“Well, Shea,” he said. “Can I leave you in the lurch with Jelly Nolan? It’s well cooked already.”

Hoey blinked and cleared his throat.

“No bother,” he said.

The tight smile looked bleak to Minogue. Murtagh, another of the detectives permanently attached to the Murder Squad, walked through the office with file folders under his arm. He whistled softly around the pencil protruding from his mouth. Minogue found himself smiling at the sight, then he remembered Hoey. How could policemen be so different? Hoey, the dark horse, moody and reserved; Murtagh, surely beloved and spoiled as a child, a cocky athlete who gleefully chased nurses in night-clubs.

Minogue closed the folder on Tommy-John Casey and sat back. A countryman himself, Minogue understood rows about land. Dublin people wouldn’t, he believed. The primal hunger for land bred during starving centuries wasn’t imprinted on them. Land hunger, land disputes, wills’ probate fought over, aging bachelor farmers, family farms. But Jelly Nolan and his likes still remained ciphers to the Inspector. He wanted to know as little as possible about Nolan’s life. Self-protective, he knew, and he felt himself recoiling from the thought of just how cramped and ugly Nolan’s life must have been. There had to be a better line of work than sitting across a table from the Jelly Nolans of this world.

His thoughts wandered to Kilmartin’s probes about the Commissioner. Damn him for sending him like a spy to Tynan. What the hell use was it trying to explain to Kilmartin that he had no influence with Tynan? Tynan: a jigsaw with no guarantee you’d find all the bits, ever. Maybe Tynan was trying to get Kilmartin and Minogue amp; Co. ready for the end of an era. The soft glove of a blunt hand in elegy, a broad hint that Kilmartin and Minogue would do well to retire before the Squad was dispersed. His eyes focussed again on the papers. He considered phoning a travel agent and trying to book some airline seats but realised he didn’t know how many days they’d be staying in Clare. Damn again. He shoved the Casey file in the Current Trial cabinet and saw that the rain had stopped.