Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

of illegal acts,” he said in an affable tone, “did you hear tell of a raid the other night on that ESB warehouse over at Poulaphouca?”
    “ESB?” Packie, said, with an exaggerated frown. “What’s that when it’s at home?”
    “The ESB, Packie, is the Electricity Supply Board, as you well know, and it had God knows how many miles of best copper cable stored over there at the Poulaphouca generating station, until some bright sparks broke in on Thursday night and made off with the lot. I suppose you wouldn’t know anything about that?”
    Packie shook his head sorrowfully and turned to appeal to Quirke. “Isn’t the Hacker here a fierce suspicious hoor?” he said. He smiled benignly at the detective, yet for a moment it seemed to Quirke that the tiny space into which the three of them were crowded had grown narrower still. “Is that why you’re out here today, now, is it, Mr. Policeman?” Packie said, his voice suddenly grown soft. “To be accusing me of being a sramala and robbing the state of its valuables?”
    Hackett smiled back at him. “No, indeed, Packie,” he said blandly, “that’s not why I’m here.”
    Packie nodded slowly, narrowing again his wolfish gray eyes. He was still standing at a stoop, and now he lowered the backs of his thighs against the rim of the cold stove and seemed to relax, giving a soft sigh.
    Quirke had finished his drink and glanced again in the direction of the milk bottle. He was aware that anything might happen here, that any kind of violence might break out at any moment, for Packie the Pike was plainly a dangerous man. He did not care. He wanted another drink. Hackett seemed perfectly at his ease, sitting there in his big overcoat with his hands resting on his fat thighs and his hat on the bed beside him. Quirke was speculating, as so often, as to what might be going through the detective’s mind. Perhaps nothing was happening in there, behind that forehead marked with a thin pink crescent made by the seam of his hatband; perhaps at moments such as this Hackett functioned entirely by instinct. Quirke wondered how that would be. As for himself, it seemed to him he had no instincts, or not the kind that the detective would operate by; everything Quirke did, so he felt, was predetermined by laws laid down he did not know when, or how, or by what agency. He was a mystery to himself, now more than ever, in this new and terrifying mental confusion that had befallen him.
    The tinker leaned forward and grasped the milk bottle by the neck and filled up again the three little glass pots.
    “Tell me, Packie,” Hackett said, revolving his glass on its base, “do you know of a young fellow by the name of Minor—Jimmy Minor?”
    Packie, leaning back once more against the stove, did not look at him. “Minor?” he said, and made a show of reflecting deeply. “Who would he be?”
    “He was a reporter,” Hackett said. “For the newspapers.”
    The tinker was looking into his drink. “Why would I know him?”
    “What I’m asking is if you knew him.”
    There was a silence. Quirke watched the detective. Hackett, he reflected, was like one of those jungle predators that go slack and still at the approach of their quarry. Perhaps that was what it took to be an investigator, that capacity to wait in watchful calm, patiently.
    Packie the Pike sucked his teeth. “What would a newspaper man be doing out here?” he said.
    Hackett turned his gaze to the rounded ceiling. “Well, he might, for instance, have been asking after a certain cleric who I’m sure you do know.”
    Packie glinted at him. “What cleric?”
    “Father Michael Honan—Father Mick. Y ou do know him, now, Packie, don’t you?”
    Packie scowled, and said nothing, and looked away again.
    Quirke brought out his cigarette case, clicked it open, and offered it flat on the palm of his hand to the tinker. Packie took two cigarettes, clipping one of them behind his ear. Leaning down to the flame of Quirke’s lighter he gave Quirke a merrily conspiratorial glance, and winked. The lighter’s petrol smell blended with the big man’s stink and Quirke felt his nostrils constrict. In his mind he saw again the phantom dog under the caravan rootling in the guts of its splayed and twitching victim. Malachy—he would go to see Malachy this evening, yes, yes, he would. Malachy would help him. He had a sensation of falling, slowly falling, inside himself.
    There was a sound outside and a face appeared at one of the