The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black Page B

"Investigating? Oh, no. No, not at all. I'm just curious, like. It's an occupational hazard that I think we both share." He glanced quickly sideways at Quirke with a sort of leer. They walked on. It was noon now and the sunshine was very hot, and the policeman took off his jacket and carried it slung it over his shoulder. "I had a nose round to find out where she came from, Deirdre Hunt. Lourdes Mansions, no less. The Wards—that was her maiden name—are a tough crowd. Father worked on the coal boats, retired now—emphysema. Hasn't stopped him boozing and throwing his weight around. The mother I surmise might have been on the game, in her younger days. There's a brother, Mikey Ward, well known to the local constabulary—breaking and entering, that kind of thing. Another brother ran away to sea when he was fourteen, hasn't been heard of since. Oh, a tough lot."
     
"I suppose that's why she went into the beauty business," Quirke said.
     
"No doubt. Intent on bettering herself." The policeman sighed. "Aye—it's a shame." They crossed again and walked up the steep slope to the gates of the park. Before them, the trees on either side of the avenue stood throbbing against a hot, bleached sky. "Do you know the fellow she was running it with?"
     
"What?"
     
"The beauty shop."
     
"No."
     
"Fellow by the name of White. Bit of a wide boy, I'm reliably informed. Had a hairdresser's in the premises in Anne Street before they opened the shop."
     
"Why is he a wide boy?"
     
"Takes risks—financial. The wife had to step in a couple of years back to keep his name out of Stubbs 's. Then the hairdresser's failed."
     
"She has money?"
     
"The wife? Must have. She's in business herself, runs a sweatshop on Capel Street, high-class fashion work at tuppence an hour."
     
Now it was Quirke's turn to chuckle. "I must say, Inspector, for a man who isn't conducting an investigation you seem to know a great deal about these people."
     
The inspector treated this as a compliment, and pretended to be embarrassed. "Arragh," he said, "that's the kind of stuff you'd pick up by standing on a street corner listening to the wind." Off to their left a herd of deer stood in the long grass amidst a shimmer of heat; a stag lifted its elaborately horned head and eyed them sideways with truculent suspicion.
     
"Look, Inspector," Quirke said, "what does it matter, any of this? The woman is dead."
     
The inspector nodded but might as well have been shaking his head. "But that's just when it does matter, to me—when someone is dead and it's not clear how they came to be that way. Do you see what I mean, Mr. Quirke? And by the way," he added, smiling, "it was you that brought poor Deirdre Hunt to my attention in the first place—have you forgotten that?"
     
Quirke had no answer.
     
They turned back then, and boarded a bus outside the Phoenix Park gates and stood on the open platform at the back, clinging to the handrail and swaying in awkward unison as the bus plunged and wallowed its way along the quays. The inspector took off his hat and held it over his breast in the attitude of a mourner at a funeral. Quirke studied the man's flat, peasant's profile. He knew nothing of Hackett, he realized, other than what he saw, and what he saw was what Hackett chose to let him see. At times the policeman gave off a whiff of something—it was as tangible as a smell, chalky and gray—that hinted of institutions. Was there perhaps a Carricklea in his far past, too? Were they both borstal boys? Quirke did not care to ask.
     
He got off at the Four Courts, stepping down from the platform while the bus was still moving. A wild-haired drunk was sprawled onthe pavement by the court gates, unconscious but holding tight to his bottle of sherry. Quirke sometimes pictured himself like this, lost to the world, ragged and sodden, slumped in some litter-strewn corner, his only possession a bottle in a brown paper bag.
     
As the bus swept away in a miasma of dirty gray exhaust