‘She was making her way home, she says. A man came out of the alleyway off Cardiff Lane. Came up behind her. She didn’t see him, just heard heavy boots, she said. He hit her with something on the head and she started roaring. He hit her three, maybe four times. Bad lacerations to the head and a fractured nose. A broken right forearm and a few cracked ribs. She was kicked or stamped on the ground. Then he took off back down the alley. She caught a glimpse of him as he went. He was a big fellow, she said, wearing some sort of heavy coat. Not surprising given the temperature of the night.’

‘No robbery? No sex assault?’ Mossop commented. ‘Sounds very like a repeat of what happened at Blackberry Lane.’

Doolan nodded.

‘No witnesses?’ Swallow asked.

‘None,’ Doolan grimaced. ‘In that bloody cold night nobody was outdoors that didn’t have to be.’

‘But she’ll be all right?’ Swallow asked. ‘She’s out of danger?’

Doolan nodded.

‘She should be all right, but it’ll take time. She’s a tough young one.’

‘What’s your instinct, Stephen?’ Swallow asked. Doolan was a veteran of Dublin street crime. Almost a quarter of a century of pounding the beat and manning the front desk at the busy Kevin Street Station had given him what Swallow called ‘a nose’ for any situation.

Doolan hesitated.

‘Did either of you ever hear tell of the Dollacher?’ he asked after a moment.

‘The what?’ Swallow and Mossop responded in unison.

‘The Dollacher,’ Doolan repeated.

‘You have me there,’ Swallow shook his head.

‘When I joined twenty-five years ago there was an old bobby, retired and widowed, used to live in a little house in Blackpitts. I’d be on beat at night up there and he’d ask me in for a cup of tea and a chat. He did thirty years’ service in the A-Division. He told me about the Dollacher.’

‘Go on,’ Swallow said, ‘this had better be good.’

‘It was in the thirties, around ’32 or ’33 I think. There was a series of attacks on young women around the Liberties. Around Corn Exchange, Thomas Street. The pattern was the same. A man would come out of an alley or a doorway, batter the woman and flee. He never actually killed anyone, but some of the victims were badly injured. Mutilated. The women said he smelled heavily, like an animal. Some said like a dog; some said he smelled like a pig. One woman said she saw him clearly and described him as having a black pig’s head.’

‘Jesus,’ Mossop exclaimed. ‘Was he ever caught?’