‘A fair bit. But there’s no idea yet who might have done it or why.’ He flipped his official notebook open. ‘Aged eighteen, name of Alice Flannery, lives with her mother and a gaggle of brothers and sisters in a cottage at the end of the laneway. The mother’s widowed, makes a few bob as a cleaner at the big church on the Rathmines Road. Seems Alice helps her on the cleaning job, but mostly she works as a waitress at the New Vienna restaurant down in South Great George’s Street.’

Swallow knew the New Vienna. It was a short walk from the Castle.

‘What do we know of her movements last night?’

‘She left the New Vienna to walk home around quarter past eleven after they’d cleaned up and shut for the night. Sometime before midnight a couple of cavalrymen tried to use the lane to slip into the barracks after lights. They heard a commotion and literally stumbled across her.’

‘Robbery? She’d have likely been paid her wages, finishing up on Friday?’

‘Maybe. She had no money on her when she was got to the hospital. No bag or anything. But it was so damned dark her things could be anywhere around the laneway.’

‘What’re the injuries?’

‘No sexual attack, though that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the motive. Her skull is badly fractured on the right side. Nose broken. Cheek-bone broken on the other side. Doctor reckons about six teeth splintered. Mouth and lips lacerated. There’s what looks like a bad rope burn or something such on the neck. Lots of scratches and cuts. It looks as if she got away into the brambles and then crawled out again. The doctor says she was beaten with a blunt weapon, maybe a heavy bar or a club of some kind. She’s lost a lot of blood.’

‘Is she conscious? Could she tell you anything?’

‘Not a lot that’s coherent. They put her under with a good dose of laudanum. The doctor was afraid that her heart would fail. Johnny took a note of what little she did say.’

Vizzard shrugged. ‘She just said “dark”, “noise” and then “the pain, the pain”. Then she said, “Me uniform’s ruined.” But she won’t be going waitressing again for a long time.’

Swallow drew up a chair.

‘She might have been doing a bit of amateur whoring on the side? Maybe the two soldiers were doing business in the laneway with her? What did they have they to say?’

Mossop grimaced.

‘That was my first thought too. But I don’t think so. They were well soused after a night in McCabe’s tavern. One of them ran out onto the Rathmines Road, roaring for a bobby. There was a beat man, Jack Caviston, at Leinster Road. He judged that the young fella was hysterical. If they’d done it, they wouldn’t have come running for a polisman.’