"You're supposed to be resting yourself, Jimmy."

"Hoey and Keating doing the legwork?"

"They're very good. You have them trained to a tee, jimmy."

"Well?" Kilmartin asked indignantly. "Aren't you going to tell me what's going on?"

Minogue thought that Kilmartin would not manage his retirement very well at all if this was what six weeks' sick-leave was doing to him.

"Sorry. Yes. A man by the name of Combs. His housekeeper said he's English. Mr Arthur Combs, seventy-three years of age."

"How was he killed?"

"Strangled, Jimmy. Hoey says he'd put money on it being a bit of nylon cord the way his neck was marked. There was no row or anything. The body was within arm's reach of the door he came in. It looks like he came home from the pub, in the door and… that was it."

"Stuff was robbed. Money, antiques," Kilmartin said tersely.

"The place was ransacked all right. I don't know what was taken yet," said Minogue.

"A crowd of young lads, I bet," Kilmartin tried again. "Looking for easy money. Give the oul lad a few digs so he'd get the money out of the mattress kind of effort. Was he beat up?"

Minogue shrugged.

"Doesn't look like it. No. We haven't placed him for the few days before the murder. Saturday night he was killed, it looks. The housekeeper only does the dinners for him on the weekdays, so…"

Minogue tried to let this part of the conversation die.

Kilmartin squirmed slightly under the sheets. He began to stroke his lower lip.

"I hope to God we have sheets on a few horrors who specialise in this class of crime. If you could call killing an old man and robbing his house by the title of 'crime' even."

"I hope so meself," added Minogue somberly and yawned.

"Um. Bastards. Cowards. Sounds like young lads to me still though," Kilmartin murmured. "Drink, drugs. They mightn't have records, these yahoos."