‘Let’s hope so,’ said Detective Inspector Mulliken. ‘It’s going to be the devil’s own job, otherwise, trying to find out who wanted O’Malley dead. He had more enemies than a hedgehog has fleas.’

‘Don’t be too glum about it,’ Bill told him, standing up. ‘The autopsy should give us a fair number of leads. It’ll tell us roughly how long he’s been dead, so at least we’ll have a time frame for when his killers dropped him down the drain. And the way that his head was smashed, I reckon that’s going to tell us the most.’

‘How’s that, then?’

‘It’s what it was done with. I’ve seen heads that were bashed in with sledgehammers and heads that were run over by cars and heads that were crushed against factory walls by reversing lorries, but I’ve never seen a head smashed in exactly like this before. You see the deep indentations here on each side, and the angle they’re at, and the damage that’s been done to his ears? Those tell me that his head was struck with considerable force at least three times and possibly more, and in some kind of pincers like a massive pair of nutcrackers. All we have to do now is work out what could cause injuries like that, and whatever it is, who owns it.’

‘Piece of cake,’ said Detective O’Sullivan. ‘All we have to do is get on to Amazon and see who’s bought a massive pair of nutcrackers recently.’

Detective Inspector Mulliken gave him a sharp look and he said, ‘Sorry. Just trying to lighten the mood, like.’

*

Katie was back in her office when Kyna came in to tell her that Sharky had been identified. One of the arrested gang had heard Katie’s two pistol shots and assumed that she had killed him. He had asked if Sharky’s sister who lived in Ardnacrusha could be notified, so that she could make funeral arrangements for him.

Sharky’s name was Feargal Grífin, sometimes known as Feargal Darsey, and he had been a member of the Keane-Collopy gang in St Mary’s Park in Limerick before he had met Barry Riordan and been recruited to come below to Cork. He had a criminal record that went back to his fifteenth birthday party, when he had picked up a cake knife and stabbed one of his friends because he had shifted his girlfriend. After that he had been in and out of jail three times, once for robbery and twice for assault. Seven years ago he had been attacked in Limerick Prison and hit in the face with a metal chair, which had permanently affected his eyesight. After that he had been nicknamed Feargal the Four-Eyed Fecker, although the story was that he had slashed and permanently disfigured a gang member who had dared to call him that to his face.