Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

missus must have knitted them for him.
    “Do you know who did it?” Harry Clancy asked.
    “I do not,” Hackett said, almost complacently.
    Harry scowled. “ Y ou must have some idea.”
    The detective shook his head, still easy, still smiling. There was a silence. From deep down in the bowels of the building a low drumming sound began to build that made the floor vibrate under their feet. The presses had started up, and would soon be printing the early edition of the Evening Echo , the Clarion ’s sister paper, which came out in the late afternoon.
    “I’d like,” Hackett said, “to have a look at Jimmy Minor’s desk.”
    Harry Clancy glanced at Archie. “Has he got a desk?”
    “Shares one,” Archie said. “With Stenson—Stenson is on the Echo . He has it during the day, Jimmy at night.”
    Hackett turned to him. “Can I see it?”
    Archie hesitated, but Harry Clancy waved a hand dismissively and said to Hackett that of course he could see the bloody desk, that they had no secrets here. He was getting into one of his tempers, Archie saw, and was glad of the excuse to make an exit. “This way,” he said to Hackett.
    The detective rose and moved towards the door Archie had opened for him. “Don’t forget your hat,” Harry said sourly.
    Hackett turned and grinned at him. “Can I leave it with you for the minute?” he said. “I’ll be back.”
    * * *

    The desk Jimmy Minor had shared with Stenson of the Echo was a scarred and ink-stained table with a big old Remington typewriter standing on it in state. There was a U-shaped plywood contraption with pigeonholes, all of them full, stuffed with out-of-date press releases and yellowing cuttings. “I’d say this is all Stenson’s,” Archie said. “Jimmy was the tidy type.”
    “Is Stenson around?”
    “Gone home. Will I call and tell him to come back in?”
    The detective seemed not to be listening. He sat down at the table and ran a finger along the brittle edges of the old papers in the pigeonholes. “Would you know Jimmy’s handwriting?” he asked.
    “Stenson would, probably.”
    Hackett nodded, then looked up at the news editor. “ Y ou think there’d be anything here?”
    “I doubt it. As I say, Jimmy kept things tidy.”
    “He was secretive, you mean?”
    “I don’t know that I’d say secretive. But he had notions of himself—saw too many Hollywood pictures, thought he was Humphrey Bogart.” He smiled, remembering. “He was a bit of a romantic, was young Jimmy.”
    Now Hackett was fingering the keyboard of the Remington, like a blind man reading braille. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Ask Stenson, when he’s in again, to have a look through all this stuff and separate off anything of Jimmy’s. Notes, I mean, memos, that kind of thing.” He looked up at Archie again. “He wasn’t that tidy, was he, that he wouldn’t have left a few bits and scraps?”
    “I’ll put Stenson onto it,” Archie said. “Maybe there’ll be something.”
    Hackett continued gazing at him, still distractedly playing with the typewriter keys. “Is there anything you can tell me, Mr. Smyth,” he asked, “anything at all?”
    The noise from the presses in the basement was now a steady, thunderous roll.
    “Like what, for instance?”
    Hackett smiled. He really did have the look of a frog, Archie thought, with that broad head and doughy face and the mouth a bloodless curve stretching almost from ear to ear.
    “ Y ou’re an experienced chap,” Hackett said. “ Y ou must have some sort of an idea of what could have happened. It’s not every day of the week a reporter in this town is murdered. Did Jimmy have any dealings with subversives?”
    “ Y ou mean the IRA?” Archie said, and gave a small laugh. “I doubt it. He’d have considered them a crowd of half-wits, playing at soldiers and blowing themselves up with their own bombs.”
    Hackett considered. There was a curved line across the detective’s forehead, a match for his mouth, where the band of his hat had left its mark. “What about the criminal fraternity?” he asked. “The Animal Gang, or their cronies?”
    “Look, Inspector,” Archie said, opening his hands before him, “this is a newspaper office. We cover fires, traffic accidents, politicians’ speeches, the price of livestock. Whatever Jimmy might have dreamed of, we’re not in the movies. God knows what he was up to. People have their secrets, as I’m sure you’re only too well aware. How he ended up in