The Inspector suggested they should take a stroll by the river, seeing the day was so fine. The stalled traffic made Westmoreland Street look like a pen crowded with jostling sleek dark animals all bellowing and braying and sending up ill-smelling clouds of smoke and dust. It was half past ten by the Ballast Office clock, and Quirke said he should really be getting to work, but the policeman waved a dismissive hand and said surely the dead could wait, and chuckled. On Aston Quay a red-haired young tinker galloped past bareback on a piebald horse, disdainful of the clamoring cars and buses that had to scramble to get out of his way. A street photographer in a mackintosh and a leather trilby was snapping shots among the passing crowd. Seagulls swooped, shrieking.

“Isn’t that river a living disgrace,” Hackett said. “The stink of it would poison a pup.”

They crossed over and walked along by the low embankment wall. “You saw the papers?” Quirke said.

“I did-I saw the Clarion, anyway. Weren’t they awful cautious?”

“Did they speak to you?”

“They did. They sent along a young fellow by the name of Minor, who I think you know.”

“Jimmy Minor? Is he with the Clarion now?” Minor, a sometime friend of his daughter’s, used to be on the Evening Mail. Mention of him caused Quirke a vague twinge of unease; he did not like Minor, and worried at his daughter’s friendship with him. He had not noticed Minor’s byline on the Clarion report. “Pushy as ever, I suppose?”

“Oh, aye, a bit of a terrier, all right.”

“How much did he know?”

Hackett squinted at the sky. “Not much, only what he put in the paper.”

“A ‘fatal collapse’?” Quirke said with sarcasm.