Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

Cherchez la femme —there’s always a broad, Harry, always.” He began to turn aside but a thought struck him and he stopped. “He wasn’t queer, was he, our little Jimmy Brown?”
    Harry was about to reply, but paused. Here was a way, maybe, to get Sumner to back off. No paper was going to splash a story if it involved a nancy boy getting done in. Even Sumner would know that. “We’ve no reason to think he was that way inclined,” Harry said carefully. “On the other hand—”
    “Good,” Sumner said briskly. “Let’s get going, then.”
    Harry’s spirits sank. No good resisting; Sumner would not be deterred.
    “There was a woman there, that night,” Harry said, tentatively.
    “Oh, yes? Who was she?”
    “Secretary, lived nearby. She was the one that found the body.”
    Sumner showed his teeth again in a big, benign smile. “See?” he said. “I told you: there’s always a broad.”
    “Trouble is, she was with someone. Her boss.”
    “Her boss? Wasn’t it the middle of the night when the corpse was found? What the hell was this secretary doing with her boss at that hour”—he laughed coarsely—“taking dictation?”
    Harry shrugged. “I don’t think we can call her a mystery woman.”
    “Sure you can! Or make the boss a mystery man. ‘ RIDDLE OF COUPLE ON RIVERBANK .’ It’s perfect.”
    “The thing is—”
    Sumner made a sudden lunge forward, planting his big hands on the desk in front of Harry and looming at him menacingly. Harry could smell the lingering mundungus stink of his breath.
    “Harry, look,” Sumner said. “Do this—do it for me, if you like. Find the girl, talk to her, talk to her boss—”
    “He won’t—”
    “He will. Y ou’ll make him talk. I bet he has a wife, and if he has I bet she didn’t know about little Miss Secretary being out with him for a midnight stroll and stumbling on a body and the cops coming and taking down her particulars—yes? All anybody needs is a little persuasion, Harry. Lean a little on the two of them and they’ll sing like songbirds.” He smiled, those white teeth genially agleam. “ Y ou’ll see—you’ll see I’m right.” He straightened, and turned and went to the door, then paused again. “ Y ou know,” he said thoughtfully, glancing up at a corner of the ceiling, “I’m really getting to like this business. I should have gone into newspapers years ago.”
    He nodded then, and went out, whistling. Harry sat for a long time gazing stonily at the door. “Noospapers,” he said, with deep disgust, spitting out the word.

7

    McGonagle’s had a new barman, a cocky young fellow with a quiff. His name was Frankie—“like Frankie Sinatra,” as he was fond of telling anyone who would listen. He was all energy, diving and dashing about behind the bar like an acrobat, tossing tumblers from hand to hand and operating the beer pulls with a fancy flick of the wrist. He had a smart mouth, and made wisecracks, addressing the older customers facetiously as Y our Honor, or Squire, or Captain, depending on what he thought they looked like. More than one of the regulars had complained about him to Paschal, the manager, but Paschal had told them to have a heart, that Frankie was only a young fellow and would soon settle down. Quirke, however, was inclined not to have a heart in the matter of Frankie, for he did not like the look of him at all, and not just the look of him, either. Quirke scowled when he came near. He found particularly irritating the way the young man had of throwing up his chin and yanking his fake bow tie to the end of its elastic and letting it snap back with a sharp smack. No, as far as Quirke was concerned, Frankie was exactly what McGonagle’s did not need.
    Quirke had been in an irritable mood even before he arrived at the pub, having been caught in yet another shower of rain on his way up Grafton Street, and the sight of Frankie’s cheeky grin set his teeth on a sharper edge. He ordered a glass of whiskey, and when Frankie asked if he wanted ice in it—ice, in a Jameson!—he gave back such a look that Frankie quailed, and only said right-oh, and skidded off to fetch the order.
    This evening Quirke had even more things than the rain and Frankie to annoy him. For a start, Isabel Galloway was coming back—in fact, she was back already, her tour having ended the previous night. She had telephoned from the railway station in Mullingar to say her train would be in by six, but that she was tired, having