Even the Dead by Benjamin Black Read Free Book Online

she said. “There are people who might see me there, too. That’s why I have to get away.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “There are people who will be looking for me. I can’t say any more, please don’t ask me.”
    “All right,” Phoebe said. “Will you wait here?”
    “Will you be long?”
    “I’ll be as quick as I can. There’s a car I need to borrow, which is why I have to make a phone call.”
    “Then I’ll wait,” Lisa said. She had thrown away her cigarette and was clutching her handbag again. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am. You really must think I’m some crazy person that’s latched onto you.”
    “I don’t think you’re crazy. But you’ll have to tell me, sooner or later, what you’re afraid of.”
    “I will, I will tell you, if I can.”
    Phoebe stood up. “I want you to promise me that you’ll be here when I come back. You have to trust me, as I’m trusting you. If you go, I’ll never know what became of you, and that wouldn’t be fair. Would it?”
    “I promise,” Lisa said. “But if I’m not here, I give you my word it won’t be because I went off of my own free will.”
    Phoebe nodded. “I can’t think what kind of awful trouble you’re in, but I’ll do my best to help you.”
    She turned quickly and walked back the way she had come. As she was about to cross the street, she paused and looked about herself carefully. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she had a crawling sensation across her back that suggested she was being watched. She told herself she was imagining things. But then, things had happened to her in the past, violent, savage things, that she would have thought were beyond imagining.
    *   *   *
    David answered on the third ring. She had called him at the pathology lab. She told him she needed to borrow the Morris Minor. When he asked her what for, she had her answer prepared: “I told Quirke I’d take him to hospital for his checkup.” She always referred to her father by his name; she couldn’t imagine calling him anything else.
    “What hospital?” David asked. He sounded suspicious.
    “St. James’s. Then I said maybe he and I would go for a spin in the country. Do you mind? Will you need the car?”
    “No, I don’t need it at the moment. It’s in the garage.”
    “Well then, can I have it?”
    He was silent for some seconds. “Since when did you start taking Quirke for spins in the country?”
    “He needs to get out. He’s been cooped up for weeks in that mausoleum on Ailesbury Road.”
    Again a silence. “Oh, all right. You’ll have to come and get the keys.”
    “I’ll be there shortly.”
    She hung up, hearing the pennies fall inside the box, then left the hotel and hurried back across the street. She hadn’t really expected Lisa to be there still, and was surprised to find her sitting as she had left her, stiff with fear, her handbag on her lap.
    “I’ll have to go to the Holy Family Hospital,” Phoebe said. “The car belongs to my—to my boyfriend, and I have to get the key from him.”
    “Your boyfriend? Is he a doctor?”
    Phoebe smiled wryly. “Sort of,” she said. “Now I’m going to get us a taxi. You’ll come with me.”
    “I—”
    “That wasn’t a question. I’m not going to leave you sitting here, frightened out of your life. You’ll be better off with me. You can wait outside the hospital, in the taxi, until I’ve got the car key.”
    They hurried to the main gate and left the park and crossed to the taxi rank at the top of Grafton Street. There was a single taxi waiting, all its windows rolled fully down. The driver, a fat bald pink man, was asleep, his head resting at an awkward angle on the back of the seat and his mouth open. When Phoebe touched him, he snorted and shook himself, blinking.
    The taxi inside smelled of hot leather, cigarette smoke, and of something else, warm and fleshy, that had to be the driver. He talked about the weather, complaining of the heat. “Can’t