“Oh, yes? And what happened?”
“She saw her friendly nun. She didn’t know of any Lisa Smith.” Quirke began to say something, but she interrupted him. “No, listen. There is a Lisa there, but she’s not Lisa Smith.”
“Then who is she?”
There was a rattling noise on the line and he didn’t catch her answer, and had to ask her to repeat it.
“Her name is Costigan,” Phoebe said. “Elizabeth Costigan.”
20
In the end it was decided that Phoebe should go with Quirke to the Mother of Mercy Laundry, since it was she who knew or at least had seen Lisa Smith, or Elizabeth Costigan, as they now knew her to be. Quirke and Phoebe had come to the house on Ailesbury Road to talk to Maisie. Mal and Rose met them, and they went, the four of them, and sat in the conservatory, at the little metal table in front of the somehow lost-looking miniature palm. It was cooler today, and now and then a breeze would wander in from the garden through the open French doors. Maisie was summoned, and repeated her account of her meeting with Sister Agnes. She had nothing to add to what she had already related to Phoebe, and Rose told her she could go.
“Costigan has a daughter called Elizabeth,” Quirke said. “I checked. She’s the youngest of three.” He turned to Phoebe. “There was an Elizabeth Costigan on the list of names from the secretarial course. It has to be your Lisa Smith.”
“I was sure Smith wasn’t her real name,” Phoebe said.
Mal took off his glasses and pressed a finger to the bridge of his nose. He was pale, and his eyes had a slightly stupefied look, as if he been straining for a long time to see something too far off to be made out. “You say she’s pregnant?” he asked.
“Yes,” Phoebe answered.
Mal nodded. “So that’s why she’s in the laundry.”
“Costigan would have put her there,” Quirke said.
“Yes, one of the parents would have had to bring her in.” Mal glanced at Quirke. “It’s usually the father who does it.”
There was a brief silence.
“What will we say?” Phoebe asked. “How will we go about getting in to see her?”
“I don’t know,” Quirke said. “You should be the one to call the laundry. Maybe pretend you’re a relative. You could even say you’re Lisa’s sister.”
“Why should we lie? It’s not a prison, after all. I’ll tell them I’m her friend and insist on seeing her.”
Yes, Quirke thought, it might work. The Griffin name would carry significant weight in the Mother of Mercy Laundry. But it would be he who would have to do the talking. He had been to the laundry before, he knew what it was like, he knew the obstacles.
Rose stood up. “Anyone care for a drink?” she asked. “It’s practically lunchtime. No? Well, I’ll leave you conspirators to hatch your plans. I’m going to fix myself something tall and cool.”
She walked off, into the house. Somehow Rose’s departure from a room was always followed by an uneasy silence, as if the people she had left behind were convinced that if they spoke she would still be able to hear them.
Mal was fiddling with his spectacles again. “Joseph Costigan,” he said musingly. “How that man has haunted my life.” He turned to Phoebe. “You know, don’t you, that your grandfather did many bad things?” Phoebe, with a quick glance in Quirke’s direction, nodded. “Joe Costigan was his right-hand man — or left-hand, I should say. A sinister person.”
“Why isn’t something done about him?” Phoebe asked. “Why isn’t he in jail?”
Mal smiled sadly. “Why not, indeed. Because he has powerful friends, who protect him. Indeed, I used to be one of his protectors. Does that shock you, my dear?”
Phoebe only looked at her hands and frowned. She knew the ways in which Mal had helped shield his father and his associates from being called to account for their misdeeds; she knew more than anyone imagined she knew.
“You can’t blame yourself for looking after Grandfather,” she said, still with her eyes cast down. “He was your father, after all.”
“Ah, yes,” Mal said, “that fine excuse.” He turned to Quirke. “You know they’ll resist you, at the laundry.”
“Yes,” Quirke said, “I know that.”
Mal was regarding him keenly. “And then there’s Joe Costigan. He’s very dangerous, though you hardly need me to tell you that.”
“Yes, I know,” Quirke said. “But maybe this time he’s gone too far. Locking his daughter away in that place is one thing. Murder is another.”
Mal shook his head. “You know Costigan. If he was responsible for that young man’s death, you won’t trace it back to him. And even if you do, his friends will pull the usual strings. The Joe Costigans of this world can indeed get away with murder.”
Quirke turned to Phoebe. “Go and make the phone call,” he said. “Don’t say that I’ll be with you. We’ll just turn up. They won’t be able to send us away.”
Phoebe rose and went into the house. When she had gone, Mal and Quirke sat for a time in a strained silence. Mortal illness, Quirke reflected, is always, at some level, an embarrassment. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m all right,” Mal answered. “Terrified, of course, terrified all the time. It’s an odd sensation. I feel as if I’m floating, as if there’s a balloon inside me, filled with hot air, buoying me up. Breathless, too, as if I’m constantly running away from something.” He smiled. “Which, of course, I am.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“For me? No. Come round of an evening and talk to Rose. This is hard on her. First Josh, now me. It’s less than fair.”
Quirke got to his feet. “I’d better go,” he said.
“Yes. And take care, Quirke.” Mal turned to look out at the garden. “It seems so strange, doesn’t it, talking about these things, while the world goes on as if nothing mattered.”
“We’ll get Costigan this time,” Quirke said. “I promise you.”
Mal looked up at him. “Maybe you will,” he said. “It won’t change the past. I used to believe in redemption. Not anymore.”
“It’s too big a word, Mal. Let’s aim for something more modest.”
Mal stood up, and together they walked through the house. They met Rose in the front hall, with a glass in her hand. She gave Quirke a sardonic smile. “Off you go, Sir Galahad,” she said. “Watch out for dragons.”
* * *
Quirke had met Sister Dominic before. He could still see, and he had seen then, the distaste she felt for him. They faced each other across the broad expanse of her desk, while Phoebe sat off to the side — put in her place, as she had ruefully to acknowledge. Sister Dominic was tall and gaunt and strikingly handsome. She wore a floor-length habit, with an outsized set of wooden rosary beads knotted loosely around her waist. She had piercing eyes of bird’s-egg blue, and long, bloodless hands, the slender fingers of which were rarely still. The close-fitting black wimple gave her the look of a compellingly lifelike statue peering out of a niche. Despite the warmth of the day she looked cold, and the tip of her nose was bone-white.
“So, Dr. Quirke,” she said, “this is an unexpected pleasure. What can I do for you?”
Quirke was lighting a cigarette; deliberately he had not asked the nun’s permission. “I’m told, Sister, that there’s a young woman in the laundry by the name of Elizabeth Costigan. She would have come here recently.”
Sister Dominic blinked, her eyelids dropping slowly and slowly rising again, like the shutter of a camera set to a long exposure. She looked down at the desk and moved a pencil an inch to one side and straightened a leather-bound blotter.
“Elizabeth Costigan,” she said, isolating and, as it were, examining closely each syllable of the name. “I’m not sure that I know her. She came to us recently, you say?”