Now Corless stirred himself. “So what you’re thinking,” he said, “is that if someone murdered Leon, it must have been an enemy not of his, but of mine. Am I right?”
Hackett gave him a level look. “Would you say you have that kind of enemy, Mr. Corless?”
Corless leaned back in his chair and lit yet another Woodbine. He had the workingman’s furtive way of smoking, cupping the cigarette in his palm with the lighted end turned inwards.
“The thing about enemies,” he said, “is that half the time you don’t even know you have them. Three months before Trotsky was assassinated, there’d been an armed attack on his house in Coyoacán, outside Mexico City, by Stalin’s agents. You’d think that would have made him take care who he trusted, wouldn’t you. Then a fellow called Ramón Mercader turned up and wormed his way into the Trotsky household, saying he was a committed revolutionary, and all the rest of it, though in fact he was one of Stalin’s agents. One day, while Trotsky was sitting at a table reading some article Mercader had pointed out to him, Mercader whipped an axe out of his raincoat pocket and split open Trotsky’s skull.” He took a deep drag on his cigarette, shutting one eye against the smoke. “Are there people who hate me enough to kill my son? I don’t know. Probably there are. But if you’re asking do I know someone in particular who has that kind of a grudge against me, the answer is no. I’m no Trotsky, whatever Archbishop McQuaid and his big battalions may say.”
He crushed his half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray on the table and stood up. “And now,” he said, “if you don’t mind, I’m going home.”
“Will you be all right?”
“All right? I doubt it. I’ve lost my son. It doesn’t leave me much to live for, but I suppose I’ll survive.”
Hackett went to the counter and paid the bill, then fetched his hat from the hat stand. They went out into the sunlight. Car roofs gleamed; the tarred road shimmered.
“You know,” Hackett said, “you lost that battle, over in Spain. But your people won the war — the real one.”
Corless didn’t look at him, and glanced about the street instead. He was turning the Zippo lighter in his fingers.
“I suppose they did,” he said. “But what did it mean, in the end?”
“It meant, Mr. Corless, that you and I, and a lot of others, are free men today.”
Corless did his thin smile.
“Free?” he said. “My son, Leon, thought he was free. And look at him now.”
He began to turn away, but not before Hackett had put out a hand. Corless looked at it, then at Hackett. “It’s not often I’m invited to shake the hand at the end of the long arm of the law,” he said.
Hackett grinned. “You did it once before, why not again?”
Self-consciously they shook hands.
“The heights of Pingarrón,” Hackett said. “I’ll remember that.”
9
Quirke could not remember when he had last been in Hackett’s office, a cramped, wedge-shaped room high up under the roof of the Garda station in Pearse Street. Nothing had changed in the meantime. The desk was still cluttered with what seemed the same papers that had always been there, the calendar hanging by a nail on the wall was still years out of date, the window behind Hackett’s chair was still painted shut. There was even that same brownish smudge high up on the wall where someone had once squashed a bluebottle. Hackett’s shiny blue suit, too, seemed the one he had been wearing since Quirke had first known him. Now he had taken off his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair, and was sitting in his shirtsleeves, leaning back with his feet on the desk.
“So anyway,” he said, “this girl, this Lisa Smith, has disappeared, right?”
“She spotted Phoebe in a café. According to Phoebe she was terrified, but wouldn’t say why. Phoebe brought her down to Malachy Griffin’s holiday place in Wicklow, in Ballytubber, and left her there, safe, so she thought. Then I don’t know what happened — Phoebe got nervous, had a premonition, I don’t know, but she went back down, and when she did, the girl was gone.”
“Gone?”
“I told you — vanished.”
“And didn’t go of her own free will, you think.”
“I don’t know what to think. Phoebe believes someone came and got her, someone she knew — probably the person she was terrified of, would be my guess.”
“Why would she go with someone she was afraid of?”
“I don’t know.”
Hackett nodded, thinking. “And Lisa Smith was with Leon Corless before he drove up to the Phoenix Park?”
“They were coming home from a party and had a fight, and she made him let her out of the car, and he drove on, going home to Castleknock, I suppose, on the other side of the park. She was waiting for a taxi when the car went on fire — she saw the glow of the flames and went up to look, but then got frightened when she saw what had happened, and ran off.”
Hackett joined the fingers and thumbs of both hands at the tips in front of himself and gazed off dreamily at a corner of the ceiling. “And she’s in the family way, with Corless’s child?”
“Phoebe believes it’s Corless’s, yes.”
Hackett nodded slowly, his lower lip pushed far out. “And tell me, Doctor,” he said, “what are we supposed to make out of all this?”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it.”
Quirke got out his silver case and his lighter and lit a cigarette. Hackett watched him. “Do you know what,” he said, “I’m thinking of giving up the fags.”
Quirke stared at him. “Why would you do that?”
“The lungs are in a terrible state. You should hear me in the evening, before I go to bed, wheezing like an old steam train, and then next day I have a cough that shakes the windowpanes. Plus the wife is at me night, noon, and morning to give them up.”
“Not easy,” Quirke said, blowing smoke towards the ceiling. “Not easy giving anything up.”
Hackett took his feet from the desk and leaned forward, fiddling among the raft of papers in front of him. “No,” he said, “no, we like our little indulgences, don’t we.” They were both thinking of Quirke’s drinking, and his repeated sojourns at the Hospital of St. John of the Cross.
“The girl lives where, did you say?” Hackett said. “Rathmines, was it? Have you the address? Maybe we should take a gander at the place. I’ll get Jenkins to bring the car round.” He stood up and put on his jacket, then stopped. “Or no, I won’t — it’s Saturday — young Jenkins will be at home with the wife and kiddies. I’ll see who else is on.”
They went downstairs to the duty office.
“Is Jenkins married?” Quirke asked. “He looks about nineteen.”
Hackett chuckled. “He’s young, right enough. He must have been a child bride.”
Eventually a driver was found. He was a thin-faced fellow with bad teeth and an unruly slick of fair hair raked back along his skull. He looked even younger than Jenkins, and the outsized uniform he was wearing made him seem younger still.
“Who are you?” Hackett said.
“Wallace, sir.”
“Is that your first name or your last?”
The young man frowned warily. “That’s my second name, sir.”
“Right, then, Garda Wallace. I hope you’re old enough to have a driving license?”
“I am, sir.”
Hackett sighed. “That was a joke,” he said. “Come on.”
Quirke and the detective sat together in the back seat. It was hot, and the air was laden with dust and the smells of the city.
“The farmers are praying for rain,” Hackett said. “No doubt the good Lord will heed them, sooner or later. They have a powerful voice in heaven, the tillers of the soil.”