Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

perhaps he should be the one to identify his brother. “Right,” Minor said, and seemed to stop himself just in time from rubbing his hands. “Right. Lead the way.”
    They descended the broad marble staircase, the four of them, and walked along the green-painted corridor. Down here the parents appeared more cowed than ever, and Mr. Minor kept close to his wife, linking his arm in hers, not to lead her but to be himself led. They were, Hackett thought, like a pair of lost and frightened children.
    Patrick Minor was quizzing him on the circumstances in which his brother’s body had been discovered. He was all business, wanting to know everything. It was, the Inspector charitably supposed, his way of dealing with grief. Everybody had a different way of doing that.
    Quirke was waiting for them. His white coat was open, and underneath he was wearing a waistcoat and a checked shirt and a bow tie—Hackett had never seen Quirke in such a tie before—looking every inch the consultant, except for those boozy pouches under his eyes. “Mrs. Minor,” he said, offering his hand, “and Mr. Minor—my condolences.” Hackett introduced Jimmy’s brother, and Quirke shook hands gravely with him as well. It had the atmosphere somehow of a solemn religious occasion; they might have been gathered there for the beatification of a martyr.
    None of the Minors would look at the draped figure on the trolley, though it could clearly be seen through the window of the dissecting room.
    Bolger the porter materialized out of the shadows and Quirke asked him to show Mr. and Mrs. Minor into his office, where there was a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits laid out. Quirke followed them to the door and when they had passed through he shut it and turned back to Hackett and Patrick Minor and nodded towards the dissecting room. “It’ll just take a second,” he said to Minor. “This way.”
    The three of them went through to the starkly lit room. Minor had a gray look now, and a tiny muscle in his jaw was twitching rapidly. “We weren’t close, you know, James and me,” he said.
    He sounded defensive. Quirke merely nodded, and positioned himself beside the trolley. “There’s extensive bruising, I’m afraid,” he said. “It’ll be a shock. Are you ready?”
    Patrick Minor swallowed hard. Quirke lifted back the nylon sheet. “Oh, Lord,” Minor said softly, drawing in his breath.
    “This is your brother, now, is it, Mr. Minor?” Inspector Hackett murmured.
    Minor nodded. He wanted to turn away, Quirke could see, yet he could not stop staring at the broken, swollen face of his brother. The bruises had lost their livid shine by now, and had the look of thick awful strips of dried meat laid over the cheeks and around the mouth.
    “Who did this to him?” Minor asked. He turned to Hackett in sudden anger. “Who did it?”
    “That we don’t know,” the detective said. “But we’ll do all we can to find out.”
    Minor fairly goggled. “All you can?” he said furiously. “ All you can? Look at my brother—look at the state of him. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, and this is what they do to him, and you say you’ll do all you can.”
    Hackett, tugging at his lower lip with a thumb and forefinger, exchanged a look with Quirke, and Quirke replaced the sheet over the face of what had once been Jimmy Minor.
    “Tell me, Mr. Minor,” Hackett said, “would you know of any enemies your brother might have had?”
    “I told you already.” The fierce little man spoke through gritted teeth. “I wasn’t close to him, not for years.” He nodded grimly, remembering. “He couldn’t wait to get out and move up here to the city. Oh, he was going to be the big shot of the family, the great fellow, up in Dublin working on the newspapers and making his fortune.” He gave a short, bitter laugh. “Now look at him, the poor fool.”
    Hackett glanced at Quirke again, and Quirke moved to the glass-paneled door. After opening it, he stood aside to let Hackett and Jimmy’s brother go out before him. In Quirke’s office Mr. and Mrs. Minor were standing beside Quirke’s desk with cups and saucers in their hands. They looked awkward and uncomfortable, and Quirke had the impression that they had been standing like this for some time, afraid to move, while their two sons, the living one and the dead, were enduring their final encounter. Bolger had made off, to have a smoke somewhere, no doubt.
    “Did you see him?” Mrs. Minor asked, peering at