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mine—will never be the same again.

 
    Chapter 7
    Twenty minutes after leaving the airport in Ashdown’s midnight-blue Nissan crossover, we arrived in the heart of Dublin. We parked along the south bank of the River Liffey and entered a maze of cobblestone streets. Though it was biting cold and still early in the evening, nightlife in the Temple Bar area was already in full-swing, the frigid air thick with Irish ballads and the malty aroma of beer.
    “The pub where it happened is called the Stalemate,” Ashdown informed me. “Just a couple more blocks.”
    I stepped over a puddle of vomit and brushed shoulders with an intoxicated kid no older than twenty.
    “Watch where you’re going, Eurotrash,” the kid shouted at me over his shoulder.
    “Bloody Yanks,” Ashdown mumbled.
    The term bar of Temple Bar actually meant “riverside path,” but the sheer number of pubs in the area could easily throw off anyone a smidgeon less Irish than Dylan Thomas or James Joyce.
    Minutes later, Ashdown pointed at a corner structure that appeared somewhat older, definitely seedier, than most of its neighbors. “There she is,” he said. “The Stalemate. She’s been shut down since the murder, but the owner’s applying pressure to have her reopened as soon as possible.”
    “Who is the owner?” I asked.
    “I’ve no clue. I’m just passing along the information that’s been given to me.”
    Amid a sea of lights the Stalemate stood in total darkness. As we approached, a figure emerged from the shadows, a woman, middle-aged, with hair the color of fire.
    Ashdown said, “Simon Fisk, meet Detective Inspector Colleen MacAuliffe of the Gardai .”
    “Pleased,” I said, taking her proffered hand. “Do I call you Detective or Inspector or Detective Inspector?”
    “How about Colleen?” Her brogue was queerly refreshing; it reminded me of a girl I’d once known, though I couldn’t recall her name, only her face and that voice, as light as air. In a Rhode Island elementary school maybe, back when I was still grasping for my European roots.
    With a thin blade produced from her jacket pocket, Colleen sliced through the white-and-blue police tape covering the frame. She unlocked the locks, opened the door, and stepped aside, allowing first me then Ashdown to enter. From behind us she summoned the lights.
    “This is about how bright they keep the pub during business hours,” she said.
    The interior smelled like Terry’s on a Sunday morning after a particularly rough Saturday night. The bar itself, solid wood painted black, ran nearly the full length of the pub along the wall to our left. The tiled floor, not surprisingly, was modeled after a black-and-white chessboard, though we were spared any hint of rooks or bishops or knights. Hanging from the walls were the usual mirrors and posters and neon signs, touting this or that brand of beer or liquor, the occasional cola or energy drink.
    “It happened in the rear of the pub,” Colleen said. “Just outside the lavatories.”
    It wasn’t difficult to imagine the pub packed with merrymakers, live music emanating from the makeshift stage set off to our right. Colleen removed a manila folder from her handbag and offered it to me.
    As I accepted it, my stare froze on the human outline taped to the floor tiles in front of the gents’ then gradually shifted to an evidence marker several feet away.
    “That was where we found our murder weapon,” Colleen said. “As you’ll see from the photos, it wasn’t terribly difficult to identify.”
    I gripped the folder tightly between my fingers, apprehensive about opening it. When I looked down my hand was trembling.
    “Fingerprints?” I said.
    I suddenly had a sour taste in my mouth, an ache in the back of my throat.
    “On the murder weapon, yes,” Colleen replied. “But no match to anything in our database or the UK’s. No hits with Interpol. Nothing yet from the FBI.”
    When I finally deigned to open the file I grimaced. The