“We can come back-”

“Stay put now,” Fine said, looking beyond them to the window. Minogue feared the worst but Fine did not pounce.

“I’ll look into the matter of how my wife got to hear of this from the neighbour and not from the Gardai some other time. I expect there’s some reason, some excuse,” Fine said. “I had a call from the Garda Commissioner five minutes before you came. I’ll take the matter up with him. It’s nothing for you, for you personally, to feel awkward about.”

“Your Worship, I might as well-”

“It’ll be better if you call me Mr. Fine.”

“Mr. Fine,” Minogue began again,“I’ll give you as much as I know, as much as we know, if you want to hear it.”

“I do, in as much as I need to hear it sooner or later,” Fine replied.

“Your son was shot three times. Where he was shot suggests some kind of a punishment killing, an execution. There are no signs that he was otherwise abused before he died. It’s very likely that he died instantly. From what our forensic technicians tell us, and this is in the absence of the State Pathologist’s work yet to be done, Paul was shot at very close range.”

“He was shot in the head,” Fine said, as though addressing nobody. Minogue’s stomach coiled with the anguish. He heard Hoey draw a breath and hold it as he perched on the edge of the chair.

“Yes, he was,” Minogue replied hoarsely.

Fine blinked several times. His eyes looked out on nothing local to the room or the men in it. Minogue believed that he saw Fine grow smaller, become a different man in that minute’s silence. Hoey’s jittery animal eyes darted to the ceiling when the cries sounded upstairs again. Footsteps skipped quickly down a staircase. A bearded man in his middle years opened the door, glanced at the two policemen and gestured to Fine. Fine left the room. Minogue noted the skullcap, the yarmulka, as the bearded man turned and drew the door closed behind Fine.