‘I appreciate that you may not want to share all your information with me since the murder is in your jurisdiction and not mine. But if you can tell me more about these cases I may be able to help you.’

‘There’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you what I know. You’ve been generous enough to offer your assistance. Dublin is generally a safe city for women. It’s well policed, and it’s very rare for any female to be molested or troubled. But there’s been a series of attacks in the past two months. Two women are dead, and another has been badly injured.’

‘I have heard, of course, about these so-called Ripper murders in London,’ Pfaus said. ‘They appear to have baffled even the famous detectives of Scotland Yard. I did not realise there were similar cases in other British cities.’

‘I’m not suggesting there’s any similarity between our cases in Dublin and those in London,’ Swallow said. ‘Dublin is a very different kind of place from London. And it’s not British, like I told you; it’s Irish.’

Pfaus shrugged.

‘Very well. But you believe there is a link between these attacks in Dublin?’

‘We don’t know. We haven’t got very far in identifying a definite suspect. There are a number of possibilities, but nothing that one could bring a charge on.’

‘So where does the Kriminalpolizei’s guest, Mr Michael James Carmody, fit into your inquiries?’

Swallow took another shot of Schnapps.

‘I don’t have any reason to connect him to any crime other than the case I’ve described, the murder of the young waitress called Alice Flannery. She was the first to be attacked. I’ve told you her employer is a man who is from Berlin. His name is Stefan Werner. Does that name mean anything to you?’

Pfaus shook his head.

‘The name is not familiar to me. Of course, Werner is not an unusual name. There are probably thousands of them in Berlin. What happened to the young woman?’

‘She walked home from the restaurant late at night, and some person or persons attacked her in a dark laneway not far from her home. She was badly beaten, but it seems that she fought back as best she could. She was found by two soldiers returning to barracks nearby. They brought her to the hospital, but she died a few hours later. The cause of death was injuries to the head, possibly inflicted by a heavy wooden stake that was found nearby.’

‘I presume you’re satisfied the soldiers weren’t involved?’ Pfaus said. ‘They’d be on my list of suspects.’

‘Naturally it was one of our first lines of inquiry,’ Swallow told him. ‘But it was clear very quickly that they were telling the truth when they said they came upon her as they returned to their barracks.’

‘So is Carmody a suspect? What’s his connection?’