“Carmel and her husband took their children home around eight. The others stayed put for a while longer, watching television and talking. Everyone except your mother had a few cans over the course of the evening; general consensus is that the men were a little drunk but definitely not blotto, and Jacinta only had the two. Kevin, Seamus and Jacinta left your parents’ place together, just after eleven. Seamus went upstairs to his flat, and Kevin walked Jacinta down Smith’s Road as far as the corner of New Street, where her car was parked. She offered Kevin a lift, but he said he wanted to walk off the gargle. She assumed his plan was to head back the way they’d come, along Smith’s Road past the entrance to Faithful Place, then cut through the Liberties and along the canal to his flat in Portobello, but obviously she can’t verify that. He watched her into her car, they waved good-bye, and she drove off. The last she saw of him, he was turning back down Smith’s Road. That’s our last confirmed sighting of him alive.”

By seven he had given up and stopped ringing me. I had ignored him thoroughly enough that he hadn’t thought it was worthwhile giving me one more try, before he tried to deal with whatever it was all by his great gormless self. “Only he didn’t go home,” I said.

“Doesn’t look like it. The builders are next door today, so no one came in here till late this morning, when two kids called Jason and Logan Hearne headed in to have a look at the basement, glanced out the landing window and got more than they bargained for. They’re thirteen and twelve, and why they weren’t in school—”

“Personally,” I said, “I’m delighted they weren’t.” With Number 14 and Number 12 empty, nobody would have spotted Kevin from a back window. He could have stayed there for weeks. I’ve seen bodies after that long.

Scorch gave me a quick, apologetic sideways glance; he’d got carried away. “Yeah,” he said. “There is that. Anyway, they legged it out of there and called their mother, who called us and apparently half the neighborhood. Ms. Hearne also recognized the deceased as your brother, so she notified your mother, who made the definitive ID. I’m sorry she had to see that.”

I said, “My ma’s tough.” Behind me, somewhere downstairs, there was a thump, a grunt and a scraping sound as the morgue boys maneuvered their stretcher through the narrow corridors. I didn’t turn around.