“How is Sarah?” Quirke asked. He let himself droop sideways heavily until his shoulder found the support of the doorjamb. He felt dizzy, and everything was keeping up a flickering, leftward lurch. He was at the rueful stage of having drunk too much and knowing that there was nothing to be done but wait until the effects wore off. Mal had his back to him, putting the file into a drawer of the tall gray filing cabinet.

“She’s well,” Mal said. “We were at a Knights dinner. I sent her home in a taxi.”

“Knights?” Quirke said, widening his eyes blearily.

Mal turned to him a blank, expressionless look, the lenses of his glasses flashing. “Of St. Patrick. As if you didn’t know.”

“Oh,” Quirke said. “Right.” He looked as if he were trying not to laugh. “Anyway,” he said, “never mind about me, what are you doing, down here among the dead men?”

Mal had a way of bulging out his eyes and drawing upward sinuously his already long, thin form, as if to the music of a snake charmer’s flute. Quirke had to marvel, not for the first time, at the polished luster of that hair, the smoothness of the brow beneath, the untarnished steely blue of his eyes behind the pebble glass of his specs.

“I had a thing to do,” Mal said. “A thing to check.”

“What thing?”

Mal did not answer. He studied Quirke and saw how drunk he was, and a cold glint of relief came into his eye.

“You should go home,” he said.

Quirke thought to dispute this-the morgue was his territory-but again suddenly he lost all interest. He shrugged, and with Mal still watching him he turned and weaved away among the body-bearing trolleys.