Benjamin Black - Even the Dead

“Among other things.”

“Why did he put her away? Because she was going to have a child?”

“That, and the fact that she’d found out about some things he was up to, and told her boyfriend, and her boyfriend started poking around, and ended up in a burning car with his head bashed in.”

She nodded. “That sounds like Costigan, all right.” She took his glass, which was empty now, and went to the sideboard and made new drinks for them both. “So what are you going to do?” she asked over her shoulder. “You and that detective friend of yours going to put old Joe in the slammer? If that’s your plan, you better have all your ducks lined up in a nice neat row. Joe is a slippery customer. You too could find yourself in a burning car with a bump on your head the size of an egg.” She came back, and handed him his glass, and sat down. “What about Phoebe?” she said. “You think Costigan might go after her?”

“He might.”

“She really should come here, stay with us, like you suggested. I’ll hire in some serious people to look after her. Costigan is not the only person with contacts.”

He shook his head. “No good. When I tried to persuade her to come here she laughed, and then got annoyed. She has her mother’s spirit — her stubbornness, too.”

“She’s a damn fool,” Rose said mildly. She stirred her drink with an index finger. “So how are you going to protect her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you worried? I mean, are you seriously worried?”

“You said yourself, Costigan is a dangerous man. He’ll want his daughter back.”

“But you, and your detective, you’re not going to give her back, right?”

“No, we’re not.”

She sat and gazed at him, smiling to herself, then leaned forward suddenly and put a hand against his cheek, as she so often did.

“Oh, Quirke,” she said, “you’re just hopeless, ain’t you. You’re like a little boy in the playground, saving some girl you’re sweet on from the school bully.”

Quirke sipped his drink. “According to Costigan,” he said, “there are two worlds, the fantasy one where people like me live and the real one, where he carries on his business. He’s right, of course. But being realistic is a great excuse for doing all the bad deeds you want to do and then saying it’s a result of the way things are, the way things really are.”

“Oh, phooey,” Rose said. “You think you can choose how to live? So does Mal, or he used to, anyway, until recent developments showed him how wrong he was. We drift, Quirke. You know that yellow foam at the edge of the waves at the seashore, that stuff that looks like tobacco spit mixed with soda water? That’s us. The wave rolls in, the wave rolls out”—she demonstrated, moving a hand languidly back and forth in front of her—“and we roll with it. I bet that yellow stuff, too, thinks it’s moving itself about, just like you do.”

She stood up, stretching. “Ah! My back aches,” she said. “I’m getting old.” She drained the last of her drink and took an ice cube into her mouth and cracked it between her teeth. She looked down at him, still crunching. “Only one thing to be done with the Joe Costigans of this world, Quirke,” she said. “And you know what that is, just as well as I do. Now I’m going up to check on my poor Mal. One thing I hate to see is a man dying. You want to have some lunch with me when I come down?”

Quirke stood up. “Thank you, no,” he said.

“You have things to do?”

“Yes,” he said, “yes, I have things to do.”

She drew close to him, looking up into his face. “Kiss me,” she said, “will you, Quirke, for old times’ sake?”

She put her arms around him. They were both holding empty glasses. Her lips were cold, from the ice. She drew her head back, smiling. “We did love each other, a little, didn’t we, Quirke? Say we did. Lie, if you have to, I don’t care.”

He said nothing, but kissed her cold lips again, lightly, then stepped away from her, and put his empty glass down on the mantelpiece and walked out of the room. She stood for a moment, gazing at the floor, then went to the bay window. Big drops of rain had begun to fall.

Quirke was already on the front steps. She watched him all the way to the gate. He didn’t look back.

* * *

At the hospital he went to his office and shut the door and sat down behind his desk and picked up the phone and dialed the girl at Reception and asked her to find Sam Corless’s number for him. He waited, drumming his fingers on the desk.

Corless, when he came on, was hoarse and sounded exhausted. Faintly in the background there was the sound of dance band music. “You have to put up with that all day long?” Quirke asked.

“All day,” Corless said grimly, and coughed. “What can I do for you?”

“I was just calling to see how you’re faring.”

There was a brief silence; then Corless coughed again. “No, you weren’t,” he said. “But I’m doing all right, I suppose.”

With his free hand Quirke fumbled a cigarette out of his case, fitted it in the corner of his mouth, and lit it. “I have some information that will interest you,” he said.

“Oh? What sort of information?”

“I believe I know who murdered your son.”

Coming up the stairs to his flat he brushed at the raindrops on the shoulders of his jacket. The bottoms of his trouser legs were wet, too, and his feet felt damp. When he got to the door he saw at once where the wood was splintered beside the lock, and when he put a hand against the door it swung open easily. He smelled cigarette smoke, not his brand. He wasn’t surprised, and yet he hesitated. It was interesting, how calm he felt, and how little afraid he was. He knew he shouldn’t be calm; he knew he should be afraid. He could turn and walk quietly back down the stairs, he could go to the phone box at the corner and call Hackett, and Hackett would send a squad car, or come himself with Jenkins and a couple of uniformed Guards. Instead he took two or three slow, shallow breaths, and stepped inside.

Costigan was standing by the window, looking out into the rain. He wore a dark blue suit, with all three buttons of the jacket fastened, so that the flap at the back rode high. He was smoking a cigarette. There was a scattering of ash on the floor at his feet. He was a big man — Quirke always forgot how big he was — with a big square head and a broad forehead and a nose like a stone axe. His hair was thick and oiled and swept back smoothly from his brow. His glasses were heavy black horn-rims. He didn’t turn at the sound of Quirke’s step behind him.

“Where is she?” he said.

“Where’s who?”

Costigan took a deep drag from his cigarette.

“I had people here with me,” he said. “They’re the ones I needed to get the door open. I could have kept them, they could still be here. Instead, it’s just me.” He glanced over his shoulder. “You can’t say I’m not a reasonable man.”

“No,” Quirke said, “I suppose I can’t.”

Costigan had turned to the window again. “So in all reasonableness, I’ll ask you again: where is she?”

Quirke took his cigarette case from the pocket of his jacket and freed one of the neat row of cigarettes from under the elastic strap holding them in place and put it between his lips and lit it. His fingers were steady, he was glad to see.

“You could say,” he said, “that she’s in the hands of the law.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Mr. Costigan, you don’t really think I’m going to tell you where she is, do you? What would have been the point of getting her out of the laundry in the first place, if I was going to hand her over to you?”