Quirke sipped his by now tepid tea, the tannin acrid against his scalded tongue. He did not know what he should say. He rarely came in direct contact with the relatives of the dead, but occasionally they sought him out, as Billy had, to request a favor. Some only wanted him to save them a keepsake, a wedding ring or a lock of hair; there was a Republican widow once who had asked him to retrieve a fragment of a civil war bullet that her late husband had carried next to his heart for thirty years. Others had more serious and far shadier requests-that the bruises on a dead infant's body be plausibly accounted for, that the sudden demise of an aged, sick parent be explained away, or just that a suicide might be covered up. But no one had ever asked what Billy was asking.

"All right, Billy," he said. "I'll see what I can do."

Now Billy's hand did touch his, the barest touch, with the tips of fingers through which a strong, fizzing current seemed to race. "You won't let me down, Quirke," he said, a statement rather than an entreaty, his voice quavering. "For old times' sake. For"-he made a low sound that was half sob, half laugh-"for Deirdre's sake."

Quirke stood up. He fished a half-crown from his pocket and laid it on the table beside his saucer. Billy was looking about again, distractedly, as a man would while patting his pockets in search of something he had misplaced. He had taken out a Zippo lighter and was distractedly flicking the lid open and shut. On the bald spot and through the strands of his scant pale hair could be seen glistening beads of sweat. "That's not her name, by the way," he said. Quirke did not understand. "I mean, it is her name, only she called herself something else. Laura-Laura Swan. It was sort of her professional name. She ran a beauty parlor, the Silver Swan. That's where she got the name-Laura Swan."