Elegy For April Part 14

"I suppose so," she said. "It's not as nice as Harcourt Street, but it will do." She was thinking how in any room Quirke always, eventually, headed for the window, looking for a way out. She sat down by the fireplace again, her knees pressed together and her shoulders hunched, clutching the steaming mug in both her hands. She was cold.

"You could come and live with me, you know," Quirke said.

He turned from the window. She was staring at him. "In Mount Street?"

"I don't think there'd be room there. I could buy a house."

Still she stared. Had Rose spoken to him? Was the thing decided, already* was this what he meant, that he would buy a house and the three of them would live in it together?

"I don't know," she said. "I mean, I don't know what to say. It would be lovely, of course, but*"

"But?"

She stood up, holding the mug; everything seemed to be happening at half speed. "You can't just ask me something like that and expect me to answer straightaway," she said, "as if it was nothing more than* than*I don't know. I have to think. I'd have to * I don't know."

He turned to the window again. "Well," he said, "it was just a thought."

"A thought thought?" she cried. "Just a thought thought?" She put the mug down on the mantelpiece with a bang. "I don't know why I drink this stuff," she said, "it's disgusting."

Quirke crossed the room and took up his coat and his hat. "I've got to go," he said.

"Yes, all right. Thank you for coming."

He nodded, pinching the dents on either side of the crown of his hat. "I'll always come," he said. "You know that."

"Yes, I know. But please, Quirke"* she lifted a hand*"please don't talk to Hackett. I really don't want you to."

"All right. But the next time there's someone there you'll call me straightaway, won't you?"

She did not reply. She had called him straightaway, and he had not been there. She wanted him to go, now, and yet did not. She would have to tell him. He walked to the door. "Quirke," she said, "wait. I lied to you."

He stopped, turned. "Yes? About what?"

She swallowed. She felt colder now in her thin silk wrap. "When you asked me about April, if she knew anyone who was* who was black." He waited. "There's a friend, a friend we all have, he's Nigerian. A student at the College of Surgeons."

"What's his name?"

"Patrick Ojukwu."

"I see."

"I suppose he might be the one that the old woman saw with April, in the house. It's possible." She was watching him. "You don't seem surprised."

"Do I not?" He stood there, looking at her, fingering his hat. "This fellow* what did you say he's called?"

"Patrick. Patrick Ojukwu."

"What was he to April?"

"What I said, a friend, that's all." He turned again to the door. "You're going to go to Hackett, aren't you?" she said. "You're going to tell him about Patrick."

Again he stopped, again he turned and looked at her. "If there's someone watching the house, we'll have to find out who it is."

"I'm sure there's no one; I'm sure I imagined it." She went to the mantelpiece and took another cigarette from the packet and lit it. "Don't go to Hackett," she said, looking at the fireplace. "Please."

"It was you who came to me about April Latimer," he said. "You can't expect me to give it up now."

ON THE WAY TO THE HOSPITAL HE STOPPED AT THE POLICE STATION in Pea.r.s.e Street and asked at the desk to see Inspector Hackett, but he was not there. The carrot-haired young Guard* what was his name?* said the Inspector would not be back until the afternoon. Quirke's headache was beating a slow drum between his temples. Outside the station a Guard was standing in front of the Alvis and writing in a notebook with the stub of a pencil. He was large and not young, and had a bony, mottled face. He pointed a finger at the windscreen. "You've no tax or insurance showing there," he said.

Quirke told him the car was new, that it was taxed and insured, and that the papers were on their way, which was not true; he had got the forms but had not yet filled them out. "I'm a doctor," he said.

"Are you?" the Guard said, looking him up and down. "Well, I'm a Garda sergeant, and I'm telling you to get your insurance and your tax disks and display them on your windscreen." He shut his notebook and put it into the top pocket of his tunic and sauntered away.

WHEN QUIRKE GOT TO THE HOSPITAL THERE WAS A MESSAGE WAITing for him at Reception. Celia Latimer had telephoned. She wished to speak to him, and asked if he would come out to Dun Laoghaire. He crumpled the note and put it into the pocket of his overcoat. He felt bad; he was raw all over, his skin crawled, and there was a sour burning in his belly. Yet it was strange, he never seemed more surely himself than when he was hungover like this. It brought out a side of him, the Carricklea side, splenetic and vindictive, that he did not like but had a sneaking admiration for. He wanted to know who it was that had been spying on his daughter. He was in the mood to crack someone's head.

In the office the telephone rang. It was someone whose voice he did not recognize. "I'm a friend of your daughter, a friend of Phoebe's." The line was bad, and Quirke had to ask him twice to repeat what he had said. "I'm just round the corner; I can be there in a minute."

He was tiny, an intricate scale model of someone much larger. He had red hair and a stark-white, freckled face, sharp and thin, like the face of an Arthur Rackham fairy. "Jimmy Minor," he said, coming forward with a hand extended. His plastic coat crackled and squeaked and gave off a faint, sharp, rubbery stink.

"Yes," Quirke said, "Phoebe has mentioned you."

"Has she?" He seemed surprised and a little suspicious.

Quirke searched on the desk and came up with a packet of Senior Service, but Minor had already produced his own Woodbines. The top joints of the first and second fingers of his right hand were the color of fumed oak.

"So," Quirke said, "what can I do for you, Mr. Minor?"

What a name.

"I'm a reporter," Minor said. "Evening Mail." Quirke would not have needed to be told; the cheap f.a.gs and the plastic coat were as telling as a press badge in his hatband. "I knew* I mean, I know know April Latimer." April Latimer."

"Yes?" There was a faint tremor in his hands. He reminded Quirke of someone, though for the moment he could not think who.

"I know you know she's missing."

"Well, I know no one has heard from her for two or three weeks. She's sick, isn't she? She sent in a sick cert, here, to the hospital."

The little man pounced. "Have you seen it?"

"The cert? No. But I know she sent it."

"Did she sign it? Is her handwriting on it?"

"I told you, I didn't see it." He did not care for this doll-like little fellow; there was something too vehement about him, he was too pushy, and sly, too. He realized who it was he reminded him of* Oscar Latimer, of course. "Tell me* Jimmy, is it? Tell me, Jimmy, what do you think is going on with April?"

Instead of answering, Minor stood up and in his bantam strut walked with his cigarette to the window of the dissecting room. Beyond the gla.s.s the light was a baleful, ice-white glare, and a porter in a dirty green house coat was halfheartedly dragging a mop back and forth over the gray-tiled floor. Minor was staring at the dissection table; there was a cadaver there, covered with a plastic sheet. He glanced back over his shoulder at Quirke. "You keep them here, just like this, the bodies?"

"Where do you think we should keep them? This is the pathology department."

"I thought* I don't know. In cold storage, or something?"

"There is a cold-room. But that one"* he nodded towards the cadaver*"is waiting for a postmortem."

Minor came back and sat down again. "Dr. Quirke," he said, "I know you've spoken to the family, to April's uncle and her mother, to her brother, too. They won't see me, needless to say, and I*"

"See you about what?"

Minor glanced at him quickly, startled. "Well, about April."

"Are you planning to write something, something in the newspaper, about April's disappearance?"

The fellow's look became evasive. "I don't know. I'm just * I'm just trying to gather the facts, such as they are."

"And when you've gathered these facts, will you write a story then?"

Minor was squirming now. "Look, Dr. Quirke, as I said, I'm a friend of April's*"

"No, you said you were a friend of Phoebe's. You said you knew, or know, April." He paused. "What I'm wondering, Jimmy"* he laid a menacing emphasis on the name*"is what exactly your interest is in this business. Are you being a friend or a reporter?"

"Why not both?"

Quirke leaned far back in his chair. There was, he suddenly remembered, a bottle of whiskey in one of the desk drawers. "I don't think it works that way. I think you'd better decide which to be. There are facts and facts, and some of them might call for a friendly interpretation."

Jimmy Minor smiled, and for a second Quirke was taken aback, so sweet a smile it was, so sudden, so open and unguarded. "Even newshounds have friends, Dr. Quirke." Along with the smile had come a movie actor's accent*nooshounds*and now he too sat back, and lit another Woodbine, and dropped the spent match into the ashtray with a finical little flourish. He had decided, Quirke saw, to give charm a try.

"Tell me what you want from me, Mr. Minor," Quirke said. "Time moves on, and there's a cadaver out there that's not getting any fresher."

"It's simple," Minor said, c.o.c.ksure now and still with that winning smile. "I'm hoping you'll help me to find out what happened to April. I like her. What's more, I admire her. She's her own woman. She may have a funny taste in men, but that doesn't mean that she*" He stopped.

"That she what?"

Minor examined his smoke-stained fingers and the cigarette they were holding. "Phoebe thinks something happened to her* to April. Do you?"

"I don't know * do you you?"

"There must be some reason for her disappearing like this."

"Maybe she went off somewhere. Maybe she needed a break."

"You don't believe that any more than I do, or than Phoebe does. April would have told us she was going."

"So you do think something happened to her."

"It's not what I think that matters. You've spoken to the family. What do they they think?" think?"

"They think she's wild, and disreputable, and they don't want to have anything to do with her. So they say, and I've no reason not to believe them."

It came to him suddenly, with something of a mild shock, that he did not know what April Latimer looked like, that he had not even seen a photograph of her. All along she had been someone that other people talked about, worried about, someone that other people loved and, perhaps, hated, too. Now, though, suddenly, talking to this peculiar and unappetizing little man, it was as if the wraith he had been following through the fog had stepped out into the clear light of day, but still at such a distance that he could make out the form of it only, not the features. How far and for how long would he have to press on before he saw April Latimer clear?

"Tell me," he said, "do you know this other friend of April's, the Nigerian, Patrick Ojukwu?"

The young man's expression altered, grew dark and sullen. "Of course," he said shortly. "We all know him."

"What can you tell me about him?"

"We call him the Prince. His father is some kind of headman of his tribe. They have their version of aristocrats, it seems." He snickered. "Big shots in the jungle."

"Were they more than friends, he and April?"

"You mean, did they have an affair? I wouldn't be surprised." He gave his mouth a sour twist. "As I say, April had strange tastes in men. She liked a bit of spice, if you know what I mean."

He was jealous, Quirke saw. "Was she promiscuous?"

Jimmy Minor laughed again nastily. "How would I know? She was never promiscuous in my direction, if that's what you're thinking."

Quirke gazed at hi m. " Where does he live, this Nigerian chap? " he asked.

"He has a flat in Castle Street. Phoebe, I'm sure, can tell you where." He smiled again, this time showing the point of a sharp tooth.

Quirke stood up. "I'm sorry," he said, "I have a busy afternoon ahead of me."

Minor, surprised, stubbed out his cigarette and slowly got to his feet. "Thanks for your time," he said, with smiling sarcasm. Quirke steered him towards the door. At the dissecting room window he paused and glanced in again at the draped corpse on the slab. "I've never seen a postmortem," he said, a little sulkily, as if it were a treat that had been willfully denied him.

"Come round someday," Quirke said. "We're always happy to accommodate the gentlemen of the press."

WHEN MINOR HAD GONE QUIRKE SAT DOWN AGAIN AND LOOKED AT the telephone for a while, tapping out a tattoo with his fingers on the desktop. He saw Sinclair come into the dissecting room* they gave each other the usual, faintly derisory wave through the gla.s.s* then he picked up the phone and dialed Celia Latimer's number. The maid answered, and said that Mrs. Latimer was not available at the moment. "Tell her it's Dr. Quirke," he said. "She expecting a call from me." It occurred to him to wonder if Sinclair might have known April Latimer. The younger doctors in the hospital that he had asked had said that April kept herself to herself, and it seemed she did not socialize much, among the staff, anyway. He had the impression she was disliked, or resented, at least, for her standoff ishness. She might have made common cause with the cynical and jadedly laconic Sinclair, if their paths had crossed.

"Thank you for calling, Dr. Quirke," Celia Latimer's cold, sharp voice said in his ear. "As I told you, I'd like to have a word. Do you think you could come out to the house?"

"Yes," he said, "I can come out. I have to see someone this afternoon."

"Shall we say five o'clock? Would that suit you?"

Her voice was tense and tremulous, as if she were having difficulty holding something back. He did not want to go out to that house but knew he would.

"Yes," he said, "five o'clock, I'll be there."

He put down the phone slowly, thinking, then rose and went into the next room. Sinclair had drawn back the sheet from the corpse* an emaciated young man with sunken cheeks and a stubbled chin* and was gazing down on it in his usual stony manner. "The Guards stumbled on him in the early hours in a lane behind Parnell Street," he said. "Hypothermia, by the look of it." He sniffed, nodding. "Somebody's son."

Quirke leaned against the stainless steel sink and lit a cigarette. "April Latimer," he said. "A junior here. Do you know her?"

Sinclair was still eyeing the corpse, measuring it up. "I've seen her about," he said. "Not recently, though."

"No, she's been out sick." He tapped his cigarette over the sink and heard the tiny hiss as the flakes of ash tumbled into the drain. "What's she like?"

Sinclair turned and leaned in a slouch against the dissecting table and pushed back the wings of his white coat and put his hands in the pockets of his trousers. "No idea. I don't think I've spoken to her more than once or twice."

"What's the word on her?"