The visitors’ car park at Glendalough was chaotic. Elongated tourist coaches and saloon cars packed with sweating, stressed families competed to reverse, u-turn, and extricate themselves from what was rapidly turning into the seventh circle of hell for the single guard on traffic duty. The old monastic site, set in a spectacular glacial valley with two lakes, was a popular tourist spot and on this, a fine summer’s day, it was humming with activity.

‘To think, the missus suggested we come up here this weekend,’ Willie Callaghan remarked. ‘What a lucky escape.’ Tom’s driver stroked his pristinely trimmed moustache, shaking his head in amazement at the close call.

Tom ignored the obvious retort, which was that Willie was now, in fact, in Glendalough.

‘Why wouldn’t you bring her?’ the inspector asked, as his driver honked the horn repeatedly at a busload of startled pensioners.

‘Glendalough on a sunny Saturday in July?’ Willie exclaimed. ‘What kind of mad bastard would you be to inflict that on yourself? Besides, there’s sport on. Which I’m bloody missing now.’

His driver spotted the area of the car park that had been marked out for official vehicles and left his hand on the horn until they reached it.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Tom said, as the car pulled up. ‘We’ll have to get you treatment for road rage.’

Detective Sergeant Ray Lennon, Tom’s deputy, was waiting inside the cordon for his boss’s car. He was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt, his tie knot pulled loose at the neck. Unlike Tom, Ray had decided to grow his hair this summer. He was taunting his boss with his naturally dark mane, not a grey strand in sight. The extra couple of inches in a heatwave seemed masochistic, and was probably, Tom suspected, something akin to Bikram yoga for his super-fit deputy.

A few feet away, a small group of women in their early twenties were whispering and giggling as they gazed at the tall detective adoringly. Ray had that effect on women and was, as usual, oblivious to it.

‘We heard you before we saw you,’ he greeted Tom.

‘Where’s the scene?’ the inspector asked. ‘And what’s going on with that crowd? Haven’t they been told the valley is off limits?’

‘The body is in woodland close to the lower lake. We’ve been trying to clear the two car parks for the last hour but new vehicles keep arriving. It’s gone out on the radio bulletins now, so people will stay away, hopefully. The normal ones, anyhow.’

‘Who found her?’ Tom asked, as they began walking.

‘A couple of kids and their dog. Aged ten and eleven.’

‘Oh, shit.’

‘No, it’s okay. The mother and father are traumatised, for sure. But the kids were thrilled. It’s like something from their favourite show – The Walking Dead – apparently. I think they’ll survive.’