‘I’m sorry, Dan. You’ve got a very warped sense of values if you think murder can be justified like that. You know it was more than likely that any foolish notions Alice had would probably have just faded away in time.’

‘I don’t think God would see what I did as murder.’

‘You’re able to read the mind of God, then?’ Swallow said.

‘I know what’s right and what’s wrong,’ Flannery answered. ‘Just as I knew when I saw that you’d taken in an innocent man that I couldn’t let him go to the hangman. So I’m willin’ and prepared to pay the price.’

Swallow stood.

‘It’s not for me to say, but I think you will pay the price, Dan. You’ll pay it in a court of law, and you’ll pay it before God in time.’

‘I know that,’ Flannery said simply.

‘Will you sign the statement that Detective Vizzard will draft up now from his notes?’

‘I will.’

‘Then I’m charging you formally now with the murder of Alice Flannery on or about 8 November 1888 at a place within the city of Dublin.’

He turned to Shanahan.

‘Martin, would you go down to the cells and release Mr Stefan Werner? Tell him he’s free to go. And send a message up to the governor at Mountjoy. There’ll be no charges against Michael Joseph Carmody. They can open the gate and let him out.’

Chapter 45

‘Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.’

John Mallon filled a third of Swallow’s tumbler from a newly opened bottle of Tullamore. He pushed the water jug across the desk.

‘That’s Shakespeare, you know. Hamlet. He’d have made a good detective, Shakespeare. Great insight into the criminal mind. It’s all about conscience, that Hamlet. That’s what made young Flannery admit what he’d done. I wonder if anyone’s ever counted the numbers of cases in this city when fellows have walked into police stations and said “I did it”? There’s something to be said for the Catholic sense of guilt.’

‘Are you shifting your loyalties, chief?’ Swallow gestured to Mallon’s whiskey glass. ‘Abandoning your beloved Bushmills for the vines of the King’s County?’

Mallon managed a thin smile.

‘Ah no, I thought you deserved something special. You’ve been through a rough passage. And I know you only drink the Bushmills out of politeness and to humour me.’

Swallow added water to his whiskey.

‘I appreciate the thought, chief. But it wasn’t necessary. Bushmills is no hardship. I nearly sunk the whole bloody ship, chief,’ he said quietly. ‘I nearly walked the wrong man into court on a murder charge.’

A blast of January wind rattled the windows of Mallon’s front parlour. Elizabeth Mallon had drawn the curtains before retiring, but the black of the winter night seeped through from the Lower Yard outside.