Benjamin Black - Holy Orders

“I see.”

“Do you, now.” The woman glanced at him from under her eyelashes, smiling in malice. “So you’re satisfied, then. You had the great sleep, and learned what you came to learn, and now you’ll be off.”

He gazed back at her, and slowly her smile faded, and she looked away from him.

“Why did you tell me?” he asked.

“Why would I not?” she answered quickly, with a flash of almost anger.

“And what if I tell?”

She brought out her tobacco and papers and set them in the lap of her red skirt and began to roll a cigarette. “Who would you tell?” she asked.

“The Guards?”

That seemed to amuse her, and she nodded to herself, bleakly smiling. “Mikey and Paudeen will be gone by morning, across the water, on the boat.”

“To where?”

“Over to Palantus — England, as you’d say. That’s the place to get lost in.”

Quirke expelled a low, slow breath. “So,” he said, “Packie is sending them off, yes?”

She shrugged. “They’ll not be found, the same two, and there’s no use that peeler looking for them — you can tell him that from me. Them are the boys that knows how to hide.”

The moon was edging its way out of the square of velvety sky above the half door. How strange a thing, Quirke thought, a silver ball of light floating there in the midst of that dark emptiness.

Molly stood up, the cigarette unlit in her fingers. Quirke looked up at her. “Go on,” she said, “go on off now. I’ve said enough and you’ve heard more than is good for you.” He rose to his feet. He was a head taller than she was. “You’ll not come round here again, I know,” she said, lifting her eyes to his.

“Will I not?”

She put up a hand and grasped the back of his neck and drew his head down to her and kissed him. He smelled the harsh scent of her body and breathed her gamy breath. He made to put his arm around her waist but she drew back from him quickly. “Go on now,” she murmured, pressing both her palms against his chest. “Go on with you.”

He stepped back. Outside, the dog gave a soft, beseeching yelp. The faint music had started up again. Or was it, Quirke wondered, only the wind, keening?

He walked back into the village and found a hackney cab to drive him home. Slumped in the back seat he had slept again, briefly, and had only woken up when the car was pulling into Mount Street. When he saw the figure slumped in the doorway he thought it must be one of the working girls who patrolled here at night looking for business. They all drank, and this would not be the first time he had stumbled on one of them passed out in a stupor. He climbed the steps and crouched down beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched, and looked at him, and then in a flash of pallid moonlight he saw who it was.

“Christ,” he said, “Phoebe!” His heart pounded and his mouth had suddenly gone dry. She clung to him, and said she was sorry, that she had not meant to give him such a shock. He got her to her feet and opened the door with his key. “I’m sorry,” she said again, but he told her to shush, and led her into the hall. She seemed not to be hurt, yet she was so shaken he had to help her up the stairs.

In the flat he put her in one of the two armchairs that stood at either side of the gas fire. She was still trembling. Her skin had a greenish pallor, and her eyes as she stared fixedly before her seemed enormous. He fetched a blanket from his bed and wrapped it about her shoulders. Then he went into the kitchen and poured a brandy and carried it back into the living room. She drank a little of it and began to cough. “Tell me what happened,” he said, keeping his voice steady.

She told him how she had gone out for a walk and how the man in the sheepskin jacket had overtaken her and caught her by the wrist and pushed her back against the railings. “I thought he was going to kill me,” she said.

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know. I had seen him before, though, when I was with Sally. I think she thought he was following her, when all the time it was me he was after. It’s almost funny, isn’t it.”

He crouched down beside the arm of the chair, sitting on his heels, and took her hand. It was cold, cold and moist, and seemed so thin and frail that he felt his heart contracting. “What do you mean, he was after you?”

She shook her head slowly, gazing at the fire as if mesmerized. Her voice when she spoke sounded wispy and faraway. “When I was little,” she said, “there was a gas fire like that in the nursery, behind a screen. I never understood about the gas — I thought it was the filaments themselves that were burning, and I was always puzzled why they didn’t get burnt up.”

Her hand lay in his, chill and lifeless, like the corpse of a bird. “Tell me what happened,” he said again.

She turned her face to him and blinked slowly. She had stopped shaking, and all her movements now were ponderously slow, as if she were moving underwater. “He cursed at me,” she said, “and crushed my wrist in his hand — I thought he was going to break the bones.” She took her hand from his and drew back the cuff of her blouse from her other hand and showed him the bruises. “You see? I couldn’t believe the strength of his grip.”

Quirke stared at the livid marks on her wrist, his mouth twitching. “What did he say?”

She turned to look at the fire again. “He said to tell you,” she said, “that he was from Mr. Costigan, and that Mr. Costigan wanted you to know that he was keeping an eye on you.”

* * *

He let the telephone ring for a long time, and was about to hang up when Isabel answered. She sounded sleepy and irritated. “Who is this?” she demanded. He said he was sorry, he knew it was late but he needed her to come round. “Phoebe is here,” he said. “She’s had a fright.” Isabel was silent for a moment. He supposed she was disappointed; no doubt she had thought he was calling because he was lonely and wanted her company.

“Of course, I’ll come straightaway,” she said, trying to inject warmth into her voice and not quite succeeding. In the midst of a squabble recently she had said she was tired of hearing him talk about Phoebe. “In fact,” she had said, putting a hand on her hip and striking a pose, “I have to say I’m disenchanted in general with your daughter, whom you spoil, and whose whims and fantasies you indulge.” He would have been angrier had he not been distracted by the thought that she might have rehearsed this speech, for certainly she had delivered it as if she were onstage. They had been friends once, she and Phoebe; Isabel was another thing he had taken from his daughter.

He went back to the living room. Phoebe was sitting forward in the armchair, nursing her bruised wrist in her other hand and gazing intently at the fire. He thought of her as a child, in Mal and Sarah’s house, sitting like this before the gas fire there, wondering why the filaments did not burn away.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later Isabel arrived, brisk and bright as a hospital nurse, the heavy fur of her coat exuding the coolness of the spring night outside. She sat on the arm of Phoebe’s chair and held her undamaged hand, as Quirke had held it a while ago. “The troubles your father gets you into,” she said, clicking her tongue. She glanced over her shoulder at Quirke. “Who is this Costigan person and why is he sending you warnings?”

Quirke was lighting a cigarette. “He’s what you might call a manager, I suppose. He makes things happen, or prevents them.”

“Is he the one who had you beaten up, that time?”

“Yes, I think so.”

He came forward and stood with his back to the fire. Phoebe sat, silent and staring, like one of El Greco’s afflicted saints. Isabel regarded Quirke, shaking her head. “And how have you annoyed him this time?” she asked.