Wednesday was a long time coming, but by nine o’ clock that morning, Minogue was backing out of the garage in his new Peugeot, listening for squeaks from the chassis as it rolled down to the gate. He was trying not to be impatient, but he was losing. The collar on his new shirt chafed. He just couldn’t find a decent driving position in his new car, and he was bewildered as to how he had missed this on the test drive. And now, Kilmartin, the very one who had guilted him into taking him along to the funeral, was late.

At least he had time for a re-read of the file he had been hurriedly handed yesterday afternoon.

Tadeusz Klos, a twenty-three-year-old Polish national, had arrived in Ireland five days before the assault that ended in his death. Klos had been beaten and stomped into a coma a stone’s throw from the Custom House, in the centre of the city. The considerable amount of blood that he had left on the footpath behind him was quickly determined by the State Pathologist to have been cranial in origin. The report did not mention that it would have been thickly mixed with that night’s rain into something that Minogue knew would be as greasy as it would be acidic from the roadway to where it had flowed. Klos was resuscitated twice in the ambulance. He died about a mile short of the hospital entrance.

The briefing file contained a copy of a passport photo and four photos taken in the hospital. Three of the four haunted Minogue much of the evening and early morning. It took a lot to crush a man’s skull with kicks.

The matter was being handled by a crew from Fitzgibbon Street Garda station, and they were going full tilt at it. Already there were copies of emails in Polish, complete with literal, often clumsy, translations. The inventory of effects from Klos’ room at the hostel offered little. His wallet was missing, but no one had tried to use his bankcard since the assault.