The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black Read Free Book Online

wives? It seemed to Quirke unlikely. Delia had died a long time ago, and anyway, had he not been secretly and shamefacedly relieved at her death? ThoughDelia was the one he had married, it was not Delia he had wanted but her sister, Sarah, and he had lost her, through carelessness, and to Malachy Griffin, of all people. Yet there was something about Billy Hunt, something about his distress and sweaty desolation, that had stung Quirke, somehow, and that was stinging yet. "Something fishy," he had said to Mal, and he knew that it was indeed a whiff out of the deeps that he had caught. It was not the same as the stench that had come up out of the dead young woman's bloated innards; it was at once fainter and more pungent than that.
     
He did not know what to do next, even supposing there was a next thing and, if there was, that he should do it. He might talk to Billy Hunt again, find out more of what he knew about his wife's demise and, more significantly, perhaps, what he did not know. But what would he ask him? How would he frame the questions? Who stuck the needle in her arm, Billy, who pumped her full of dope—was it you, by any chance? He did not believe Billy was the killer. He was too hapless, too inept. Killers were surely of a different breed from poor, shambling, freckled, sorrowing Billy Hunt.
     
Under the covers his knee began to ache, his left knee, the cap of which had been smashed when he had been set upon by a pair of assailants and flung down the area steps of a deserted house in Mount Street one wet night a couple of years previously. That, he reflected now, was just the kind of thing that happened to you when you poked at things better left unpoked.
     
He turned on his side with a hand under his cheek on the hot pillow and gazed at the heavy, floor-length curtains standing above him in the half-light like a massive fluted slab of dark stone. What should he do? The waters into which Deirdre Hunt's corpse had plunged were deep and turbid. The autopsy he had done on that other young woman two years ago had raised a wave of mud and filth, in the lees of which he was still wading. Was he not now in danger of another foul drenching? Do nothing, his better judgment told him; stay on dry land. But he knew he would dive, headfirst, into the depths. Something in him yearned after the darkness down there.
     
     
AT HALF PAST EIGHT THAT SAME MORNING HE WAS AT PEARSE STREET Garda Station, asking for Detective Inspector Hackett. The day was hot already, with shafts of sunlight reflecting like brandished swords off the roofs of motorcars passing by outside in the smoky, petrol-blue air. Inside, the dayroom was all umber shadow and floating dust motes, and there was a smell of pencil shavings and documents left to bake in the sun that reminded Quirke of his schooldays at Carricklea. Policemen in uniform and some in plain clothes came and went, slow moving, watchful, deliberate. One or two gave him a sharp look that told him they knew who he was; he could see them wondering what he was doing there, Quirke, the hotshot pathologist from the Hospital of the Holy Family, scuffing his fancy shoe leather in these fusty surroundings; by now he was wondering the same thing himself.
     
Hackett came down to greet him. He was in shirtsleeves and broad braces; Quirke recognized the voluminous blue trousers, shined to a high polish at seat and knee, that were one half of what must still be the only suit he owned. His big square face, with its slash of mouth and watchful eyes, was shiny too, especially about the jowls and chin. His brilliantined black hair was brushed back fiercely from his forehead in a raptor's crest. Quirke was not sure that he had ever seen Hackett before without his hat. It was two years since he and Hackett had last spoken, and he was faintly surprised to discover how pleased he was to see the wily old brute, box-head and carp's mouth and shiny serge and all.
     
"Mr. Quirke!" the detective said expansively, but