Holy Orders A Quirke Novel

by Benjamin Black

“You like your work? I mean, you get satisfaction out of it?”

  Harry’s mouth had gone dry again. “Yes, of course,” he said.

  Once again Sumner was nodding. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “I like to think the folk working on my newspapers are happy. It gives me satisfaction, to know that you’re happy. You believe that?” Harry only looked glum, and Sumner smiled, showing his big white teeth. “You’d better believe it, because it’s true. But you’ve got to realize”—he leaned back and brought out from the breast pocket of his jacket a box of cheroots and flipped open the lid—“I’m in business here. We’re all in business here.”

  The cheroots were of a blackish-brown color, obviously handmade; long and thin and misshapen, they reminded Harry of shriveled dog turds. Sumner selected one, held it up before himself between his fingertips, and gazed at it with satisfaction. Harry pushed a heavy desk lighter towards him but Sumner shook his head and brought out a box of Swan Vestas. “Lighters taste of gasoline,” he said. “A good cheroot deserves a match.”

  He lit up with a flourish, making a business of it, while Harry looked on in dull fascination. Sumner shook the flame until it died, then set the smoldering matchstick carefully on a corner of the desk, ignoring the ashtray Harry was offering, and exhaled with a soft sigh a flaw of blue, dense-smelling smoke. “The point is, Harry,” he said, settling back on the chair and crossing his left ankle on his right knee, “newspapers thrive on—well, you tell me. Come on. Tell me. What do newspapers thrive on, Harry?”

  Harry regarded him helplessly with a glazed stare. By now he felt less like a rabbit than a torn and bloodied mouse that a cat had been toying with for a long time and was about to eat.

  “Noos, Harry,” Sumner said, almost whispering the word. “That’s what they thrive on—noos.”

  He smoked in silence for a time, smiling to himself and gazing at Harry almost benignly. Harry was bitterly reminding himself that although Sumner had taken over the Clarion less than a year before, obviously he saw himself as an expert at the business.

  Below them, deep in the bowels of the building, the presses were starting up for a dummy run.

  “So,” Harry said, “what do you want me to do, exactly?”

  “Me? I don’t want you to do anything. What I want is for you to tell me what you’re going to do. You’re the professional here, Harry”—he paused, seeming about to laugh at the notion but settling for a broad smile instead—“you’re the one with the know-how. So: impress me.”

  Harry could feel the sweat forming on his upper lip; he was sure Sumner could see it, beads of it glittering against his already forming five-o’clock shadow, which on him always began to appear midmorning. He had spent time in the army when he was young. He had been had up on a shoplifting charge, nothing very serious, but the judge had given him the option of Borstal or the ranks. It was a period of his life he did not care to dwell on. There had been a sergeant who was the bane of his life—what was his name? Mullins? No, Mulkearns, that was it. Little stub of a fellow, built like a barrel, with slicked-back hair and a Hitler ’tache. He was a bully too, like Sumner here, the same dirty, gloating smirk and the same air of enjoying himself hugely at others’ expense. You say these here spuds are peeled, do you, Clancy? Well, now you can get going on peeling the peelings. Oh, yes, Mulkearns and Carlton Sumner were of a type, all right.

  “We could run a feature, maybe,” Harry said, though it sounded unimpressive even to his own ears. “The increasing instances of violence in the city, gangs on the rise, Saturday night drunkenness, the youth running wild…”

  He let his voice trail off. Sumner, lounging on the chair, had put his head back and was gazing at the ceiling, slack-mouthed and vacant, the cheroot in his fingers sending up a swift and, so it seemed to Harry, venomously unwavering trail of steel-blue smoke. Then he snapped forward again, straightening his head with such suddenness that a tendon made an audible click in his thick, suntanned neck. “No no no,” he said, with a broad gesture of his left hand, as if he were brushing aside a curtain of cobwebs. “No: what I see is a front-page splash. ‘JIMMY MURDER: NEW DEVELOPMENT.’ Run it across eight columns, top of the page. A photo of Jimmy—what was his name?”

  “Minor.”

  Sumner frowned. “Sounds kind of ridiculous, doesn’t it, ‘Jimmy Minor’? If he’d been a kid it would be fine—‘Little Jimmy Minor,’ like ‘Little Jimmy Brown.’” He brooded. “Still, run a nice picture of him, with something in the caption like ‘Our man, brutally slain.’ Right?”

  “Right,” Harry said, trying to sound in forceful agreement. He fingered a sheet of copy paper on the desk in front of him. “But,” he said, “this ‘new development’—what would that be?”

  Sumner looked at him, his cheeks and even his eyes seeming to swell and grow shiny. “What do you mean?”

  “Well … there haven’t been any developments.”

  “There must be developments. There’s always developments. Even if there’s not, the cops pretend there are. What do they say? ‘Following a definite line of inquiry.’ Get onto that detective, what’s-he-called, and make him give you something. If he says he has nothing, invent it yourself—‘love tangle clue to killing,’ ‘mystery woman seen in vicinity of the crime,’ that kind of thing.”

  “But…”

  “But what?”

  Harry heard himself swallow. “It’s not really … We can’t just…”

  “Why not?” Sumner’s mustache was twitching again. Was he trying not to laugh? The missus was right, Harry had to acknowledge it: Sumner was no newspaper man. He was just amusing himself here, making Harry peel the potato peelings. Harry shifted in his chair.

  “We can’t just invent things, Mr. Sumner. I mean, there’s a limit.”

  Sumner, gazing at him, slowly shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong, Harry,” he said, in almost a kindly, almost an avuncular tone. “There are no limits, except the ones you impose on yourself. That’s a thing I’ve learned from a lifetime in business. There’s no limits, there’s no line that can’t be crossed. You take a risk? Sure you take a risk. Otherwise you’re not in the game at all.” He stubbed the remains of his cheroot in the ashtray on the desk and got to his feet, brushing his hands together. “The mystery woman,” he said. “That’s the line to follow.”

  “But—”

  “There you go again,” he said, smiling genially, “butting the buts.” He winked. “Cherchez la femme—there’s always a broad, Harry, always.” He began to turn aside but a thought struck him and he stopped. “He wasn’t queer, was he, our little Jimmy Brown?”

  Harry was about to reply, but paused. Here was a way, maybe, to get Sumner to back off. No paper was going to splash a story if it involved a nancy boy getting done in. Even Sumner would know that. “We’ve no reason to think he was that way inclined,” Harry said carefully. “On the other hand—”

  “Good,” Sumner said briskly. “Let’s get going, then.”

  Harry’s spirits sank. No good resisting; Sumner would not be deterred.

  “There was a woman there, that night,” Harry said, tentatively.

  “Oh, yes? Who was she?”

  “Secretary, lived nearby. She was the one that found the body.”

  Sumner showed his teeth again in a big, benign smile. “See?” he said. “I told you: there’s always a broad.”

  “Trouble is, she was with someone. Her boss.”

  “Her boss? Wasn’t it the middle of the night when the corpse was found? What the hell was this secretary doing with her boss at that hour”—he laughed coarsely—“taking dictation?”

  Harry shrugged. “I don’t think we can call her a mystery woman.”

  “Sure you can! Or make the boss a mystery man. ‘RIDDLE OF COUPLE ON RIVERBANK.’ It’s perfect.”

  “The thing is—”

  Sumner made a sudden lunge forward, planting his big hands on the desk in front of Harry and looming at him menacingly. Harry could smell the lingering
mundungus stink of his breath.

  “Harry, look,” Sumner said. “Do this—do it for me, if you like. Find the girl, talk to her, talk to her boss—”

  “He won’t—”

  “He will. You’ll make him talk. I bet he has a wife, and if he has I bet she didn’t know about little Miss Secretary being out with him for a midnight stroll and stumbling on a body and the cops coming and taking down her particulars—yes? All anybody needs is a little persuasion, Harry. Lean a little on the two of them and they’ll sing like songbirds.” He smiled, those white teeth genially agleam. “You’ll see—you’ll see I’m right.” He straightened, and turned and went to the door, then paused again. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, glancing up at a corner of the ceiling, “I’m really getting to like this business. I should have gone into newspapers years ago.”

  He nodded then, and went out, whistling. Harry sat for a long time gazing stonily at the door. “Noospapers,” he said, with deep disgust, spitting out the word.

  7

  McGonagle’s had a new barman, a cocky young fellow with a quiff. His name was Frankie—“like Frankie Sinatra,” as he was fond of telling anyone who would listen. He was all energy, diving and dashing about behind the bar like an acrobat, tossing tumblers from hand to hand and operating the beer pulls with a fancy flick of the wrist. He had a smart mouth, and made wisecracks, addressing the older customers facetiously as Your Honor, or Squire, or Captain, depending on what he thought they looked like. More than one of the regulars had complained about him to Paschal, the manager, but Paschal had told them to have a heart, that Frankie was only a young fellow and would soon settle down. Quirke, however, was inclined not to have a heart in the matter of Frankie, for he did not like the look of him at all, and not just the look of him, either. Quirke scowled when he came near. He found particularly irritating the way the young man had of throwing up his chin and yanking his fake bow tie to the end of its elastic and letting it snap back with a sharp smack. No, as far as Quirke was concerned, Frankie was exactly what McGonagle’s did not need.

  Quirke had been in an irritable mood even before he arrived at the pub, having been caught in yet another shower of rain on his way up Grafton Street, and the sight of Frankie’s cheeky grin set his teeth on a sharper edge. He ordered a glass of whiskey, and when Frankie asked if he wanted ice in it—ice, in a Jameson!—he gave back such a look that Frankie quailed, and only said right-oh, and skidded off to fetch the order.

  This evening Quirke had even more things than the rain and Frankie to annoy him. For a start, Isabel Galloway was coming back—in fact, she was back already, her tour having ended the previous night. She had telephoned from the railway station in Mullingar to say her train would be in by six, but that she was tired, having been up till dawn at the last-night party—“To tell you the truth, darling, I think I’m still a bit squiffy”—and would go to bed for a few hours, and see him later. He was surprised at how his heart sank when he heard her voice and realized her return was imminent. Isabel, he reminded himself again, was a splendid woman in many ways, yet he could not deny that he had found the weeks of her absence restful and undemanding. This made him feel guilty, of course, and now he felt guiltier still as he settled down to savor his last few hours of what he could not but think of as freedom.

  He spotted Hackett as soon as the detective came in the door. He had his hat on, and the shoulders of his gabardine raincoat were splashed with rain.

  “That’s a soft evening,” Hackett said, settling himself on the stool next to Quirke’s. He had struggled out of his raincoat and now he folded it on his knees and set his hat on the bar beside his elbow.

  “What will you have?” Quirke asked.

  “A small port.”

  Quirke stared. “A what?”

  “A small port,” Hackett said again, unruffled. “If it’s all right with you.”

  “Sure. Certainly.” There was a pause. “Since when did you become a port drinker?”

  “I take a glass sometimes. It’s very calming. You should try it.”

  Quirke lifted a finger to Frankie. “A glass of port for my friend here.” He shook his head, watching as the young man took down the dusty bottle of Graham’s from a high shelf. “I suppose next it’ll be Wincarnis tonic wine.”

  “You may mock,” Hackett said complacently. “It doesn’t trouble me.” He glanced at Quirke’s tie of blue and white stripes. “You’re not wearing it today, I see.”

  “Wearing what?”

  “The dickey bow.”

  Frankie set the glass of ruby syrup in front of Hackett. “There you are, Captain,” he said. “One port.” He lifted a hand towards his throat but caught Quirke’s look and left his own bow tie unplucked.

  Hackett sipped his port. “It seems it’s getting very popular, these days,” he said, nodding towards Frankie’s departing back, “the dickey bow.”

  Quirke scowled but said nothing. He glanced towards the phone booth at the end of the bar. Should he call Isabel? She would probably be awake by now.

  “See the Clarion this morning?” Hackett asked.

  “No. Why?”

  From the pocket of his raincoat Hackett pulled out a wadded-up and slightly damp copy of the paper and unfolded it on the bar. Across the top of page 1 the headline read, GIRL SOUGHT IN MINOR CASE. There was a photo of Jimmy Minor. The story had no byline. “Christ almighty,” Quirke said.

  Hackett nodded. “Some splash.”

  “That’ll be Carlton Sumner,” Quirke said. “He thinks he’s William Randolph Hearst. Who is the girl supposed to be?”

  “The one that found the young fellow’s body. She was courting along the canal bank with her fancy man. He happens also to be her boss.”

  “Then what does it mean, ‘girl sought’?”

  “It means nothing,” Hackett said dismissively. “The fellow, Wilson, the girl’s boss, asked to be kept out of it for”—he sucked his teeth—“domestic reasons. He has a wife.” He shifted his backside on the stool. “She’s going to be finding out more than she wants to know, if the Clarion has its way.”

  “And will it? Have its way?”

  The detective lifted his shoulders to the level of his earlobes and let them drop again. “The Clarion won’t have far to seek for ‘the girl,’” he said drily. “Or for Mr. Wilson, either.” He drank his port, pouting his froggy lips and licking them after he had swallowed. “I went around to his place,” he said. “Jimmy Minor, where he lives. Lived.”

  “Oh, yes? And?”

  “Nothing much. I sent Jenkins and a couple of lads up there this morning, to see what they could turn up. I’m awaiting their report. I haven’t a high expectation of results.” He drank again from his glass. Between the rows of bottles behind the bar they could see their fragmented reflections in the speckled mirror; the mirror had an advertisement for Gold Flake emblazoned in gilt on its upper half, a tarnished sunburst. Frankie was energetically polishing a glass with a dirty tea towel and whistling faintly through his teeth.

  “He was a gardener,” Hackett said.

  Quirke frowned. “A gardener? Who?”

  “Jimmy Minor. Out the back of the house in Rathmines where his flat is he had a bit of a garden going, a plot, like. Spuds, beans, carrots too, I think. They were just starting to come up.”

  Quirke wanted another whiskey and was trying to catch the eye of Paschal the manager, but Frankie spotted his empty glass and put away the rag and came down behind the bar, cracking his knuckles and grinning. “Same again, Captain?”

  Quirke nodded sourly.

  “Did he own the place?” he asked Hackett.

  “No. The landlord let him at it. Nice little plot, well tended. Good soil there, plenty of leaf mold laid down over the years. He’d have had a tidy crop. The potatoes, I’d say, would do particularly well.”

  They fell silent, the two of them. Frankie brought Quirke’s drink, but sensing some darkening of their mood he set it down without flourishes and said nothin
g, only took the ten-shilling note Quirke proffered and turned to the till.

  Quirke cleared his throat. “So otherwise you found nothing,” he said.

  Hackett did not answer, but reached inside his jacket and brought out from the breast pocket a creamy-white envelope and placed it on the bar. It had Jimmy Minor’s name and address typed on it, and in the top left-hand corner, in dark blue lettering, was stamped the legend:

  Fathers of the Holy Trinity

  Trinity Manor

  Rathfarnham

  County Dublin

  “It was with his stuff,” Hackett said.

  Quirke picked up the envelope, opened it, and took out the letter, feeling as he did so a sort of click in the region of his breastbone. Was it the look of the paper, the smell of it that had set something going in him? Then he remembered: he had been given a letter like this to carry with him when he was being sent to Carricklea; strange, how clearly he remembered it, after all these years. We are directed to entrust this boy into your care … He blinked the thought away. The letter, this letter now in his hands, was typed, in very black ink, on a single sheet of embossed paper—the fathers, it was clear, did not stint themselves in the matter of stationery. The Rathfarnham address was stamped here, too, and underneath it the letter began.

  Dear Mr. Minor,

  We are in receipt of your letter addressed to Father Michael Honan, to which I have been directed to reply by Monsignor Farrelly, our Father Superior.

  You do not make it clear in what connection you wish to interview Father Honan, but in any case it is not possible for you to do so. Father Honan is extremely busy at present, as he is about to embark for the mission fields in Africa, and is therefore unable to comply with your request.

  If you require information about the work of the Trinitarian Fathers, here or abroad, please address your questions directly to Msgr. Farrelly, or to me.

  Yours in the Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ,

  Daniel Dangerfield, FHT

  Quirke read it over twice, then looked at Hackett. “‘Daniel Dangerfield,’” he said. “That’s a mouthful.” He put the paper down on the bar, where it slowly closed itself along its folds, like a fly-eating flower. “What’s it mean?”