Holy Orders A Quirke Novel Page 26

  “Too late for what?”

  “For everything,” he said again.

  He leaned his face down suddenly and kissed her cold cheek. Then he gave her that strange, crooked smile again, and turned and walked away.

  She watched him go, through light and shade, under the trees. When she could no longer see him she went and sat down on a metal bench. In the flowerbed beside her the daffodils leaned their heads as if listening to some far, faint sound. She set the box of sweets on her lap and laid her hands on it. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. She had no memory of Quirke bringing her to that shop, all those years ago; no memory at all. What had he called the sweets? Fire and Ice? Yes, she thought: fire and ice.

  * * *

  Quirke watched the clock on the wall of the waiting room. It had a clay-white face and long, spindly black hands. It was an electric clock, he saw, for the second hand swept round and round in smooth, swift circles. He remembered the clocks in Carricklea, big wooden affairs that old Crowther, the janitor, wound once a week, with a big shiny key. They had Roman numerals, and their second hands progressed in a series of tiny jerks, quiveringly. What became of things, he wondered, things like those old clocks? They would hardly be there still, would they? Carricklea had been shut down a decade ago; the building was empty now, so far as he knew. Would someone have bought the clocks, some local watchmaker, maybe, or tinkers, looking for a bargain? He thought of the tinker woman Molly, intently rolling her cigarettes in the light of the oil lamp, her black hair gleaming. He remembered the taste of her mouth, its wild tang.

  There were two other people waiting. Patients. Was he a patient, too? Not yet, strictly speaking. They had put him to stand against the cold metal plate, with a lead blanket to protect his chest from the radiation. “Quite still now, please, Dr. Quirke!” The machine, pointing at his head, had whirred a moment, and it was done. The radiologist had given him the X-ray plate in a buff envelope and sent him upstairs, where he had handed the envelope to the receptionist, a steel-haired woman with butterfly glasses who had smiled at him coldly, showing her teeth, and directed him to a chair while she went into the consultant’s office, with the envelope.

  Ten past ten on a sunny weekday morning. Through a tall window on the far side of the room he could see down the length of a narrow garden to the mews at the back of Fitzwilliam Place. Rain and shine, rain and shine, turn and turn about. Volatile weather, the world busying itself, fraught with burgeoning life.

  Twelve minutes past.

  Of the two waiting with him, one was a middle-aged woman, handsome, with permed auburn hair and worried brown eyes. She kept opening her handbag, searching in it, then shutting it again with a sigh. She had smiled at him when he came in, with that important-looking envelope in his hand, which she had pretended not to see. An envelope that big had to have something serious in it. Maybe she had handed hers in already.

  The other person was a young man with a cocky expression and narrow oiled black sideburns. He reminded Quirke of someone, though he could not think who. He had a jittery leg, the left one; it beat away like the arm of a sewing machine, the knee fairly bouncing, though he seemed unaware of it.

  He had been about to leave the flat, on the way here, when the telephone had rung, and he had stopped, hat in hand. Who would be calling him at this hour? He thought of not answering it, but then picked up the receiver. Hearing Hackett’s voice, he put it down again, without a word. He did not want to speak to Hackett now. Whatever it was, it would have to wait.

  The receptionist came out of the consulting room. She had a curious way of opening the door only some inches and insinuating herself around it and then closing it soundlessly behind herself. Was it that she had instructions to let none of those waiting have even a glimpse into that secret inner place, before their turn came to enter and be told the good news or the bad? She sat down at her desk. Quirke liked the way that women, before sitting down, would run a hand deftly under the seat of their skirts, smoothing them out.

  Isabel. He should have called Isabel. If the news Philbin had for him was bad, it would be all the harder now to break it to her. Yes, he should have called her, should have told her where he was, warned her of what he was waiting for, so she would be prepared.

  The woman with the perm was first in. Sweetman was her name; he heard the receptionist say it. She rose, clutching her handbag, and walked forward towards the white door, starkly smiling. Sweet Mrs. Sweetman. Quirke silently wished her well. He and the young man exchanged a blank look. Frankie the barman! That was who he looked like—the same smooth hair and blue-shadowed chin, the same oily glance, the same cockiness.

  Fifteen minutes past. The second hand swept on, unfaltering.

  He sneezed violently, making the receptionist start and stare at him. His cold was coming along nicely.

  At half past, Mrs. Sweetman emerged from the consulting room. Quirke and the fellow who looked like Frankie scanned her face surreptitiously, searching for a sign. She gave none, and passed them by, leaving a trace of her perfume on the air.

  Quirke sat back on the chair and folded his arms. He had time left; Frankie boy would be next. But he was wrong. The receptionist was looking at him, smiling her polite, frigid smile. She nodded. “Mr. Philbin will see you now, Dr. Quirke,” she said. Mister. Doctor. She knew the hierarchical niceties.

  He rose and stepped forward, leaden-footed, and as he did so he saw in his mind yet again that path by the canal, and the darkness, and the darkly attendant trees, and someone walking towards him, out of the night.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Cant, or Shelta in the United States, is the secret language of Irish travelers, who in the 1950s were known universally, and unpejoratively, as tinkers. The origins of this colorful patois are obscure, and travelers are still reluctant, understandably, to reveal a full vocabulary. The word “Cant” probably comes from the Irish word caint, meaning “talk.” “Shelta” may be a corruption of siulta, the Irish word for “walking,” as in Na Daoine Siulta, the “Walking People.”

  Two authoritative sources on Cant are The Secret Languages of Ireland, by R.A.S. Macalister (1937), and Irish Tinkers or “Travellers”: Some Notes on Their Manners and Customs and Their Secret Language or “Cant,” by Pádraig Mac Gréine (Béaloideas, 1931).

  Glossary of Cant words used in the text:

  aras: soft in the head

  cuinne: priest

  gatrin: child

  granen: pregnant

  grit: sick

  mugathawn: fool

  mull: woman

  nyaark: rascal

  Palantus: England

  shade: policeman

  shako: sin

  sharog: redhead

  sramala: robber

  sreentul: friend

  sringan: drink (alcoholic)

  spurk: fornicate

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to Olivia O’Leary and, as ever, to Dr. Gregory Page, who knows everything there is to be known about injury, dying, and death.

  ALSO BY BENJAMIN BLACK

  Vengeance

  A Death in Summer

  Elegy for April

  The Silver Swan

  Christine Falls

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BENJAMIN BLACK is the pen name of the Man Booker Prize–winning novelist John Banville. The author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed series of Quirke novels—including Christine Falls, A Death in Summer, and Vengeance—he lives in Dublin.

  Henry Holt and Company, LLC

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  Henry Holt® and ® are registered trademarks of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

  Copyright © 2013 by Benjamin Black

  All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Black, Benjamin, 1945–

  Holy orders: a Quirke novel / Benjamin
Black. — First edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-8050-9440-4

  1. Police—Ireland—Dublin—Fiction. 2 Pathologists—Fiction. 3. Catholic Church—Ireland—Dublin—Fiction. 4. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 5. Dublin (Ireland)—Fiction. 6. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PR6052.A57H65 2013

  823'.914—dc23

  2013001589

  First Edition 2013

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  eISBN 9781429943963

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Two

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Benjamin Black

  About the Author

  Copyright