When the Communion had concluded, Father Cavendish’s homily was clinical and formulaic, the predictable promises of eternal life and resurrection. Formal condolences were extended to the bereaved family. There was an exhortation to anyone with information concerning the crime to come forward and to confess. Curiously, Swallow thought, there was no reference to the dead girl’s work in the very place of worship in which she now lay. Everything about the obsequies and Father James Cavendish’s manner reinforced his unease. There was no sense of warmth or compassion in the service, rather a cold compliance with necessary formality. Swallow often found himself disquieted at the growing opulence and sense of privilege that he sensed in many of the pastors of his own church. The church’s new and growing wealth was given physical form in the magnificence of St Mary Immaculate’s rich interior. Yet he thought he detected something else here. It was as if Father Cavendish’s Mass and homily were no more than a show, performed to a carefully prepared script.

After the final blessing, the coffin was wheeled down the nave, followed by the dead girl’s immediate family and other relatives. Swallow and Mossop moved swiftly to the back of the church in order to observe the congregation as it emptied out into the concourse at the building’s front. There was nothing of any significance to note. Swallow recognised one or two middle-aged men who in earlier years would have figured as minor criminals in police reports.

They followed the funeral cortège in a police side-car through Rathmines and Harold’s Cross to Mount Jerome. Along the route, shops temporarily drew down their blinds as a mark of respect. Men on the footpaths removed their headgear and women blessed themselves as the hearse came by. A light flurry of snow came out of the leaden grey sky as the coffin was taken from the hearse at Mount Jerome. Swallow felt cold flecks on his face as it was lowered into the ground.

The priest said the final prayers and led the mourners in a decade of the Rosary, finishing hurriedly with the traditional prayer for the deceased. ‘May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace, Amen.’

There had been nothing of investigational value to be gleaned. No suspicious behaviour. No confidential whispers from any of the mourners. No giveaway comments that might give the G-men a possible line of inquiry. As the gravediggers came forward to start shovelling the earth onto Alice Flannery’s coffin, the priest stepped back, removed the purple stole from around his neck and began to make his way to his waiting cab. Swallow stepped forwards, holding out his warrant card as the priest stepped up to the footplate.