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may have to go to Limerick tonight, so don’t wait up for him.”
    “All right,” Katie nodded, thinking to herself,
what the hell is Paul up to now?

6
     
     
    She was talking to one of the airport security police when Dr Owen Reidy came through the automatic sliding doors, impatiently pushing two young children aside. He was wearing a billowing tan trenchcoat that was belted too tight in the middle and a wide-brimmed trilby hat.
    “They kept us waiting on the runway at Dublin for over twenty minutes,” he grumbled, pushing his medical bag and his bulging overnight case at the young garda. “What do they think, we have time to waste waiting for these package holidaymakers to land from Florida? They should make them circle until they run out of fuel. And crash. And burn.”
    Dr Reidy had a big, mottled face and sumptuous ginger eyebrows, and he always sported a huge spotted bow-tie. He had been closely involved with Charlie Haughey, when he was Taoiseach, and the
Irish Examiner
had claimed that he was “the fifth man” in a middle-aged orgy at the Grafton Hotel in Dublin, which Dr Reidy had always firmly denied. Deny it or not, he was a grand stegosaurus from the mid-1980s, when the Irish economy had begun to boom, and certain people had made a great deal of money, thanks to nods and winks and tax-breaks and special favors, and he still expected to be treated like one of the great and the good.
    “Glad to see you’re well, Dr Reidy,” said Katie, as they walked out into the sunshine,
    “
Pphh
! I was hoping for two days of golf in Killarney. Not picking over skeletons in Cork.”
    “So far, we’ve exhumed eleven skulls; which presupposes eleven different individuals, and a corresponding collection of assorted bones.”
    “Well, your people can count then, can they? That’s one mercy.”
    “We don’t have any suspects yet. It depends very largely on the way they died, and when.”
    “So – as usual – you’ll be depending on me to crack your case for you.”
    “You’re a great pathologist, Dr Reidy.”
    “And you, detective superintendent, should be home minding your kids.”
    Katie looked out of the car window as they were driven down the long hill toward Kinsale Roundabout, and Cork. She could have said all kinds of things in answer to that. She could have been dismissive, or bitter, or told him how she had gone to feed Seamus on that chilly January morning and found him dead, not breathing.
    Instead, she said, “We’ve booked you your usual room, up at the Arbutus Lodge. I’ll have to warn you, though… it’s changed hands since you were here last, and the food’s not what it used to be.”
    “I’ll take my chances with that, inspector.”
    They drove into the city, and dropped Katie off in Anglesea Street. Dr Reidy said, “I’ll be letting you know my findings as soon as I can. I’m aiming to get at least two days’ golf in, after all.”
    Katie said nothing, but closed the car door and watched him being driven off, his car bouncing and swaying over the potholes. She crossed the road and walked back into the Garda headquarters, her head bowed, and when Garda Maureen Dennehy said, “Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll has been looking for you, ma’am,” she didn’t look up, not once.

     
    Eamonn “Foxy” Collins was already waiting for her when she walked into Dan Lowery’s pub in MacCurtain Street. It was a small pub, its walls crowded with bottles and mirrors advertising Murphy’s stout and souvenirs and vases of dried flowers. Eamonn Collins liked it partly because of its theatrical connections (it was right next door to the Everyman Palace theater) but mainly because of its gloomy stained-glass window, which had originally come from a church in Killarney, and which made it impossible for anybody to see into the pub from the pavement outside.
    He was sitting in the small back room where he could watch both the front door and the stairs which led up to the toilets. Opposite him