Christine Falls: A Novel

by Benjamin Black

  He stood up and paced the narrow length of floor behind his desk. This office was too small—everywhere was too small, for him. He had an image of his physical self, half comic and half dispiriting, as a huge spinning-top, perilously suspended, held upright by virtue of an unrelenting momentum and liable at the merest touch to go reeling off in uncontrollable wobblings, banging against the furniture, before coming helplessly to rest at last in some inaccessible corner. His excessive size had always been a burden to him. From boyhood on he had been built like a bus, and thus had been a natural challenge first to the orphanage toughs, then schoolyard bullies, then rugby types at dances and drunks in pubs at closing time. Yet he had never been involved directly in serious violence, and the only blood he had ever spilled had been at the dissecting table, although there had been rivers of that.

  The scene in Dolly Moran’s kitchen had affected him peculiarly. In his time he had dealt with countless corpses, some more abused than hers, yet the pathos of her predicament, lying there on the stone floor bound to a kitchen chair, her head lolling in a gluey puddle of her own gore, had provoked in him a rolling wave of anger and something like sorrow that had not subsided yet. If he could get his hands on whoever had done this terrible thing to her, why, he would…he would…But here his imagination failed him. What would he do? He was no avenger. Yes, dead ones, Dolly had said. No trouble there.

  Sinclair came to the glass door and knocked and entered. He was a meticulous cutter—You could eat your tea off of Mr. Sinclair, one of the cleaners had once assured Quirke—and there was hardly a smear on his rubber apron and his green lab boots were spotless. From the back of a drawer in the filing cabinet Quirke brought out a bottle of whiskey and splashed a tot of it into a tumbler. It was a ritual he had instituted over the years, the post-postmortem drink. By now the little occasion had taken on something of the solemn atmosphere of a wake. He handed the glass to Sinclair and said: “Well?”

  Sinclair was waiting for him to produce a glass for himself, but Quirke did not care to drink to the memory of Dolly Moran, whose remains he could plainly see, if he glanced through the glass door, glimmering palely on the steel slab out there. Sinclair shrugged. “No surprises,” he said. “Blunt-force trauma, intradural hematoma. Probably she wasn’t meant to die—fell sideways on the chair, smacked her head on the stone floor.” He looked into his drink, which he had hardly touched, held back no doubt by Quirke’s unwonted abstemiousness. “You knew her, did you?” he said.

  Quirke was startled. He did not recall having said anything to Sinclair about his dealings with Dolly Moran, and was not sure how he should answer. His dilemma was solved by the appearance in the glass of the doorway at Sinclair’s back of a bulky figure in hat and mackintosh. Quirke went to the door. Inspector Hackett wore his usual expression of mild merriment, and came sidling in like a theatergoer arriving late at a farce. He was as broad as Quirke but a good half a foot shorter, which seemed to trouble him not at all. Quirke was accustomed to the stratagems that people of normal stature adopted for dealing with him: the backward-leaning stance, the vigorous straightening of the shoulders and the craning of the neck, but Hackett went in for none of this. He looked up at Quirke with a skeptically measuring eye, as if he and not Quirke were the one with the advantage, the one with the loftier if slightly laughable eminence. He had a large rectangular head and a slash for a mouth and a nose like a pitted and mildewed potato. His soft brown eyes resembled the lenses of a camera, leisurely scanning everything, taking everything in. Under his glance Sinclair hastily put the glass down on the desk, the whiskey half undrunk, and murmured something and left. Hackett watched him as he crossed the dissecting room, discarding his apron as he went and, hardly breaking his stride, flinging a sheet over Dolly Moran’s corpse with an expert flick of the wrist before passing on and exiting through the green swing doors.

  Hackett turned to Quirke. “Delegated the job, did you?”

  Quirke was searching in the desk drawer for cigarettes. “He needed the practice,” he said.

  There were no cigarettes in the drawer. The detective produced a packet and they lit up. Quirke pushed the ashtray forward on the desk. He felt as if he were embarking on a chess match in which he would be both a player and a piece. Hackett’s easy manner and Midlands drawl did not deceive him—he had seen the detective at work before now, on other cases.

  “Well,” Hackett said, “what’s the verdict?”

  Quirke told him Sinclair’s findings. Hackett nodded, and perched himself on one broad ham on the edge of Quirke’s desk. He had not taken off his hat. For a moment Quirke hesitated and then sat down too, behind the desk, in his swivel chair. Hackett was contemplating Sinclair’s whiskey where the young man had left it on the corner of the desk; a tiny star of pure white light was burning in the bottom of the glass.

  “Will you take a drink?” Quirke offered. Hackett made no reply, and asked instead: “Was she interfered with?”

  Quirke gave a short laugh. “If you mean, was she sexually assaulted, then no, she wasn’t.”

  Hackett gazed at him expressionlessly for a moment, and the atmosphere in the room tightened, as if a screw holding something vital in place had been given a small, effortful turn. “That’s what I meant, all right,” the detective said softly; he was not a man to be laughed at. The light shining upward from the desk lamp made his face a mask, with jutting chin and flared nostrils and pools of empty darkness in the eye sockets. Quirke saw again, with a clarity that shook him, the woman on the floor, the burn marks on her arms, and the blood that was almost black under the ceiling’s single, bare bulb. “So they weren’t there for fun, then,” Hackett said.

  Quirke felt a stab of irritation.

  “Did you think they were?” he said sharply. Hackett shrugged, and Quirke went on, “What do you mean by they—how many of them were there?”

  “Two,” Hackett said. “Footprints in the back garden, before you ask. No one in the street saw or heard anything, of course, or so they say, even the old biddy opposite, who I’d imagine could hear a sparrow fart—but people like to mind their own business. It would have taken two of them to get poor Dolly trussed up like that. We’re assuming she was conscious all the time. Not easy to tie a woman by the legs, if you’ve ever attempted it. Stronger than you’d expect, even the no longer young ones, like Dolly.” Quirke tried to discern an expression in that shadowed mask but could not. “Would you have any idea as to what they were after?” Hackett continued, almost musingly. “Must have been something worth finding, for they tore the place apart.”

  Quirke had finished his cigarette and Hackett offered another, and after the briefest of hesitations he took it. Smoke rolled along the top of the desk like a fog at night on the sea. Quirke heard Dolly Moran’s voice again: I have it all written down. He coughed, giving himself a moment.

  “I’ve no idea what they might have been looking for,” he said, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in his own ears. Hackett was watching him again, his face more masklike than ever. From somewhere far above them, on the upper floors of the hospital, there came a muffled crash. How strange, Quirke thought, with vague inconsequence, the inexplicable noises that the world makes. As if the sound from above had been a signal, Hackett rose from the desk and walked to the door and stood leaning against the jamb, looking out at Dolly Moran’s sheeted corpse. The white light falling from the great lamps in the ceiling seemed to vibrate minutely, a colorless, teeming mist.

  “So anyway,” Hackett said, returning to the earlier part of their exchange as if there had been no break, “Dolly knew this girl…what was her name?”

  “Christine Falls,” Quirke answered, too quickly, he realized. Hackett nodded, and did not turn. “That’s right,” he said. “But tell me this, now, would you normally give your telephone number to somebody who was a friend of somebody that died?”

  Quirke did not know how to answer, yet had to. He heard himself say:

  “I was interested in her—in Christi
ne Falls, I mean.”

  Still Hackett did not turn but went on looking out through the glass of the door as if there were something of great interest occurring in the other, empty room.

  “Why?” he said.

  Quirke shrugged, even though the detective was not to see him do it. “Curiosity,” he said. “It goes with the job. Dealing with the dead, you sometimes find yourself wondering about the lives they led.”

  He heard the contrivance in the words but could do nothing to correct it. Hackett turned with his easy half smile. Quirke had an almost irresistible urge to tell him to take off, for God’s sake, that damned hat.

  “And what did she die of?” Hackett asked.

  “Who?”

  “This girl, this Falls girl.”

  “Pulmonary embolism.”

  “What age was she?”

  “Young. It happens.”

  Hackett stood gazing down at his boots, with the wings of his mackintosh pushed back and his hands in the jacket pockets of his tightly buttoned, shiny blue suit. Then he looked up. “Right,” he said, and moved to the door, “I’ll be off.”

  Quirke, surprised, pushed his chair back on its castors and stood up. “You’ll let me know,” he said, sounding faintly desperate—“you’ll let me know, I mean, if you find out anything?”

  The detective turned back, the smile broadening on his smudged features, and said in a tone of jovial good humor: “Oh, we’ll find out plenty of things, no doubt of that, Mr. Quirke. Plenty of things.”

  And still smiling he turned again to the door and was through it and had shut it after him before Quirke had time to come forward from behind the desk. Hardly noticing what he was doing Quirke picked up Sinclair’s glass and drank off the whiskey in it, then lumbered to the filing cabinet and fished out the bottle again and poured himself another go. Mal Griffin, he thought savagely, you’ll never know how much you owe me.

  10

  IT WAS NOT EXACTLY WHAT CLAIRE HAD BEEN HOPING FOR, THE TOP half of a two-family house on Fulton Street, but it was a world away from the places they had been living in since they were married, places that were not much better than flophouses, and she knew she could turn it into a home; best of all, it was hers—theirs—for it was all paid for, with nothing owing to the bank, and they could fix it up whatever way they liked. It was gray clapboard with a steep roof and a nice porch at the front with a swing. They had the three rooms upstairs, as well as a kitchenette and bathroom. The living room was full of light, and there was an arched window in the gable end, like the window in the alcove of a church, that looked right into the heart of an old walnut tree growing at the side of the house where squirrels hopped and skittered. Mr. Crawford’s man had sent over the painters from the body shop in Roxbury, and she had been allowed to choose the colors herself, buttercup yellow in the living room, white for the kitchen, of course, and a cool, pale blue for the bathroom. She had not been sure about the shade of candy pink she had picked for the baby’s room, but it looked fine, now that it had dried. The store had promised to deliver the crib this morning, and Andy had arranged for their things to be brought over from the old place on a flatbed by one of his buddies in the afternoon. For now she was enjoying the look of the rooms before they were filled up. She liked the emptiness, the space, the way the sun fell slanting on the wall here in the living room, the way the polished maple floor rang clean and solid under her heels.

  “Oh, Andy,” she said, “isn’t it just the prettiest place? And to think, it’s all ours!”

  He was on one knee in a corner, jiggling a loose power socket in the wall there. “Yeah,” he said without turning, “old Crawford has a real big heart.”

  She went and stood behind him, leaning her hips against his back and draping her arms around his shoulders, savoring his strong, metallic smell that she always thought of as blue, the jukebox blue of spilled machine oil or a sheet of pliant milled steel.

  “Come on,” she said, reaching down past his shoulders and patting his chest with her two hands, “don’t be such a sourpuss.”

  She was about to speak again, to tell him how handsome he looked in the dark pants and the sport jacket, but just then the baby in the bassinet behind her woke up. Claire was secretly thrilled at the way the baby’s—Christine, she must get used to thinking of her by her name—at the way Christine’s thin, rising wail, like the sound of a flute or some high instrument like that, already affected her, causing something to move in her stomach and making her heart beat faster and more heavily, as though it was a fist thumping softly inside her chest. “What’s wrong with baby then, hmm?” she whispered. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like our nice new housey?”

  She wished her mother could be alive to see her now. Daddy would only laugh, of course, and wipe the back of his hand across his mouth, as if to wipe away a bad taste.

  She smiled at Andy and snuffed up a deep breath through her nostrils. “Smell that,” she said. “Fresh paint!”

  Andy was balancing on one leg, pulling on a boot. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Let’s go get a hamburger.”

  She said all right, although she did not want to leave yet, wanted to stay and get used to the place, to let it soak into her. There was a short hall beside the kitchenette with a sort of French door at the end of it that opened onto a set of rickety wooden stairs leading steeply down into the yard at the side; this would be their front door. Andy went first, descending the stairs sideways and holding her by the elbow to steady her as she followed with the baby in her arms. This was one of the things she loved most about him, the easy, graceful way he had of being helpful, not just to her but others, too—women in stores, children, the one-armed old man at the gas station out on the turnpike who looked after the pumps; sometimes Negroes, even.

  The backyard was brown after the dry summer and the grass crackled under their feet and gave off dust that smelled like wood ash, and crickets the same color as the grass clicked their hinged back legs and sailed away from them on all sides. There was nothing in this part of the yard, only a gnarled peach tree, its leaves gone already, and an old overgrown dug patch where someone must have raised vegetables, long ago.

  “Well,” Claire said, with a rueful laugh, “this is going to take some rethinking.”

  “What gives you the idea it’s going to be ours to rethink?” Andy said.

  He was looking past her toward the house, and she turned and saw a tall, thin-faced woman standing on the porch, watching them. Her no-color hair was pulled back and tied in a tight ball at the back of her neck. She wore a brown apron.

  “Why, hello there,” Claire said, going forward with the baby in one arm and a hand outstretched. It was a strategy she had devised for meeting new people, always to make a move right away, before her shyness had time to stop her. The woman on the porch ignored the hand she was offering and she quickly took it back. “I’m Claire Stafford,” she said.

  The woman looked her up and down and was obviously unimpressed with what she saw. “Bennett,” she said. When she shut her mouth her lips made a straight, colorless line.

  She must be thirty-five, Claire guessed, but she gave an even older impression. Claire wondered if Mr. Bennett was about, or if there was a Mr. Bennett. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. “We’re moving in today. We were just up there, getting the feel of the place.”

  The woman nodded. “I heard the baby.”

  Claire held out the bundle in her arms. “This is Christine,” she said. The woman ignored the baby; she was squinting at Andy standing back in the dry grass with his hands in the seat pockets of his jeans and his head on one side, and the look in her eye warmed a half a degree or so, Claire noted. “That’s my husband, Andy,” Claire said. She lowered her voice to a woman-to-woman level. “He’s a mite put out,” she said. “I think he thinks the place is on the small side.”

  She knew at once it had been the wrong thing to say.

  “That right?” the woman said coldly. “Guess he’s used to grander quarter
s, is he?”

  Andy must have seen from the angle of Claire’s back that she needed rescuing. He came forward with his widest grin.

  “Howdy there,” he said, “Miss…?”

  “Bennett,” the woman said. “Mrs.”

  “No!” He lifted a hand in mock amazement and opened wide his velvety brown eyes. Claire watched him with an amusement in which there was only the faintest touch of jealousy. His charm knew no shame, and always worked, however obvious the lies he told. “Well,” he said to the woman, “I’m mighty glad to make your acquaintance.”

  He stepped up on the porch and she let him take her hand, having wiped it first on her apron.

  “Likewise, I’m sure,” she said.

  Claire saw how he held her fingers in his a moment before releasing them, and how her tight lips twitched into a smile.

  There was silence then between the three of them. Faintly, like the rumbling of far-off thunder, Claire felt the first beats of a headache starting up. The baby flexed its arm, pressing out the blanket as if it—she—Christine—also wanted to reach out to this hard-faced, long-boned woman. Claire drew the warm bundle more tightly to her breast.

  Andy slapped his hands against his hips. “Well,” he said, “I guess it’s about lunchtime.” He waited a second, but if he expected the Bennett woman to invite them in then he was disappointed. “Let’s go get something to eat, honey,” he said. “I’ll fetch my billfold.”

  He went off up the wooden stairway two at a time. Claire smiled at Mrs. Bennett and turned to follow him. The woman said:

  “I hope that baby ain’t a bawler. Noise carries easily, in these tiny little houses.”

  11

  QUIRKE COULD NOT REMEMBER THE LAST TIME HE HAD BEEN IN THE hospital chapel, and he was not sure what he was doing here now. The doors, giving off the corridor that led to radiology, struck an incongruous note, with their fancy handles and the two narrow panels of stained glass that some rich old lady had paid to have installed a couple of years previously in memory of her married daughter who had died. The air in here was always cold, with a special sort of cold not to be felt elsewhere, but which Quirke associated, unaccountably, with the vase of lilies that had stood every summer on the altar of the chapel in Carricklea—he used to believe it was always the same bunch, miraculously undying—into the bell of one of which he had one day dared to put his hand, and the chill, clammy, flesh-like feel of which he had never forgotten. The Holy Family chapel was small, without pillars or side alcoves, so that there was no avoiding the beady eye of the little oil lamp with the ruby-red globe that burned perpetually before the tabernacle. It was there at noon that Quirke found Mal, kneeling with hands joined and head bowed before a statue of St. Joseph. He went forward quietly and sat down in the seat beside where Mal knelt. Mal did not turn, and gave no sign to acknowledge his presence, but after a minute or two he crossed himself and sat back on the seat with a sigh. They were both silent for a time; then Quirke lifted a hand and made a gesture indicating the statue, the sanctuary lamp, the altar with its gold-embroidered white cloth, and said: “Tell me, Mal, do you really believe in all this?”