Benjamin Black - The Silver Swan

Quirke hesitated. "She doesn't know why Leslie White was in her flat. She's not sure. She assumed he needed help, money, something-Kreutz had been murdered, after all, and Kreutz had been connected with White, she knew that much."

"How?" Again that bland tone, again the gimlet gaze.

"How did she know? White told her. He liked to tell stories about the amusing people he knew-he was good at it. He made her laugh. He had that gift."

The frowsty girl brought a tray with teapot and cups and set it down rattlingly. The inspector waited for her to be gone, and said: "So Kreutz puts the heavy gang onto White, at which White is mightily annoyed, so much so, in fact, that as soon as he gets his strength back he goes up to Kreutz's place and gives him a beating and leaves him bleeding to death on the living room mat. Then what?"

"Then in a panic he goes to Phoebe's flat-she'd given him a key-aiming, I suppose, to hide out there."

The inspector dropped four lumps of sugar into his tea and stirred it slowly. He splashed in milk, but it was still too hot and he poured a measure into the saucer and lifted the saucer with tremulous care to his mouth and drank deep. "And Billy Hunt?" he asked, wiping his lips. "Where does he come in? And how does he come in-which is to say, how did he get into the house where Miss Griffin's flat is?"

"He convinced the mad old biddy who lives on the ground floor that he was Phoebe's uncle. He had seen White going in, and-"

"By chance, again?"

Quirke held out the open cigarette case, but this time the inspector declined the offer with a curt shake of his head. His eyes to Quirke seemed as sharp as flints.

"The fact is," Quirke said, and cleared his throat, "the fact is, he'd been watching the house for a long time. He was convinced by now that Leslie White had murdered his wife. He knew my niece had taken him in once already, after the beating he got from Kreutz's people. He didn't know who Phoebe was. When he saw White going in he followed him. Then Phoebe arrived, Billy waited until she had opened the door, and…"

"… and ran in and pushed the bugger out the window."

"He lost his head."

"What?"

Quirke had to clear his throat again. "He says he lost his head."

"Aye. That's what he told me, too."

"He doesn't know what he meant to do to Leslie White, but he didn't mean to kill him."

"Do you believe it?"

"Yes," Quirke answered stoutly, and stoutly held the other's gaze.

At last the policeman sat back on his chair and smiled. "I admire your benevolence," he said. The tea had cooled and he drank it direct from the cup now; each time he lifted the cup, Quirke noticed, with idle fascination, a drop fell from the bottom of it back into the saucer, making a crown shape in the little pool of khaki liquid that was left there and sending a random spray of splashes onto the tabletop. "Well, then, Mr. Quirke," the policeman said, "what do you want me to do?"

"I want you to do nothing."

Hackett nodded as if this were the answer he had been expecting. He mused for a moment, sighing. Then he laughed softly. "Lord God, Mr. Quirke," he said, "but you're an unpredictable man. Do nothing, you say. But two years ago you came to me with information about all manner of skulduggery in this town and wanted me to do all sorts of things, arrest people, destroy reputations, haul in respectable people-some of them in your own family-and show them up for the villains you said they were."

"Yes," Quirke said calmly, "I remember."

"We both do. We both remember well."

"But you were taken off the case."

Hackett chuckled. "The fact is, as you and I know, the case was taken off me, and put neatly and safely away in a file marked Don't touch . It's a bad world, Mr. Quirke, with bad people in it. And there's no justice, not that I can see."

"Justice has been done here."

"A rough class of justice, if you ask me."

"But justice, all the same. Leslie White is no loss to the world. He poisoned a woman and beat a man to death. Billy Hunt saved the state the job of meting out due punishment for those crimes."

The inspector gave a doubtful shrug. "Billy Hunt," he said. "Billy Hunt appointed himself judge, jury, and executioner. Are we to let him off with that?"

"Look, Inspector," Quirke said. "I don't care a tinker's curse about Billy Hunt. My only concern is the girl."

"Your niece?"

Quirke looked across the room to the table where he and Billy Hunt had sat. "She's not," he said, "my niece. She's my daughter." The policeman, sitting slumped with his chin on his chest, did not look at him. "It's a complicated story, going back a long way. I'll tell it to you someday. But you see my interest. She's had a hard time. Bad things have happened to her, some of them my fault-many of them, maybe. I have to protect her now. What she saw last night, the things that happened… You have sons, haven't you? You'd want to protect them, if they had gone through what my daughter has gone through. If she had to appear in a witness box I don't know what the consequences might be."

Hackett shifted his bulk, pulling himself half upright, and reached out and took a cigarette from Quirke's case where it lay on the table. Quirke flicked his lighter.

"You're asking me," the policeman said slowly, "to hush this thing up, so this girl, your daughter, as you say, won't have to give evidence in court?"

Quirke hesitated, but then said only: "Yes."

The policeman let his head sink on his chest again, his double chins swelling, fat wads of flesh as pallid as the belly of a fish. "You're asking a lot of me, Mr. Quirke."

"I believe you owe it to me. Or if not to me, then to my daughter." He saw himself two years ago standing in a squalid kitchen where a woman's bloodied corpse lay on the floor, bound to a chair with lengths of braided electric flex and her own nylon stockings. What justice had there been for her?

The policeman was patting his pockets in search of money, but Quirke dropped a florin on the table, where it spun for a moment on its edge and then fell flat. Hackett nodded towards the coin. "Aye," he said, "we owe each other, I suppose." Now he gave Quirke a long, considering look, seeming to weigh something in his head. Then he decided. "I think you're telling me the truth, Mr. Quirke," he said. "I mean, the truth as you see it. I didn't think so at first. To be honest, I thought you were trying to hoodwink me." Quirke was very still, his eyes fixed on the table, one fist resting beside his untouched teacup. The inspector went on. "But you really don't see it, do you? I thought you were less gullible. I also thought you had a less rosy view of human beings and their doings."

"What do you mean?" Quirke asked, still without looking up.

The policeman rose abruptly and took up his hat. He waited, and Quirke after a moment rose also, and together they walked through the crowded dining room and across the coffee shop to the doorway, where they paused.

"I'm sorry," Hackett said. "I can't do what you ask-I mean, I can't do nothing. What happened is not what you think happened. It's all much simpler, and much worse, in a way. There's a certain gentleman who thinks he's fooled us all." He turned, smiling his toad's smile, and looked at Quirke, and winked. "But he hasn't fooled me, Mr. Quirke. No, he hasn't fooled me."

"Who is it?" Quirke asked. "Who are you talking about?"

The policeman peered out from the doorway, squinting into the morning's grayness. "Do you know what it is," he said, "but the weather in this country would give you the pip."

BILLY HUNT WAS WELL AWARE THAT PEOPLE THOUGHT HIM A BIT OF A fool, but he knew better. Not that he had any great illusions about his brain power. At school he had been slow, or so they had told him, but it was only because he was no good at reading and therefore sometimes could not keep up with the rest of the class. That was why he had ducked out of doing medicine, all those years ago-he had not expected there would be so many books to be read. Quirke and that gang had looked down on him, of course. Quirke. He was not sure what he thought about him, what he felt about him. But talk about being a bit of a fool! The great Mr. Quirke, who imagined he was so clever, had missed the whole thing. In any other circumstances it would have been funny, how wrong they had all been, without even knowing it.