Benjamin Black - Even the Dead

“And of course,” Rose said with a teasing smile, “you’re going to find out what it is. You and that little man, the detective, what’s his name?”

“Hackett.”

“That’s it. You and Detective Hackett. What a pair you make. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.”

Quirke smiled tolerantly. Rose had always liked to tease, but there was a new bitterness in her tone now, an intent to wound. Well, it was understandable. She had attended the dying of one husband, and now she would have to do the same all over again for another.

“You should definitely speak to Phoebe, then,” Mal said, “and encourage her to come to us. She’ll be welcome.”

“She surely will,” Rose said. She hadn’t taken her eyes off Quirke. “But what makes you think she’ll be safer here than anywhere else? At your place, for instance.”

“I thought of that,” Quirke said calmly. “But there isn’t room.”

“No. And you wouldn’t want to be inconvenienced in any way, would you?”

She smiled at him sweetly, showing the tips of her teeth. Certainly she was trying to start a fight, but he had no intention of fighting with her. He stood up.

“I should go,” he said.

“Things to do?” Rose said, looking up at him, still with that brightly provoking smile. He made no reply, and she turned away, to the garden and the sunshine.

Mal walked with Quirke through the house, to the front door.

“You mustn’t take any notice of her,” Mal said quietly. “She’s doing her best to cope.”

“Maybe it would be a bad idea, your taking Phoebe in,” Quirke said. “You both have a lot to manage, now, you and Rose.”

“No, no. It would be good to have her here.” He paused. “Do you really think she’s in danger?”

“I don’t know,” Quirke said. “But I’m afraid she might be.” He supposed Mal imagined he had suggested Phoebe should take shelter here as a diversion, to take Mal’s thoughts off his own mortal plight, if only for a little while. And maybe it was true, maybe he had. “She’s very fond of you, Mal,” he said.

“Yes, I know that.”

They were at the front door, and Maisie appeared, with Quirke’s straw hat. She thrust it into his hand and scuttled away. “Mal,” Quirke said, “I think you frightened the daylights out of poor Maisie.”

“Oh, Lord, did I, really?” Mal said ruefully. “Everything I do these days seems wrong. I seem to have lost the knack of being normal. I’m sure it’s temporary. Nothing stays strange for very long. I imagine death will be just as ordinary and dull as everything else.” He laughed softly. “I certainly hope so.”

They were standing on the doorstep, under the great slanted shadow of the roof. The sunlight beyond seemed cold and without intensity, a heartless glare.

“I’m sorry, Mal,” Quirke said. “I don’t know what to say to you.”

Mal gazed out at the Sunday-deserted street. “You don’t need to say anything. What is there to say? You asked me what it felt like. It’s like discovering that all along you’ve been walking on a tightrope, and suddenly the end of the rope is in sight. You want to get off, but you can’t, and you can’t stop or retrace your steps, you just have to go on, until you can’t go on any farther. Simple as that.” He turned to Quirke, earnest yet smiling. “It’s no great thing, believe me. That’s what I have to tell you. It’s no great thing.” He stepped back, into the doorway. “Good-bye, Quirke. We’ll see you soon. Bring Phoebe — we’ll look after her, we’ll take care of her.”

Quirke said nothing, only nodded, and turned and went down the steps. When he reached the gate he looked back. Mal was still there, in the doorway, under that wedge of shadow.

David Sinclair was plainly dismayed, and angered, even, by his boss’s abrupt return to work. He was probably cursing himself, Quirke thought, for having driven out personally that day to summon him to the hospital to look at the mark of the blow on Leon Corless’s skull. And maybe Sinclair was right: maybe he wouldn’t have come out of convalescence, or whatever to call it, if it hadn’t been interrupted. At Mal and Rose’s house, he had slipped into a state of torpor that might have continued for months, for years, perhaps, until all his professional expertise had withered away. But now he was back, busy and determined and, as far as Sinclair was concerned, as much of a meddler as ever.

Sinclair had liked being boss round here, Quirke knew; now he was an assistant once more. Quirke smiled to himself.

Most of his first morning back he spent in his office, going over the records of all procedures that had been carried out in his absence. This intensified Sinclair’s sense of grievance. He was outraged to be checked up on like this, though he couldn’t risk challenging his boss directly. Quirke guessed what Sinclair was feeling, but didn’t care. He was the head of the pathology department, and Sinclair would have to be made to recognize it and accept it; the time had not yet come for the younger man to step into Quirke’s place, and that was the end of the matter.

There was a postmortem to be done, on a teenage girl who had managed to poison herself with a dose of domestic bleach; if Quirke ever left off poring over the files, they could get it finished before lunch. Sinclair had already found that the girl had been pregnant. Another illegitimate one; another death.

Quirke had spoken to Phoebe the previous evening, and put to her his plan for her to go and stay with Mal and Rose until Lisa Smith was found and the mystery of her disappearance was cleared up. First Phoebe had dismissed the idea, and then, when Quirke pressed her, had become annoyed, or pretended to. He was being ridiculous, she told him, and besides, even if she was in danger, which she didn’t for a moment think she was, she certainly wasn’t prepared to uproot herself, albeit temporarily, and move to Ailesbury Road. “You couldn’t stay there,” she said, “so why do you think it would be different for me?” To that he had no answer. But he could see she wasn’t quite as cool and unconcerned as she was pretending to be. Lisa Smith had come to her in terror and then had disappeared without a trace. If, as Phoebe believed, she had been taken away by force, then the ones who had done the taking knew it was Phoebe who had helped her to hide in the first place.

He could find no fault with Sinclair’s reports, and he shut the last of the folders and set it aside. Then he lit a cigarette and pushed back his swivel chair and put his feet on the desk. He was like a dog reestablishing his territory; he knew it, and he felt a twinge of shame, but he wasn’t going to stop.

Had he been hoping to find some sign of negligence in Sinclair’s record keeping, a slipshod conclusion here, a corner cut there, an obviously flawed judgment left to stand? If so, he had been disappointed. Sinclair was a good pathologist, diligent and thorough. What Quirke objected to was the younger man’s impenetrable sense of himself and his own worth. Quirke had never known anyone so self-possessed, and he was — he had to admit it — jealous. Or no, not jealous; envious, yes, but not jealous — he had to give himself that. There was a difference, in Quirke’s definition of the terms. To be jealous meant you not only wanted something someone else had, you also wanted that someone else to be deprived of it; to be envious was to recognize another’s gift and only want to have it too, for yourself. Pondering this distinction was a way of soothing himself.

He swiveled in his chair and squinted at the little window high up under the ceiling. It wasn’t really a window, only a shallow panel of glass, no more than six inches deep and reinforced with iron mesh, set on a level with the pavement outside, and of little use as a means of letting in light. He liked to see women in high heels walking past. He thought of Phoebe’s new boss, the widowed Dr. Evelyn Blake. He couldn’t imagine her wearing high heels. Strange, the way she had looked at him, so calm and seemingly incurious and yet — what was the word? Appraising, yes, that was it. She had an appraising gaze. It had pleased him, in an obscure way, to be thus scrutinized.