The magnificence of the church contrasted sharply with the living conditions of its parishioners in Blackberry Lane, just 100 paces away from its gates, facing onto the Rathmines Road. As the police side-car came to the scene, Swallow tried to visualise the widow Flannery and her young daughter cleaning and polishing the altar rails and the pews under the magnificent dome. When he and Mick Feore descended from the side-car, the morning light had strengthened to show the open sewer running down the middle of the lane and the rotten green of the cottages’ thatched roofs. Somewhere on the air he got the scent of animal waste. Not the customary smell of horse droppings on city streets. More pungent. Pigs, he guessed. He was grateful for the coldness of the morning. In any warmth the stench would be unbearable.

A second open car clattered up behind them, the horse snorting and steaming from its exertions. It was the police photographic technician with his assistant. The two men climbed down from the car and started to lift the cumbersome camera equipment to the ground.

The uniformed sergeant guarding the crime scene saluted and led him into the laneway. Swallow’s first thought was to reprimand him. G-men were never saluted in public as a precaution against identification. But he let it pass. The man had probably been there all night.

‘Just a few steps up here, sir.’

He gestured to the ground. The bloodstains were dark brown, almost dry in the morning air. The muddy ground showed a jigsaw of footprints. Three, maybe four men’s boots or shoes, and the distinctive smaller imprints probably made by the victim. To his right Swallow could see an indentation in the brambles. A little farther on, he saw the gate leading to the meadow. The metal bolt was undone. Beyond the gate the grass was white with hoar frost.

‘Mornin’, Joe. Mornin’, Mick.’

Sergeant Stephen Doolan came up the lane followed by half a dozen E-Division constables from Rathmines. Each man was equipped with a long, wooden-shafted pike. Swallow surmised the implements were army issue from the cavalry barracks.

He nodded.

‘You know the story here, Stephen?’

Doolan nodded. ‘Yes, I caught up with it on the routes before I left Kevin Street.’

The ‘routes’, or ‘routines’, were the crime reports that circulated to all city police stations on the ABC telegraph from DMP headquarters in the Castle’s Lower Yard.

‘That’s where he waited.’ Swallow pointed to the gate. ‘Probably got away through the field when the two soldier-boys arrived. So when you’ve done the laneway you’ll have to search the field too, end to end. There’s no winter growth so the grass is short. If he’s left anything to be found it won’t be difficult.’