Benjamin Black - Even the Dead

Ned had always been lucky, however, and that night his luck held. The Guard who had chanced on the two men about their shocking business had recognized Ned — his photograph had been in the paper that very week, over a story about a visit to Ireland by an American congressman — and, worried, had used his walkie-talkie to call the home number of Sergeant Hackett, whose sage advice he urgently sought. “Bring the bugger into the station,” Hackett had said, “but take him down to the cells and don’t let anyone see him.”

Hackett came into Pearse Street, interviewed Ned briefly, and let him go with a caution. Hackett knew the world and its ways, and despite the anathemas of church and state alike, he held it against no man for giving in to the carnal impulse, no matter what form that impulse took. What he had never told anyone was that his youngest brother, his favorite among his siblings, was that way inclined. As far as Hackett was concerned, it was for the good Lord, and not the law and its officers, to judge us for our grubby misdemeanors.

Besides, they were all living in a land of glass houses, where public stone throwing was inadvisable. The church, the arbiter in all matters of faith and morals, had her weaknesses when it came to the sins of the flesh. Indeed, Hackett had heard certain rumors, uttered only in secret and in the softest of whispers, about the Archbishop himself, rumors that, if true, would have scandalized the faithful and rocked the church to its foundations.

Hackett had run across Ned Gallagher on a number of occasions since that momentous night in the swirling fog on Burgh Quay, but in decidedly different circumstances. Ned had learned his lesson, and these days conducted his secret life with circumspection and the greatest discretion. So when the Inspector telephoned Ned’s office and asked his secretary to have her boss call him, not ten minutes elapsed before Ned was on the phone, sounding ebullient as ever, though not without a catch of concern in his voice. They chatted briefly, but Hackett could almost hear Ned urging him, anxious in his impatience, to get to the point.

“There’s a small matter I’d like to consult you on,” Hackett said. “Would you have a minute, this afternoon, or maybe this evening?”

“Oh, certainly, certainly,” Gallagher said. “Sure, why wouldn’t I have time to talk to the law, ha ha?”

He was perceptibly startled, however, when he heard where Hackett proposed they should meet.

“The Hangman, you say?” he said, as if he had never heard of the place. “Remind me, now, where is that?”

“It’s up there at Kingsbridge Station, on the other side of the river. I’m sure you know it.” Hackett smiled into the receiver. “If it wouldn’t be too much out of your way. Would five o’clock suit you? It’ll be nice and quiet at that time of the evening.”

“Oh, fine, so,” Gallagher said. Hackett could hear the reluctance, and the growing worry, in his voice.

O’Driscoll’s public house, popularly known as the Hangman, was on a cobbled street away from the river, wedged between a mattress warehouse and a garage that had long ago closed down. It was a disreputable establishment, frequented by various species of criminal life. It was also known, in certain circles, as the haunt of men with special predilections, and Hackett had no doubt whatsoever that Ned Gallagher, despite his show of vagueness on the phone, knew the place, and knew it intimately.

The Inspector was the first to arrive. He sat in the dimness of the public bar, at a small table in the corner, with a bottle of Bass and a greasy copy of the Evening Mail that someone had left behind. He had lately given up drinking Guinness, thinking it too heavy on the stomach, but he was still finding it hard to get used to bottled beer, although, perversely, he liked its sudsy consistency. He lit a cigarette; tobacco smoke always dulled the edge of even the most unpleasant tastes, he found.

The only customers, apart from himself, were a couple of heavy-set types, railway porters, probably, sitting hunched at the bar with their backs turned to him. The barman, a skinny fellow with sloping shoulders and an impossibly long neck, was leaning on the bar with his arms folded, listening to what sounded like a horse-racing commentary on the wireless. In here there was no sense of the intense light and pulsing heat of outdoors — the summer day was showing no signs of waning yet. Hackett read a report on efforts being made by the Dublin dioceses to hold another Eucharistic Congress to match the great success of 1932; His Grace Archbishop McQuaid himself, it was said, was considering traveling to Rome to make a personal approach to the Vatican. Hackett took a drink of the insipid beer and turned to the sports pages.

When Ned Gallagher arrived, he stopped in the doorway and scanned the room quickly. He wore a dark blue, three-piece pin-striped suit. He was visibly relieved to see only Hackett there, in his gloomy corner, and the two rough fellows at the bar; the people who might have recognized him tended to come in much later, near closing time, emboldened by the general tipsiness of the clientele and their consequent approachability. Seeing Ned’s anxious look, Hackett felt a slight regret at having summoned him to the Hangman; Hackett wasn’t a mischievous man, and he took no real pleasure in the discomfort even of puffed-up hypocrites of the likes of Ned Gallagher.

“Ah, there you are!” Gallagher said, approaching Hackett with a hand extended. “Isn’t it great weather we’re having?” He pointed to Hackett’s glass. “Will you take another of them?”

“No, no,” Hackett said, rising. “My round. What’ll you have?”

“Just a bottle of orange. I’m off on retreat tomorrow — to Glenstal, you know — so I’d better stick to the soft stuff. It wouldn’t do to arrive at the blessed abbey stinking of porter.”

Hackett smiled tolerantly and went to the bar. The two fellows sitting there turned their heads and regarded him blankly. There was something about the dead look in their eyes that made him think they probably weren’t porters after all. He decided it would be prudent to ignore them. Meanwhile he, in turn, was ignored by the skinny barman. He waited a polite interval, then spoke: “Hand us out a bottle of minerals, there, Mick,” he said.

The barman gave him a hostile stare. “My name is not Mick,” he growled.

“Is that so?” Hackett said easily. “I’ll take that bottle of Orange Crush, all the same, and another bottle of Bass. And maybe you’d bring them over for me, will you?”

He ambled back to the table in the corner.

“Busy as ever, I suppose, Inspector?” Ned Gallagher said.

“Oh, as ever.” He glanced in the direction of the two hunched backs at the bar. “For all my efforts, the world refuses to give up its wicked ways. I see your name in the papers, now and then.”

Gallagher shifted uneasily in his chair; there was a number of possible ways in which his name might appear in the public prints, some of which didn’t bear contemplating.

The barman brought their drinks and banged them down bad-temperedly on the table. “That’ll be two and fourpence,” he said.

Hackett counted out the coins and handed them over and the barman slouched away. Ned Gallagher tipped the bottle of Orange Crush into his glass and held it aloft. “Sláinte,” he said.

Hackett poured the foaming ale; it made a joggling sound as it toppled into the glass. He sipped. The taste really wasn’t getting any better. He would stick with Bass until the end of the week, and if it hadn’t grown on him by then he’d go back to the Guinness, whatever smart remarks May might make about his waistline.

“Were you at the match on Sunday?” Gallagher said.