Benjamin Black - Elegy For April

“I don’t think there’d be room there. I could buy a house.”

Still she stared. Had Rose spoken to him? Was the thing decided, already- was this what he meant, that he would buy a house and the three of them would live in it together?

“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I don’t know what to say. It would be lovely, of course, but-”

“But?”

She stood up, holding the mug; everything seemed to be happening at half speed. “You can’t just ask me something like that and expect me to answer straightaway,” she said, “as if it was nothing more than- than-I don’t know. I have to think. I’d have to… I don’t know.”

He turned to the window again. “Well,” he said, “it was just a thought.”

“A thought ?” she cried. “Just a thought ?” She put the mug down on the mantelpiece with a bang. “I don’t know why I drink this stuff,” she said, “it’s disgusting.”

Quirke crossed the room and took up his coat and his hat. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

“Yes, all right. Thank you for coming.”

He nodded, pinching the dents on either side of the crown of his hat. “I’ll always come,” he said. “You know that.”

“Yes, I know. But please, Quirke”- she lifted a hand-”please don’t talk to Hackett. I really don’t want you to.”

“All right. But the next time there’s someone there you’ll call me straightaway, won’t you?”

She did not reply. She had called him straightaway, and he had not been there. She wanted him to go, now, and yet did not. She would have to tell him. He walked to the door. “Quirke,” she said, “wait. I lied to you.”

He stopped, turned. “Yes? About what?”

She swallowed. She felt colder now in her thin silk wrap. “When you asked me about April, if she knew anyone who was- who was black.” He waited. “There’s a friend, a friend we all have, he’s Nigerian. A student at the College of Surgeons.”

“What’s his name?”

“Patrick Ojukwu.”

“I see.”

“I suppose he might be the one that the old woman saw with April, in the house. It’s possible.” She was watching him. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“Do I not?” He stood there, looking at her, fingering his hat. “This fellow- what did you say he’s called?”

“Patrick. Patrick Ojukwu.”

“What was he to April?”

“What I said, a friend, that’s all.” He turned again to the door. “You’re going to go to Hackett, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re going to tell him about Patrick.”

Again he stopped, again he turned and looked at her. “If there’s someone watching the house, we’ll have to find out who it is.”

“I’m sure there’s no one; I’m sure I imagined it.” She went to the mantelpiece and took another cigarette from the packet and lit it. “Don’t go to Hackett,” she said, looking at the fireplace. “Please.”

“It was you who came to me about April Latimer,” he said. “You can’t expect me to give it up now.”

ON THE WAY TO THE HOSPITAL HE STOPPED AT THE POLICE STATION in Pearse Street and asked at the desk to see Inspector Hackett, but he was not there. The carrot-haired young Guard- what was his name?- said the Inspector would not be back until the afternoon. Quirke’s headache was beating a slow drum between his temples. Outside the station a Guard was standing in front of the Alvis and writing in a notebook with the stub of a pencil. He was large and not young, and had a bony, mottled face. He pointed a finger at the windscreen. “You’ve no tax or insurance showing there,” he said.

Quirke told him the car was new, that it was taxed and insured, and that the papers were on their way, which was not true; he had got the forms but had not yet filled them out. “I’m a doctor,” he said.

“Are you?” the Guard said, looking him up and down. “Well, I’m a Garda sergeant, and I’m telling you to get your insurance and your tax disks and display them on your windscreen.” He shut his notebook and put it into the top pocket of his tunic and sauntered away.

WHEN QUIRKE GOT TO THE HOSPITAL THERE WAS A MESSAGE WAITing for him at Reception. Celia Latimer had telephoned. She wished to speak to him, and asked if he would come out to Dun Laoghaire. He crumpled the note and put it into the pocket of his overcoat. He felt bad; he was raw all over, his skin crawled, and there was a sour burning in his belly. Yet it was strange, he never seemed more surely himself than when he was hungover like this. It brought out a side of him, the Carricklea side, splenetic and vindictive, that he did not like but had a sneaking admiration for. He wanted to know who it was that had been spying on his daughter. He was in the mood to crack someone’s head.

In the office the telephone rang. It was someone whose voice he did not recognize. “I’m a friend of your daughter, a friend of Phoebe’s.” The line was bad, and Quirke had to ask him twice to repeat what he had said. “I’m just round the corner; I can be there in a minute.”

He was tiny, an intricate scale model of someone much larger. He had red hair and a stark-white, freckled face, sharp and thin, like the face of an Arthur Rackham fairy. “Jimmy Minor,” he said, coming forward with a hand extended. His plastic coat crackled and squeaked and gave off a faint, sharp, rubbery stink.

“Yes,” Quirke said, “Phoebe has mentioned you.”

“Has she?” He seemed surprised and a little suspicious.

Quirke searched on the desk and came up with a packet of Senior Service, but Minor had already produced his own Woodbines. The top joints of the first and second fingers of his right hand were the color of fumed oak.

“So,” Quirke said, “what can I do for you, Mr. Minor?”

What a name.

“I’m a reporter,” Minor said. “ Evening Mail .” Quirke would not have needed to be told; the cheap fags and the plastic coat were as telling as a press badge in his hatband. “I knew- I mean, I know April Latimer.”

“Yes?” There was a faint tremor in his hands. He reminded Quirke of someone, though for the moment he could not think who.

“I know you know she’s missing.”

“Well, I know no one has heard from her for two or three weeks. She’s sick, isn’t she? She sent in a sick cert, here, to the hospital.”

The little man pounced. “Have you seen it?”

“The cert? No. But I know she sent it.”

“Did she sign it? Is her handwriting on it?”

“I told you, I didn’t see it.” He did not care for this doll-like little fellow; there was something too vehement about him, he was too pushy, and sly, too. He realized who it was he reminded him of- Oscar Latimer, of course. “Tell me- Jimmy, is it? Tell me, Jimmy, what do you think is going on with April?”

Instead of answering, Minor stood up and in his bantam strut walked with his cigarette to the window of the dissecting room. Beyond the glass the light was a baleful, ice-white glare, and a porter in a dirty green house coat was halfheartedly dragging a mop back and forth over the gray-tiled floor. Minor was staring at the dissection table; there was a cadaver there, covered with a plastic sheet. He glanced back over his shoulder at Quirke. “You keep them here, just like this, the bodies?”

“Where do you think we should keep them? This is the pathology department.”

“I thought- I don’t know. In cold storage, or something?”

“There is a cold-room. But that one”- he nodded towards the cadaver-”is waiting for a postmortem.”

Minor came back and sat down again. “Dr. Quirke,” he said, “I know you’ve spoken to the family, to April’s uncle and her mother, to her brother, too. They won’t see me, needless to say, and I-”