‘We have a couple of ideas we’re still working on, ma’am. We thought at first that a heavy sash window could have been slammed down on his head a few times, because of the indentations on both sides of his skull. But a sash window would have had to be banged down fierce hard to have caused that kind of damage, and it would have caused parallel indentations, and these are definitely at an angle to each other, like his head was squeezed in a giant nutcracker, like we said before, or some tool resembling a huge pair of pincers. So we’re looking at a whole range of possibilities. There’s an industrial compression machine that they use for testing the strength of toys, among other things, and that machine can be adjusted to apply huge pressure at all kinds of different angles. There’s at least a couple in use on the Togher industrial estate and we’ll be checking them out. We’ll find out what did it, don’t you worry.’

‘Thanks, Bill. Once we know what we’ll have a good chance at finding out who.’

*

A uniformed garda was posted outside Feargal Grífin’s room at the Mercy, and he jumped up like a jack-in-the-box when Katie and Kyna came along the corridor.

‘Afternoon, ma’am,’ he said briskly.

Katie nodded towards Feargal’s door. ‘Any trouble at all?’

‘Your man was a bit shouty earlier on. He didn’t like the fish they gave him for his lunch, something like that. He’s been quiet ever since, though. His solicitor’s in there with him.’

Katie and Kyna went into Feargal’s room. He was sitting in a chair by the window, wearing a hospital dressing-gown, his right hand wrapped in a thick white gauze dressing and his arm in a sling. He was staring mournfully out at the car park like a child whose mother is late picking him up from school, and he didn’t even look around when Katie and Kyna came in. Katie knew his solicitor: Sheenagh Finegan, a chubby young woman from Keenan & Doyle, with hair like a cottage loaf and a way of tutting and smacking her lips between every sentence as if she disagreed even with herself.

‘Don’t get up,’ said Katie, although Sheenagh gave no indication that she was going to, and Feargal couldn’t, with his wounded knee. Sheenagh had her laptop open and earplugs in her ears and she lifted her hand as if she were telling Katie and Kyna to wait until she had finished what she was working on.

Katie and Kyna pulled over chairs and sat on either side of Feargal. He looked from one to the other and then said, ‘What?’