Doolan deployed his men on both sides of the laneway, starting from the intersection with the main roadway. They moved slowly along the poor thoroughfare, eyes scanning the grass and mud, probing the brambles with their long pikes. Within less than a minute a searcher had located a small handbag off the track beside the gate. The cheap imitation velvet was damp, but the metal clasp was secure. When Doolan opened it he counted five shilling coins—a waitress’s Friday pay.

‘Have a look at this, skipper.’

A constable by the gate tapped with his foot at a heavy wooden stake lying in the grass. Measuring perhaps four feet and sharpened at one end, it might have come from a farm fence or enclosure. Half of its length was spattered with darkened blood.

‘Don’t touch it until the photographic technician has taken pictures,’ Doolan ordered. ‘We’ll want pictures of the lane itself, the gateway and those footprints too.’

He turned to Feore.

‘Get the plaster kit from the car. I want casts of all the footmarks once the photographs are taken.’

The scene was telling Swallow little so far. The assailant might have known the gateway to the meadow as a place of concealment. Or he might have just come upon it. The bloodied stake might have been brought to the scene as a weapon, or it might simply have been a convenience. The fact that the girl’s bag and her wages were still at the scene suggested that the motive was not robbery. But equally it was possible that the attacker had been unable to locate them in the dark.

The photographer had got his tripod up and was busy at his work when a third open car drew to a halt at the end of the laneway. The constable-driver came down from his seat to assist the uniformed passenger to the ground. It was ‘Duck’ Boyle, Swallow’s former superior at Exchange Court, lately promoted to superintendent and placed in command of the E-Division. ‘Duck’ Boyle’s generously cut uniform with its silver braid was moderately effective in disguising its wearer’s advanced corpulence, but it could not remedy the distinctive waddle that had earned him his nickname among his former colleagues at G-Division.

Regulations required that the divisional superintendent should attend personally at the scenes of serious crimes. Swallow was not surprised by Boyle’s arrival, but he knew from the expression on the fat superintendent’s face that this was more than a routine compliance with regulation.