Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

sin?” he said. “ Shako, was it? I must remember that. Yes—a handy word to know.”
    He stood up from the bed, a short pudgy man with a few wisps of black hair combed across his balding pate and a frog’s wide slash of a mouth. Suddenly Packie the Pike laughed again, and leaned back, the bulging muscles of his neck relaxing. “ Y ou’re a fierce man, Hacker,” he said. “A fierce man.”
    Hackett smiled, those bloodless lips wider and thinner than ever. “No fiercer than yourself, Packie,” he said quietly. He looked at the tinker in silence for a moment, smiling. “ Y ou wouldn’t be lying to me, now, would you? For as you know”—his smile softened, the outer corners of his eyes wrinkling—“I’m not a man to be lied to.”
    They stood a moment, the detective and the tinker, regarding each other. Quirke felt again that rush of anticipation in his throat. What would he do, if Packie were to launch himself at the detective? He pictured the three of them locked together in a grunting struggle, the caravan rolling and pitching, the stove’s crooked chimney toppling and the windows shattering. He grinned to himself blearily.
    After a moment Packie smiled, showing a mouthful of big crooked teeth the color of old and stained ivory. “Ah, sure now, wouldn’t I know better than to be lying to you, Hacker, my old sreentul ,” he said.
    The Inspector nodded skeptically. “Of course, Packie,” he said. “I know you’re the soul of honesty.”
    He turned, and ducked through the half door and stepped down by the upturned bucket to the ground. Quirke made to follow him but the tinker put a hand on his arm. “What class of a doctor are you, anyhow?” he asked.
    “Pathologist,” Quirke said, his thickened tongue giving him a slight lisp. “Corpses.” For a second he saw again Jimmy Minor lying on the trolley, the bruised face, the weals on his chest and flanks, the mangled pulp at his crotch.
    Packie the Pike chuckled. “Begod,” he said, “the Hacker brings his own sawbones around with him, do he? That’s a good one.”
    Outside, a watery sun was shining but it had begun to rain, fat glistening drops falling at an angle and smacking against the side of the caravan. Hackett, wearing his hat, was halfway to the car already. Quirke, glancing about quickly in search of the black-haired woman, spied two young men sitting in the front seat of one of the wrecked cars, smoking cigarettes and watching him through the glassless windscreen. One of them, a raw-faced boy of sixteen or seventeen, was the one who had looked briefly in at the little window behind Packie’s shoulder. He had greasy black curls and a snub nose and a mouth breather’s sagging lower lip. The other one was older, in his mid-twenties, swarthy as a flamenco dancer, with a face as sharp as an axe blade. They watched him impassively as he went by, following in Hackett’s wake.
    Jenkins started up the car and the exhaust pipe burbled a bubble of ash-blue smoke. The far hills crouched, getting ready to spring. Quirke turned up the collar of his overcoat. He glanced back once at the two young men, watching him, then opened the rear door and climbed in beside Hackett.
    As they drove back towards the city Hackett sat in silence, drumming his fingers on the armrest beside him.
    “So,” Quirke said, “what do you think? Was he lying?” He widened his eyes and blinked, trying to keep the world in focus. He had not drunk enough poteen to account for this fuzziness. He put the palm of his hand against his forehead, cupping it tenderly. His poor head; his poor brain.
    Hackett went on gazing out the window. “Was Packie lying?” he said. “Oh, he was lying, all right.”
    “About Jimmy Minor?”
    The detective laughed softly. “About everything.”

17

    David Sinclair, stepping ahead of Phoebe through the doorway of the flat, paused and went very still, his face settling into a blank mask. Phoebe thought, not for the first time, how uncanny it was, the way he could control himself, showing hardly a sign of what he was thinking, what he was feeling. Weren’t Jewish people supposed to be emotional and demonstrative?
    He did not often call on her unannounced, but this evening—this evening of all evenings!—he had just appeared at the front door with his hands in the pockets of his overcoat and his collar turned up. When he rang the bell she had gone down to let him in, and as they were coming up the stairs she had tried to think how