Benjamin Black - Even the Dead

“Aye. And no Smiths, at all.”

“There’s a Costigan, I notice.”

“What’s she called?” Hackett said, twisting his neck to read the name. “Elizabeth. Maybe he has a daughter, the same Joe Costigan.”

They looked at each other for a moment, then both shrugged at the same time. Quirke pushed the list aside. “It’s not much help, is it,” he said. A thought struck him. “Where did you see Phoebe,” he asked, “that she gave you this?”

“She telephoned me, to say she’d got it from the agency, and could she bring it down to me. I sent Jenkins in the squad car up to her place of work. Fitzwilliam Square — very nice. She must like it, there.”

Quirke was surprised at how annoyed he was that Phoebe had called Hackett and not him. Well, he acknowledged, he deserved the snub. She had her sly way of reminding him, every so often, of the nearly twenty years during which he had pretended, to her and to everyone else, that she was not his daughter.

“So what’s next?” Quirke asked.

Hackett took a drink of his lemonade, while Quirke looked away. It was the color of the stuff that was most repulsive.

“I’ve sent a couple of my boys up to the house in Rathmines, with a search warrant.”

“What will they be looking for?”

“Your daughter insists she was in Lisa Smith’s flat in that house, and I believe her, whatever the bold Mr. Abercrombie may say.” He fingered an uneaten crust from his sandwich. “I’m also due to have a word with young Corless’s boss down in Government Buildings. I thought”—he gave a soft little cough—“I thought you might come along, if you have an hour to spare.”

Quirke always forgot how nervous Hackett was when it came to dealing with what he referred to, with a mixture of deference and scorn, as “the gentry.” For the detective, this class included all professionals, such as lawyers and doctors and the higher orders of the church, and any kind of government official.

“Yes, all right,” Quirke said, “I’ll come with you.”

* * *

They paid for their sandwiches and crossed the road to the hospital car park, where young Garda Wallace, he of the bad teeth and drooping cowlick, was waiting for them in a squad car. It was hot in the back seat, and they opened their windows on either side, though the muggy air that came in from outside afforded little relief.

“Tell me again which department it is that Corless worked in?” Quirke asked.

“Health. Crawley is the Minister. Creepy Crawley they call him. Or the Monsignor — he’s renowned for his piety. Has twelve children, three of them priests and one a nun. He has his place reserved for him in heaven, that’s for sure.”

“Is that who we’re going to see?” Quirke asked.

“Not at all — he’s altogether too grand to be talking to the Guards. It’s a fellow called O’Connor, or Ó Conchubhair, as he sometimes styles himself, when he’s feeling extra patriotic, I suppose.” He chuckled. “He’s the Secretary of the department, which I imagine doesn’t mean he does the typing.”

In Merrion Street they were let in through a side gate and directed to park next to an imposing, carved oak door. Inside, a girl behind a hatch told them to go up two flights and they’d be met. On the second floor another girl showed them into a big high room with plaster carvings on the ceiling. Two high windows looked out onto Merrion Street. Between the windows there was an enormous desk, behind which sat a small fat man in a three-piece blue suit. His head was as round as a melon, and he was entirely bald save for a few long, greasy strands of colorless hair coaxed round from somewhere at the back and plastered laterally across his pinkish-gray skull. He wore a dark blue bow tie with dark red polka dots. A gold watch chain was looped across the front of his buttoned waistcoat. He could have been any age between thirty-five and fifty. He stood up, assuming a wintry smile, and said, “Dea-lá a thabhairt duit, uaisle.”

“Dea-tráthnóna, a dhuine uasail,” Hackett replied, in his flattest Midlands accent. “Detective Inspector Hackett. And this is Dr. Quirke.”

The little man gave Quirke a small, plump hand to shake. “Turlough O’Connor,” he said. His smooth brow developed a furrow. “I think I know you, do I, Dr. Quirke?”

“I’m at the Hospital of the Holy Family,” Quirke said. “Pathology department. But you might have met me at the home of Judge Garret Griffin.”

Something moved in the depths of O’Connor’s pale eyes, something sharp and cold. “The very place,” he said. “You’d be Garret’s son, then.”

“Adopted,” Quirke said stonily.

“Yes, yes, of course.” A spot of pink appeared high on each of the man’s cheekbones, and he coughed softly. “And how is Garret’s other — how is Dr. Malachy, how is he keeping, these days?”

“He’s retired.”

“Is he, now. Well, well.” He coughed again. “Please, sit down, gentlemen — bring over those chairs and make yourselves comfortable. Now: what can I do for you?”

“It’s about one of your staff. Leon Corless.”

O’Connor nodded, closing his smooth, bulbous eyelids for a moment and then opening them again, wider than before. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Poor Leon — a shocking thing. Do you know what happened? I read about it in the paper. What can he have been doing out so late?”

Hackett took out a packet of Player’s, pushed open the flap, and flicked the cigarettes expertly into a stack, like a miniature set of organ pipes, and offered them across the desk. O’Connor waved his chubby hands in front of him. “Thank you, no, I’m not a smoker.”

Nor a drinker, either, Quirke saw, from the Pioneer pin fixed in his lapel, just below the fáinne, the little gold ring proclaiming him an advocate for the Irish language. Quirke couldn’t but marvel at the polished completeness of the man: the blue suit with lapel pins, the bow tie, the watch chain, the mincing manner. Maybe there was a school for civil servants, like a drama school for actors.

“We believe,” Hackett said, vigorously shaking a match to extinguish it, “that Leon Corless had been to a party and was on his way home across the Phoenix Park to Castleknock, where he lives, or lived, in digs at the house of a relative, an aunt by marriage. His car ran into a tree and caught fire.”

O’Connor nodded; his head seemed set directly on to his trunk, without the interposition of a neck. “Yes, that’s what the paper said. Although there was no mention of a party.” He clicked his tongue, partly in sympathy and partly to deplore. “These late-night parties are becoming more and more the thing nowadays, among the young. I suppose he had been drinking?”

“There was alcohol in his blood, yes,” Quirke said, “but not so much that he would drive into a tree.”

O’Connor seemed not to have heard. “It’s very bad,” he said, “very bad. From what I knew of him, I wouldn’t have thought there was wildness in him. Of course, his family background, his father…” He let his voice trail off.

There was a brief silence; then Hackett shifted on his chair and said, “Can you tell us, Mr. O’Connor, what sort of work did Leon Corless do here in the department?”

Again O’Connor softly closed his lids and again dilated them; it was a tic, it seemed, and slightly unnerving. “Well now, I can tell you he was a very promising young fellow, very promising indeed. He came in as a junior ex — he did very well in his exams, remarkably well — and it wasn’t long before his potential was spotted. He had a wonderful head for detail, not only a good memory but also a great capacity for organizing material. So I put him on statistics. It’s a new field we’re moving into, and Leon seemed just the type for it. And so it proved. He had a fine career ahead of him, Inspector, a fine career, tragically cut short.”