HE MIGHT HAVE WALKED TO HADDINGTON ROAD-IT WAS TEN minutes away, across the canal- but he drove instead, the car seeming to him even more sullen and obstinate than usual. Phoebe was wearing the silk dressing gown that had once belonged to Sarah. She said she had probably imagined it, that shadowy presence in the lamplight.
“When was this?” he asked.
“I told you, in the middle of the night. It must have been- I don’t know- three o’clock, four?”
“Why were you up so late?”
She went to the fireplace and took a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from the mantelpiece. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. She blew a quick stream of smoke at the ceiling. “I often can’t sleep.”
He took off his overcoat and put it on the back of a chair. “I see you’re smoking again,” he said.
She held the cigarette away from her and looked at it as if she had not noticed it until then. “Not really,” she said. “Just once in a while. Good for the nerves, they say.”
He came to her and took the packet from her hand and looked at it. “Passing Cloud,” he said. “Your old brand.”
She puffed again and grimaced. “They’re so old they’re stale.”
He helped himself to one and lit it with her lighter. The gas fire was muttering in the grate; they sat down on either side of it.
“So,” Quirke said, “tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
She was smoothing the silk drape of the dressing gown over her knee. Not a dressing gown- what was it called? A tea gown? Sarah used to go and put it on after dinner, even when there were guests. He pictured her leaning back in the chair by the fireplace in the house in Rathgar, while the talk went on and Mal fussed with the drinks. Everything had seemed simpler, then.
He thought of Isabel Galloway, in her peignoir.
Phoebe was pale, and her temples seemed sunken, as if something had been pressing on them.
“You’re frightened,” Quirke said. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”
She picked up an ashtray from the grate and rolled the tip of the cigarette on it, sharpening it, like a pencil. “Do you want anything?” she asked. “Tea? Coffee?” He did not reply, only sat watching her. She gave a vexed shrug. “I just thought there was somebody down there, standing by the streetlamp.”
“Who do you think it was?”
“I don’t know. I told you, I’m not even sure there was anyone- I may have imagined it.”
“But it’s not the first time, is it?”
She compressed her lips and looked down into her lap. After a moment she gave a rapid shake of her head. “No,” she said, so quietly he could hardly hear her. “I thought there was someone there before, in the same place.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t know- the other night.”
“You didn’t call the Guards?”
“No. What would I have told them? You know what they’re like; they never believe anything.”
He thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll talk to Hackett.”
“Oh, no, Quirke, please don’t,” she said wearily. “I don’t want him poking about here.”
“He can put someone on the street, a plainclothes man, to keep watch, for a night or two. If there’s anyone, they can collar him.”
She laughed. “Oh, yes, the way they did with-”
She looked away. That other nightwalker who had watched her window, no one had collared him, until it was too late. He reached for the ashtray, and she handed it to him, and he stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette. “You’re right,” he said, “they are stale.”
She stood up and went out to the kitchen, where he heard her filling a kettle. “I’m going to make a cup of Bovril,” she called to him. “Do you want some?”
Bovril. That brown taste, the very taste of Carricklea Industrial School. “No,” he called back. “I suppose you wouldn’t have a drink, would you?” She pretended not to hear.
When she returned, carrying her mug, he had risen from the chair and was standing by the window, looking out. The air in the street was gray with frost-smoke, and there was ice on the windscreens of the cars parked on the other side of the road. The dusty smell of the cretonne curtain was a smell from the far past. “Have you settled in here?” he asked.
“I suppose so,” she said. “It’s not as nice as Harcourt Street, but it will do.” She was thinking how in any room Quirke always, eventually, headed for the window, looking for a way out. She sat down by the fireplace again, her knees pressed together and her shoulders hunched, clutching the steaming mug in both her hands. She was cold.
“You could come and live with me, you know,” Quirke said.
He turned from the window. She was staring at him. “In Mount Street?”
“I don’t think there’d be room there. I could buy a house.”
Still she stared. Had Rose spoken to him? Was the thing decided, already- was this what he meant, that he would buy a house and the three of them would live in it together?
“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I don’t know what to say. It would be lovely, of course, but-”
“But?”
She stood up, holding the mug; everything seemed to be happening at half speed. “You can’t just ask me something like that and expect me to answer straightaway,” she said, “as if it was nothing more than- than-I don’t know. I have to think. I’d have to… I don’t know.”
He turned to the window again. “Well,” he said, “it was just a thought.”
“A thought?” she cried. “Just a thought?” She put the mug down on the mantelpiece with a bang. “I don’t know why I drink this stuff,” she said, “it’s disgusting.”
Quirke crossed the room and took up his coat and his hat. “I’ve got to go,” he said.
“Yes, all right. Thank you for coming.”
He nodded, pinching the dents on either side of the crown of his hat. “I’ll always come,” he said. “You know that.”
“Yes, I know. But please, Quirke”- she lifted a hand-”please don’t talk to Hackett. I really don’t want you to.”
“All right. But the next time there’s someone there you’ll call me straightaway, won’t you?”
She did not reply. She had called him straightaway, and he had not been there. She wanted him to go, now, and yet did not. She would have to tell him. He walked to the door. “Quirke,” she said, “wait. I lied to you.”
He stopped, turned. “Yes? About what?”
She swallowed. She felt colder now in her thin silk wrap. “When you asked me about April, if she knew anyone who was- who was black.” He waited. “There’s a friend, a friend we all have, he’s Nigerian. A student at the College of Surgeons.”
“What’s his name?”
“Patrick Ojukwu.”
“I see.”
“I suppose he might be the one that the old woman saw with April, in the house. It’s possible.” She was watching him. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“Do I not?” He stood there, looking at her, fingering his hat. “This fellow- what did you say he’s called?”
“Patrick. Patrick Ojukwu.”
“What was he to April?”
“What I said, a friend, that’s all.” He turned again to the door. “You’re going to go to Hackett, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re going to tell him about Patrick.”