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A Novel
by Benjamin Black
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“Oh,” Quirke said. “Right.” He looked as if he were trying not to laugh.
“Anyway,” he said, “never mind about me, what are you doing, down here among the
dead men?”
Mal had a way of bulging out his eyes and drawing upward sinuously his
already long, thin form, as if to the music of a snake charmer’s flute. Quirke
had to marvel, not for the first time, at the polished luster of that hair, the
smoothness of the brow beneath, the untarnished steely blue of his eyes behind
the pebble glass of his specs.
“I had a thing to do,” Mal said. “A thing to check.”
“What thing?”
Mal did not answer. He studied Quirke and saw how drunk he was, and a cold
glint of relief came into his eye.
“You should go home,” he said.
Quirke thought to dispute this—the morgue was his territory—but again
suddenly he lost all interest. He shrugged, and with Mal still watching him he
turned and weaved away among the body-bearing trolleys. Halfway across the room
he stumbled and reached out quickly to the edge of a trolley to steady himself
but managed only to grab the sheet, which came away in his hand in a hissing
white flash. He was struck by the clammy coldness of the nylon; it had a human
feel, like a loose, chill cowl of bloodless skin. The corpse was that of a young
woman, slim and yellow-haired; she had been pretty, but death had robbed her of
her features and now she might be a carving in soapstone, primitive and bland.
Something, his pathologist’s instinct perhaps, told him what the name would be
before he looked at the label tied to her toe. “Christine Falls,” he murmured.
“You were well named.” Looking more closely he noticed the dark roots of her
hair at forehead and temples: dead, and not even a real blonde.
he woke hours later, curled on his side, with a vague but pressing sense of
imminent disaster. He had no memory of lying down here, among the corpses. He
was chilled to the bone, and his tie was askew and choking him. He sat up,
clearing his throat; how much had he drunk, first in McGonagle’s and then at the
party upstairs? The door to his office stood open—surely it was a dream that Mal
had been there? He swung his legs to the floor and gingerly stood upright. He
was light-headed, as if the top of his skull had been lifted clear off. Raising
an arm, he gravely saluted the trolleys, Roman-style, and walked stiffly at a
tilt out of the room.
The walls of the corridor were matte green and the woodwork and the radiators
were thick with many coats of a bilious yellow stuff, glossy and glutinous, less
like paint than crusted gruel. He paused at the foot of the incongruously grand,
sweeping staircase—the building had been originally a club for Regency rakes—and
was surprised to hear faint sounds of revelry still filtering down from the
fifth floor. He put a foot on the stair, a hand on the banister rail, but paused
again. Junior doctors, medical students, nurses beef to the heel: no, thanks,
enough of that, and besides, the younger men had not wanted him there in the
first place. He moved on along the corridor. He had a premonition of the
hangover that was waiting for him, mallet and tongs at the ready. In the night
porter’s room beside the tall double doors of the main entrance a wireless set
was quietly playing to itself. The Ink Spots. Quirke hummed the tune to himself.
It’s a sin to tell a lie. Well, that was certainly true.
when he came out onto the steps the porter was there in his brown dust coat,
smoking a cigarette and contemplating a surly dawn breaking behind the dome of
the Four Courts. The porter was a dapper little fellow with glasses and dusty
hair and a pointed nose that twitched at the tip. In the still-dark street a
motorcar oozed past.
Copyright © 2006 by Benjamin Black. All rights reserved.
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