"All right," I said. "Each man had his tongue cut out. Do we have any other points of comparison?"

"One: they were connected in life, in that Kennedy tried to find Hutton. Must have done a certain amount of digging. Two: they were both killed and mutilated elsewhere, and then cleaned up and deposited where they lay in the past couple of days. Three: they were killed in exactly the same way, strangled by hand and/ or ligature. Four: they were mutilated in the same way, tongue cut out. Five: they each had a small leather bag or purse full of coins."

"Did Kennedy have any tattoos?" I said.

"Not in the obvious places. I didn't get time to search the whole body. Nothing else was found on him."

"What do you make of the tattoos on Hutton's forearm?" I said.

Dave shook his head. He had copied them in his notebook. He opened it to that page, and we studied them in silence for a moment.

†?

"Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet," I said. "From alpha to omega: from beginning to end."

"From life to death."

"And the crucifix represents death."

"And life everlasting."

"What do you make of it?"

"I don't know. A serial killer who's into symbols and whatdoyoucallit, tarot cards and all this? That's grand for American films, Ed. In real life, I'd say it's all my hole."

I almost laughed out loud. That sounded more like the Dave Donnelly I knew, a man who assumed everyone else needed knocking off his perch, and considered himself the man to do it. If he were a T-shirt, it would read: WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? That could have accounted for some of the tension between him and Myles Geraghty: they were both cut from the same cloth. Apart from Dave's not being a complete and total prick.

"Still, when was the last time you came across a tongue cut out?" I said. "That's a lot of work, and a lot of mess."

"Not if the victim's dead first. No blood to speak of then."

"But you take my point? Two in the same day? And both strangled too?"

Dave nodded.

"It's not rock solid, but it would be a hell of a coincidence if the MO was used by two different killers. And what is there no such thing as?"

"And the fact that they were dumped within a mile or two of each other-does that not suggest the killer's trying to tell us something?"

"That's the other thing I've never got about those films and all: why the killer wants to tell the cops anything. I mean, if he's happy being a mad fucker who goes around killing people, why would he want the cops anywhere near him?"

"Because it vindicates him as a person. The artistry of his killing spree is mythologized among the community at large, thus validating his ego. He is the superman, the cops humans every whit as petty and puny as his victims."

Dave was giving me the "cop yourself on, you tool" look. I shrugged.

"Hey, this stuff isn't just in the movies. These fuckers are real, and they're out there."

"I know, and it usually goes back to something that happened in childhood. Mammy never bought me a bowwow, boo hoo hoo."

"You know who you sound like, Dave? The man who, after I'd just witnessed a murder-suicide, and been advised that counseling was available to me, told me that what I really needed was a good boot up the arse. Your friend and mine, Myles Geraghty."

Dave reacted as if I'd slapped him; he leapt to his feet and wagged a finger across the table at me, his lips quivering as he attempted to form words and failed, his face red and contorted with rage; then he stormed out of the room. When he came back in a few minutes later, he was shaking his head as if in amazement at the behavior of someone else entirely, our mutual friend with the short temper. He sat and made a show of looking through his notes.

"I'll tell you this much," Dave said. "Myles Geraghty will go a long way out of his way to avoid bringing this within a country mile of F. X. Tyrrell."

"Why so?"

"Are you kidding? The queue to be F.X.'s best friend in the tent at the Galway Races, you should see it. All the politicians and the big rich. This is the man whose horses beat the Queen's, for fuck's sake: this was one of Ireland 's heroes in the dark days when no one had an arse to his trousers: he stuffed the English every Cheltenham, an equestrian IRA man in a morning suit. No one will want Tyrrellscourt anywhere near this."

"And maybe they'll be right. We've got Leo Halligan connected to it, and he's got form in this area, doesn't he?"

"Leo's a bad lad all right. Do you remember him, Ed? He was in our school."

"I know, but he was never there, was he?"

"He was always on the hop all right."

"I remember he went away to reform school for stabbing Christine Doran."

"That was bad."

"He was funny though, wasn't he? He was a brilliant footballer."

"He was a good footballer. He was a brilliant boxer."

"Fly, wasn't he?"

"He went up to welter for a while, but he couldn't keep the weight on."

"It was weird, even though we were all scared of him, everyone kind of liked him, far as I can recall. I did at any rate," I said.

"I wouldn't say 'like.' He wasn't a fucking psycho like Podge, or a slick cunt like George, but yeah, he was…for a dangerous bollocks, he was kind of normal, wasn't he? How did he pull that off?"

"I think, because you didn't feel he was gonna take you out for looking at him."

"Yeah. Mind you, Podge would, and then he'd come after you for sorting Podge out."

"Speaking of which. Did you see the Volvo? The RIP?"

"Was that Leo? Of course, there was all this, when he got out, he was gonna get you for sending Podge down. I'd've thought it would be a relief to them to have him locked away, he was becoming a liability."

"It all comes down to blood with the Halligans."

Dave looked at his watch.

"Time I headed back to the station, see if we've had any calls."

"What's the story with Vinnie Butler?"

"He's a Butler," Dave said, as if that were explanation enough. When I shook my head, he expanded, covering pretty much the same territory Tommy Owens had in his voice mail, if in greater detail: the Butlers were a large extended family scattered around north Wicklow and the Dublin border, into all manner of burglary, extortion, fencing and low-level drug dealing. They also spent a great deal of time feuding with each other over a variety of perceived slights and betrayals, real and imagined, one branch of the family doorstepping another with machetes and shotguns and, most recently, a jar of sulfuric acid: Dave told me the young girl whose face the acid was flung in was fifteen and pregnant; she was burned so badly she lost an eye.

"Geraghty set a couple of his boys on him, but I don't think he was dumping anything more than refuse. State of the body for one thing; Vinnie Butler couldn't keep himself that clean: half an hour in the back of his Transit the corpse would have decomposed. Geraghty's probably pining for the days of the Branch and the Murder Squad, when they'd have fitted up a gouger like Vinnie for this no bother."

The National Bureau of Criminal Investigation had been formed from the ashes of the Garda Special Branch and the Murder Squad, elite outfits that, like many elite units within the Guards, had quickly become corrupt and unmanageable; they had been disbanded, and then after a decent interval, the NBCI was formed. Geraghty and many of his colleagues had been Branch or Squad men; now stewing with resentment, they were tipped into a Bureau they felt was beneath them but loftily consented to dominate. A lot of Dave's problems probably stemmed from the tension between the old elite and new officers keen to make a name for themselves.

At the doorway, Dave turned and looked me in the eye.

"All right, Ed?"

"All right, Dave. You?"