each other?”

  “I don’t think so. When did we meet last?”

  “Oh, I see you about, frequently.”

  “Do you?” Quirke took a sip of his drink. The sharpness of the whiskey burned his tongue pleasantly. “I don’t see you.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  Quirke turned with the glass in his hand. “So you’re keeping watch on me, are you?”

  “I keep a watch on a lot of people.”

  “I’m sure you do. Look, Costigan, you’ve asked what you came to ask, and I’ve given you my answer. I’m tired.”

  “I can believe it. You’ve had a busy day.”

  Quirke sat down at the table by the window. Costigan hesitated, then came forward and pulled out a chair and sat too.

  “How are we going to resolve this, Quirke?”

  “I’m not sure we are going to resolve it. For a start, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What kind of resolution could there be?”

  Costigan ran his fingers over the smooth plastic top of the table. “You know, I could have you charged with removing my daughter from a place where she was legally residing.”

  Quirke laughed. “Go ahead. Besides, I didn’t remove her. She came of her own free will, despite the best efforts of Sister what’s-her-name.”

  “Dominic,” Costigan said darkly. “Sister Dominic. Who’ll shortly be on her way to the mission fields in the Congo.” He paused, his jaw working. “How’s Malachy?” he asked.

  “He’s not well.”

  “Is that so? I heard something, all right. Is he bad?”

  “Yes, he’s bad.”

  “Sorry to hear it.” Costigan set both fists on the table now. “Come on, Quirke, where’s my daughter, what did you do with her? Was that bastard Hackett with you when you went to the laundry?”

  Quirke took another, sparing sip of his drink and sat back in his chair, crossing an ankle on a knee. He felt slightly light-headed; he supposed he must be afraid, after all. Yet still there was that strange calm inside him. He could feel the whiskey doing its work on him.

  “I know what it was that Leon Corless found out about you and what you’re up to,” he said.

  The lenses of Costigan’s spectacles caught the light from the window and turned opaque; they looked like two coins placed over his eyes. “Is that so?” he said. “What am I up to, then?”

  “I know about the money you’re making in America. When Garret Griffin and Josh Crawford were running the thing, at least they weren’t in it for profit.”

  “Profit? What profit? Have you any idea what the overheads are in an operation like this?”

  Quirke laughed again. “The overheads! Jesus, Costigan.” He stopped laughing, and leaned forward across the table, lowering his voice to almost a whisper: “Tell me, did you have Leon Corless murdered?”

  “What do you mean, murdered? The young pup was at a party and got drunk and ran his car into a tree.”

  “No, he didn’t. He was dead, or unconscious at least, before he got anywhere near that tree.” Those glossy lenses flashed at him. “What happened, Costigan? Was it another one of those mistakes your people are prone to making? Did you send some of your boys to frighten him, to rough him up a bit, maybe, and warn him to stay away from your business and keep his mouth shut about the things Lisa had told him and the other things that he found out for himself? And then it all went wrong?”

  Costigan leaned away from him, putting his head far back.

  “You have some imagination, Quirke,” he said.

  Quirke lifted the whiskey glass and was surprised to see that it was empty. Should he have another? He looked at his watch. Ten minutes; he would wait ten minutes. He still felt slightly dizzy. Someone was calling to him, a voice in his head. He shut his eyes for a moment. He seemed to feel a finger against his lips. Not speakable. He opened his eyes and looked about himself, and for a second he didn’t know where he was.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Costigan growled.

  “What?”

  “Are you sick too, like Malachy?” He gave a low laugh. “Jesus, if I wait long enough you’ll both be gone and out of my hair.”

  Quirke went to the sink and took up the whiskey bottle and poured a measure into his glass. He must hold on; he mustn’t let the dizziness overcome him. He willed the voice in his head to be silent.
Whose voice was it, anyway? Evelyn, yes, it was Evelyn’s voice, wasn’t it? That was all right. She would speak to him; she would tell him things.

  He returned to the table. A thought occurred to him. “Where’s Lisa’s mother, Costigan?” he said. “What does she think of all this?”

  “My wife is dead,” Costigan said.

  “Ah. Sorry.”

  “You don’t sound sorry.” Costigan was sweating, and his spectacles had slipped down the moist bridge of his nose. He pushed them back into place with a fingertip. “She died when Lisa was seven. Lisa never got over it. That’s her trouble.” He looked up at the window. “You know what it’s like, Quirke, worrying about a daughter, watching over her and worrying about her.”

  “Oh, yes, I know,” Quirke said. “But I would never have been worried enough to put my daughter into the Mother of Mercy Laundry.”

  Costigan’s look hardened. “I knew what I was doing,” he said. “She was going to have that fellow’s bastard. Bad enough he was getting ready to try to destroy me, he had to ruin my daughter, too.”

  “Your reputation, your daughter. Would you have sold her child to the Americans, when the time came, along with all the other ones?”

  Costigan brought the side of his fist down hard on the table, making Quirke’s whiskey glass jump.