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sat a big silent man with a blue-shaved head and protruding ears and python tattoos crawling out of the neck of his sweatshirt. Eamonn himself was lean and dapper, with russet brushed-back hair that was beginning to turn white in the front and which had earned him his nickname. He wore a beautifully-tailored two-piece suit in mottled gray tweed, a black waistcoat and very shiny black Oxfords.
    Katie sat down opposite him, deliberately obscuring his view of the front door.
    “Will I buy you a drink?” he asked her. They didn’t need to exchange any pleasantries. His eyes were like two gray stones lying on a beach in winter.
    “A glass of water will do.”
    “Jerry,” said Eamonn, and the big silent man stood up and went to the bar.
    “You’ve been taking it very easy lately,” said Katie. “Five days’ fishing in Sligo… two weeks golf in South Carolina.”
    “It’s good to know that I’m missed.”
    “I miss you like a dose of hepatitis A.”
    “You’re the light of my life, detective superintendent. But a little more live-and-let-live would go a long way.”
    “I don’t think that drugs have anything much to do with letting people live, do you?”
    Eamonn gave a one-shouldered shrug. “What I always say is, you shouldn’t let nefarious activities fall into the wrong hands; you have to keep crime clean.”
    “Is that what happened up at Meagher’s Farm? Somebody was keeping crime clean?”
    “I don’t know what happened up at Meagher’s Farm, I’m sorry to say. Things have been very peaceful here in Cork in the past few months, that’s why I went off on two weeks’ holliers. The only thing I can tell you for sure is that it wasn’t anything to do with me; or with anybody else that I know of.”
    Eamonn was the only man she knew who actually pronounced his semi-colons, sticking out the tip of his tongue and making a soft little clicking sound. She had always found his fastidiousness to be the most alarming thing about him. He ran one of the most profitable drug rackets in the city, and he had been personally responsible for the brutal murders of at least five people. Yet all his clothes were handmade in Dublin and he was always quoting from Yeats and Moore.
    There weren’t many of Cork’s criminals who actually gave her that bristling-down-the-back-of-the-neck feeling, but “Foxy” Collins did.
    “Have you eaten at all?” he asked her. “I know that you detectives are often too busy to eat, and the beef sandwiches here are particularly good. Or the Kinsale fish chowder.”
    “I’ve had lunch already, thank you,” Katie lied. “What I need to know from you is who’s gone missing in the past six months. Eleven people, that’s a lot of bodies. If they’re
your
bodies, I’m sure that you’ll be anxious to have your revenge. If they’re not, then I’m sure you’ll be equally anxious to make sure that one of your competitors gets what’s coming to him.”
    “But what if
I’m
responsible?” asked Eamonn. “I wouldn’t tell you that, now would I?”
    “I don’t think you
are
responsible. You’re more flamboyant than that. When you deal with somebody, you like the whole world to know about it. Like that time you set fire to Jacky O’Malley in the middle of Patrick Street.”
    Eamonn came close to smiling. He took a sip of his Power’s whiskey and fixed her over the rim of his glass with those stones for eyes. “You know what it looks like to me, this massacre of yours? It looks like the work of knackers. There’s been some bad blood feuds between some of the families, and if I were you I’d be looking to talk to some of the Traveling folk.
    “Tómas Ó Conaill?”
    “That wouldn’t surprise me. He was always a vicious bastard, and his head was always full of fairy nonsense.”
    There was a long silence between them. In the front of the pub, a businessman was shouting on his mobile phone. “I will, yeah. I did, yeah. I am, yeah.” Eventually Eamonn leaned forward and