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speak with him.”
    The officer nodded, leading the innocent soul away. Craddock glanced back through the gate into the graveyard. Sergeant Rafferty was standing over the sprawled body of the victim, gazing down with an apparently shocked expression. Close by, Inspector Munro was kneeling with a sketch pad and charcoal, copying impressions from any boot-indentations in the snow. Craddock sidled in, keeping clear of the actual murder scene.
    “ On your mother’s soul, eh, Rafferty?” he finally said, coming to stand beside the sergeant.
    Rafferty stiffened. “Aye sir, on my mother’s soul.”
    Marion Mary Rourke no longer looked human. She’d already frozen solid, and snowflakes were gathering on the blackened mess of her face. Her head lay virtually at a right angle to her shoulder.
    “ Ready to talk to me now?” Craddock wondered. “Now that we’ve got another body on our hands? Perhaps ready to tell me what it was you were too embarrassed to tell me before? About what Roisin Lachlan really said.”
    Rafferty stumbled for the right words. “I’m an Irishman born and bred, sir – but perhaps I’m too long away from the old country. I didn’t believe it when she told me. I couldn’t believe it. No right-thinking man would.”
    “ Try me,” the major said.
    The sergeant considered, then finally shrugged. “How long did we serve together in India, sir?”
    “ Thirty years or more. Why?”
    “ Didn’t we see some strange sights while we were out there? Hear some odd tales?”
    “ That we did, Rafferty.”
    “ You remember Calcutta market, sir?”
    Craddock nodded.
    “ And the fakir – floating in the air while he slept? I mean, we saw that, sir. We all saw it with our own eyes.”
    “ That we did.”
    “ And the fellow on the bed made from nails? Not a scratch on his back. Not a drop of blood drawn?”
    “ Aye.”
    “ And you says to me, ‘There’s more goes on in Heaven and Earth than me and you will ever know, Padraig Rafferty’.”
    “ I remember that,” the major said.
    The sergeant glanced round at his superior. Once again, he bore a haunted look. “Well try this for size, sir.” He cleared his throat, as if not knowing how to start. “There’s an old story – from my own country, sir. One you may have heard, but I doubt it. About the Pooka?”
    Craddock shook his head. “The Pooka?”
    Rafferty nodded. “A mythical creature. A sort of evil faerie. An imp, if you like. Back in Ireland, they never pick blackberries after September because the Pooka will have pissed on them.”
    Craddock looked back to the violated corpse. “We have three unsolved murders, and you think we should be looking for faeries?”
    Rafferty followed his gaze. “Roisin Lachlan does. And she saw what happened.”
    The major pondered this. “Tell me more.”
    “ You don’t scoff at our Irish legends, sir?”
    Craddock half-smiled. “My mentor was General Gough, Rafferty. You recall him, I take it. Our commanding officer at Goojerat.”
    “ How could I forget him, sir?”
    “ He was an Irishman, was he not?”
    “ He was indeed.”
    “ Did he not win the war?”
    “ That he did?”
    “ And the peace, bringing the Sikh nation under our banner, when all other methods had failed?”
    “ Aye.”
    Craddock nodded. “I respect the Irish, Rafferty. So tell me – the Pooka?”
    Again, the sergeant had to think before speaking. “In England you think of the faerie folk as something from a children’s book – pretty woodland spirits doing mischief. In Ireland it’s darker. The Pooka, they used to say, was something to be feared. A bringer of mayhem. A being who existed by his own rules. He especially disliked drunks. He’d prowl at night and if he came across any – he’d strangle them.”
    Major Craddock felt a chill pass through him, as if a frozen wind had picked up. He managed to suppress it. “As you say, it’s only a legend.”
    Rafferty didn’t seem convinced. “So far only Irish people have