Benjamin Black - Even the Dead

Quirke watched him; it was indeed, he felt, like watching a great actor in a minor role, but playing it with all his smooth, accustomed genius. This building teemed with people like him, the drivers of the nation, playing earnestly at being in charge, the reins of state firmly in their pudgy little hands. By instinct he despised and loathed the type. It was people like O’Connor who, with the flick of a pen, had condemned him to a childhood of cruelty and terror.

“And tell us,” Hackett said, “what was the nature of his work, exactly?”

O’Connor blandly smiled and folded his hands neatly before him on the desk. “Well, I don’t think I can tell you exactly . I wouldn’t want to blind you with — ha ha — statistics.”

Hackett’s look was as affable as ever. “Maybe, then, you’d give us a general idea,” he said. “Would that be possible, do you think?”

O’Connor stared at him in silence for a moment, measuring him, trying to calculate how much authority he might have at his disposal, how much of a threat he might represent. They were both employees of the state, after all, and as such they were natural enemies.

Steepling his fingers, O’Connor frowned down at his desk. “I can tell you,” he said, “that Leon was working in — what shall I say? — in a sensitive area. As you know, the Archbishop’s Palace keeps a vigilant eye on matters to do with health, and particularly”—he lifted his eyes and fixed on Quirke—“when it comes to mother-and-child issues.”

There was a moment of silence. Hackett stirred again in his chair.

“But would you be able to say,” he asked, with a patient smile, “in general, what duties he was engaged in? I’m not sure what ‘statistics’ means.”

O’Connor glanced to the side, pursing his lips. “As I say, Inspector, this is a sensitive area.”

Hackett waited, and when nothing more was forthcoming, he said, “Yes, Mr. O’Connor, and what we’re looking into is sensitive also, possibly involving a crime.”

O’Connor turned his head quickly and stared at him. It was, Quirke thought, the first time he had shown a genuine reaction to anything that had been said to him so far.

“A crime,” he said, in a hushed voice. “What kind of crime?”

“From investigations carried out by Dr. Quirke and his team, there is the possibility that there was foul play involved in the death of Leon Corless.”

“You mean”—O’Connor was verging on breathlessness—“you mean his death wasn’t accidental?”

“It doesn’t appear that way, no.”

O’Connor turned to Quirke with an expression of growing alarm.

“There was a contusion on the side of the skull,” Quirke said, “that didn’t seem to us to be the consequence of the car crash. It seems as if he was knocked unconscious before the car ran into the tree.”

“Are you saying this might be a case of murder?”

“That’s the possibility we’re considering,” Hackett said.

There was another silence, this time of longer duration. O’Connor put his hands flat on the desk before him and glanced agitatedly this way and that; he suddenly seemed a man clinging to a raft in a tempestuous sea.

“But that’s — that’s impossible,” he muttered, more to himself than to the other two. “Leon Corless murdered? It can’t be. He was just a young fellow doing his job.”

“And his job,” Hackett said, “was keeping statistics on — on what, exactly?”

O’Connor, wild-eyed and breathing heavily, seemed to have forgotten about the two men before him, but now he came back from whatever panic-stricken plain his thoughts had been ranging over.

“I don’t think,” he said, “that I should say anything more, at this juncture. I shall have to — I shall have to take advice — I shall have to consult the Minister.” He looked at Hackett. “You understand, Inspector, any hint of — of scandal or of crime, why—” He stopped, and gazed before himself, horrified.

“But we can take it, can we, Mr. O’Connor,” Quirke said, “that Leon Corless was engaged in compiling statistics to do with, let’s say, childbearing, birth rates, infant mortality, even”—he let a beat pass—“adoption?”

O’Connor waved his little hands again in front of himself, crossing them back and forth rapidly. “I’ve said all I have to say, for the present. I shall speak to the Minister. Perhaps”—he turned to Hackett—“perhaps you should ask to see the Minister yourself. Mr. Crawley has the authority that I lack, in this matter.” He stood up; he looked slightly sick. “I’ll bid you good day, gentlemen. Miss O’Malley will show you out.”

Quirke and Hackett glanced at each other doubtfully. They knew they had no choice but to leave, that the interview, such as it had been, was over, for now, at least. They stood up slowly from their chairs, their hats in their hands. O’Connor bustled with them to the door. The young woman who had met them when they arrived on the second floor was waiting in the corridor.

“Ah, Deirdre,” O’Connor said, “please show these gentlemen the way out.” He turned to the two men behind him. “Inspector, Dr. Quirke, good day to you. And Dr. Quirke, please tell Dr. Griffin I was asking for him.”

He smiled unhappily, shook hands with both of them hurriedly, and scuttled back into his office and shut the door.

The young woman, who had dark hair and wore a vaguely Celtic-looking dress with an embroidered bodice, smiled at the two men. There was a mischievous light in her eyes. “This way, gentlemen,” she said. “It’s just down the stairs here, the way you came up. At the bottom of the stairs you’ll see the door in front of you.” She was biting her lip, trying not to smirk. No doubt, Quirke thought, it wasn’t every day she saw her boss so flustered, and obviously she had enjoyed the spectacle.

They descended the stairs, their heels ringing on the marble steps.

“All these buildings,” Hackett remarked, “they remind me of hospitals. I suppose you wouldn’t have the same impression, since you work in a real hospital.”

They reached the ground floor. The girl behind the hatch smiled at them; she looked like a framed snapshot of herself.

Outside, the heat was pounding down. Wallace had got out of the car and was standing in the shade, having a smoke. When he saw them approaching, he dropped the cigarette hastily and trod on it. He opened the back door and Hackett climbed in, while Quirke went round to the other side. The upholstery of the seats was hot to the touch.

Wallace got behind the wheel and started the engine. Hackett leaned forward and tapped Garda Wallace on the shoulder. “Open them air vents, will you?” he said. “We’re suffocating back here.” They nosed their way out through the narrow gate and onto Merrion Street.

“Well,” Quirke said, “what did you make of that?”

Hackett didn’t answer at first. Quirke noticed again his way of sitting in a car, upright, with his back straight and his hands on his knees, like a child being taken for a treat.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” he said at length. “I think we’re getting into a sticky place with the powers that be.”

“Again?” Quirke said drily, with a faint smile.

* * *

Hackett got out at Pearse Street and told Wallace to drive Quirke on to the hospital. Hackett said he would telephone as soon as he got a report from the two detectives he had sent with a search warrant to the house in Rathmines. Then he strolled into the station with his hat on the back of his head, and Wallace swung the big car away from the curb, into the afternoon traffic.

Quirke, in the back seat, watched the simmering streets roll past. A double-decker bus had broken down on O’Connell Bridge, and even though Wallace put the siren on, it still took them a good ten minutes to negotiate their way through the jam of cars and lorries and horse-drawn drays. It was low tide, and the river was a soupy trickle between two banks of shining blue mud. The stench from the water made Quirke cover his nose and breathe through his mouth, but it did little to block out the noxious fumes. At last they were free of the snarl-up, and sped along O’Connell Street and on to Parnell Square.