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"—and how Quirke had misunderstood what it was she was asking of him, what it was she could not bring herself to tell him outright.
     
Mal was humming tunelessly under his breath; it was another of the habits he had developed since Sarah's death.
     
"How are you managing?" Quirke asked.
     
"What?"
     
"In the house, on your own—how are you getting on?"
     
"Oh, all right, you know. Maggie looks after me."
     
"I meant, how are you, in yourself?"
     
Mal considered. "Well, it gets better in some ways and worse in others. The nights are hard, but the days pass. And I have Brandy." Quirke stared, and Mal smiled wanly and pointed to the dog. "Him, I mean."
     
"Oh. That's its name, is it?"
     
Quirke looked at the beast as it pattered hurriedly here and there in the soft grayness of dusk with its curious, busy, stiff-legged gait, like a mechanical toy, bad-temperedly sniffing at the grass. It was a stunted, wire-haired thing the color of wet sacking. Phoebe had got it for him, this man whom until two years ago she had thought was her father, to be company for him. It was plain that dog and master disliked each other, the dog barely tolerating the man and the man seeming helpless before the dog's unbiddably doggy insistences. It was odd, but ownership of the dog made Mal seem even more aged, more careworn, more irritably despondent. As if reading Quirke's thoughts, he said defensively: "He is company. Of a sort."
     
Quirke longed suddenly for a drink, just the one: short, quick, burning, disastrous. For, of course, it would not be just the one. When had it ever been just the one, in the old days? He felt the rage starting up, the dry drinker's whining, impotent, self-lacerating rage.
     
The streetlamps shone among the barely stirring leaves of the trees that lined the towpath, throwing out a seething, harsh white radiance that deepened the surrounding darkness. The two men stopped andsat down on a black-painted iron bench. Leaf shadows stirred on the path at their feet. The dog, displeased, ran back and forth fretfully. Quirke lit a cigarette, the flame of the lighter making a red globe that was cupped for a second in the protective hollow of his hands.
     
"A fellow called me this morning," he said. "Fellow that was at college when we were there. Billy Hunt—do you remember him? Big, red-haired. Played football, or hurling, I can't remember which. Left after First Meds." Mal, watching the dog, said nothing; was he even listening? "His wife was drowned. Threw herself off the jetty out in Sandycove. They found her yesterday washed up on the rocks on Dalkey Island. Young, in her twenties." He paused, smoking, and then went on: "Billy asked me to make sure there'd be no postmortem. Couldn't bear to think of her being cut up, he said."
     
He stopped and glanced sideways at Mal's long, angled profile beside him in the lamp-lit gloom. The canal smelled of dead water and rotting vegetation. The dog came and put its front paws on the bench and caught hold of the lead with its teeth and tried to tug it out of Mal's hands. Mal pushed the creature away with weary distaste.
     
"What did you say his name was?" he asked.
     
"Hunt. Billy Hunt."
     
Mal shook his head. "No, don't remember him. What happened to the wife—I mean, why did she do it?"
     
"Well, that's the question."
     
"Oh?" Quirke said nothing, and now it was Mal's turn to glance at him. "Is it a case of—what do the Guards say?—'suspicious circumstances'?"
     
Quirke still did not answer, but after a moment said: "Her name was Deirdre, Deirdre Hunt. She called herself Laura Swan. Very fancy."
     
"Was she an actress?"
     
"No—a beautician, I think is what she would have said." He dropped the end of his cigarette on the path and trod it under his heel. The dog was worrying the lead again and whimpering. "Better get on," Mal said, and stood up. He attached the lead to the dog's collar and they went up through the gap in the railings onto Herbert Place andturned back in