Benjamin Black - Holy Orders

“I’m not sure.”

“That means you know but you’re not prepared to say.” He offered her a cigarette but she waved it away. “It’s one thing to have you beaten up,” she said. “God knows I often think of doing the same thing myself. But sending thugs to attack your daughter in the street, that’s too much.”

“Yes. I know.”

“It’s to do with Jimmy Minor’s death, isn’t it?” She looked down at Phoebe. She was still holding her hand. “Phoebe? Is it?”

Phoebe shrugged listlessly. “I don’t know,” she said. She lifted her eyes and looked at Quirke. “Is it, Quirke?”

He sighed, and leaned an elbow on the mantelpiece, and told them about Packie the Pike, and what Packie’s woman had told him. When he had finished they were silent, all three, for a long time. Then Isabel spoke: “So he was killed by mistake, Jimmy Minor?” she said with bitter incredulity.

“I don’t think I’d call it a mistake,” Quirke said. He considered the toes of his shoes. “Someone had to die, and it couldn’t be the priest.”

Isabel snorted. “Why not? He raped their child.”

“Jimmy should have stayed out of it,” Quirke said.

Phoebe looked up at him, frowning. “Are you saying it was his own fault?”

“No, I’m not saying that. He didn’t know the kind of people he was getting involved with.”

Isabel was suddenly indignant. “A pack of tinkers—?” she began.

“Not just them,” Quirke said. “Costigan, the church. All that.” The moon, he saw, was in the window here, too, its crooked face leering down.

“How did Jimmy know about it?” Phoebe asked. “How did he find out about this priest, and what he’d done?”

“Someone must have told him,” Quirke said.

“Who?” Isabel demanded.

“The same person who told me.”

Isabel was watching him closely now. “The tinker’s woman? You seem to have had quite a cozy chat with her.”

Quirke said nothing to that, and turned away.

Another silent interval passed; then Isabel spoke again. “So: what will you do?” she asked.

“I’ll talk to Hackett,” Quirke said.

“Your detective friend?” Isabel curled her lip. “And what will he do?”

“He’ll go after Packie Joyce.”

“Will he arrest him?”

“I don’t know. He’ll try to get Packie’s sons back from England. If they can be found.”

Phoebe suddenly stood up, letting the blanket fall from her shoulders. “Nothing ever happens,” she said in a thin, bitter voice. “People commit murder and get away with it.” She looked at Quirke, her lower lip trembling. “You let them get away with it.”

Quirke stepped forward, putting out a hand, but she drew away from him quickly. “Don’t touch me,” she said.

“Nobody kills a priest,” Quirke said, his voice gone weary. “Not even the likes of Packie Joyce will kill a priest. It’s what I said — Jimmy should have stayed out of it.”

There was a brief silence; then Isabel rose from where she had been sitting on the arm of the chair. “Come on, Quirke,” she said, “walk your daughter home. I’m off.”

* * *

They waited in the street for a taxi, and when one came Isabel turned to Quirke and kissed him quickly on the cheek and gave him a hard look, gazing searchingly into his eyes, then stepped away and said she would phone him in the morning. Quirke and Phoebe watched the taxi drive away, then turned and walked up the street, across the crescent, past the Pepper Canister. The moon was bright enough to throw sharp-edged shadows athwart the pavements. The wind had dried up most of the rain but here and there patches of dampness persisted, gleaming like pewter. At the corner of Herbert Place Quirke glanced across at the canal in the darkness and the towpath leading away into the denser darkness under the trees.

“Is that girl staying with you still,” he asked, “Jimmy’s sister?” Phoebe nodded, tight-lipped; she was still angry at him. He did not blame her; he was angry at himself. “Will you tell her what I’ve told you?”

“I don’t know,” Phoebe said, keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead.

A white cat crossed the road in front of them, padding along swiftly with its belly low to the ground. When it reached the railings on the other side it stopped, with one paw lifted, and looked back at them, its eyes flashing like shards of glass. Quirke thought of Packie’s woman, felt again her hand on the back of his neck, her lips on his. He was tired; he longed for sleep.

They came to the steps of Phoebe’s flat. She had her key in her hand. He asked if she would like him to come up with her, but she said no, she would be all right. “Tell her,” he said, “tell Jimmy’s sister I’m sorry.”

* * *

Phoebe opened the door of the flat and went in. There was a smell of cocoa still. For a second she felt all the crushing weight of the world’s banality and indifference. She took off her coat and hung it on a hook on the back of the kitchen door. She paused, taking a deep breath, then walked forward, into the living room, where Sally, standing by the window, turned to her with a strained, expectant look, and lifted a hand to her hair.

Later, lying in bed, Phoebe gazed up into the darkness, nursing her aching wrist against her breast. Her eyes felt scalded but she could not sleep. She and Sally had gone and sat at the kitchen table, as they had sat that first night, and Phoebe had talked while Sally listened, the darkness pressing eagerly against the tall window beside them, as if trying to overhear what was being said. Now and then a car went past, and once someone had laughed in the street, directly below.

As she spoke, Phoebe had the impression of pouring something, some clear, cold liquid, into a bottomless vessel. Sally, even as she sat there, seemed to be moving away from her, sliding backwards smoothly, silently, inexorably, as if the walls all around them had dissolved and they were suspended in space, two planets locked in mutual repulsion. At the end, when Sally knew everything that Quirke had found out, she had risen from her chair and walked into the living room and stood again at the window, her arms folded, holding herself tightly, staring out into the dark. Phoebe had left her there, and gone into her room and undressed quickly and got into bed and turned out the light. But sleep would not come.

Now she thought of David. Had he and Sally kissed, in that brief moment when they were alone? She found she did not care. Nothing would ever be the same again.

At last she fell into a restless sleep. She dreamed of the man in the sheepskin jacket, except that in the dream he was also Jimmy Minor. Tell Quirke, he said, that I’m watching him . And he laughed.

A chink of sunlight coming in at the window woke her. She lay for a moment, listening, testing the silence. Nothing came back. She went out to the living room. Sally was gone; she had packed her things and slipped away in the night. On the table there was a note, scrawled with a pencil in large letters on the inside of a torn-open Craven A packet. Thanks. S. In one of the loops of the S there was a small, bone-white button. Phoebe stared at it, then picked it up and put it to her lips.

* * *

He had always loved the trappings of his faith, the heavy silk vestments in their gorgeous hues of green and blue and purple, the mingled perfumes of incense and lilies, the glint of candlelight on paten and pyx, the weight of the jewel-encrusted chalice when he lifted it in both hands above his head and the altar bells behind him began their urgent jangling. It was, he knew, a kind of idolatry, but he felt the Lord would forgive him, since the Lord forgave so much. Yes, he loved the church and all it stood for, yet on mornings like this, dank and rainy, he could not prevent his heart from sinking when he came through from the sacristy and genuflected before the altar, under the ruby eye of the sanctuary lamp, and felt the chill of the marble floor strike upwards into his bones.