Minogue studied Donavan as the pathologist took off his jacket. A rugby player of old, exactly the kind of man who could fall down the stairs sober and not hurt himself, Minogue thought.

"Matt Minogue, Doctor. And my colleague, Detective Connors."

"And how is the bold Inspector Kilmartin back at the ranch, men?"

"Oh, pulling the divil by the tail, Doctor."

Donavan sat heavily into his seat. He pulled a file from under a brimming ashtray.

"Do ye want the pictures, lads?"

"No thanks, Doctor. We'll defer to your description."

"The mob in Pearse Street handed this over to you as a matter of course? The deceased was a young man in good health. I suspect that he had been killed on Thursday night at about 9 P.M. Well he was dead between eight and twelve hours. There. Isn't pathology wonderful?"

"To be sure, Doctor," said Minogue.

"Well. To cut a long story short. There's no doubt this young man was killed by whoever set about it. There was no trick acting and playing kiss-my-arse-and-kiss-my-elbow with this. This wasn't a brawl that got out of hand. I found a moderately severe contusion on the left side of the head. My feeling is that this was a blow rendered by some object such as an iron bar, perhaps a good quality bicycle pump or the like of that. It would have been enough to put him out. It certainly wouldn't have killed him at all, at all. What did in this unfortunate lad was the stone or whatever was used on his head. It appears to have been applied several times. The person wielding it would of necessity have to have given good swings at it… maybe from the height of a man's shoulders. Now, I'm speculating here. However, he was given a coup de grace, if you like, with a lot of force applied toward the end of the episode."