Kilmartin was standing next to him now. “All right,” he grunted. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s go, Matty.”

Kilmartin scrutinized the pebbles and sand next to his feet before he knelt down heavily and turned back the plastic.

“Are you gentlemen involved below?” the waiter asked them.

Minogue and Kilmartin had walked back up the beach and into the lounge of the one hotel opposite the station. The beach and its events were out of sight to the two policemen seated as they were by a picture window. Kilmartin had eaten most of the chicken sandwiches and downed a pot of tea. The sea air, he claimed as he stifled a belch, wasn’t it great? Minogue was working on a second Bewley’s coffee.

“If we’re not now, we will be,” Kilmartin replied. “Did you make this tea with bags or with real tea leaves?”

“Bags.”

Minogue refused more coffee which the hotel offered black, to be doctored with cold milk by the customer. He far preferred his Bewley’s coffee in situ, in a Bewley’s Oriental Restaurant, complete with scalded milk, a sticky bun to play hell with his dentures and a deafening noise of plates and loud conversation.

“Terrible business. Never happened since I started at this place. That’s fifteen year ago next November,” the waiter observed. He too had been immobilized by the sea, Minogue noticed. The sea looked tranquil from here. The waiter stood over the two policemen, his tray against his chest, gazing vacantly out the window. Minogue wondered if everyone near the sea looked as if they had been summoned by a hypnotist.

“Tell us, do you work here every day?” Kilmartin asked.