Mal shrugged impatiently. “What’s your interest?”

“Well, she’s gone, for a start. Her corpse was-”

“I don’t know anything about that. Look, Quirke, I have a busy afternoon-do you mind?”

He made to turn away but Quirke put a hand on his arm. “The department is my responsibility, Mal. Stay out of it, all right?”

He released Mal’s arm and Mal turned, expressionless, and strode away. Quirke watched him quickening his step, drawing the students into his wake like goslings. Then Quirke turned too and walked down the absurdly grand staircase to the basement and went to his office, where he was aware of Sinclair’s speculative eye upon him, and sat at his desk and opened Christine Falls’s file again. As he did so the telephone, squatting toadlike by his elbow, rang, startling him with its imperious belling, as it never failed to do. When he heard the voice that was on the line his expression softened. He listened for a moment, then said, “Half five?” and put down the receiver.

THE GREENISH AIR OF EVENING WAS SOFTLY WARM. HE STOOD ON THE broad pavement under the trees, smoking the last of a cigarette and looking across the road at the girl on the steps of the Shelbourne Hotel. She wore a white summer dress with red polka dots and a jaunty little white hat with a feather. Her face was turned to the right as she gazed off towards the corner of Kildare Street. A stray breeze swayed the hem of her dress. He liked the way she stood, alert and self-possessed, head and shoulders back, her feet in their slim shoes set neatly side by side, her hands at her waist holding her handbag and her gloves. She reminded him so much of Delia. An olive-green dray went past, drawn by a chocolate-colored Clydes-dale. Quirke lifted his head and breathed in the late-summer smells: dust, horse, foliage, diesel fumes, perhaps even, fancifully, a hint of the girl’s perfume.

He crossed the street, dodging a green double-decker bus that parped its horn at him.