Cruz dropped all pretence of politeness.

‘This is not a joke,’ he said. ‘Tell me why you are here, and what it is you want.’

Quirke assumed an expression of large surprise and puzzlement.

‘I don’t think I understand you, Doctor Cruz,’ he said. ‘What do you mean, who am I, and why am I here? I’m a medical man, like yourself, and I’m on holiday with my wife in this lovely city. What else do you need to know?’

Cruz took a step back and made himself smile.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, and paused a moment, scanning the pavement at his feet. ‘Angela has had some troubles in her life. It would not be good for her if— if the past were to come back.’ He lifted his eyes. ‘You understand?’ His smile this time was ruefully complicit. Quirke shrugged.

‘It’s none of my business,’ he said easily. ‘I hope I haven’t done anything to upset your— your friend.’

A lightning flash of pain from his wounded thumb sped along his forearm to the elbow. He was remembering a rainy night in Dublin. Some hotel. The Russell, was it? No, the Shelbourne. Splinters of light in the panes of the revolving glass door, the rain shining on the conical breasts of the twin statues of the Nubian slave girls holding aloft their lamps at either side of the door. He was drunk, as he so often was in those days. He had got into an altercation with the top-hatted doorman. Why don’t you go home, sir, and sleep it off. The glass door revolved, two young women came through, one looking back and saying something, the other unfurling an umbrella. The one facing back was Phoebe. Now she turned, and saw him, his bleared eye, his sodden coat. Her smile died. Behind her, the black umbrella sprang fully into bloom. A thin pale face, a pair of dark eyes regarding him.

Doctor Cruz was speaking to him, but he wasn’t listening. He looked along the pavement. His wife had stopped, and so had Angela Lawless, so-called. She was lighting a cigarette. The match flame flared briefly, buttercup-yellow, identical in each of the black lenses.

Could it be possible? he thought. A dead young woman not dead at all, but here, just here in front of him, tapping her foot on the pavement and looking impatiently away? Yes, it was more than possible. It was what he had known all along, without knowing, that he had been right, that  Angela Lawless wasn’t who she said she was, that there was no Angela Lawless, in fact, or if there was, as there was bound to be, somewhere, this was not she, but another A. L. altogether.

April, he thought, and almost laughed at the sheer unlikeliness of the thing, at the sheer astonishment of it. April Latimer. April in Spain.

DUBLIN

Chapter 17