They made love silently and slowly. When they had finished Maria fell into a deep and contented sleep. Swallow watched the waxing half-moon moving across the sky behind the squat spire of St Catherine’s. He had not felt so safe and contented since childhood days in Newcroft. The world they inhabited, with all its challenges and ugliness, was a good one. He and Maria were right for each other. And he knew that the arrival of new life, life of their making, would open horizons of understanding and happiness such as he had not known before.

Tuesday December 18th, 1888

Chapter 24

Kelly and his men came back, as Mallon said they would, in a more civil mode, but no less determined, after an interval of almost five weeks. As the days passed, Swallow had started to wonder if perhaps Mallon was wrong. Maybe Kelly’s masters had overruled him. Or perhaps he had simply given up. But Mallon was not wrong. The search time, Mallon told him the previous evening, had been fixed for ten o’clock. When they arrived, precisely on the hour, there were no threats, no guns; just a look of cold insinuation on Kelly’s face as he led his posse into Exchange Court.

There were six of them this time. Swallow recognised two from the RIC crime office in the Lower Yard. The others were strangers. Military, he guessed, or former military. They carried themselves with the air of rank. Stern, tough-looking characters. Officers, he knew. Men accustomed to taking orders and, in turn, being obeyed. But they did not have the ceaselessly searching eyes that characterise the experienced police detective.

Mallon was good on his promise that he would be on hand to ensure that the search was conducted with propriety. This was going to be done by the book. Comparisons in rank between police and military were an imprecise science, but the chief superintendent of G-Division certainly outranked an army major. So protocol required that the process should start by Kelly presenting himself at Mallon’s office. Mallon reciprocated the gesture of respect by arranging for his visitor to be offered tea.

Swallow sat on a window ledge in the corridor until they emerged perhaps ten minutes later.

‘The major and his men are ready to start now, Detective Inspector,’ Mallon said curtly. ‘Please start with the public office. I’ve assured Major Kelly that we will extend every co-operation. Our men will work side by side with his throughout the search.’

‘We will operate in teams of two,’ Kelly announced. ‘I want one team to start where the logs are normally filed and then to check other regular storage places. I want another team to start in the detective inspector’s and the crime sergeants’ offices. The third team will search the sleeping and recreation quarters.’