Benjamin Black - Even the Dead

Hackett formed his lips into a silent whistle. “That won’t be easy.”

“No. But I’m going to do it, all the same.”

Hackett shook his head in amusement. “You’re a fierce man, when you set your mind to a thing,” he said.

They drank their drinks. They could hear the noise of the traffic outside. Now and then a waft of exhaust smoke came in at the open doorway and made its way even into the snug, where they were seated.

“Dr. Griffin is very ill,” Quirke said.

Hackett turned to him. “Is that so?”

“Yes. He’s dying.”

“Ah, is he, now. I’m sorry to hear that. He’s a decent man. That will be a great shock for his wife. For you and your daughter, too. I know”—he coughed—“I know Miss Phoebe was very close to him.”

“Yes, she was. Still is.”

“Does she know he’s dying?”

“She does. I told her.”

Hackett clicked his tongue. “Ah, that’s very sad.”

Quirke stood up, pointing to Hackett’s empty glass. “Can I get you another?”

“I hate drinking on my own.”

“I’ll have something with you.”

“Good man! I’ll take a ball of malt, so.”

Quirke went to the bar and when the barman came he ordered two small Jamesons. He waited for the drinks to be poured, paid for them, set them on the table, and sat down. For a minute neither man touched his glass. Quirke gazed at the whiskey with the air of a man standing on the edge of a cliff and trying to gauge how deep the drop would be. Hackett watched him sidelong, and said nothing. At last Quirke picked up his glass and sniffed at the whiskey. “Here’s to life,” he said.

“While we have it,” Hackett answered.

And they drank.

“So,” Quirke said, leaning back against the plush, “what did your civil servant have to say?”

“A lot, as it happens. It seems our young Mr. Corless was off on a frolic of his own, gathering information about a project that would not be unfamiliar to you and me.”

“Don’t tell me,” Quirke said. “Babies, and what to do with them.”

Hackett nodded. “It seems, according to my informant, that the scheme Judge Garret Griffin and his associates used to run, taking babies from unmarried mothers, or mothers they deemed unfit for motherhood, and smuggling them to America and other parts is still going strong. Only now it’s being carried out on a financial footing.”

“What does that mean?”

“The people running it are making a fortune. Babies are being sold to rich American families for two, three thousand dollars apiece. That’s a lot of money, for a scrap of a child, wouldn’t you say, Doctor?”

In times to come, Quirke thought, people will look back and say, How could it happen? The future never understands the past. He and Hackett had tried to destroy the network that Garret Griffin operated, in collusion with Rose Griffin’s first husband, Josh Crawford, but they had failed, overruled and overborne by the forces ranged against them — the Archbishop, the Knights of St. Patrick, and all the other shadowy figures of power, wealth, and influence who knew how the world should be run and ran it according to their own, unwritten laws. He picked up the whiskey glass. Could he have done more? Should he have persevered, should he have carried the fight into the belly of the beast itself? Pathetic notion. The beast would have belched him out and turned its back and slouched off about its beastly business.

This, at least, is what he told himself; and he was half convinced.

Drink the whiskey, and then order another. That had always been a solution to his doubt and his dread.

He set the glass down on the table.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s go for a walk.”

Hackett looked at him, startled. “You haven’t finished your drink.”

“No,” Quirke said. “I haven’t, have I.”

* * *

They strolled by the river in the gathering dusk, under a lavish mackerel sky. The tide was low. Couples passed them by, hand in hand, the young men with their shirt collars turned up fashionably at the back, the girls in sandals, with cardigans draped over their shoulders. The world is not what it seems, Quirke reflected. However tranquil the scene before us, beneath our feet another world is thrashing in helpless agony. How can we live up here, knowing what goes on down there? How can we know and not know, at the same time? He would never understand it. Had Joe Costigan been there, he would have been able to explain it to him, as he had done before, though the lesson hadn’t sunk in.

They had not spoken since they left the pub. At Capel Street Bridge Hackett stopped, and leaned on the embankment wall, and looked down at the river, a trickle of quicksilver meandering through the mud.

“Do you know who’s in charge of the undertaking now?” he said. “Have a guess.”

Quirke didn’t have to guess. “Costigan,” he said.

“Right first time!” Hackett cried. “Give that man the prize money!” He chuckled. “Yes, the same Joseph Costigan, the fixer of fixers. And he’s getting fat on the proceeds. Oh, fat as a spring pig. He has a new house out in Monkstown, among the quality, and a big American car with two fins on the back of it that would frighten a shark. His eldest daughter recently had a wedding in the Shelbourne that was the talk of the town for weeks.”

“It’s not like him,” Quirke said, “to flaunt his money.”

“They always get careless,” Hackett said complacently, “even the most cautious of them.”

Outside a pub on the other side of the quay, two young men were engaged in a drunken fight. At the sound of it, Hackett turned and contemplated the scene. They swung their arms wildly, capering like monkeys, and cursed and grunted, then grappled clumsily and fell over, rolling on the pavement.

“Where are the Guards when they’re needed?” Hackett muttered sardonically.

Now a third young man appeared, also drunk, and began indiscriminately kicking the pair on the ground. A small crowd was gathering, enjoying the spectacle. Quirke and Hackett walked on.

“Do you ever think of leaving the city,” Quirke asked, “and going back to the country?”

“I do, when I see the likes of that,” Hackett said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the fight. “But May wouldn’t have it. What would she do without Switzers department store and the tram out to Howth on Sunday afternoons?”

They crossed the bridge and turned right and walked back along the other side of the river in the direction they had come from. Why are smoky summer evenings like this always so sad? Quirke wondered.

“So what are we going to do?” he said.

“What are we going to do about what?” Hackett inquired mildly, with lifted eyebrows.

There were times when Quirke felt a deep sympathy for the long-suffering Mrs. Hackett.

“About,” he said patiently, “Leon Corless and what he found out regarding Costigan and his American money. What did your civil servant panjandrum say, exactly?”

“Well now,” Hackett said with a laugh, “the man is a civil servant, so there’s not much chance of him saying anything exactly . It seems Corless had a bee in his bonnet about Costigan and this thing he’s carrying on with the babies. I don’t know how he heard about it in the first place, but when he did he made it his business to record every scrap of information he could lay his hands on.”

“And what became of it, all this information?”

“Ah, that’s the question. If I were to guess, I’d say it’s likely to have been mislaid by now, or it might even have disappeared, mysteriously. Costigan and his pals tend to be thorough, where incriminating documentation is concerned.”

They were silent for some paces; then Quirke spoke. “You know what we’re talking about here,” he said. “We’re talking about the distinct possibility — in fact, the distinct probability — that Joe Costigan was behind the murder of Leon Corless.”