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back of the house.
    Fallon crouched down and pointed to a couple of spots barely visible on the dark floorboards.
    ‘They’re recent enough?’ McEvoy said, lowering himself to join her, the boards creaking under his feet.
    ‘Last day or so. There’s a shard here.’ She pointed to a piece of white porcelain, one edge stained blue, nestled in against the spines of two books on the nearest shelf. ‘There’s another one at the bottom of this pile.’ She pointed to one side.
    ‘So he was killed in here and then carried upstairs?’
    ‘Attacked in here at least, perhaps. He might have died later on.’ She shrugged her shoulders.
    Their conversation was disturbed by the noise of two cars crunching up the driveway. McEvoy eased himself up and headed for the front door.
    Detective Sergeant John Joyce and Detective Garda Kelly Stringer clamoured out of their respective cars and approached McEvoy. Round faced and boyish looking, Joyce was dressed in a scruffy grey suit, his thin hair shaved close to his head. He’d attained a doctorate in Sociology from Trinity College Dublin before changing career track and joining the gardai. He was still viewed with suspicion by a few colleagues, some of whom felt threatened by his obvious intellect, some of whom suspected they were part of an ongoing ethnographic study. Just over six feet tall, Stringer was conservatively dressed in a two-piece, dark blue trouser suit over a plain white blouse buttoned to her neck that made her look ten years older than her twenty-nine years. Her dark-brown hair was twisted round and pinned up.
    ‘You took your time,’ McEvoy stated flatly.
    ‘We had a few problems finding this place,’ Joyce explained. ‘Are we the first to arrive?’
    ‘You’ll be the only ones to arrive; we’re fully stretched. I’ve recruited a local sergeant, Tom McManus, to help with the questionnaires and searches. John, I want you to work closely with me, okay. You’re the dogsbody. If I get called away on other cases, you’ll be in charge. That alright?’
    ‘No bother.’
    ‘Kelly, you’re to set up the incident room.’
    ‘I’m to what?’ she said, surprised, aware that it was a job usually reserved for somebody more senior.
    ‘I said, set up the incident room. I hope I’m not going to have to repeat everything. Hannah Fallon and George Carter are inside,’ he continued without waiting for a reply. ‘We need to organise a search of the farm, start the interviews, and talk to the locals. Things are moving too slowly.’
    * * *
     
    Roza Ptaszek was a short, thin woman in her late twenties, with shoulder-length black hair tied back in a short ponytail. Her face was pale, her blue eyes rimmed red. Her boyfriend’s apartment, which he shared with two others, was a mess; a scattering of clothes, food wrappers and old newspapers strewn everywhere. She was sitting on the edge of a red sofa, her tall, stocky boyfriend standing behind her looking concerned.
    ‘Will I be able to collect my things soon?’ she asked with a light, East European accent.
    ‘Not for a couple of days,’ McEvoy replied neutrally. ‘We need to look for clues as to what happened to Dr Koch.’
    ‘It was terrible,’ she repeated for the fifth time. ‘Terrible.’ Her boyfriend squeezed her shoulder, offering sympathy.
    ‘What time did you leave the farm last night?’
    ‘About ten o’clock . We watched television and then we came into town and meet with some friends,’ she said in slightly broken English.
    ‘And there were no visitors?’
    ‘I left Dr Koch by himself. I always go out on Saturday night.’
    ‘And when did you go back?’
    ‘This morning. I got back to the house at about eight o’clock to make the breakfast. Dr Koch did not came downstairs so I went up to see why. He was always at his desk by eight o’clock . I know straight away he was dead. Somebody killed him, so I called the police.’
    ‘What made you think he’d been attacked?’
    ‘He’d been hit on