Hackett poured the foaming ale; it made a joggling sound as it toppled into the glass. He sipped. The taste really wasn’t getting any better. He would stick with Bass until the end of the week, and if it hadn’t grown on him by then he’d go back to the Guinness, whatever smart remarks May might make about his waistline.
“Were you at the match on Sunday?” Gallagher said.
“No,” Hackett answered. “As it happens, I had to work. You saw in the paper about that young fellow dying in a crash in the Phoenix Park? Leon Corless. One of yours.” Gallagher stared at him wildly. “Civil servant, I mean.”
“Oh. Right. Yes.” He coughed softly into his fist. “Corless, yes. In Agriculture and Fisheries, wasn’t he?”
“No,” Hackett said. “Health.”
He didn’t doubt that Gallagher had known perfectly well where Leon Corless worked. By now, lying was second nature to poor Ned.
“Ah, right. I didn’t know him—” He broke off, hearing how defensive he had sounded. “I mean, I didn’t come across him. Somebody said he was a bright spark.”
“So I’m told. Statistics, that was his field, I believe.”
“Oh, they all have some new-fangled speciality, the bright boys.”
Hackett was lighting a cigarette.
“I went up to the department to have a word with his boss. Chap called O’Connor.”
Gallagher nodded. “Turlough O’Connor,” he said. “Yes, a sound man.”
“He seemed a bit”—Hackett blew out the match—“nervous, to me.”
“Nervous? About what?”
“Hard to say. About whatever it was young Corless was working on, before he died, so it seemed.”
Gallagher had gone very still, like an old fox hearing faintly from afar the sound of the huntsman’s horn.
“And what class of work was it he was doing?” he asked carefully.
“Mr. O’Connor wouldn’t say, exactly. Something in the mother-and-child area, I believe.”
Gallagher nodded. His unease was growing by the minute. Civil servants, Hackett reflected, were by nature a cautious species, but none was more cautious than one with a secret of his own to hide.
“I see,” Gallagher said. “That would be a sensitive area, now.”
“Yes. Turlough O’Connor said much the same thing, when I spoke to him. And when he was saying it he looked almost as worried as you do now, Mr. Gallagher.”
Gallagher blinked. “You’d be worried yourself, Inspector, if you knew half the things that a man in my position is privy to.”
“I’m sure you’re right. But the point is, you see, there’s sort of a criminal investigation going on over the death of young Mr. Corless.”
“What do you mean, a sort of investigation?”
Hackett scratched his chin, producing a sandpapery sound. “There are suspicious circumstances surrounding his death.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the fact, and it seems to be a fact, that he was dead, or at least unconscious, before his car crashed.”
“Did he have a heart attack or something?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Ah, I see. So someone else is involved, then?”
“That’s the way it’s looking.”
Gallagher thought this over, a muscle working in his big square jaw. “Corless,” he said. “Isn’t he a son of what’s-his-name Corless, the Communist fellow?”
“Samuel Corless. He was, yes.”
“Hmm. In that case, God knows what kind of stuff he was mixed up in. The father has a steady flow of red rubles coming in by the month from Moscow, I hear, and he’s supposed to be in cahoots with the IRA, too. We get regular reports on him from the Special Branch. Like father, like son, eh?”
“Have you knowledge that young Corless was political, like his father? You said a minute ago he had a reputation as a bright spark. Bright sparks in your line of work tend to steer a steady course, I’m sure.”
“There’s nothing on him that I know of,” Gallagher said.
“Nothing to suggest he might have been mixed up with subversives, for instance?”
“I told you, I don’t know.” Gallagher was turning sullen, though he was showing signs of being relieved, too, thinking he knew now what it was Hackett was going to ask him to do. “I can run a check on him, in the morning. There’s a couple of fellows in the Branch I know well — they’ll tell me anything there is to tell.”
Hackett was silent for a while, lighting another Player’s. “You haven’t touched your glass of orange,” he said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like something else? Though I’d hate to make a man break his fast who’s going on a retreat.”
Gallagher shook his head sulkily; no doubt it rankled sorely with him that he had to sit here meekly and take all this guff from a jumped-up peeler.
Hackett leaned forward, lowering his voice. “The thing is, Mr. Gallagher,” he said, “I don’t think for a moment that Leon Corless was involved in politics, subversive or otherwise. I don’t think he even had any interest in such things. He was a scientist, a technician. And himself and his father were hardly on speaking terms.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because his father told me so.”
Gallagher drew back his head and looked at Hackett with a witheringly skeptical smile. “Ah, now, Inspector, come on. Why would you believe a word out of the mouth of that champion of atheistic communism?”
Hackett was still leaning across the table, looking up sideways at Gallagher, and now he too smiled. It was a gentle smile, tender, almost, and it brought back all of Gallagher’s unease and worried resentment.
“I believe Sam Corless is an honest man,” Hackett said. “I may be wrong, of course, as I have been, many times, in the past. Be that as it may, I don’t think his son was killed, if he was killed, out of political motives. Or at least, not the kind of political motives you seem to be suggesting.”
He stopped, and sat back in his chair and drank the dregs of his beer. Gallagher was regarding him with a sort of fascination. This encounter was, for Gallagher, a novel experience. He was used to being the one sitting at his ease, with some terrified underling squirming and sweating in front of him.
“Look, Inspector,” he said, in a wheedling tone he couldn’t suppress and that made him angry with himself, “I should be getting home, the missus will be wondering where—”
“Yes, yes,” Hackett said, lifting a hand, “I won’t keep you more than another minute, for I’m sure my own tea is on the table and going cold even as we speak. What I want is a small favor. Tomorrow when you go into the office—” He stopped, and put on a look of polite concern. “But tell me, what time will you be setting off for Glenstal and your retreat?”
“First thing.”
Hackett shook his head sadly. “Ah, that’s a pity. For I really do need this little favor done. Do you think, by any chance, you might delay your departure by an hour or two? Because what I want is for you to find out for me what sort of work it was exactly that young Leon Corless was engaged in, at the department, in the area of the mother and the child.”
A silence fell, as the two men confronted each other across the table. Gallagher’s brow colored, and a hard gleam came into his eyes. Hackett gazed back at him blandly, with his blandest, gentlest smile.
“What do you think I am,” Gallagher said gratingly, unable to restrain himself, “some sort of a clerk, some sort of a messenger boy?”
Hackett reared back in feigned astonishment and shock.
“Oh, Mr. Gallagher, I certainly think no such thing,” he said. “If you feel this little task is beneath you, don’t give it another thought. We’ll finish our drinks and go home to our wives and forget we ever met here this evening. It’s just that, with all the matters you’re privy to, I thought this wouldn’t be such a great thing to ask.”