"Is this instinct or something harder?" asked Fitzduane. "Is this academic discussion or something that crosses what I'm up to?"
"It's not academic," said Kilmara, "but it's not hard. "It's bits and pieces sifted from intelligence reports and interrogations. It's the presence of elements that shouldn't be there. It's stuff on the grapevine. It's the instincts of someone who's been a long time in this game. As for whether it affects you, I don't see how — but who knows? Suicide is about alienation. There are other ways to show society you're pissed off. And there is a lot about our society to piss people off."
Kilmara stopped at they approached the car. The sky was black, and thunder rumbled. Rain poured down and cascaded off the two men. Lightning flashed and for a moment illuminated Kilmara's face. He started to say something, then seemed to change his mind. He reverted to what they had just been discussing. "In this new modern Ireland of ours — and for Ireland you can substitute the Western capitalist world — our idea of progress is a new shopping center or video machine. It just isn't that simple. Life can't be that hollow."
Fitzduane looked at his friend.
"I've got children," said Kilmara, "and I'm not sure I like the view in my crystal ball."
They returned to the hotel and dried off and had a hot whiskey together for the road. They drank in companionable silence. The hotel's central heating was as usual too hot, but their coats and hats, draped over the radiators and dripping onto the carpet, were drying out. The room smelled like an old sheepdog.
"I wonder what you've got into this time, Hugo," said Kilmara. "You and your fucking vibes." He swirled the clove in his hot whiskey. "Tell me," he said, "do they still call you the Irish samurai?"
"From time to time," replied Fitzduane. "The media have picked it up, and it's in the files. It livens up a story."
Kilmara laughed. "Ah," he said, "but the name fits. There you are with your ideals, your standards, your military skills, and your heritage, looking for a worthwhile cause to serve, a quest to undertake."
"The idea of a samurai," said Fitzduane, "Is a warrior who already serves, one who has already found his master and has his place in the social order, a knight in the feudal system answerable to a lord but in charge of his own particular patch."
"Well," said Kilmara, "you've certainly got your own particular patch — even if it is in the middle of nowhere. As to whom you are answerable" — he grinned — "that's an interesting question."
The thunderstorm was working itself up to a climax. Rain drummed against the glass. Lightning split the sky into jagged pieces.
"It's the weather for metaphysics," said Fitzduane, "though scarcely the time."
* * * * *
Fifteen minutes later Kilmara was connected by telephone to a white-tiled room in Cork.
A smallish man with salt-and-pepper hair and the complexion of a fisherman was given the phone by the lab technician. The smallish man was wearing a green smock and trousers and rubber apron. His white rubber gloves were splashed with blood.
"Michael," said Kilmara after the proprieties had been observed, "I want you to take a break from cutting the tops off of Irish skulls with that electric saw of yours in a fruitless search for gray matter. I'd like you to take a friend of mine out to dinner and do a wee bit of talking."
"What about?" asked the smallish man. There was the sound of dripping from the open body into the stainless steel bucket below.
"A Berlinese hanging."
"Ah," said the smallish man. "Who's paying for dinner?"
"Now, is that a fair question from a friend to a friend about a friend?"
"Yes," said the smallish man.
"The firm."
"Well now, that's very civilized of you, Shane," said the smallish man. "It will be the Arbutus, so."
He decided he would have a nice cup of tea before returning to the corpse.
Kilmara phoned Switzerland.
* * * * *
Fitzduane soaked in the bath, watching his yellow plastic duck bob around in the suds. That was the weakness of showers. There was nowhere to float your duck.
The music of Sean O'Riada wafted through the half-open door.
Fitzduane didn't hear the phone. He was thinking about O'Riada — an outstanding composer who was dead of drink by early middle age — and Rudi von Graffenlaub and the fact that killing yourself, if you included drugs and alcohol, wasn't really such an uncommon human activity. It was just that hanging was rather more dramatic. The duck caught his eye. It was riding low in the water. He had a horrible feeling that it had sprung a leak.
He heard Etan laughing. She entered the bathroom and pulled a towel off the heated rail. "It's Shane. He asks would you mind leaving your duck for a moment. He wants to talk to you."
Fitzduane picked up the phone in a damp hand. There were bubbles in his hair. He leaned over and turned the music down lower. "Still alive?" he said into the mouthpiece.
"You're a real bundle of laughs," said Kilmara. It was late on a wet March evening, and it would take him well over an hour to get to his home in Westmeath. He was feeling grumpy, and he thought it quite probable he was coming down with a cold.
"Developments?" asked Fitzduane. "Or are you just trying to get me out of the bath?"
"Developments," said Kilmara. "The man in Cork says yes, but you'll have to drive down there. The man in Bern says well-behaved tourists are always welcome, though he gargled a bit when he heard the name von Graffenlaub. And I say, if I'm not in bed with acute pneumonia, will you take a stroll over to Shrewsbury Road in the morning? I want to talk about the dead and the living. Clear?"
"In part," said Fitzduane.
* * * * *
Three hours later, Kilmara felt much improved.
Logs crackled in the big fireplace. An omelette fines herbes, a tomato salad, a little cheese, red wine — all sat especially well when prepared by a Frenchwoman. He heard the whir of the coffee grinder from the kitchen.
He lay back in the old leather wing chair, the twins snuggled in close. They were cozy in pajamas and matching Snoopy robes, and they smelled of soap and shampoo and freshly scrubbed six-year-old. Afterward, when the cries and the squeals and the “But, Daddy, we can't go to bed until our hair is really, really dry” had died down, he talked with Adeline. As always when he looked at her or thought about her, he felt a fortunate man.
"But why, chéri, does he want to do this thing?" said Adeline. She held her balloon glass of Armagnac up to the firelight and enjoyed the flickering rich color. "Why does Hugo go on this quest when nothing is suspicious, when there seems to be no reason?"
"There's nothing suspicious as far as the authorities are concerned," said Kilmara, "but Hugo marches to the beat of a different drum. The point is that it doesn't feel right to him, and that, to him, is what counts."
Adeline looked skeptical. "A feeling — is that all?"
"Oh, I think it's more than that," said Kilmara. "Hugo is something of a paradox. He's a gentle man with a hard edge — and he's spent most of his adult life in war zones. In the Congo he was a natural master of combat while in action, though he had qualms of conscience when it was all over. Combat photography was his compromise. Well, now he's heading toward middle age, and that's a time when you tend to take stock of where you've been and where you're going. I suspect he feels a sense of guilt about having made a living for so many years out of photographing other people's suffering, and I think this one death on his doorstep is like a catalyst for his accumulated feelings. He seems to think he can prevent some future tragedy by finding out the reasons for this one."