“Leon. Leon Corless.”
“She could see him slumped against the wheel, and the flames all round him.”
“What did she do?”
“Nothing. She was frightened, and ran off. I suppose she was in a panic by then. She went home to her flat — I think she must have walked all the way to Rathmines — and slept for a while. Or tried to sleep. I don’t know where she was going when she saw me in the restaurant. I think she was just wandering around in a daze, not knowing what to do.”
Quirke took another cigarette from his case on the table and lit it. A wedge of ice seemed to have lodged itself between his ribs, on the inside. He wanted a drink; he needed a drink; but he must not, must not, must not have a drink.
“So what did you do,” he said, “when you met her in the Green?”
“I borrowed the car from David and drove her down to Wicklow.”
“To Wicklow?”
“To the house in Ballytubber. She needed somewhere to hide, she said, somewhere where no one would find her.”
“Like who?”
“What?”
“Who would want to find her, who was she hiding from?”
“I don’t know. I asked her but she wouldn’t tell me. She was too frightened.”
He walked to the window and stood looking out. Even yet there was a streak of silver radiance in the western sky, and a long smooth plume of cloud the color of smoke.
“Who was he?” Phoebe asked. “Leon Corless, I mean.”
Quirke shrugged. “A civil servant. His only claim to fame is that his father is Sam Corless.”
“Who’s Sam Corless?”
“The Communist. Socialist Left Alliance, or whatever it’s called.”
“Oh, him. Yes. Was he — the son — was he in politics, too?”
“No. He had no interest in that kind of thing, so his father says.”
They were silent, lost in their thoughts. Quirke was recalling Sam Corless sitting in his cluttered little room above the tobacconist’s, hands clamped on his knees, haggard and lost. He had always had a certain admiration for Corless, for his fearlessness, his effrontery, for the jeering speeches he made, excoriating state and church, laughing at the golf club plotters, the dinner dance conspirators, all the whited sepulchres, the Judge Garret Griffins and the Josh Crawfords and the Joe Costigans of this mean and mendacious little city.
“The girl, Lisa,” Quirke said. “She’s pregnant, you say. Was Leon Corless the father?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Christ,” he muttered, “what sort of a mess is this.” He turned from the window and paced the floor again. “Got any drink?”
“What?”
“Drink. Whiskey, wine. Anything.”
“No,” she said, “there’s no drink. And even if there was, I wouldn’t let you have it.”
He laughed harshly. She was right, she was right, but oh, how his very nerves were crying out for just one small sip. But of course it wouldn’t be that, it wouldn’t be one small sip; it never was.
“So you left her in Ballytubber,” he said. “How will she manage there, on her own?”
“I don’t know. I’ll go down and see her tomorrow, find out how she’s getting on.”
“Does David know about her?”
“No. I told him I was taking you to the hospital for a checkup, and then for a drive somewhere.”
He laughed again, more quietly. He was wondering what Sinclair would have made of the notion of him and Phoebe off on a jaunt together. They were hardly that kind of father and daughter. But then, they were hardly any kind of father and daughter, really.
“I’m going home,” he said. “It’s late — you should sleep. Have you to work tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow is Saturday.”
“So it is.”
He took up his hat.
“Have you really moved out of Ailesbury Road?” Phoebe asked. “Are you really back in the flat?”
“Yes, I am.”
“When did you leave?”
“Tonight, just before I met you. Also, I’m going back to work.” He smiled at her in the lamplight. “My sojourn in the desert is over.”
“Good,” she said. “I was worried about you. What did Rose have to say?”
“About what — about my moving out? Not much. I imagine she’s relieved, though she seemed offended. As for Mal, God knows what he thinks. I’m not sure it had sunk in that I was living with them in the first place. You know Mal.”
She walked down with him to the front door. They stood together on the top step, looking out into the night. All was still except for the sound of water tumbling over one of the locks in the canal. Quirke had again that sense of pervasive, mild melancholy. He wanted to touch his daughter, to make some gesture that would communicate all he felt for her, whatever that was. But of course he couldn’t do it. Faintly, as if from afar, the circus music sounded in his head. Would he ever get over that wall, would he ever see the clowns, the strong man, the sequined bareback rider circling the ring, the trapeze artists swooping through beams of powdered light? He felt a sweet pang of self-pity, and despised himself for it.
“Good night,” he said. “Sleep well.”
“Good night, Quirke.”
She watched him descend the steps and walk off into the night. After shutting the door, she went up to the flat and into the living room and switched off the lamp on the mantelpiece and sat down in the armchair by the window. She wasn’t sleepy. She thought of Lisa, alone down there in that little town. She thought of Quirke, too, walking by himself in the dark streets.
For a full minute she sat without stirring. Then she stood up quickly and took her handbag and the car keys from the table. As she was going down the stairs she heard the bell in St. Stephen’s tolling midnight.
* * *
The same bell was sounding a later hour when Quirke’s telephone rang, making him spring awake. He was sprawled on the sofa in his flat, still dressed, an open book lying face-down on his lap. He must have dozed off. He got up groggily and crossed to the still-shrilling phone and picked up the receiver.
“She’s gone,” Phoebe said, her voice small and distant and fearful.
“What?” Quirke didn’t understand. “Where are you?”
“In Ballytubber.”
“How did you get there?”
“I drove down, after you left. I was worried, I couldn’t stop thinking of Lisa here on her own. But now she’s gone, Quirke.”
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was a distant wail. “I don’t know. Only the house is empty, and she’s gone.”
7
It had been some time after one o’clock when she arrived, for the second time that night, at the house in Ballytubber. She turned off the engine and doused the headlights and sat in the dark for five minutes or more, telling herself she should turn around and go back to Dublin. What had she been thinking of, coming back here like this? Apart from anything else, if she knocked on the door now it would terrify Lisa, for who would be calling at such a late hour to a house that had been standing empty for so long? And what explanation could she give for turning up again, no more than a couple of hours after she had left? Yet she couldn’t deny the instinct that had made her come back. Something was wrong, she knew it was.
In the end she steeled herself and got out of the car. No light showed in the house. Instead of knocking on the front door, she went around by the side, to the window of the bedroom with the double bed, and tapped on the glass and spoke Lisa’s name. There was not a stir inside, and no reply came. She tapped again, more sharply this time. She went back to the front door and knocked, even though she knew by now that it was futile to persist. Lisa was not here; she had gone, somehow. Phoebe knelt by the gatepost and, working from memory, removed a stone from the base, and found the spare key that was always kept there.