As with the newer working-class areas such as Inchicore and Crumlin and, more recently, Tallaght, much damage had been done to Garda work by Gardai themselves. Young Guards, countrymen, fresh from training, had been thrown into areas like Ringsend and had been backed up and directed by Gardai also overwhelmingly from the country. Over the years, those old hands had distilled their native dislike for Dubliners into a cynical and heavy-handed contempt. Time, not training, had settled the matter. Ringsend and Irishtown had become quieter as the first generation born into the flats and terraces had married and moved out. The Garda Press Office still liked to point out, to nuisances who asked why Garda-community relations were so bad, that crime rates in places like Ringsend had plummeted because Garda foot-patrols had solved the problem.

“They used to say that a sign you were a real Dubliner was if you knew where Raytown was,” Minogue observed. Hoey took note of Minogue’s melancholy tone, of Minogue examining the grey sky over the docks. “Yep,” Minogue added. “Raytown’s over there by Ringsend village.”

“Seems like a rough spot still to me,” Hoey said.

“Ah, it is and it isn’t. Is this the house?”

A cramped glass porch had been built around the front door. Two Guards were sitting in the kitchen drinking tea. The middle-aged woman who had admitted Minogue and Hoey fussed with the teapot for the new arrivals.

“Miss Connolly has keys for the flat upstairs, sir,” one Guard said, rising from the table.

Minogue declined tea, and took the keys.

“When was Mr. Fine here last?”

“Let me see. This being a Monday… It would have been Sunday morning. Late morning. I was doing a bit in the garden there, and I saw him come out. About eleven o’clock.”

“In the morning?”

“Oh yes. We all go to bed early here, we do. The whole street does be as quiet as a graveyard at nine o’clock at night.”