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her if she wouldn’t do what she was told. Why should she think that you and me are going to treat her any different?’
    She was tempted for a moment to ask the girl about ‘Mah-wah-
kee-
yah’, but she decided against it. Even if she could persuade her to say anything at all, it was obvious that she was deeply traumatized and in Katie’s experience witnesses in that state were almost always unreliable. She didn’t want to devote hours of valuable police time trying to distinguish between what had really happened and what might have been nothing more than a young girl’s nightmare.
    ‘I’ll come and see you later, when you’re settled in the hospital’ she said, and gave the girl a smile. The girl only stared back and dragged the blanket up so far that only her eyes were showing.
    As Katie stepped down from the back of the ambulance, however, the girl did say something, though her voice was so muffled that Katie could hardly hear her. There was noise from outside, too, a police siren suddenly yipping and dozens of people talking.
    ‘Say that again, sweetheart, would you?’ Katie asked her.
    The girl lowered the blanket a little, took two or three breaths, then whispered, ‘
Rama Mala’ika!
’
    ‘I’m sorry, girl, I don’t understand you. What does that mean? That’s not your name, is it?
Rama Mal-ah-eeka
?’
    She waited, but the girl didn’t repeat it. Katie looked at the paramedic and shrugged.
    ‘Okay if we take her off now?’ said the paramedic.
    ‘Of course, yes. Thanks a million.’
    It was starting to rain again, so Katie hurried across to the deli and went inside. Detective Horgan was waiting for her and Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán had arrived. They were both standing inside the shop, talking to the technician whose back Katie had seen in the upstairs window.
    Kyna ó Nuallán had joined Katie’s team only a month ago, from Dublin, to replace Detective Sergeant Jimmy O’Rourke who had been shot and killed while on duty. She was a thin, tall, sharp-faced young woman with a prominent chin, a geometric blonde bob and almost colourless eyes. Detective O’Donovan had said he would have quite fancied her if she didn’t always make him feel that he had said something gauche, even before he’d said it.
    That was one of the reasons that Katie had selected her, though, apart from the fact that she was a woman. She had a way of listening to witnesses – nodding, not interrupting, but with one finely plucked eyebrow constantly raised as if she didn’t believe a single word they were saying. She made them work harder and harder to convince her that they were telling her the truth, and that was a very rare talent. Horgan had already dubbed her Sergeant O’Polygraph.
    ‘I got here as fast as I could, ma’am,’ she told Katie. ‘I’m almost done with Councillor Parry. You should have my full report on that by Friday, once I’ve talked to the Cremin brothers. I’m still trying to trace where the payment for that Donnybrook development went to, but I’ll find it.’
    Katie turned to the technician. He was fortyish, grey-haired, and she had never seen him look anything but weary – as if he went home every night and tried to watch television with his spaghetti supper on his lap but couldn’t see anything in his mind’s eye but glistening intestines, and couldn’t taste anything but Vicks VapoRub.
    ‘Well then,’ she said, ‘we’d better take a look at this unfortunate feller. How long do you think he’s been dead?’
    The technician handed her a surgical mask and passed another to Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán. He raised a jar of Vicks, but Katie shook her head and took an aerosol of Lancôme Miracle out of her bag. She sprayed the inside of the mask and then knotted it around her neck. Although most technicians and coroners used Vicks, it opened the nasal passages as well as masking the smell of putrefaction, and she found it made it linger in her lungs for longer. She didn’t want