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.The Judge had been a great and secret sinner, and it was Quirke who had exposed his sins.A young woman had died, another woman had been murdered, and these things had been the old man's fault.What impressed Quirke most was the cloak of silence that had been drawn over the affair, leaving him standing alone in his indignation, exposed, improbable, ignored, like a crackpot shouting on a street corner.So why did he keep coming dutifully each week to this barren room below the mountains? He had his own sins to account for, as his daughter could attest, the daughter whom he had for so long denied.It was a small atonement to come here twice a week and read out the court cases and the death notices for this dying old man.His thoughts turned again to Deirdre Hunt.There had been no question of not performing a postmortem, after he had chanced on that needle mark in the woman's arm.He had his professional duty to carry out, but that was not what had made him take up the knife.He had been, as always, simply curious, though Quirke knew there was nothing simple about his curiosity.He had cut open the cadaver, palped the organs, measured the blood, and now, with the Judge for silent witness, he had it all out for himself again and viewed it from all the angles he could think of.Still it made no sense.He turned."What do you think, Garret?" he asked."Just another lost girl?"The Judge, propped against pillows, his mouth awry, glared at him.Quirke sighed.The room was hot and airless, and even though he had taken off his jacket he was sweating and could feel the damp patches on his shirt under the armpits and between his shoulder blades.He wondered, as he often did, if the Judge registered these things: heat, cold, the commonplace vagaries of the day.Was he in pain? Imagine that—imagine being in unrelenting pain and not even able to cry out to be released from it or just to plead for sympathy.He sighed again.He recalled the premonitory twinge of unease he had felt when the woman at the hospital reception desk had handed him the note from Billy Hunt asking him to phone.How had he known that something was amiss—what intuition, what sixth sense, had forewarned him? And what was this dread he was feeling now? It was a postmortem he had performed on the body of another young woman that had led to the unraveling of the Judge's web of secrets; did he want to become involved in another version of all that? Should he not just let the death of Deirdre Hunt alone, and leave her husband in merciful ignorance? What did it matter that a woman had drowned herself?—her troubles were over now; why should her husband's be added to? Yet even as he asked himself these questions Quirke was aware of the old itch to cut into the quick of things, to delve into the dark of what was hidden—to know.Sister Agatha came bustling back into the room, plainly irritated that he was still there, when at other times he so patently could not wait to be away.And why was he tarrying like this? Did he expect some silent revelation from the old man, some grand sign of guidance or admonition? Did he expect help? The nun was a little, wizened, bearded woman with an eye as sharp as a robin's.No matter in what part of the room she was, she contrived always to seem planted protectively between him and her helpless, bedridden charge.She disapproved of Quirke and made no attempt to hide the fact."Isn't it grand," she said, without looking at him, "to see the sun shining still, and it so late?"It was not late, it was six o'clock; she was telling him she wanted him gone.He watched as she tended the old man, adjusting his pillows and smoothing the thin blanket and the turned-back top of the sheet that lay across the middle of his chest like a broad, restraining band.The Judge had never seemed so huge as he did here, bound helpless in his narrow metal bed; Quirke recalled from long ago a day of fierce storm at Carricklea when he had witnessed a giant beech tree brought down by the wind, its fall making the ground quake and the crash of it rattling the panes of the window at the sill of which he was eagerly watching.The old man's lapsing was like that, an end of something that had been there for so long it had seemed immovable.How much of this destruction was Quirke's doing? And was he now about to start another storm that would topple from its pedestal the monument Billy Hunt wanted to erect to his dead wife?He took up his jacket from where he had draped it on the back of a chair beside the bed."Good-bye, Sister," he said."I'll see you on Thursday."Still she would not look at him and said nothing, only made a little breathy sound down her nostrils that might have been a snicker of disdain.From the Judge too there was no response, and his eyes were turned away, as if in bleak disdain, towards the hills.IN BAGGOT STREET QUIRKE ATE A VILE DINNER IN A CHINESE RESTAUrant, and afterwards walked back to his flat trying to strip a scum of grease from his front teeth with his tongue.Nowadays, without the anesthetic of alcohol, he found the evenings the most difficult, especially in this midsummer season with its lingering white nights.His friends, or at least the few acquaintances he used to have, were pub people, and on the rare occasions when he met them now it was plain that he made them nervous in his newfound sober state.He thought of going to the pictures, but then saw himself sitting alone in the flickering dark among scores of courting couples, and even the deserted silence of his flat on a sun-washed summer evening seemed preferable.Arrived at the shabby Georgian house in Upper Mount Street where he lived, he closed the front door soundlessly behind him and went softly along the hall and up the stairs [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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