It was the telephone. He struggled out of sleep, rising off his side and flailing one arm wildly to find the machine and stop the awful noise. He found the switch of the bedside lamp. It always seemed to him a ringing telephone should be hopping, but there it sat on the little locker by the bed, quite motionless, squat as a frog, yet making such a racket. He snatched up the receiver.
“I know, I know,” Hackett’s voice said, “I know it’s late, and you were asleep. But I thought you’d want me to call you.”
Quirke was sitting on the side of the bed now, rubbing at his eyes. “Where are you?” he asked. “What’s going on?”
“I’m in a phone box, in Baggot Street. I was down on Haddington Road-”
“What? Why were you there? What’s happened?”
“Nothing, nothing. I went round to have a look, after what you told me about your daughter, thinking she’d seen someone in the street.”
Quirke could not take it in. “You went to Haddington Road to night?”
“Aye. It’s a grand night, and I took a stroll.”
Quirke looked to the bedroom window, rimed outside with frost. “You realize,” he said, “it’s… what time is it?”
“It’s late, it’s late. Anyway, I went and had a look. Your daughter wasn’t seeing things. There was someone there, right enough, across the road from the house. At least I think there was.”
“Someone there?”
“Aye.”
“Doing what?”
“Just… watching.”
“And what happened? “
There was a pause. Quirke thought he could hear the detective making a humming noise under his breath, or perhaps it was some buzzing on the line.
“Nothing happened,” Hackett said, and chuckled ruefully. “I’m afraid I’m not the sleuth I used to be. I tried to get close to have a look, but whoever it was heard me and took off.”
“Did you see anything?”
“No.”
“But you must have made out something?”
“If it was anyone, it was a very slight person, light on the feet. Coat, some kind of cap, I think. Had a car down the road, got in it, and was gone.”
“Slight, you say- what do you mean?”
The pips began and Hackett could be heard fumbling for coins, and then there was the crash of the pennies going into the slot and his voice again. “Hello hello, are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Bloody phones,” the detective said. “What were you asking me?”
“A slight person, you said. Slight in what way?”
“Well, I don’t know how else I can say it. Small. A bantamweight. Fast on the pins.”
A slow spasm was making its way slantwise down Quirke’s back; it was as if a cold hand were brushing against his skin. “Could it have been- could it have been a female? A woman?”
This time there was a longer pause. Hackett was humming again; it was definitely he who was making that soft, nasal sound. “A woman?” he said. “I didn’t think of that, but yes, I suppose so, I suppose it could have been. A young woman. If, as I say, there was anyone; the mind plays tricks at this hour of the night.”
Quirke was looking up at the window again. The moon was gone, and all beyond the glass was blackness. “Come round,” he said. “Don’t ring the bell, the bugger on the ground floor will complain. I’ll watch for you and let you in.”
“Right. And Dr. Quirke-”
“Yes?”
“Whoever it was, it was no black man, I can tell you that.”
THEY SAT IN THE KITCHEN DRINKING TEA AND SMOKING. QUIRKE made the detective tell him again what had happened, little though it was, and after he had finished they had lapsed again into silence. The gas stove was turned full on but still the room was cold, and Quirke pulled his dressing gown more snugly around him. Hackett had not taken off his woolen scarf or his hat. He was wearing that shiny coat again, with the toggles and straps and epaulets. He sighed and said it was frustrating, but the more he tried to remember what he had seen of the fleeing figure the less certain he felt. It might have been a woman, he said, but somehow he thought that run was not a woman’s run. “They tend to turn their toes out,” he said, “have you ever noticed that? They haven’t got that- that coordination that men have.” He shook his head, gazing into the mug of tea that by now was no more than lukewarm. “Mind you, with the young ones that are going about today you never know; half them are hard to tell from fellows.”
Quirke rose and carried his mug to the sink and rinsed it under the tap and set it upside down on the draining board. He turned, leaning back against the sink, and put his hands into the deep pockets of the dressing gown. “What if it was her?” he said.
“What?”
“Hasn’t it occurred to you? It could have been her; it could have been April Latimer. What if it was?”
Hackett with one finger pushed his hat to the back of his head and with the same finger scratched himself thoughtfully along his hairline. “Why would she be standing in the street on a freezing night like this, looking up at your daughter’s window?”
“I know,” Quirke said. “It makes no sense. And yet…”
“Well?” The detective waited.
“I don’t know.”
“As you say,” Hackett said. “It makes no sense.”
21
IN THE MORNING, AT SOMETHING BEFORE EIGHT, THE PHONE RANG again. Quirke was shaving and came into the bedroom with half his face still lathered. He thought it would be Hackett, to say he had remembered something about the figure in the street. He had offered to drive him home the night before, but then remembered that the Alvis was up at Perry Otway’s place, locked in its garage, and he did not relish the thought of getting it out of there. He said he would call him a taxi, and asked him for his address, but Hackett had waved him away, saying he would walk home, that the exercise would do him good. Quirke was disappointed: he had hoped finally to find out where it was that Hackett lived. They went down to the front door together, Quirke still in his dressing gown, and the detective strolled off into the night, trailing a ghostly flaw of cigarette smoke behind him. In the flat again, Quirke had been unable to get back to sleep, and sat in an armchair in front of the hissing gas fire for a long time. In the end the warmth of the fire sent him into a doze, where he dreamt once more of alarms, and things on fire, and people running. When he woke again it was still dark, and his limbs were stiff from huddling in the armchair, and there was a vile taste in his mouth. And now the phone was going again, and he wished he did not have to answer it.
“Hello,” Isabel Galloway said, sounding tense and guarded. “It’s me.”
“Yes,” he said drily, “I recognized your voice, believe it or not.”
“What? Oh, yes. Good.” She paused. “How are you?”
“I’m all right. Something of a sleepless night.”
“Why was that?”
“I’ll tell you another time.”
“Listen, Quirke-” Again she stopped, and he had the impression of her taking a deep breath. “There’s someone here who needs to talk to you.”