The Silver Swan (32 page)

made it up with Kate and was living with her again, which was a lie, of course—Kate, he was fairly certain, would never have him back. He could see Mrs. T. did not believe him—he had made the mistake of taking her to Percy Place a couple of times when Deirdre's back was turned, so she knew about the room, which he also had to swear now that he had given up—but he had more important things to worry about than Mrs. T.'s disappointment at not being able to get him between the sheets. He escaped from her finally, after she had handed over the stuff, by promising to meet her that night in the Shelbourne—"I'll take a room," she purred, gazing up at him slit-eyed like a cat and clawing softly at the lapels of his linen jacket, "we can give a false name"—a promise he had no intention of keeping.

 

As he drove off along Baggot Street she stood on the bridge in the sunlight looking after him, in her white-rimmed sunglasses and her flowered frock that was too young for her, and when he glanced back over his shoulder she lifted a white-gloved hand and waved weakly, sadly, and he knew he would not see her again—unless, of course, Maisie Haddon and his other contacts should suddenly dry up. Mrs. T. was another one he would miss, he really would. She was forty-five if she was a day, and as thin as a whippet, but there was something about her, something about those bony wrists and spindly ankles of hers, so frail, so breakable, that had got a little way under even his tough hide. He remembered how easy it had been to make her cry. Yes, he would miss her. But Christ, all these bloody women, hanging out of him and telling him they loved him, and then turning awkward—what was a fellow to do?

 

It was funny, but when he walked out of the front door in Percy Place into the hot, muggy gray morning, he was stopped in his tracks by a feeling that at first he could not identify, a sort of heaviness in the chest, as if a weight had dropped on his heart. He climbed gingerly into the Riley, careful of his strapped-up ribs. He did not start the engine at once, but sat behind the wheel trying to discover what was the matter with him. He had been thinking of Kreutz, and Deirdre, and the dirty photo Kreutz had taken of her, the photo that he had posted on, for a
lark. Now he closed his eyes for a moment. Christ. What had he done? And then he realized that what he was feeling was guilt. Yes, guilt. That was what had stopped him in midstride, that was the weight pressing on his heart. He opened his eyes again and looked about the empty street in a kind of amazement. Leslie White, feeling guilty—now, there was a thing. Then he started the engine and gave the accelerator a few hard punches. What was done was done. Things had turned serious, but was that his fault? The trouble was, he thought as he drove out into Haddington Road, people did not understand him, women especially. They wanted things from him that it simply was not in him to give. Yes, that was the trouble, people expecting things that he did not have.

 

He ran a yellow light at Baggot Street and shot onto Mespil Road in a whoosh of exhaust smoke. The trees by the canal gleamed gray-green in the overcast air. The water had the look of polished tin. He pushed a hand through his hair, feeling with pleasure its silky texture. The breeze was pleasantly cool against his bruised face. What had it been but a jape, after all, posting the picture on? He had not meant to make so much mischief. That was another thing people did not understand about him: his essential innocence, his blamelessness. Nothing he did was ever meant, not really.

 

He was beginning to feel jumpy, and thought of stopping the car and nipping into a pub and locking himself in a cubicle in the gents' and giving himself a shot of joy juice, but decided instead to wait. He had things to do, and he needed to stay sharp until they were done. There was old Kreutzer, for a start. He was certain it was Kreutz who had sent those johnnies to beat him up, so that would have to be sorted out and retribution administered. Old Kreutz had not been nice to the girl when he had sent her to him that night of the beating to fetch his medicine. She was his angel of mercy and Kreutz had spurned her, had turned her from his door. Mind you, that was better than giving her a cup of his special brew and taking an artistic study of her, too, as he had done with poor Deirdre. How had the bloody wog found the nerve, first to try blackmailing him and then hiring a squad of thugs to give him a goingover? Yes, the Doctor was in need of a serious seeing-to.

 

Adelaide Road was deserted as usual this afternoon. Strange, how little movement there was about here always, only the occasional car, and hardly ever a pedestrian. Why was that? he wondered. Surely there should be hospital traffic, and there were plenty of houses and flats, so where were the occupants? He would not mind having a place here, a bolt-hole, amidst all this peace and leafy quiet. The question of where to live was much on his mind these days, since the bust-up with Kate and then Deirdre's going. The room in Percy Place had been all right for the purpose he had borrowed it for, but it would not do for a roost in the long term. There was the problem of funds, of course, which were in decidedly short supply since the salon had sung its swan song and gone under. Kreutz would have to be made to resume payments, or certain respectable husbands would shortly be receiving in the post some very interesting snaps of their lady wives. The difficulty there, of course, was that Kate, damn her, had burned the bloody photos. Nothing for it but to obtain a replacement set from Kreutz, which he imagined would entail a certain amount of arm-twisting. He was smiling to himself as he drew up to the curb and parked. What a wheeze it would be, to make Kreutz hand over the very material which Leslie would then use to squeeze money out of him.
Blackmail
was a word, by the way, at least when he was the one who was doing it, that he certainly did not think was ugly, despite what everyone was always saying in detective stories; on the contrary, it smacked to him of dark deeds of elegant risk and feats of derring-do. He pushed open the iron gate—
eek, eek
—and walked up the short path to the door, a hand in the pocket of his jacket rolling the ampoules Mrs. T. had given him through his fingers like glass dice, liking the clunky, cool, happiness-promising feel of them.

 

Once again Kreutz was not answering the door, and he got out his clever bit of wire and, having checked the street, went to work on the lock. In the dim hallway there was a faint but definite and distinctly unpleasant smell. He walked forward softly. He wondered where Kreutz would be hiding. Well, it did not matter; he would find him.

 

 

WHEN THE TELEPHONE RANG QUIRKE SOMEHOW KNEW, IN THE SECond before he picked up the receiver, who it was that was calling. He was at his desk in his underground office beside the body room, where Sinclair was at work preparing a corpse for cutting. It was close to six o'clock on a busy working day and the phone seemed to have been going all afternoon, shrill and demanding as a baby wanting its bottle, so what was it about this particular call, he wondered, that he should be able to tell who was on the line? Yet when the policeman announced himself—"Inspector Hackett here"—he felt the usual twinge of foreboding. Hackett took his time in coming to the point. He talked about the weather—the topic was for Hackett what mother-in-law jokes were for comedians, always dependable—saying the heat was getting him down, though the wireless was forecasting rain, which would be a welcome relief, a thing he knew he should not be saying, there were so many people out enjoying the sun, he had seen them in the Green when he was walking up here, lying on the grass, getting burned, the half of them, he had no doubt, which they would know all about come nightfall . . . Where was it, Quirke was wondering, that the inspector had "walked up" to? When he said where he was, at an address in Adelaide Road, Quirke had another moment of telepathic recognition, and knew the name that was coming.

 

"Seems to have met with a bit of an accident," the inspector said. "More than a bit, in fact, and more than an accident, too, if I'm not mistaken. Do you think you could spare a minute to come up here and have a look?"

 

"Officially?"

 

A soft chuckle came down the line. "Ah, now, Mr. Quirke . . ."

 

 

OVER EVERY SCENE OF VIOLENT DEATH QUIRKE HAD ATTENDED IN THE course of his career there had hung a particular kind of silence, the kind that falls after the last echoes of a great outcry have faded. There
was shock in it, of course, and awe and outrage, the sense of many hands lifted quickly to many mouths, but something else as well, a kind of gleefulness, a kind of startled, happy, unable-to-believe-itsluckness. Things, Quirke reflected, even inanimate things, it seemed, love a killing.

 

"A right mess, all right," Inspector Hackett said, nudging gingerly with the toe of his shoe a copper bowl overturned on the blood-spattered floor.

 

The dark-skinned man lay in a curious posture in front of the sofa, face-down with his arms upflung above his head and his bare feet pointing downwards. It was as if he had rolled, or had been rolled, across the room until he had come to a stop here. Death is a rough customer. One of the man's hands was wound thickly in a not very clean bandage.

 

"What happened?" Quirke asked.

 

The inspector shrugged. "Took a hiding," he said. "Fists, kicks. The bandaged hand seems to be a burn, or a scald." He was wearing his blue suit, the jacket tightly buttoned in the middle, but his shirt collar was undone and the noose of his tie loosened, for it was hot and airless in the room. He was holding his hat in one hand, and there was a faint pink weal across his forehead where the hatband had bitten into the sweat-softened skin. "There must have been some racket. Surprising no one in the houses roundabout heard anything—or if they did, no one reported it." He walked forward and stood over the body, pulling at his lower lip with a thumb and forefinger. He glanced at Quirke. "Do you mind my asking how you knew of him?"

 

"How did you know I knew?"

 

The detective grinned and bit at the inside of his jaw. "Ah, there's no catching you out, Mr. Quirke." He twirled his hat in his hand. "Billy Hunt mentioned him."

 

"Then I suppose he must have mentioned him to me, too."

 

Hackett nodded. "Right," he said. "Right. His wife knew him, it seems—Billy's wife. There's a coincidence, what? First she dies, and
now this poor fellow is killed. And"—he wagged a finger to and fro, as if counting sides—"here's you, and me, and the grieving widower, and God knows who else, and all of us somehow connected. Isn't that strange?"

 

Quirke did not respond. Instead he asked again: "What happened?"

 

"Must have been someone he knew. No locks were forced, no windows broken, as far as I can see."

 

Something struck Quirke. "You haven't called in forensics?"

 

The inspector gave him a sly smile. "I thought I'd have a word with you first," he said, "seeing as you were the one who came to me about Deirdre Hunt, and now Deirdre Hunt's pal here is after being knocked into the next world."

 

"I don't know anything about this," Quirke said flatly. "I never saw this fellow before—what's his name again?"

 

"Kreutz. Hakeem Kreutz. It's written on the board out on the railings."

 

"Do you know anything about him?"

 

"Aye, I did a bit of investigating. He claimed to be Austrian, or that his father was Austrian, anyway, and that his mother was some class of an Indian princess. In fact, he was from Wolverhampton. Family kept a corner grocery shop."

 

"How did he come to be Kreutz?"

 

"It's just what he called himself. I suppose he liked the sound of it, 'Dr. Kreutz.' Real name Patel."

 

Quirke hunkered down beside the body and touched the cheek; it was cold and stiff. He got to his feet, brushing his hands together, and said:

 

"I don't see what the connection could be between this and Deirdre Hunt's suicide."

 

Hackett took it up sharply. "Her suicide?" He waited, but Quirke said nothing. "Are you sure, Mr. Quirke, there isn't something you're not telling me? You're a fierce secretive man, I know that of old."

 

Quirke would not look at him. "As I've already said, I don't know anything about this." He was studying a dried puddle of blood,
gleaming darkly like Chinese lacquer against the red-painted floorboards. "If I did, I'd tell you."

 

There was a lengthy silence. Both men stood motionless, each turned somewhat away from the other.

 

"All right," the inspector, sighing, said at last, with the air of a chess player conceding a game, "I'll believe you."

 

 

LESLIE WHITE HAD THE JITTERS SO BADLY THAT EVEN A HEFTY TOOT OF Mrs. T.'s poppy juice, administered in the basement lavatory of the Shelbourne, had not steadied him. He nosed the little car in and out of the evening traffic, clutching the wheel and blinking rapidly and shaking his head as if trying to dislodge an obstruction from his ear. He had been driving round and round the Green for what seemed hours. He did not know what to do, and could not think straight. The dope had strung scarves of greenish gauze in front of his eyes, like a forest of hanging moss, behind which he could still see blood, and the copper bowl on the floor, and Kreutz dead. He desperately wanted to be inside, away from the streets and the cars and the hurrying crowds. Was the daylight as dim as it seemed? Was it later than he thought? He longed for nightfall and the concealing dark. It was not so much that he was afraid, but this inability to decide what to do next was awful. He veered into the path of a bus and it trumpeted at him like an elephant, so that he wrenched the wheel and almost ran into a big Humber Hawk that had been waddling along beside him. He knew he should stop and park the car, go into a pub, have a drink, try to calm down, try to think. And then, suddenly, he knew what he should do, where he should go. Of course! Why had he not thought of it before? He sped along to the corner of Grafton Street and turned with a squeal of tires and headed west.

 

 

PHOEBE HAD GOT INTO THE HABIT OF STOPPING IN THE FRONT DOORway and looking carefully in all directions before venturing into the