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detective. “But I’m afraid this one’s a little unusual in that regard.”
    He took Daly on a tour of the murder scene with an exaggerated propriety, as though he were a guide at a National Trust property. Daly fumbled as he stepped over the tape, stumbling in the big man’s wake.
    At first glance, everything looked aboveboard to Daly’s eyes. The body of a barefoot, elderly man sat propped within the scorched stump of a tree, his face untroubled, the mouth slightly open and the tongue sticking out, like a creature trying to escape the death of its host. The smell of rotting sloe berries flavored the air, and bluebottles droned above the corpse like a deep snore. No outward sign of evil, he remarked, the death a tragic accident that had happened to an old man who might have normally walked this way barefoot and rested in the hollow of a tree every morning.
    But on closer inspection it was evident that parts of the corpse had been set alight, making it difficult to distinguish between human sinew and burnt wood. The victim’s blackened limbs, shriveled after the fire, were entwined with charred branches as though his body had twisted itself around the remains of a burnt deformed twin. An examination of the head revealed multiple bruises and patches of sticky blood. The back of the scalp was a mangled flap of gristle.
    Around the corpse, hardworking, competent professionals waltzed about, snapping photographs, mopping hairs and microscopic pieces of evidence from the undergrowth, collecting and cataloguing a brutal segment of the past that they would eventually waltz off with to fill the shelves of a police laboratory.
    Butler was talking to him, but Daly could barely follow the words as he took in the scene before him. Some detectives sucked up the details of gruesome murder like efficient vacuum cleaners, but Daly was not one of them. Butler noticed his discomfort. To help him regain his composure the pathologist turned to the view of the Tyrone shoreline and began listing the distant town lands, as if for his own amusement.
    The tremor of squeamishness that passed through Daly’s gut was nothing to his sense of professional rivalry when it came to dealing with the macabre, and he felt a twinge of annoyance at Butler’s tactful distraction.
    “How long has the body been here?” he asked, turning toward the pathologist’s composed profile.
    “Fortunately, the victim has been found before serious decomposition could set in or the local wildlife have had their wicked way with him.”
    “You’re telling me it could not have worked out better for him?” Daly’s voice was stony.
    “To a degree. A wildlife preserve is not a good place for a murdered body.”
    “Where is a good place?”
    Butler stepped gingerly around the lumps of wood, unperturbed by either Daly or the corpse, his features concentrating on the process of thought and deduction. Death simplified things, like mathematics. Working out how it happened meant seeing things clearly and being objective; dropping the veils of sentimentality.
    “At least he got a priest’s blessing,” remarked Daly.
    “Kindly performed by a Father Aiden Fee from Maghery. Do you know him?”
    “No, no. I’m not a regular Mass-goer. But I will look him up.”
    “He says the dead man was Joseph Devine, a devout parishioner. Mr. Devine had no next of kin, apparently. The wallet in his jacket held a driving license and a few bank cards.”
    The ripples of wash from a passing motorboat splashed urgently against the jetty. The two men watched the boat frisk the island’s rocky shoreline and then disappear from view.
    “The victim was killed by brute force and a series of blows to his skull,” Butler continued. “His limbs were also set alight, possibly as a means of torture. The sap in the tree acted as a form of fuel. We’ll never be able to supply you with an exact time, but roughly speaking he’s been dead for no more than twenty-four hours.”
    Butler prodded the