Superintendent Myles Geraghty had found someone to press his brown suit, and someone else to cut his unruly thatch of salt-and-pepper hair, but his gut was still poking out between the flaps of his yellow shirt, if perhaps not quite as far as it had, and his tie looked like he'd eaten his breakfast off it. He seemed in excellent form, which didn't fill me with reassurance. I had sat in the interview room in silence while a uniformed female Garda got the video camera ready; now Geraghty was here, and silence was no more.

"Ah, the hard! Good to see you again Edward Loy, and the compliments of the season to you, and tell us this: how's the old private dick, ha? Getting out and about, and in and out, is it? Are you winning, are you? Pulling the divil by the tail says you, ha? Pull the other one, it's got bells on!"

There was no reply needed to any of that, so I didn't make one. Geraghty took a long shrewd look at me, all faux bonhomie gone, and I met this full-on. He had a good poker face, a mask that meant he could play the fool but was very far from being one. It was impossible to tell what he had on me, but given the circumstances in which he'd found me, I'd be feeling pretty bullish if I were him.

Geraghty nodded to get the tape rolling, and sat down across the table from me and asked me my name and I said, "Solicitor."

"D'you get that changed, by deed poll? Or did you get married, and take the little woman's name?"

"Solicitor," I said again.

Geraghty made a face.

"Jasus, you could be out of here by lunchtime if you just answer the few questions."

I made a face at that, my "d'you think I cycled up the Liffey on a bicycle?" face. Geraghty nodded at the uniform, who turned off the tape while he bounded from the room, returning a few seconds later with a tabloid newspaper, which he handed to me. It was folded to the crossword, which had been half completed in a laborious hand.

"Six down, 'Clown, foolish person,' seven letters, begins with B… Buffoon?"

"Front page, please," a smiling Myles Geraghty said with the oily poise of a backbench politician at long last elevated to office.

The front page of the Irish Daily Star said, OMEGA MAN SLAYS TWO-SERIAL KILLER ON THE LOOSE, and showed a blurred photograph of a much younger, slimmer Don Kennedy in a Garda uniform. Inside there were photographs of the two crime scenes with technical officers in protective white suits going about their work, and an inset shot of a Myles Geraghty dark of hair and hollow of cheek, as he'd maybe looked the day he made his confirmation, who was "heading up the investigation." There was talk of "the killer the Guards are calling the Omega Man because of the macabre way his victims are mutilated," but no further detail about Hutton's tattoo, and a lot more high-energy ventilating of not very much information. The severed tongues didn't get a mention, nor had Patrick Hutton been identified yet.

"Very good," I said. "Congratulations, that's quite a case you've got."

"I assume you were working a case. That's what you were doing up in Mrs. Tyrrell's house."

I nodded.

"I think we can help each other, don't you?"

"Well, I believe in helping the Guards. That would be something of a motto of mine. Of course, you don't want to blunder in and get in their way. Stand well back until invited."

Geraghty looked around at the uniform, and signaled to her. She went to put the camera back on, but he shook his head and pointed to the door. When she had gone, he turned back to me, a grin on his face.

"Well, here's your invitation. Last time you and I met, I probably went a bit hard on you. Don't know me own strength sometimes, and you'd just lost your girlfriend, and your mother, couldn't have been easy. And I know at times like that, it's not easy to forgive someone who crosses you. But fair play, you got the results that time…and we all saw what you did on the Howard case. I mean, I know you got a lot of stick about it in the papers, with the commissioner having a pop, and the Garda Representative Association advising its membership not to cooperate with private detectives in general and you in particular, but for officers who'd been around the block, I'm telling you, it was a beautiful piece of work. Not just the Howards themselves, what a fucking collection, but Brock and Moon and the Reillys, kaput! And no fucking trials to worry about-"

"I never-"

"I know you never, that was what was so beautiful, you got them to do it themselves. Last man standing, Ed Loy. Jasus, in here we talked about nothing else for weeks, we were drawing diagrams to keep it all clear: Dublin mountains, Fitzwilliam Square, Shelbourne Road, he's off again!"

Despite myself, I was a little flattered. A case usually ended with justice of a sort, but with most of the survivors' lives in tatters; very rarely was anyone in the mood to offer thanks, let alone praise. Myles Geraghty might have been a buffoon, but he was a senior policeman, and if what he had said was a quarter true, well, the respect of your peers is always something. Then, just in time, my brain came to, and I began to see where this was going, mere seconds before Geraghty leant in and spelled it out for me.

"And we all felt the credit should have gone where it was due, instead of to people who, if we're to be scrupulously fair, did not deserve it. Now I know he's a friend of yours, and fair play, loyalty is what I look for in my officers too, I don't expect you to tell tales out of school, but the least we should acknowledge is that you're the man, Ed Loy. You and Lee Harvey Oswald both: ye acted alone, ha?"

I nodded, understanding what the game was. It looked like Dave had good reason for his fears: Geraghty was clearly out to undermine him. Geraghty took my nod as an assent, and continued.

"Good man. Because here's the thing: I don't believe you had anything to do with Jackie Tyrrell's murder up above. I want to hear what you were doing there, sure I do, down to the last detail, but I know there's no reason for you to kill her. And even if there was, you wouldn't have…all the other stuff."

"What other stuff?" I said.

"You first," Geraghty said. When I stayed silent, he went on.

"Because of course, I have enough to keep you here all day, and maybe charge you and all, keep you in over Christmas, even if we drop the charges then. A lovers' tiff, a drunken spat, private detective and a rich divorcée-who do you think's going to give a shite? So if you want to get out and get back to your case, you better let me know what's going on."

"What do you mean?"

"You and Donnelly, what are ye cooking up? What's he been telling you?"

"Nothing, what?"

"He was at your house last night. He was seen leaving."

"What, are you having him followed?"

"He was just…an off-duty officer spotted him, happened to be going the same way, saw him entering your house."

I waited to see what more there was. If there'd been a tail on Dave, if they'd followed us to the mortuary…no, they'd've stepped in then and there. Wouldn't they? Maybe they'd arrested Dave last night, after he left my house the second time. Maybe they were questioning him alongside me.

And if they were? What was I going to do, grass him up?

"I'll tell you about the case I'm working. Dave Donnelly's visit was…a personal matter."

Geraghty flinched as if I'd slapped him; his tiny eyes flared up.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean, it was a private matter. Between two old friends. You know, there's something on your mind, you drop around a friend's house, ask his advice. Trouble with your neighbors, or your kids. Or your wife. Type of thing. And of course, to make sure I'd be at the party he's throwing tonight. He said Carmel really wanted me to be there."

Geraghty was sucking his teeth and his nostrils were flaring; when I said the word wife I thought I saw him flush; by the time I mentioned Carmel, he was nodding briskly, as if this were a file whose contents he had already read.