The Inspector watched the Sub Aqua van inch down off the footpath above the bank. The driver raised a hand from the window as he drove off.

“We should have a preliminary with a cause of death by dinnertime. A bag or something might turn up in the daylight tomorrow. Might get a call come in from someone worried about her. We really need a name to get going in earnest here.”

It took Minogue a few moments to realize that there was no point looking for his jacket on the seat: he hadn’t brought one. Why bother with a jacket if it was going to be another day like yesterday? He remembered the feeling of being incomplete and the sense of freedom when he had backed out of the driveway. It was a quarter to nine. The heat wave hadn’t abated. He was dopey. That yellow, metallic tint in the sky he’d noted on his drive through Ranelagh was something he associated with the end of a hot summer’s day here in Dublin, not the morning. As he penetrated through to the city centre, it seemed to him that the streets and even the buildings had changed colours in a subtle way his eye registered but his brain couldn’t confirm. A cement lorry trapped him for several minutes by a building site. Dust in the air seemed to vibrate with the thumping of pneumatic drills. Through an opening in the hoardings he spied foundations of yet another office building. His back was wet when he stepped out of the Citroen in the carpark.

“Ah. Eilis. La brea brothollach.”

She spared him a smile for his recollection of the cliches beaten into generations of students by schoolteachers exacting essays in Irish.

“…ag scoilteagh no gcloc le teas,” she sighed. She retrieved her cigarette from the ashtray and reached for a file next to a snow-dome souvenir of Lourdes on the top shelf behind her.