Read Online Holy Orders A Quirke Novel by Benjamin Black - Free Book Online Page A

frighteningly quiet, nodded to himself. He let his hands fall to his sides in a gesture of helpless resignation. He pulled up a straight-backed chair and sat down and planted his elbows on the desk. “How long have you been in this job, Harry?” he asked, purring, sounding almost friendly, as if he really wanted to know.
    “A year,” Harry said defensively. “Two, in September.”
    “You like your work? I mean, you get satisfaction out of it?”
    Harry’s mouth had gone dry again. “Yes, of course,” he said.
    Once again Sumner was nodding. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “I like to think the folk working on my newspapers are happy. It gives me satisfaction, to know that you ’re happy. You believe that?” Harry only looked glum, and Sumner smiled, showing his big white teeth. “You’d better believe it, because it’s true. But you’ve got to realize”—he leaned back and brought out from the breast pocket of his jacket a box of cheroots and flipped open the lid—“I’m in business here. We’re all in business here.”
    The cheroots were of a blackish-brown color, obviously handmade; long and thin and misshapen, they reminded Harry of shriveled dog turds. Sumner selected one, held it up before himself between his fingertips, and gazed at it with satisfaction. Harry pushed a heavy desk lighter towards him but Sumner shook his head and brought out a box of Swan Vestas. “Lighters taste of gasoline,” he said. “A good cheroot deserves a match.”
    He lit up with a flourish, making a business of it, while Harry looked on in dull fascination. Sumner shook the flame until it died, then set the smoldering matchstick carefully on a corner of the desk, ignoring the ashtray Harry was offering, and exhaled with a soft sigh a flaw of blue, dense-smelling smoke. “The point is, Harry,” he said, settling back on the chair and crossing his left ankle on his right knee, “newspapers thrive on—well, you tell me. Come on. Tell me. What do newspapers thrive on, Harry?”
    Harry regarded him helplessly with a glazed stare. By now he felt less like a rabbit than a torn and bloodied mouse that a cat had been toying with for a long time and was about to eat.
    “ Noos, Harry,” Sumner said, almost whispering the word. “That’s what they thrive on— noos .”
    He smoked in silence for a time, smiling to himself and gazing at Harry almost benignly. Harry was bitterly reminding himself that although Sumner had taken over the Clarion less than a year before, obviously he saw himself as an expert at the business.
    Below them, deep in the bowels of the building, the presses were starting up for a dummy run.
    “So,” Harry said, “what do you want me to do, exactly?”
    “Me? I don’t want you to do anything. What I want is for you to tell me what you ’re going to do. You’re the professional here, Harry”—he paused, seeming about to laugh at the notion but settling for a broad smile instead—“you’re the one with the know-how. So: impress me.”
    Harry could feel the sweat forming on his upper lip; he was sure Sumner could see it, beads of it glittering against his already forming five-o’clock shadow, which on him always began to appear midmorning. He had spent time in the army when he was young. He had been had up on a shoplifting charge, nothing very serious, but the judge had given him the option of Borstal or the ranks. It was a period of his life he did not care to dwell on. There had been a sergeant who was the bane of his life—what was his name? Mullins? No, Mulkearns, that was it. Little stub of a fellow, built like a barrel, with slicked-back hair and a Hitler ’tache. He was a bully too, like Sumner here, the same dirty, gloating smirk and the same air of enjoying himself hugely at others’ expense. You say these here spuds are peeled, do you, Clancy? Well, now you can get going on peeling the peelings . Oh, yes, Mulkearns and Carlton Sumner were of a type, all right.
    “We could