“Did you see which way he went?”

Bill Stannard pointed to the shore, farther into the harbor. “He was headed that way, but I was real tired, never saw him land. I guess the boat’s over there somewhere, because I definitely never saw him leave.”

“Any idea where he came from?”

“Hell, no. I never caught sight of him until he was more or less alongside. But there’s nothing much down toward the harbor entrance. The guy just showed up, out of nowhere.”

In the following twenty minutes, the police and Coast Guard searched the harbor from end to end for a twelve-foot Zodiac with a Yamaha engine. Nothing. And no one else had seen it, either. Which presented the investigation with a blank wall, the main trouble being that everything, including the murder, had taken place too early, when hardly anyone was awake.

Back in Skibbereen, Detective Ray McDwyer decided to concentrate on the killer’s getaway. It was clear that he had driven away from the crime scene in Jerry’s truck and had come as far as Skibbereen at the wheel. But what then?

The Crookhaven team called in to report the mystery man in the Zodiac, arriving in the harbor wearing a brown suede jacket and a black T-shirt. Both he and, more surprisingly, the boat had vanished.

Ray assessed that the man had somehow left the area from Skibbereen, and since there was no car dealer open at that early hour, he must have either gone on the bus, taken a taxi, walked, or stolen a car. There had been no report of anything stolen, so Ray dispatched an officer to check the taxi company. He and Joe Carey made calls to any business that might have been operational at seven in the morning.

The choice was limited. In fact, it didn’t stretch much beyond the Shamrock. Joe Carey went in first and beckoned for the youth behind the counter to come over for a quick word. The two had known each other all their lives, and Joe was friendly.

“Hello, young Mick,” he said. “Right now we’re looking for a fella who may have come in here yesterday morning, a little after seven.”

“Anything to do with that murder in Crookhaven yesterday?”

“Mind your business.”

“Sure, it is my business,” replied Mick, quick as a flash. “Any time there’s a bloody killer out there threatenin’ the lives of me and my fellow citizens, right there you’re talking my business. Anyway, I already read your boss is in charge, so it must be about the murder.”

Mick Barton proceeded to fall about laughing, despite the seriousness of the situation. He was only two years out of school, where he had been the class wit, and now he was the café wit. Joe Carey punched him cheerfully on the arm.

“Come on, now, the boss will be in here in a minute. Just let me know if there was a fella in here yesterday, early, wearing a brown suede jacket. A complete stranger.”

“No jacket,” said Mick. “But there was a fella, a stranger who came in. He drunk two big glasses of orange juice down in about twenty seconds. Then he had toast and coffee.”

“What was he wearing, Mick?”

“I think it was a black T-shirt, and he was carrying a leather bag.”

“Anything else you recall about him?”

“He could have been foreign. He was dark, short curly hair, heavyset. But he spoke English, naturally, or I wouldn’t have known what he was talking about.”

“Any idea where he went afterward?”

“Sure. He asked me about the bus to Cork, and I sent him up to the Eldon Hotel for the eight o’clock.”

Outside the Shamrock, Ray McDwyer put three men on the bus route to check with the drivers where the man in the black T-shirt had gone. They made contact with the Bus Eireann office and had their drivers check into the Skibbereen police station as soon as they pulled into town.

At midday, Ray and Joe left for Bantry, twenty-four miles away. Two detective inspectors from Scotland Yard’s Special Branch had flown direct from London to Cork and been transported by a Garda helicopter to the town of Bantry, where the body of Jerry O’Connell was in the morgue beneath the new Catholic Hospital.

Joe and Ray met them at the little airport, which had been constructed mainly to service Bantry’s major oil and gas terminal. All four went immediately to the hospital, and the two men from London expertly examined the body.

The chief inspector touched it only once. He gently pressed the area in the central forehead with the flat of his thumb. Then he stepped back and said immediately, “Ray, this farmer of yours was killed by an expert in unarmed combat. Death was caused by something smashing into and weakening the big forehead bone, which allows the combatant to slam the septum into the brain much easier.

“I’ve seen it before. But not often. When you’re looking at a murder like this, you instantly think of the SAS or one of the other Special Forces. But I can tell you, this cat really knew what he was doing. The farmer died in under five seconds. This was a lethal blow.”

Ray McDwyer nodded thoughtfully. “I wonder who the hell he was,” he said.

“That’s always the question, right? But this was a very local man, I imagine, no business far beyond West Cork?”

“ West Cork!” said Ray. “Jerry O’Connell didn’t have any business beyond Crookhaven.”

The inspector chuckled. “And that means he probably died by accident. I mean, the killer had no intention of harming him when he arrived in the area. Jerry just somehow got in the way.”

“I’ve assumed that from the start. At least I assume it on the basis that the murder could not have been committed by wandering Irish scoundrels.”

“Absolutely not,” declared the inspector. “This was committed by a professional. The issue is, why was he here, and what’s he doing now?”

“I’ve got half the force trying to trace him. But we’re having only limited luck. I’ll know more when we get back to Skibbereen. Are you fellas willing to stay a little longer?”

“Well, we had planned to return to London right away, but this is very brutal, and very bewildering. Do you have any ideas yet where this character came from?”

“Not really. First sighting was from a yacht captain in Crookhaven Harbor. He saw a man, who answered the rough description, cross the harbor in a Zodiac at the right time. Needless to say, the boat’s missing, but the yacht guy said it came in from the outer harbor.”

“Could he have been dropped at sea?”

“It’s hard to imagine how the hell he got there before six o’clock in the morning if he hadn’t been.” Joe McDwyer was visibly uneasy. But, as the Irish host, he stayed cool.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll get you a couple of rooms at the Eldon and we can have a strategy meeting this afternoon. I’m grateful you could come, but your diagnosis has made a grim situation somewhat worse.”

General Rashood awakened reasonably early, showered, shaved, and had breakfast in his room. He opened the door and found the Irish Times on the carpet. He picked it up and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw the lead story, straight across all eight columns of the front page:

WEST CORK SEAPORT STUNNED AT BRUTAL MURDER Dairy Farmer Found Battered to Death Garda Baffled at Senseless Slaying.

There followed a lurid account of how the longtime Crookhaven resident had gone missing and then been found dead on the cliff top, his truck and 160 gallons of milk missing. The newspaper speculated that it might have been just a milk thief, but later quotes from Detective Superintendent Raymond McDwyer suggested something much more sinister.

Extra police were due to be drafted into the area, and a nationwide search for the killer was launched last night. D-Sup. McDwyer was still in his office at 3 A.M. trying to piece together the many separate parts of his investigation.