“Ah, but did you read the letters to the papers? Jesus wept. People putting pen to paper and saying she should be given the farm and not even charged with manslaughter. Sent back to her children and her house as if nothing had happened,” Kilmartin added in an aggrieved tone. He did not take his gaze away from the window.

Neither man spoke further until the train doors opened in Dalkey. A youth with a hair cut which reminded Minogue of a Mohican, but with wires trailing from both ears, slouched into the train. He sized up the two policemen, sneering a little, Minogue believed, and flopped as if shot into a seat. He twitched occasionally as he lay there and played chords with gusto on an imaginary guitar.

“Frankenstein,” Kilmartin muttered as they stepped on to the platform in Killiney. “Ask him if he can spell haircut.”

Minogue and Kilmartin trudged up the steps to the pedestrian bridge which led from the station to the beach. They paused on the bridge and saw again the orange markers, the dozen or so men standing near the plastic tarp. The orange seemed to be the only colour abroad that day amid the greys of beach and sea and sky. The beach was too soft to allow the Garda cars to drive out on to the sand.

“Never came to a murder site on a train before. Feels sort of classy, I must say,” declared Kilmartin. He looked to his watch. “Twenty minutes only. Gob, that’s fantastic entirely.”

Minogue nodded. The two laboured across a stony part of the beach. Kilmartin started with the two Gardai from Dalkey Station; Minogue went to the body. A light breeze was coming in off the water. Sea-smells, the soft lick of the water on sand. A district detective greeted Minogue by name but it took Minogue two tries to remember his surname.