“It wouldn’t have done him any harm.”

The rain was steady and gentle, as though it were being sprinkled methodically. Drains gurgled in the middle distance; a gutter drummed tinnily next to the door. Hoey took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He turned from Minogue and a folded airmail envelope fell to the pavement. Minogue picked it up and nudged Hoey’s upper arm. The detective turned back in a cloud of smoke.

“Fell out of your pocket.”

Hoey hesitated before taking it. He coughed once and plucked it from the Inspector’s hand. “The latest epistle. St. Aine to the pagans.” Minogue registered the ironic tone but said nothing. “Says the people are very nice,” Hoey went on. “The Zimbabweans. Did I say that right?”

Minogue wondered if Hoey kept all his girlfriend’s letters in his pockets. “Sounds right. Here, I’ll be in sometime in the morning proper. See if I can sleep this off. Maybe I’ll wake up and find out it was just a bloody dream or something.”

Hoey flicked a glowing butt out onto the street. It hissed and was carried as it landed. The two detectives watched as it was propelled along, spinning, by a lazy runnel of water. Trapped for several seconds on a drain-grate, the butt bobbed before it was snapped abruptly into the darkness below.

Minogue tried to stay clear of the bottle of Jamesons whiskey which he knew was kept beneath the kitchen sink. Kathleen Minogue had had new cabinetry installed that spring but the cupboard under the sink remained her detention area for whiskey. Her husband read its proximity to cleaning agents as her subconscious rebuke.

He was too restless to go to bed. He thought about tea-coffee would wake him up too much-and then he thought about a man being kicked to death in a laneway awash with rain. Kate Marrinan would doubtless try for manslaughter, that was her job: no hard feelings. My client is also a victim, a victim of hopelessness, of alcohol, of inadequate education; he is prey to vicious social evils endemic to working-class areas — drug abuse, loansharking; he is a young man of inadequate personality…