Dave let his head sink into his hands. I looked at him in astonishment and dismay: Dave had always been so solid, so captain-of-the-school dependable, I guess I'd taken his strength for granted. It was like watching a cardboard cutout become real before my eyes. I wasn't sure I needed another real person in my life, but then, I had been surprised when he'd chosen me to celebrate his transfer with. Carmel had often told me he didn't have many friends, but I'd never really thought of myself as one, let alone his closest.

"Maybe I should just walk. I could take the pension, get out early, go into business with Carmel 's brother. He's got a car showroom in Goatstown. Awful gobshite, but he's coining it there."

"What does Carmel think?"

"About going in with her brother? She'd like the extra change. But she knows what being a cop means to me."

"No, I meant the phone calls. The weight loss. The stress."

Dave shook his head.

"We don't really work on that level," he said. "I've always been…I don't bring the job home, you know? Because Carmel doesn't want to know."

"I'm sure she'd be sympathetic-"

"No. Our deal is, she has a stressful job raising four kids. She doesn't need me coming home crying like a baby. If I want to change jobs, fine, so long as the money's still coming in. But to talk to her the way I've talked to you…she'd consider it weak."

"Sounds like the 1950s round your house, Dave."

He shrugged, and rolled his neck, and flexed his still-massive arms.

"It's how we started out. I was the one in charge, the one to make things safe, the one she could rely on. I think how you start out…it colors how you proceed, you know?"

"You sure she still feels the same way?"

"I still feel the same way. End of story. Don't ask me about Carmel, all right?"

"All right."

Dave lifted his head and, in what seemed like a determined effort, cracked a smile.

"Fuck sake, look at us, like a pair of fucking 'oul ones, commiserating. Come on to fuck. It's fine, everything's just grand. Come on."

Dave got up and drank the second whiskey and clapped me on the shoulder. It hurt.

"Where are we going?"

"To see dead people."

We drove south on the N11 as far as Loughlinstown and came off at the exit for St. Colmcille's Hospital. The hospital mortuary is at the far end, past A &E and the main entrance. Dave asked me to bring a hat and a scarf; the only hat I had was a black fedora Tommy Owens found in a secondhand store, which he insisted I have because it made me "look like a proper detective." It didn't, it made me look like a sinister old-style priest, a detail Dave lit upon when we parked the car. He found a set of rosary beads in the glove compartment, and gave them to me, along with the black leatherette-bound Toyota manual.

"You're a priest, Ed," he said.

"Thank you, Dave," I said.

The door was opened by a red-eyed, unshaven hospital porter who didn't speak English; he was joined by a young uniformed Guard who recognized Dave immediately. Dave took the Guard aside and chatted briefly to him. I held the rosary over the book and kept my eyes down.

Dave came back and said, "This way, Father."

The Guard nodded respectfully as I entered, and I acknowledged him briefly with a low priestly half wave, half blessing and a rattle of beads. We passed through a carpeted reception area with a screened-off corner for grieving families to identify their next of kin. The porter led us through double doors to a cold room with two bodies on hospital gurneys. Each body was covered with a white cloth. There was another room ahead where the autopsies were conducted, and a refrigeration room to one side. A life-size wood-and-plaster crucifix loomed above us on the wall. The porter nodded and withdrew behind the double doors.

"What are we doing here, Dave?" I said.

"The state pathologist has done the preliminary examinations at the scene. The second body meant it was too late to start the autopsies tonight. They'll begin at eight in the morning. They brought them here because they finished late, they're starting early, and it was nearer than the city morgue."

"Okay. What are we doing here?"

Dave Donnelly's mouth was set; his eyes were burning and his hands began to shake.

"The first body," he said. "The one Geraghty insisted on telling the press bore all the hallmarks of a gangland killing."

I nodded.

"I ID'd him straight off-not by the contents of his wallet, by his face. He was Don Kennedy. He was my sergeant when I was starting out, down Kildare way, twenty-five years ago. He was like a father to me. Stood godfather to Paul, my second eldest. He got out in '99 or so, did a bit of private work, missing persons, insurance claims, that sort of stuff. I didn't see much of him anymore. Godparents don't seem to matter so much when your kids get older. But he never forgot a birthday. Look at him. He was strangled. And someone cut his tongue out, Ed. What do you think of that?"

What did I think? I thought Don Kennedy was the private detective Miranda Hart had hired two years ago to find Patrick Hutton.

"Because I know your body had his tongue cut out too, Ed. The Bureau may be trying to edge me out, but the incident room is in Bray station, and I have a lot of friends there. Your man was strangled and he had his tongue cut out too. What do you think? Coincidence?"

"There's no such thing, Dave. You know that."

"And so do you."

He took the sheet partly from one of the bodies to reveal a large male head with an unruly thatch of gray hair. The strangulation marks around the neck were similar to those on what Dave had called "my body." Dave lifted the sheet now on the blond gentleman farmer with the Church's shoes I'd found upended in a dump. I looked at the face, wondered how closely I wanted to work with Dave and decided I needed him at least as much as he needed me.

I took the photograph Miranda Hart had given me from my coat pocket and showed it to him. The hair was blond, whether dyed or not I couldn't say, but the face looked very similar: same lined skin, same sunken cheeks, same tiny point of chin. I took a latex glove from my jacket and fitted it over one hand and pointed to the vivid blue of Patrick Hutton's eyes in the photo. Dave nodded. With index and middle fingers, I tugged the corpse's eyes open. They were far from vivid, but they were blue. We weren't in a position to be definitive, but as far as we could tell, the dead man was Patrick Hutton, missing for ten years, dead for forty-eight hours. Without thinking, I turned to the crucifix on the wall and blessed myself. When I looked back, I saw Dave doing the same. I don't know if Dave was thinking about the Four Last Things. I couldn't tell you if I was either. Maybe we were just two spooked Paddies in the house of the dead. But we both had faith in this much: after violent death, there must come judgment.