Read Quirke 06 - Holy Orders for Free Online Page A

young man’s murder. Hackett asked where they would be staying, until the funeral. Flynne’s Hotel, Patrick Minor told him. Hackett nodded. Flynne’s, of course. It was where people from the country stayed. Boiled bacon and cabbage, loud priests in the bar knocking back whiskeys, and staff with the familiar accents of the Midlands. Ireland, Mother Ireland. Sometimes, Hackett had to admit, this country sickened him, with its parochialism, its incurable timidity, its pinched meanness of spirit. He shook hands with the parents—the son pretended not to notice his proffered hand—and led them to the door. “We’ll let you know,” he said, “as soon as we have any news, any news at all.”
    Quirke stepped forward and opened the door. The elderly couple went out, followed by their son, who paused in the doorway and glanced a last time towards the window of the dissecting room and the figure on the trolley there. “He used to come to me in the schoolyard,” he said, “looking for me to save him from the bigger boys when they picked on him. I didn’t help him then, either.” He turned his eyes to Hackett, then to Quirke, but said nothing more.
    * * *

    “So,” Hackett said. “What do you think?” He was half sitting with one haunch perched on the corner of Quirke’s desk. Quirke was lounging in his swivel chair behind the desk, lighting up a Senior Service. Hackett, swinging one leg, could not take his eyes off that blue bow tie. It was not like Quirke, he thought, not his style at all. Maybe it was a present from his daughter, or maybe from his lady friend, the actress—what was her name? Gallagher? No, Galloway. It would be her style, a fancy tie like that. But maybe Quirke had bought it himself, maybe he was after a new look: the sleek medic, top man in his field, sound and dependable but not averse to cutting a bit of a dash. The waistcoat too was a new addition. What next? A couple of gold rings? Eyeglasses on a string? Spats?
    Quirke glanced at him sharply through the smoke of his cigarette. “What’s so funny?”
    “Ah, nothing,” Hackett said. “I was admiring your tie.”
    Quirke put up a hand self-consciously and touched the silk knot. “Is this what you’re grinning at?”
    “Not at all, not at all. Very smart, it is. Very smart.”
    Quirke continued to eye him darkly. Hackett’s own faded red tie was of the ordinary type, though short, and broad at the bottom, so that it looked a bit like an immensely long tongue, hanging out dejectedly.
    “Anyway—what do I think about what?” Quirke said.
    Hackett nodded towards the dissecting room window. “This business.”
    The swivel chair creaked as Quirke leaned far back in it and put his feet on the desk with his ankles crossed. He pressed bunched fingers to the bridge of his nose. “I don’t think anything,” he said. “What about you?”
    Hackett puffed out his cheeks and expelled a long breath. “God knows,” he said. He pointed to the Senior Service packet. “Give us one of them.”
    Quirke pushed the cigarettes across the desk, along with his lighter. For a while both men smoked in silence; then Quirke spoke: “Anything found at the scene?”
    “Not a thing. Footprints and so on, but there’d been a downpour earlier and everything was washed out. Plus, of course, my genius of an assistant, Detective Sergeant Jenkins, had let everyone traipse all over the place, so anything there might have been was trodden into the mud.”
    Quirke laughed. “Poor Jenkins. I imagine he’s still smarting, after you finished with him.”
    The detective sighed. “What would be the use? He’s hopeless, the poor clot. But I suppose he’ll learn.” He paused, picking a fleck of tobacco delicately from his lower lip. “ Y our daughter,” he said. “Does she know?”
    “I told her.”
    “How did she take it?”
    Quirke screwed up his face and touched his bow tie again. “I didn’t handle it very well.”
    “Hmm,” Hackett said. “I don’t