Benjamin Black - Holy Orders

The detective rose and moved towards the door Archie had opened for him. “Don’t forget your hat,” Harry said sourly.

Hackett turned and grinned at him. “Can I leave it with you for the minute?” he said. “I’ll be back.”

* * *

The desk Jimmy Minor had shared with Stenson of the Echo was a scarred and ink-stained table with a big old Remington typewriter standing on it in state. There was a U-shaped plywood contraption with pigeonholes, all of them full, stuffed with out-of-date press releases and yellowing cuttings. “I’d say this is all Stenson’s,” Archie said. “Jimmy was the tidy type.”

“Is Stenson around?”

“Gone home. Will I call and tell him to come back in?”

The detective seemed not to be listening. He sat down at the table and ran a finger along the brittle edges of the old papers in the pigeonholes. “Would you know Jimmy’s handwriting?” he asked.

“Stenson would, probably.”

Hackett nodded, then looked up at the news editor. “You think there’d be anything here?”

“I doubt it. As I say, Jimmy kept things tidy.”

“He was secretive, you mean?”

“I don’t know that I’d say secretive. But he had notions of himself — saw too many Hollywood pictures, thought he was Humphrey Bogart.” He smiled, remembering. “He was a bit of a romantic, was young Jimmy.”

Now Hackett was fingering the keyboard of the Remington, like a blind man reading braille. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Ask Stenson, when he’s in again, to have a look through all this stuff and separate off anything of Jimmy’s. Notes, I mean, memos, that kind of thing.” He looked up at Archie again. “He wasn’t that tidy, was he, that he wouldn’t have left a few bits and scraps?”

“I’ll put Stenson onto it,” Archie said. “Maybe there’ll be something.”

Hackett continued gazing at him, still distractedly playing with the typewriter keys. “Is there anything you can tell me, Mr. Smyth,” he asked, “anything at all?”

The noise from the presses in the basement was now a steady, thunderous roll.

“Like what, for instance?”

Hackett smiled. He really did have the look of a frog, Archie thought, with that broad head and doughy face and the mouth a bloodless curve stretching almost from ear to ear.

“You’re an experienced chap,” Hackett said. “You must have some sort of an idea of what could have happened. It’s not every day of the week a reporter in this town is murdered. Did Jimmy have any dealings with subversives?”

“You mean the IRA?” Archie said, and gave a small laugh. “I doubt it. He’d have considered them a crowd of half-wits, playing at soldiers and blowing themselves up with their own bombs.”

Hackett considered. There was a curved line across the detective’s forehead, a match for his mouth, where the band of his hat had left its mark. “What about the criminal fraternity?” he asked. “The Animal Gang, or their cronies?”

“Look, Inspector,” Archie said, opening his hands before him, “this is a newspaper office. We cover fires, traffic accidents, politicians’ speeches, the price of livestock. Whatever Jimmy might have dreamed of, we’re not in the movies. God knows what he was up to. People have their secrets, as I’m sure you’re only too well aware. How he ended up in that canal I don’t know, and furthermore don’t like to speculate. As far as I’m concerned he can rest in peace.”

He stopped, with a sheepish expression, surprised at himself: he was not known for loquaciousness. He supposed he must be more upset by Jimmy’s death than he had thought. The detective, still seated, was studying him, and now again he let that broad, lazy smile spread across his face. “The thing is, Mr. Smyth,” he said, “my job is just that — to speculate. And so far I’m staring at a blank wall.”

Archie looked away. He scratched the crown of his head with the little finger of his right hand, making Hackett think of Stan Laurel. Hackett was feeling a faint stirring of annoyance. He had slipped many a morsel of useful information to Archie Smyth over the years, and now it was time for Archie to return the compliment. He waited. It was his experience that people always knew more than they thought they did. Things lay torpid at the bottom of their minds like fat pale fish in the depths of a muddy pond, and often, with a bit of effort, those fish could be made to swim up to the surface.

Sure enough, a light dawned now in Archie’s expression. “There was something he mentioned, all right,” he said, “I’ve just remembered it — something about tinkers.”

“Tinkers?”

“Yes. He’d been out to someplace where they were camped, out in Tallaght, I think it was. Yes, Tallaght.”

“Why?”

Archie blinked. “What?”

“Why did he go out to Tallaght? I mean, what brought him out there?” For a news editor, Hackett thought, Archie was not exactly fast on the uptake.

“I don’t know. Someone must have given him a tip-off.”

“About what?”

“I told you — tinkers.”

“That’s all?”

Archie shrugged. “I was only half listening.”

“When was this?”

“Last week sometime. He wanted me to sign a taxi docket, I asked him what was wrong with the bus. Jimmy thought he was too good for public transport.”

“He took a taxi to Tallaght?”

“Ten or fifteen shillings it would be, for that distance. And of course he had to taxi back in again.”

Hackett was gazing at Archie’s blue pullover. He knew better than to try to hurry people, but sometimes he felt like grabbing the Archies of this world by the throat and shaking them until their cheeks turned blue and their eyes popped. “Did he say where the tinker camp was?”

“I told you — in Tallaght.”

“Yes, Mr. Smyth, you did. But there’s a lot of tinkers in Tallaght, or there were, the last time I was out there. Did Jimmy mention a name?”

Archie laughed. “What use would that have been? They’re all called either Connors or Cash.”

Hackett suppressed a sigh. “So, no name, then. Anything else?”

“Sorry. No.”

“And when he came back from Tallaght, did you see him? Did he have anything to say then?”

Archie shook his head. “I heard no more about it, about tinkers or Tallaght or anything else.”

“But he’d have kept notes, wouldn’t he?”

“I suppose so, if he thought there was a story. You haven’t found his notebook, I take it.”

“We found nothing — the poor fellow was stripped of everything he had.”

“What about his flat?”

Hackett stood up; he seemed suddenly weary. “That,” he said, “is my next port of call.” He paused. “Mr. Smyth,” he went on, “can I ask you a favor? Would you ever mind fetching me my hat from your boss’s office? I think Mr. Clancy and I have said all we have to say to each other, for the present.” He smiled. “Sufficient unto the day, eh, Mr. Smyth?”

“—is the newspaper thereof,” Archie said.

They both chuckled, without much conviction.

* * *

The landlord’s name was Grimes. He was a large pale smooth man with a hooked nose and a condescending smile. He wore a dark three-piece suit with a broad chalk stripe and a camel-hair overcoat with a black velvet tab along the collar. His manner was slightly pained, as if he were being compelled to take part in something he considered beneath him. He made a show of having difficulty with the front-door key, to demonstrate, Hackett assumed, how little familiarity he had with such a down-at-heel establishment, despite the fact that he was the owner. The house, in a russet-and-yellow-brick terrace on Rathmines Road, was of three stories over a basement. Mr. Grimes said he was not sure, actually, how many flats there were. Hackett nodded. He could guess how inventive Mr. Grimes would have been in the disposition of partition walls. Despite his disclaimer he would know exactly how many cramped little boxes he had managed to divide the old house into.