Free Elegy for April by Benjamin Black Page A

don’t like them.”
     
“Powerful folk,” the Inspector said. He glanced at Quirke from under his thick brows and gently smiled, and his voice grew soft. “Dangerous, Dr. Quirke.”
     
Quirke paid the bill, and Hackett’s storm-trooper’s coat was returned to him. They walked through the lobby and out onto the steps above Dawson Street. Either the fog was down again or an impossibly fine rain was falling, it was hard to tell which. Motorcars going past made a frying sound on the greasy tarmac.
     
“I’d say now, Dr. Quirke,” Hackett said, fitting his hat onto his head with both hands as if he were screwing on a lid, “I’d say it’s power you don’t like, power itself.”
     
“Power? I suppose it’s true. I don’t know what it’s for, that’s the trouble.”
     
“Aye. The power of power, you might say. It’s a queer thing.”
     
Yes, a queer thing, Quirke reflected, squinting at the street. Power is like oxygen, he realized, being similarly vital, everywhere pervasive, wholly intangible; he lived in its atmosphere but rarely knew that he was breathing it. He glanced at the dumpy little man beside him in his ridiculous coat. Surely he knew all there was to know about power, the having of it and the lack ofit; together they had tried, some years back, to bring down another influential family in this city, and had failed. For Quirke, the memory of that failure rankled still.
     
They went down into the street. Quirke said he would call up Phoebe and arrange for her to meet them at April Latimer’s flat when she left work that evening, and Hackett said he would make sure to be there. Then they turned and went their separate ways.
     
MALACHY ARRIVED AT QUIRKE’S FLAT AT TWO, AND THEY WALKED round to the garage in the lane off Mount Street Crescent and met Perry Otway, who handed over the key to the lock-up garage where the Alvis was waiting. The galvanized-iron door opened upwards on a mechanism involving a big spring and sliding weights, and when Quirke turned the handle and pulled on it the door resisted him at first but then all at once rose up with an almost floating ease, and for a moment his heart lifted too. Then he saw the car, however, lurking in the shadows, agleam and motionless, fixing him with a silvery stare from its twin headlamps. Childish, of course, to be intimidated by a machine, but childishness was an unaccustomed luxury for Quirke, whose real childhood was a forgotten bad dream.
     
He had thought that for Malachy too the Alvis would revive something from his youth, some access of daring he must once have had, but he drove it as he did the old Humber, at arm’s length, muttering and complaining under his breath. They went by way of the Green to Christ Church and down Winetavern Street to the river and turned up towards the park. The mist was laden with the doughy smells of yeast and hops from Guin-ness’s brewery. It was the middle of the afternoon, and what there was of daylight had already begun to dim. Even Malachy’s driving could not subdue the power and vehemence of the car,and it swished along as if under its own control, gliding around corners and bounding forward on the straight stretches with a contained, animal eagerness. They crossed the bridge before Heuston Station and went in at the park gates and stopped. For a time neither of them stirred or spoke. Malachy had not turned off the ignition, yet the engine was so quiet they could hardly hear it. The trees lining the long, straight avenue in front of them receded in parallel lines into the mist. “Well,” Quirke said with forced briskness, “I suppose we better get on with it.” He was suddenly filled with terror and felt a fool already, before he had even got behind the wheel.
     
Learning to drive, however, turned out to be disappointingly easy. At first he had trouble operating the pedals and more than once mistook the accelerator for the brake— the engine’s howled rebuke quickly taught him the distinction— and getting the hang of the