Holy Orders A Quirke Novel by Benjamin Black

by this same Father Honan—or I presume it’s the same.”
    “Mistreated?” Quirke said.
    “Aye. It wasn’t clear what was meant—the boy, it seems, wouldn’t go into details about it, even to his father. The Super at the time, Andrew O’Gorman—do you remember him? Not the most imaginative fellow, our Andy—he tried his best to get out of the father what the whole business was about, but it was all very vague.”
    “And what happened?”
    Hackett shrugged. “Nothing. There was nothing to go on. I think the Super sent someone out to talk to the lad, but he still wasn’t forthcoming, so the thing fizzled out.” He chuckled. “You can imagine how eager Andy would have been to start quizzing the reverend fathers—next thing there’d be a thunderbolt from the Archbishop’s Palace, asking”—here he put on a sepulchral voice—“ by what right did the Garda Síochána think it could bring unfounded accusations against a hard-working and well-respected priest of this parish , blah blah blah and Yours in Christ Our Savior. So it was dropped.”
    Quirke beckoned to Frankie again, pointing to Hackett’s empty glass, and the young man came with the bottle of Graham’s and poured another measure.
    “What was your involvement?” Quirke asked of Hackett.
    “Hmm?” Hackett was attending to his port.
    “With this business about the priest—about the complaint.”
    “I wasn’t involved,” the detective said, “not directly.”
    “But what? You had a hunch?”
    “No no. Not really. But I asked around a bit. You know.”
    Quirke smiled thinly, nodding. “And what did you hear?”
    The detective pressed the butt of his cigarette into an ashtray on the bar, grinding it in slow half circles, thoughtfully. An angry flare of smoke rose quickly and dispersed. “A busy fellow, the same Father Honan. Ran a boys’ club out of one of the tenements in Sean McDermott Street. Athletics, swimming, boxing, that sort of thing. Got local businesses to cough up, persuaded Guinness to sponsor equipment, jerseys, football boots, so on. Made him very popular with the locals.”
    “No complaints like the other one?”
    “No fear! The man was a saint, as far as Sean McDermott Street was concerned. Set up a temperance society too, bringing the men in and persuading them to take the pledge. There was a tontine society that he got going, to pay for the funerals of the poor. Oh, aye, Father Mick was the local hero. Did work for the tinkers, too, trying to get them to settle down and quit stravaiging the country. A busy man, as I say.”
    Quirke was lighting another cigarette. “But you were skeptical.”
    Hackett made a large gesture, rolling his shoulders and lifting up the empty palm of one hand. “I had nothing against the man,” he said. “I never even met him.”
    They were silent again. Behind them the bar was filling up, and the electric light, under siege from the clouds of cigarette smoke, was turning into an almost opaque blue-gray haze. Barney Boyle was somewhere in the crowd; Quirke, hearing the playwright’s loud, slurred tones, kept his head well down. He did not feel up to dealing with Barney, not this evening.
    “So,” he said. “Are you going to follow it up?”
    Hackett made his Spencer Tracy face, pressing his tongue hard into his cheek and screwing up an eye. “I thought we might amble out there and have a word with Father Honan, before he departs for the mission fields, with his pickaxe and spade.”
    “You mean, you thought you might amble out.”
    “Ah, now, Doctor, you know you’ve a great way with the sky pilots—I’ve noticed it before.”
    “You have, have you?”
    “I have.” The detective chuckled. “I imagine they think of you as being in the same line of business as themselves, more or less—you handle the bodies, they do the souls.”
    Quirke shook his head. “You’re a terrible man, do you know that?” he said. “Here, buy me a drink—it’s the least you can do.”
    This