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Superintendent Molloy shook his head. ‘There you are, Dermot! What I have always been saying? Give a woman a perfectly straightforward case to solve and before you know it she has it all tangled up like her knitting!’

Katie said, ‘Well, Bryan, we can discuss this later if you like. I can show you all the pathology reports we have so far, as well as all the witness statements and forensic evidence from the technical lads.’

‘Perhaps we could talk about it over dinner tonight,’ said Superintendent Molloy.

‘Excuse me?’

‘I said, perhaps we could talk about it over dinner. I’m staying at Jury’s at the moment until they can fix me up with somewhere more permanent. It would give us a chance to get to know each other better, and for you to brief me on everything that you have in hand.’

‘I’m sorry, Bryan, I have a prior engagement this evening.’

‘Oh!’ said Superintendent Molloy, turning around on his heel as if he were appealing to a sceptical jury. ‘And is this prior engagement more pressing than you and me discussing how we’re going to tackle two high-profile homicides, with the perpetrator still at large? Not to mention a host of other serious criminal activities in this not-so-fair city?’

‘I’ve said I’m sorry, Bryan, but it’s an engagement I really can’t break. I’m supposed to have a day off tomorrow but, if you like, I’ll come in around eleven and do whatever I can to get you up to speed.’

Superintendent Molloy blew out his cheeks. ‘That’s the first time in my life a woman has ever turned me down. I’m shaken! Shaken to the core!’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning,’ said Katie.

She picked up her briefcase and her sandwich and Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll opened the door for her.

Outside in the corridor, Katie said, ‘How are you feeling, Dermot? You’re looking a little washed out, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll gave her a weary smile. ‘I’m bearing up, Katie. I’ve packed my pyjamas ready for hospital, tried to give Bryan all the background he needs, but I know that you’ll give him your support.’

‘Of course I will, Dermot. It’s my job.’

Chief Inspector O’Driscoll reached behind him and closed the door so that Superintendent Molloy wouldn’t be able to hear him.

‘I know he won’t be that easy for you to get along with. There are still too many in the force like him. But one of the reasons he got this job so promptly was because he has influential friends at Phoenix Park. Let me tell you this, Katie: if you really want to get ahead, try to stay on his good side. He could help you go a long way. If Noirin O’Sullivan could make it to Deputy Commissioner in Charge of Operations, so could you. You might even make Commissioner.’

‘I can manage Bryan Molloy,’ said Katie. ‘I was married to Paul, remember, and he thought that women were only good for two things, one of which was washing the dishes. It’s you I’m worried about, Dermot. Promise me that you’ll keep in touch and let me know how things are going, I’ll come and visit you in the Bon Secours and bring you some of Ailish’s barmbrack.’

Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll held out his arms for her and gave her a hug and kissed her. When he stood back, he had tears in his eyes.

‘Do you know something, Katie,’ he said, ‘in all my thirty-five years in the Garda, this is the first time I’ve ever been scared.’

She finished her coffee and was debating with herself whether she needed another cup when Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán knocked at her office door. She was wearing a faded denim jacket and a denim skirt, but her blonde bob was immaculate and shining.

‘Ah, Kyna,’ said Katie. ‘I got your message about the tattoo parlour. I’ve just had to organize all these technical reports for Superintendent Molloy to go through. Have you met him yet?’

‘Not yet. He’ll be after introducing himself to everybody this afternoon. There’s a special meeting in the canteen at three o’clock. But – yes – I know of him by reputation.’

‘And?’

‘And I know of him by reputation, that’s all. He’s an outstanding officer, that’s what they say. He’s one of the reasons they don’t call Limerick “Stab City” any more.’

Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán looked as if she were about to say something else, but instead she stayed silent. Katie looked up at her and said, ‘Is that it?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘You know that if you work with me you can speak your mind. I don’t give anybody down the banks for having an opinion.’

‘No, ma’am.’

Katie was tempted to tell Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán exactly what
she
thought about Superintendent Molloy, but she had learned a long time ago not to give hostages to fortune, especially when it came to promotional politics. It was highly likely that Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll would never return to duty and that Superintendent Molloy would take over permanently, and also that Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán would be seeking to make her way higher up the ladder. Better to say nothing at all.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘What’s all this about Mawakiya’s tattoo?’

‘Well, it’s very sensitive. I’d nearly given up, to tell you the truth. Then I visited this tattoo studio on French Church Street and one of the artists told me that he’d heard of a Thai tattooist who was operating out of a massage parlour on Grafton Street. He said he’d seen some of his work and it was very similar to Mawakiya’s. A dragon or a snake starting at the genitals and winding its way around the body.’

She took her notebook out her jacket pocket and flipped it open. ‘The massage parlour is called Golden Fingers and it’s one of those advertised on Michael Gerrety’s website. They have three Thai girls working there. They give legitimate massages, but for sixty euros extra they’ll go the whole way.

‘There’s a back room there where this Thai tattooist does tattoos and piercings. He didn’t want to speak to me at first, but then I told him I came from the Immigration Bureau and after that I couldn’t shut him up. He said his name is Nok. I showed him the photographs of Mawakiya’s tattoo and he said that he had done it, about eighteen months ago. He had known him only by the name of Kola.’

‘That fits. Young Lolade heard him called Kola. Lolade, by the way – that’s Isabelle’s real name.’

‘Nok said that Kola had been brought to the massage parlour by three of his friends. They were all regulars – like they would come in two or three times every month, at least, and sometimes they would bring more of their friends in with them. A couple of them had tattoos, but mostly they came for the massage. The
full
massage.’

‘Did this Nok know who Kola’s friends were?’

‘The three that brought him in, oh yes. He knew them well. One of them was called Mister Dessie and he represented the owners of the massage parlour. He came in every day to collect the takings. The other two were called Ronan and Billy. Nok knew that because they both came to him for tattoos while their friends were having a massage. In fact, they both had the same tattoo, right between the shoulder blades. Guess what it was?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Katie. ‘A dragon? A picture of Bono?’

Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán passed over her open notebook. ‘There – Nok drew it for me.’

Katie picked it up. The tattoo design was a Celtic cross with a circle in the middle, and two curly intertwined letters in the centre, G and S. Around the outside of the cross were the words
Gharda Síotchána na h-Éireann
.

‘A Garda badge,’ said Katie. She was shocked. ‘Don’t tell me they were both gardaí?’

Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán took her notebook back. ‘That’s how Mawakiya appeared to stay unnoticed for so long. He wasn’t unnoticed at all. He was simply being shielded by Ronan and Billy. Nok told me that he knew for sure they were guards because he had seen both of them in the street, in uniform.’

Katie frowned. ‘If Ronan and Billy were friends with Dessie O’Leary, that means they must have known that Mawakiya was being used by Michael Gerrety to farm out any girls who were under the age of consent. Ten to one Gerrety was paying them to keep quiet about it – if not directly, then indirectly. Settling their mortgages for them, something like that. Paying for their kids to go to school.’

‘I won’t have any trouble identifying them, Ronan and Billy,’ said Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán. ‘I just thought you ought to know about them first.’

‘Well, good thinking,’ said Katie. ‘We don’t want Michael Gerrety to find out yet that we’ve established a connection between him and Mawakiya, or Kola, or whatever he called himself. It could well put Ronan and Billy at risk, and whatever they’ve done, I don’t want them ending up in the river.’

‘One more thing,’ said Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán. ‘I checked on the Dumitrescu house again this morning. The whole lot of them have definitely fled the nest. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve already left the country.’

Katie said, ‘That definitely increases my suspicion that our dead Romanian is Mânios Dumitrescu. And, of course, Dumitrescu
did business with Michael Gerrety, too – mostly doing the direct opposite to Mawakiya and taking the older brassers off his hands.’

‘That still doesn’t bring us too much closer to who killed them, does it?’

‘It could do.’ Katie told Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán what Lolade had said about juju, and why Mawakiya’s hands might have been cut off and his face obliterated.

Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán looked thoughtful and then she said, ‘Our perpetrator did the same to the white victim, didn’t she? That could be further confirmation that she’s Nigerian and believes in juju.’

‘How do you work that out?’

‘It’s only logic. If she had punished Mawakiya like that only because
he
believed in it, then she would have punished the white victim in a way that was appropriate to
his
beliefs. Since it’s likely that he was Romanian, he was probably Eastern Orthodox, and they believe that sin is its own punishment, so all she had to do was kill him and he would have gone to hell anyway. He wouldn’t have needed to have his hands cut off and his face shot away.’

‘That’s very erudite of you,’ said Katie.

‘It’s just that I always try to put myself inside the mind of the perpetrator. If I can understand how they think, it usually helps me to work out who they are.’

Katie stood up, shuffling together the papers that she had been preparing for Superintendent Molloy. ‘If you can discreetly find out for me the identities of Ronan and Billy, we’ll have a further meeting to discuss what our plan of action is going to be. Your tattooist mentioned that they brought in other friends, so it’s conceivable that there may be other officers involved. Until we know the extent of this, we need to handle it like an unexploded bomb, believe me.’

As Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán turned to go, Katie’s mobile phone played
And it’s no, nay, never –
no, nay never no more
—

‘Patrick?’

‘Yes, ma’am. They’ve found another one. African male with his hands missing and his head shot to buggery.’

‘Mary, Mother of God. Where?’

‘He’s in a furniture workshop in Mutton Lane, in between the Mutton Lane Inn and the English Market.’

‘When was this?’

‘Only about twenty minutes ago. The owner came back from his holliers a couple of days early and found him there, like. Bring your strongest scent. The stink’s enough to make a maggot gag.’

‘Give me ten minutes,’ said Katie. Then, to Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán, ‘I hope you don’t have any plans for the rest of the day. We’ve got ourselves another one.’

It had stopped raining and the streets were glistening in the sunshine. Three patrol cars and an ambulance and a van from the Technical Bureau were already parked at angles along the south side of Patrick Street. Gardaí had closed the street to westbound traffic and cordoned off the pavement between Princes Street and Market Lane. There were crowds at either end, silently waiting like guests at a funeral for the deceased to be carried out.

As Katie and Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán drew up outside, Detective O’Donovan came across and opened Katie’s door for her. He looked sweaty and tired and his eyes were watering. He had a surgical mask around his neck and he smelled of Vicks VapoRub.

‘Sorry to mess up your day, ma’am.’

Don’t worry about messing up my day
,
thought Katie,
it’s already been thoroughly ruined by the appearance of Bryan Molloy
. However, she smiled tightly as she climbed out of her car and said nothing.

Detective O’Donovan led them down Mutton Lane. The Mutton Lane Inn was closed, although the candles were still burning inside and the bar staff were peering out of the windows. At the far end of the lane, the entrance to the English Market had been closed and screened off, too. Four or five uniformed gardaí were standing outside the open door to the furniture workshop, as well as one of the crime scene technicians in his pale green Tyvek suit, having a smoke. Beside them stood a worried-looking middle-aged man in a faded pink polo shirt. He had a thinning comb-over and spectacles stuck together in the middle with a grubby adhesive plaster. His nose was flaking with sunburn.

‘This is the owner of the workshop, Gerry O’Farrell,’ said Detective O’Donovan. ‘Mr O’Farrell, this is Detective Superintendent Maguire.’

‘I don’t actually own the premises, only rent it, like,’ said Gerry O’Farrell. ‘This is such a terrible shock. I can’t understand why anybody would want to use my workshop to do such a thing.’

‘You didn’t know the deceased?’

‘Of course not! I never saw him before in my life! The size of him, la! I don’t know
nobody
as fat as that!’

‘How do you think the perpetrator gained access?’ asked Katie.

‘There was no sign of forced entry,’ said Detective O’Donovan. ‘Mr O’Farrell thinks the perpetrator must have somehow managed to copy his keys.’

‘And how do you think they did that?’

‘I hang my jacket up by the door, with the keys in the pocket, and on a warm day I sometimes leave the door open. That’s all I can think of.’

‘I’d better take a look at the deceased,’ said Katie. She took a blue cotton scarf out of her bag, sprayed it with perfume, and tied it around her neck. Then she snapped on a pair of yellow surgical gloves.