Christine Falls: A Novele by Benjamin Black Page B

had to change, and…His voice ran down and he sat gazing at Quirke helplessly with an expression of desperation and mild suffering, so that Quirke felt he should do something, should reach out and pat his brother-in-law’s hand, perhaps, or offer to help him to his feet. Mal, however, seeming to sense what was going through Quirke’s mind, withdrew his hands from the table and stood up hastily, and was as hastily gone.
    Quirke sat thinking. It was true, he was not much concerned with the exact circumstances of the girl’s death, but it interested him how much it obviously did concern Mal. And so, later that night, when Quirke left the pub, not sober but not quite drunk, either, he did not go home but instead went to the hospital, and opened up his office, and looked in the cabinet, intending to read again the file on Christine Falls. But the file was no longer there.

     

    MULLIGAN THE REGISTRY CLERK WAS TAKING HIS ELEVENSES. HE SAT tilted back in his chair with his feet on the desk; he was reading a newspaper and smoking a cigarette; a steaming mug of tea stood handily on the floor beside his chair. The paper was last Sunday’s People and the story he was engrossed in was a juicy one about a tart in Bermondsey, wherever that was, and her sugar daddy, who had done in some old one for her money. There was a photo of the tart, a big blonde in a little frock that her front was falling out of. She looked a bit like the nurse from upstairs who had left the other day to go to America, the one who was sweet on the boss—and be damned, but he was just thinking that when the boss himself came bursting in, full of piss and wind, as usual, and he had to get his feet off the desk and stub out the fag and stuff the paper in the desk drawer, all in the one smart go, while Quirke stood in the doorway with his hand on the knob, giving him the cold eye.
    “An emergency case,” Quirke said. “Name of Falls, Christine. A wagon was sent for her the other night. Wicklow, Wexford, somewhere down there.”
    The clerk, all business now, went to the files and took down the current month’s ledger and opened it flat on the desk and licked his thumb and began to turn over the pages. “Falls,” he said, “Falls…” He looked up. “F-a-l-l-s, right?”
    Quirke, still in the doorway, still watching him with that cod’s cold eye, nodded.
    “Christine,” he said. “Dead on arrival.”
    “Sorry, Mr. Quirke. No Falls, not from down the country.” Quirke stood thinking, then nodded again and turned to go. “Hang on,” the clerk said, pointing at a page. “Here she is—Christine Falls. If it’s the same one. Wasn’t down the country, though—she was collected in the city. They picked her up at one fifty-seven A.M. , Crimea Street, Stoney Batter. Number seventeen. Key holder there is”—he peered more closely—“one Dolores Moran.”
    He looked up with a smile of modest triumph— one Dolores Moran; he was proud of that—expecting at least a hint of gratitude for his alertness. But no thanks were forthcoming, of course. Quirke only took up a piece of paper and a pencil from the desk and had him repeat the address as he wrote it down, then turned again to go, but paused, eyeing the tea mug on the floor beside the chair.
    “Busy, are you?” he asked mildly.
    The clerk shrugged apologetically. “Bit slow, this time of the morning.” And when Quirke was gone he slammed the door after him as violently as he dared. “Sarky bastard,” he muttered. Who was this Christine Falls, he wondered, and why was the boss so interested? Some wagon, maybe, that he was banging. He chuckled: a wagon to pick up a wagon. He sat down at the desk and was about to resume his reading of the paper when the door opened again and Quirke reappeared, filling the doorway.
    “This Christine Falls,” he said, “where was she taken to?”
    “What?” the clerk snapped, forgetting himself. Seeing Quirke’s look he scrambled to his feet. “Sorry, Mr.