Three boys were playing long slogs up and down the street, hitting a leather ball with a hurley as hard as they could so that it banged into the wheelie bins or the cars parked along the left-hand kerb. Two little girls were skipping on the pavement and singing, ‘Datsie-dotsie, miss the rope, you’re outie-o!’

Kyna paused for a moment to watch the girls before she rang the doorbell at the house where Doireann Greaney was supposed to be lodging. They brought back her own childhood, which now seemed so long ago: days of skipping in the schoolyard, and rain, and innocence, and hair-pulling, and wondering why she didn’t fancy boys like the other girls did.

The girls sang, ‘If you’d have been, where I’d have been, you wouldn’t have been put outie-o!’ and Kyna rang the doorbell.

A short woman in a floral housecoat opened the door almost immediately, as if she had been waiting on the other side. She had a face that put Kyna in mind of a pug dog, with bulging eyes, a squashed-up nose and a turned-down mouth, as well as a large brown mole on her upper lip.

‘Whatever it is, I’m not interested,’ she snapped.

‘I’m not selling anything,’ Kyna told her, holding out her identity card. ‘I’m a detective, from Anglesea Street Garda station.’

The woman peered at the card short-sightedly for a moment, her lips moving as she read out An Garda Síochána, and then she said, ‘That doesn’t look like you at all. Your hair’s different.’

‘Yes, it is, but I’ve grown it since this picture was taken. It is me, though, I can promise you.’

‘All right. If it is you, what do you want?’

‘I’m looking for Doireann Greaney. I understand that she rents a room here.’

‘Doireann, is it? What’s Doireann done?’

‘All I want to do is have a word with her. Is she in?’

‘Did I say she lived here?’

‘No, but I’ve been reliably informed that she does, and you seem to know her.’

‘Well, she does, but she’s not here now. You’ve missed her by only a minute but she told me she wouldn’t be back till maybe five, like. She’s gone off joggling.’

‘Really? What was she wearing?’

‘What do you think? Her tracksuit, like always. The only time she never wears that tracksuit is when it’s in the laundry.’

‘What colour is it, this tracksuit?’

‘What colour? Sort of grey, I suppose you’d call it. About the same colour as them clouds up there.’

‘Do you know where she’s gone?’

‘How would I? I couldn’t go with her. I have the desperate arthamiritis in my knees. I can hardly stagger to the shop, let alone joggle.’

‘You say she left here only about a minute ago. Did you see which way she went?’