"I'm reading about you all the time in the papers," he said. "About cases you're involved in." Quirke shifted uneasily on his chair. "That thing with the girl that died and the woman that was murdered-what were their names?"

"Which ones?" Quirke asked, expressionless.

"The woman in Stoney Batter. Last year, or the year before, was it? Dolly somebody." He frowned, trying to remember. "What happened to that story? It was all over the papers and then it was gone, not another word."

"The papers don't take long to lose interest."

A thought struck Billy. "Jesus," he said softly, staring away, "I suppose they'll put a story in about Deirdre, too."

"I could have a word with the coroner," Quirke said, making it sound doubtful.

But it was not stories in the newspapers that was on Billy's mind. He leaned forward again, suddenly intent, and reached out a hand urgently as if he might grasp Quirke by the wrist or the lapel. "I don't want her cut up," he said in a hoarse undertone.

"Cut up?"

"An autopsy, a postmortem, whatever you call it-I don't want that done."

Quirke waited a moment and then said: "It's a formality, Billy. The law requires it."

Billy was shaking his head with his eyes shut and his mouth set in a pained grimace. "I don't want it done. I don't want her sliced up like some sort of a, like a-like some sort of carcass." He put a hand over his eyes. The cigarette, forgotten, was burning itself out in the fingers of his other hand. "I can't bear to think of it. Seeing her this morning was bad enough"-he took his hand away and gazed before him in what seemed a stupor of amazement-"but the thought of her on a table, under the lights, with the knife… If you'd known her, the way she was before, how-how alive she was." He cast about again as if in search of something on which to concentrate, a bullet of commonplace reality on which he might bite. "I can't bear it, Quirke," he said hoarsely, his voice hardly more than a whisper. "I swear to God, I can't bear it."