Benjamin Black - Elegy For April

“Oh, a long time. Last summer.”

“And how is that daughter of yours?- I’ve forgotten her name.”

“Phoebe.”

“That’s right. Phoebe. How is she getting on?”

Quirke stirred his tea slowly. “It’s her I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Is that so?” The policeman’s tone had sharpened, but his look was as bland and amiable as ever. “I hope she’s not after getting herself into another spot of bother?” The last time Hackett had seen Phoebe was late one night after the violent death of a man who had been briefly her lover.

“No,” Quirke said, “not her, but a friend of hers.”

The detective produced a packet of Player’s and offered it across the table; the look of the cigarettes, arrayed in a grille, made Quirke think, uneasily, of the Alvis.

“Would that,” Hackett asked delicately, “be a female friend, now, or…?”

Quirke took one of the offered cigarettes and brought out his lighter. The men at the next table, who had been sitting forward almost brow to brow and murmuring, suddenly threw themselves back in their chairs, purple-cheeked and raucously laughing. One of them wore a bow tie and a wine-colored waistcoat; both had a shady look about them. Strange to think, Quirke thought, that the likes of these two were free to knock back all the whiskey they wanted, in the middle of the morning, while he was not to be allowed a single sip.

“Yes,” he said to the policeman, “a girl called April Latimer- well, a woman, really. She’s a junior doctor at the Holy Family.” The frond of palm leaning beside him was distracting, giving him the sense of an eavesdropper attending eagerly at his elbow. “She seems to be… missing.”

Hackett had relaxed now and seemed even to be enjoying himself. He had eaten four fingers of bread-and-butter and was eyeing the stand of cakes. “Missing,” he said, distractedly. “How is that?”

“No one has heard from her in nearly a fortnight. She hasn’t been in contact with her friends or, it seems, anyone else, and her flat is empty.”

“Empty? You mean her stuff is cleared out of it?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Did someone get in to have a look?”

“Phoebe and another friend of April’s got in- April leaves a key under a stone.”

“And what did they find?”

“Nothing. Phoebe is convinced that her friend is- that something has happened to her.”

The detective had started on a cream cake and ate as he spoke. “And what about… um… this girl’s… ah… family?” A dab of whipped cream had attached itself to his chin. “Or has she any?”

“Oh, she has. She’s Conor Latimer’s daughter- the heart man, who died?- and her uncle is William Latimer.”

“The Minister? Well.” He wiped his fingers on a napkin. The fleck of cream was still on his chin; Quirke was wondering if he should point it out. “Have you talked to him- to the Minister- or to her mother? Is the mother alive?”

“She is.” Quirke poured more tea and gloomily added milk; he could still smell that whiskey from the next table. “I went with Phoebe to see her brother this morning- Oscar Latimer, the consultant.”

“Another doctor! Merciful God, they have the market cornered. And what had he to say?”

The whiskey drinkers were leaving. The one in the bow tie gave Quirke what seemed to him a smirk of pity and contempt; were his troubles written so starkly on his face?

“He said nothing. It seems his sister is the black sheep of the family, and there’s little contact anymore. Frankly, he’s a sanctimonious little bastard, but I suppose that has nothing to do with anything.”

Hackett had at last located the cream on his chin and wiped it off. His tie, Quirke noted, was a peculiar, dark-brown color, like the color of gravy. The hat-line across his forehead had still not faded. “And what,” he asked, “would you be expecting me to do? Would your daughter, maybe, want to report her friend to us as missing? What would the family think of that?”

“I strongly suspect the family would not like that at all.”

They pondered, both of them, in silence for a time.

“Maybe,” the Inspector said, “we should go round and have a look at the flat ourselves. Do we know where the key is kept?”

“Phoebe knows.”

Hackett was idly examining a loose thread in the cuff of his suit jacket. “I have the impression, Dr. Quirke,” he said, “that you’re less than eager to let yourself get involved in this business.”

“Your impression is right. I know the Latimers, I know their kind, and I don’t like them.”

“Powerful folk,” the Inspector said. He glanced at Quirke from under his thick brows and gently smiled, and his voice grew soft. “Dangerous, Dr. Quirke.”

Quirke paid the bill, and Hackett’s storm-trooper’s coat was returned to him. They walked through the lobby and out onto the steps above Dawson Street. Either the fog was down again or an impossibly fine rain was falling, it was hard to tell which. Motorcars going past made a frying sound on the greasy tarmac.

“I’d say now, Dr. Quirke,” Hackett said, fitting his hat onto his head with both hands as if he were screwing on a lid, “I’d say it’s power you don’t like, power itself.”

“Power? I suppose it’s true. I don’t know what it’s for, that’s the trouble.”

“Aye. The power of power, you might say. It’s a queer thing.”

Yes, a queer thing, Quirke reflected, squinting at the street. Power is like oxygen, he realized, being similarly vital, everywhere pervasive, wholly intangible; he lived in its atmosphere but rarely knew that he was breathing it. He glanced at the dumpy little man beside him in his ridiculous coat. Surely he knew all there was to know about power, the having of it and the lack of it; together they had tried, some years back, to bring down another influential family in this city, and had failed. For Quirke, the memory of that failure rankled still.

They went down into the street. Quirke said he would call up Phoebe and arrange for her to meet them at April Latimer’s flat when she left work that evening, and Hackett said he would make sure to be there. Then they turned and went their separate ways.

MALACHY ARRIVED AT QUIRKE’S FLAT AT TWO, AND THEY WALKED round to the garage in the lane off Mount Street Crescent and met Perry Otway, who handed over the key to the lock-up garage where the Alvis was waiting. The galvanized-iron door opened upwards on a mechanism involving a big spring and sliding weights, and when Quirke turned the handle and pulled on it the door resisted him at first but then all at once rose up with an almost floating ease, and for a moment his heart lifted too. Then he saw the car, however, lurking in the shadows, agleam and motionless, fixing him with a silvery stare from its twin headlamps. Childish, of course, to be intimidated by a machine, but childishness was an unaccustomed luxury for Quirke, whose real childhood was a forgotten bad dream.

He had thought that for Malachy too the Alvis would revive something from his youth, some access of daring he must once have had, but he drove it as he did the old Humber, at arm’s length, muttering and complaining under his breath. They went by way of the Green to Christ Church and down Winetavern Street to the river and turned up towards the park. The mist was laden with the doughy smells of yeast and hops from Guin-ness’s brewery. It was the middle of the afternoon, and what there was of daylight had already begun to dim. Even Malachy’s driving could not subdue the power and vehemence of the car, and it swished along as if under its own control, gliding around corners and bounding forward on the straight stretches with a contained, animal eagerness. They crossed the bridge before Heuston Station and went in at the park gates and stopped. For a time neither of them stirred or spoke. Malachy had not turned off the ignition, yet the engine was so quiet they could hardly hear it. The trees lining the long, straight avenue in front of them receded in parallel lines into the mist. “Well,” Quirke said with forced briskness, “I suppose we better get on with it.” He was suddenly filled with terror and felt a fool already, before he had even got behind the wheel.