Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

you.”
    They stood half facing each other, each with an elbow on the bar, a hand in a pocket, like counterparts, two men of the world, sharing a drink. This was not what Quirke had expected. But then, what had he expected? Someone lean and watchful, thin-lipped, pale, with a jaw like a knife blade, a Nike or a Father Dangerfield, not this thickset golfing-club type with a drinker’s nose and a mesh of broken veins in the shiny skin over his cheekbones. In the light here at the bar his hair was a darker shade of red than it had seemed at first, and beads of sweat were sprinkled through it.
    “May I ask,” Quirke said, “how you knew my phone number?”
    Father Honan, drolly smiling, let an eyelid briefly droop. “Oh, we have our sources,” he said. He sipped his drink, watching Quirke over the rim of his glass. “Father Dangerfield said you were looking for me. Something to do with this young fellow who was killed?”
    “Jimmy Minor, yes.”
    “And there was a detective with you?”
    “Hackett. Inspector Hackett, Pearse Street.”
    “Yes,” the priest said, “Hackett. I’ve heard of him. A good man, they tell me.”
    The girl in the pillbox hat stood up suddenly and marched from the room, her eyes fixed straight ahead of her in a furious glare. After a moment the young man rose sheepishly and followed her, clearing his throat and blushing. “Ah, the bumpy road of love,” the priest murmured. He nodded towards the table the couple had vacated. “Shall we?”
    They crossed the room with their drinks. The young priest with the horn-rimmed spectacles glanced in Father Honan’s direction and said something to his two companions, who turned to look also. A downdraft in the chimney sent a ball of turf smoke billowing out of the fireplace to roll across the carpet. Through a window beside him Quirke looked out into the glossy darkness and saw the rain dancing on the pavements and the roofs of parked cars.
    “There was a letter, I believe,” Father Honan said. “Desperate Dan told me about it—sorry, that’s Father Dangerfield. We think the world of him, only he’s a bit of a Tartar, as no doubt you noticed.”
    “He didn’t seem to know your whereabouts,” Quirke said.
    “Oh, Father Dangerfield is the soul of discretion,” the priest said, in his soft, breathy voice, and laughed. His way of speaking, with smiles and winks and little nods, made it seem as if everything he said, even the most innocuous commonplace, were being imparted as a confidence and meant for no one else’s ear. He produced a cigarette case and offered it across the table. “What was it, do you know, that this unfortunate young man wanted to see me about?”
    “That’s what we—that’s what Inspector Hackett was wondering,” Quirke said.
    The priest sat back in his chair with his elbows on the armrests and his hands clasped before him, a cigarette clamped at a corner of his mouth and one eye screwed shut against the smoke. “May I ask, Dr. Quirke,” he said, “what you…?”
    “What’s my interest? I knew Jimmy Minor—he was a friend of my daughter’s.”
    The priest nodded, but his eyes were narrowed. He still had the cigarette in his mouth; it jiggled up and down when he spoke. “And Inspector Hackett,” he asked, “is he a friend of yours?”
    “The Inspector and I have—what shall I say? We’ve cooperated in the past.”
    “Yes. So I’m told.”
    Who had told him? Quirke wondered. And if he knew about him and Hackett already, why had he asked? And anyway, why in the first place had he contacted him and not the Inspector?
    The three priests at their table had ordered another round. The older two were drinking whiskey, the younger one a glass of Guinness. How did they come to be out together like this on a weekday night, drinking and gossiping in Flynne’s? A birthday? Some other celebration? Flynne’s was a haven for the clergy, a safe house for them in the city.
    “I don’t think I ever came across this young man, this Jimmy Minor,” the priest said reflectively. “He was a reporter, is that right?”
    “On the Clarion . Used to be with the Mail .”
    “I wonder what he wanted to talk to me about.”
    “Something to do with your work, maybe? Y ou run clubs and so on in Sean McDermott Street, I hear.”
    “And other places.”
    The priest kept his eyes narrowed, and Quirke could see only the merest ice-gray glint between the lids. His eyelashes, like the hairs on the backs of his hands, were