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USED IN EVIDENCE

'You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you say mil be taken down and may be used in evidence,'

Part of the wording of the official caution used in the British and Irish police forces by the cautioning officer to the suspect.

The big police car slid to a halt by the kerb some fifty feet from where the cordon spanned the street to keep the bystanders back. The driver kept the engine running, the wipers flicking rhythmically across the screen to push away the insistent drizzle. From the rear seat Chief Superintendent William J. Hanley looked forward through the glass to the groups of watchers outside the cordon and the knots of irresolute officials beyond it.

'Stay here,' he told the driver, and prepared to get out. The driver was pleased; the inside of the car was snug and warm and, he reasoned, this was no morning to be walking up and down a slum street in the drifting rain. He nodded and cut the engine.

The precinct police chief slammed the door after him, hunched himself deeper into his dark blue overcoat, and walked purposefully towards the gap in the crowd barrier where a damp police officer watched over those who entered and left the cordoned area. Seeing Hanley he brought up a salute, stepped aside and let him pass through.

Big Bill Hanley had been twenty-seven years a policeman, starting by pounding the cobbled alleys of the Liberties and rising through the ranks to his present status. He had the build for it, over 6 feet and 1 inch of him and built like a truck. Thirty years before, he was rated the best lock forward that ever came out of Athlone County; in his green Irish jersey he had been part of the best rugby football team the country had ever produced, the team that Karl Mullen led to victory three years running in the Triple Crown and that wiped the floor with the English, the Welsh, the Scots and the French. That had not done his promotion chances any harm either, when he joined the force.

He liked the job; he got satisfaction from it, despite the poor pay and the long hours. But every job has its tasks that no one can enjoy, and this morning had brought one of them. An eviction.

For two years, the Dublin city council had been steadily demolishing the rash of tiny, back-to-back, one room up and one room down houses that formed the area known as the Gloucester Diamond.

Why it had ever been called that was a mystery. It had none of the wealth and privilege of the English royal house of Gloucester, nor any of the expensive brilliance of the diamond. Just an industrial slum lying behind the dockland zone on the north shore of the Liffey. Now most of it was flat, its dwellers rehoused in cubic council apartment blocks whose soul-numbing shapes could be seen half a mile away through the drizzle.

But it lay in the heart of Bill Hanley's precinct, so this morning's business was his responsibility, much as he hated it.

The scene between the twin chains of crowd barriers that cordoned the centre section of what had once been Mayo Eoad was as bleak that morning as the November weather. One side of the street was just a field of rubble, where soon the earth-movers would be at work, gouging out fresh foundations for the new shopping complex. The other side was the centre of attention. Up and down for hundreds of feet not a building stood. The whole area was flat as a pancake, the rain gleaming off the slick black tarmac of the new two-acre car park destined to house the vehicles of those who would one day work in the intended office blocks nearby. The entire two acres was fenced off by a 9-foot-high chain-link fence; that is to say, almost the whole two acres.

Right in the centre, facing onto Mayo Road, was one single remaining house, like an old broken stump of tooth in a nice smooth gum. Either side of it the houses had been torn down, and each side of the remaining home was propped up with thick timber beams. All the houses that had once backed onto the sole survivor had also gone and the tarmac tide lapped round the house on three sides like the sea round a lone sandcastle on the beach. It was this house and the frightened old man who sheltered within it that were to be the centre of the morning's action; the focus of entertainment for the expectant groups from the new apartment blocks, who had come to see the last of their former neighbours being evicted.

Bill Hanley walked forward to where, directly opposite the front gate of the lone house, stood the main group of officials. They were all staring at the hovel as if, now that the-moment had finally come, they did not know how to go about it. There was not much to look at. Fronting the pavement was a low brick wall, separating pavement and what purported to be the front garden: no garden at all, just a few feet of tangled weeds. The front door stood to one side of the house, chipped and dented by the numerous stones that had been flung at it. Hanley knew that behind the door would be a yard-square lobby and straight ahead the narrow stairs that led up. To the right of the lobby would be the door to the single sitting room, whose broken, cardboard-stuffed windows flanked the door. Between the two was the passage running to the small, filthy kitchen and the door leading to the yard and the outside privy. The sitting room would have a tiny fireplace, for the chimney running up the side of the house still jutted to the weeping sky. Behind the house, Hanley had seen from the side view, was a back yard wide as the width of the house and 25 feet long. The yard was fringed by a 6-foot-high timber plank fence. Inside the yard, so Hanley had been told by those who had peered over the fence, the bare earth was slick with the droppings of the four speckled hens the old man kept in a hutch at the foot of the yard, up against the back fence. And that was it.

The city council had done its best for the old man. There had been offers of rehousing in a bright, clean, new council flat; even a small house of his own somewhere else. There had been social workers, and relief workers, and church workers round to see him. They had reasoned and cajoled; given him deadline after deadline. He had refused to move. The street had come down around him and behind him and in front of him. He would not go. The work had gone on; the car park had been levelled and paved and fenced on three sides of him. Still the old man would not shift.

The local press had had quite a field day with the 'Hermit of Mayo Road'. So had the local kids, who had pelted the house with rocks and mud balls, breaking most of the windows while the old man, to their intense delight, shouted obscenities at them through the shattered panes.

Finally, the city council had issued its eviction notice, the magistrate had given permission for forcible removal of the occupant, and the might of the city had ranged itself before the front door on a wet November morning.

The chief housing officer greeted Hanley. 'Unpleasant business,' he said. 'Always is. Hate these evictions.'

'Aye,' said Hanley, and scanned the group. There were the two bailiffs who would do the job, big, burly men looking embarrassed. Two more from the council, two of Hanley's own policemen, someone from Health and Welfare, a local doctor, an assortment of minor officialdom. Barney Kelleher, the veteran photographer from the local newspaper, was there with a beardless young cub reporter in tow. Hanley had good relations with the local press and a friendly if guarded relationship with its older servants. They both had jobs to do; no need to make a guerrilla war out of it. Barney winked; Hanley nodded back. The cub took this as a sign of intimacy.

'Will you be bringing him out by force?' he asked brightly.

Barney Kelleher shot him a look of venom. Hanley swivelled his grey eyes to the sprog and held the gaze until the young man wished he had not spoken.

'We will be as gentle as we can,' he said gravely. The sprog scribbled furiously, more for something to do than because he could not remember such a short sentence.

The magistrate's order specified nine o'clock. It was two minutes past nine. Hanley nodded to the chief housing officer.

'Proceed,' he said.

The council officer approached the door of the house and knocked loudly. There was no answer.

'Are you there, Mr Larkin?' he called. No answer. The official looked back at Hanley. Hanley nodded. Clearing his throat, the official read out the eviction order in a voice loud enough to be heard inside the house. There was no answer. He stepped back to the group in the road.

'Will we give him five minutes?' he asked.

'Very well,' said Hanley. Behind the crush barrier a murmur started among the growing crowd of former dwellers in the Gloucester Diamond. Finally one at the back became bolder.

'Leave him alone,' called the voice. 'Poor old man.'

Hanley strolled leisurely over to the barrier. Without haste he walked down the line of faces, staring into the eyes of each. Most looked away; all fell silent.

'Is it sympathy you'd be giving him?' asked Hanley softly. 'Was it sympathy that broke all his windows last winter and himself freezing in there? Was it sympathy that had him pelted with stones and muck?' There was a long silence. 'Hold your hour,' said Hanley and walked back to the group by the front door. There was silence behind the barrier. Hanley nodded to the two bailiffs who were staring at him.

'On you go,' he said.

Both men had crowbars. One walked round the side of the house, between the chain-link fence and the corner of the brickwork. With skilled ease, he prised loose three of the fence planks and entered the back yard. He walked to the back door and rapped at it with his bar. When his colleague at the front heard the sound, he rapped at the front. There was no reply to either. The man at the front inserted the tip of the crowbar between the door and side post and had it open in a trice. The door yielded 3 inches and stopped. There was furniture behind it. The bailiff shook his head sadly and, turning to the other edge of the door, whisked off both hinges. Then he picked up the door and laid it in the front garden. Piece by piece, he removed the pile of chairs and tables in the hallway until the space was clear. Finally he entered the lobby calling, 'Mr Larkin?' From the back there was a splintering sound as his friend entered through the kitchen.

There was silence in the street while the men searched the ground floor. At the upper bedroom window a pale face appeared. The crowd spotted it.

'There he is,' yelled three or four voices from the crowd, like hunt followers spotting the fox before the riders. Just trying to be helpful. One of the bailiffs popped his head round the front doorpost. Hanley nodded upwards towards the bedroom window; the two men clumped up the narrow stairs. The face disappeared. There was no scuffle. In a minute they were coming down, the leader cradling the frail old man in his arms. He emerged into the drizzle and stood undecided. The relief worker hurried forward with a dry blanket. The bailiff set the old man down on his feet and the blanket was wrapped round him. He looked underfed and slightly dazed, but most of all very frightened. Hanley made up his mind. He turned towards his car and beckoned the driver forward. The council could have him later for the old folks home, but first a damn good breakfast and a hot cup of tea was called for.

'Put him in the back,' he told the bailiff. When the old man was settled in the warm rear seat of the car, Hanley climbed in beside him.

'Let's get out of here,' said Hanley to his driver. 'There's a transport cafe half a mile down here and second left. We'll go there.'

As the car moved back through the barrier and past the staring crowd, Hanley gave a glance at his unusual guest. The old man was dressed in grubby slacks and a thin jacket over an unbuttoned shirt. Word had it he had not looked after himself properly for years, and his face was pinched and sallow. He stared silently at the back of the car seat in front of him, not returning Hanley's gaze.

'It had to come sooner or later,' said Hanley gently. 'You knew that all along.'

Despite his size and the capacity, when he wished to use it, to cause hard villains from the dockland to wet their knickers when he faced them, Big Bill Hanley was a much kinder man than his meaty face and twice-broken nose would give reason to think. The old man turned slowly and stared at him, but he said nothing.

'Moving house, I mean,' said Hanley. 'They'll fix you up in a nice place, warm in winter, and decent food. You'll see.'

The car drew up at the cafe. Hanley descended and turned to his driver.

'Bring him in,' he said.

Inside the warm and steamy cafe Hanley nodded to a vacant corner table. The police driver escorted the old man to the corner and sat him down, back to the wall. The old man said nothing, neither of thanks nor protestation. Hanley glanced at the wall chart behind the counter. The cafe owner wiped his hands on a damp dishcloth and looked inquiringly.

'Double eggs, bacon, tomatoes, sausage and chips,' said Hanley. 'In the corner. The old fella. And start with a mug of tea.' He placed two pound notes on the counter. 'I'll be back for the change,' he said.

The driver returned from the corner table to the counter.

'Stay there and keep an eye on him,' said Hanley. 'I'll be taking the car myself.'

The driver thought it was his lucky day; first a warm car, now a warm café. Time for a cup of tea and a smoke.

'Will I sit with him, sir?' he asked. 'He smells a bit.'

'Keep an eye on him,' repeated Hanley. He drove himself back to the demolition site in Mayo Road.

The team had been all ready and prepared and they were not wasting time. A line of contractor's men came in and out of the house, bearing the squalid goods and chattels of the former occupant, which they deposited in the road under the now streaming rain. The council housing officer had his umbrella up and watched. Inside the car-park compound two mechanical shovels on their rubber wheels were waiting to begin on the rear of the house, the back yard and small privy. Behind them waited a line of ten tipper trucks to carry away the rubble of the house. Mains water, electric current and gas had been cut off months ago, and the house was damp and filthy as a result. Sewage there had never been, hence the outside privy which had been served by a buried septic tank, soon to be filled in and concreted over forever. The council housing officer approached Hanley when he got out of his car again. He gestured towards the open back of a council van.

'I've saved what we could of any sentimental value,' he volunteered. 'Old photos, coins, some medal ribbons, some clothes, a few personal documents in a cigar box, mostly mouldy. As for the furniture…' he indicated the pile of bric-a-brac in the rain, 'it's alive; the medical officer has advised us to burn the lot. You wouldn't get tuppence for it.'

'Aye,' said Hanley. The official was right, but that was Ids problem. Still, he seemed to want moral support.

'Will he get compensation for this?' asked Hanley.

'Oh, yes,' said the official eagerly, anxious to explain that his department was not a heartless beast. 'For the house, which was his own title property, and a fair valuation for the furniture, fixtures, fittings and any personal effects lost, damaged or destroyed. And a displacement allowance to cover the inconvenience of moving… though frankly he's cost the council a lot more than the total by refusing to quit for so long.'

At this moment, one of the men came from round the side of the house carrying two chickens, head down, in each hand.

'What the hell do I do with these?' he asked no one in particular.

One of his colleagues told him. Barney Kelleher snapped off a photo. Good picture, that, he thought. The last friends of the Hermit of Mayo Road. Nice caption. One of the contractor's men said he too kept chickens and could put them in with his small flock. A cardboard carton was found, the damp birds popped inside and they went in the council van until they could go to the workman's home.

Within an hour, it was over. The small house was gutted. A burly foreman in gleaming yellow oilskins came over to the council official.

'Can we start?' he asked. 'The boss wants the car park finished and fenced. If we can concrete by tonight, we can tar it over tomorrow first thing.'

The official sighed. 'Go ahead,' he said. The foreman turned and waved toward a mobile crane from whose arm swung a half-ton iron ball. Gently the crane moved forward to the flank of the house, planted itself and rose with a soft hiss onto its hydraulic feet. The ball began to swing, gently at first, then in bigger arcs. The crowd watched fascinated. They had seen their own houses go down in just this way, but the sight never palled. Finally, the ball thumped into the side of the house, not far from the chimney, splintering a dozen bricks and sending two cracks racing down the wall. The crowd gave a long, low 'Aaaaaah'. There's nothing like a nice bit of demolition to cheer up a bored crowd. At the fourth crunch, two upper windows popped out from their frames and fell into the car park. A corner of the house detached itself from the rest, waltzed slowly in a half spiral and collapsed into the back yard. Moments later, the chimney stack, a solid column of brick, snapped at the mid-section and the upper portion crashed through the roof and down through the floor to ground level. The old house was coming apart. The crowd loved it. Chief Superintendent Hanley got back into his car and returned to the caf6.

It was even warmer and more humid than before. His driver sat at the bar counter before a steaming cup of tea. He stubbed out a cigarette as Hanley walked in and slithered from his bar stool. The old man seemed busy in the corner.

'Is he finished yet?' asked Hanley.

'He's taking a powerful long time, sir,' said the driver. 'And the buttered bread is going down like there was no tomorrow.'

Hanley watched as the old man embalmed yet another morsel of greasy fried food in soft, white bread and began to chew.

'The bread'11 be extra,' said the caf6 owner. 'He's had three portions already.'

Hanley glanced at his watch. It was past eleven. He sighed and hoisted himself on a stool.

'A mug of tea,' he said. He had told the Health and Welfare official to join him in thirty minutes and take the old man into council care. Then he could get back to his office and on with some paperwork. He'd be glad to be shot of the whole business.

Barney Kelleher and his cub reporter came in.

'Buying him breakfast, are you?' asked Barney.

'I'll claim it back,' said Hanley. Kelleher knew he wouldn't. 'Get some pictures?'

Barney shrugged. 'Not bad,' he said. 'Nice one of the chickens. And the chimney stack coming down. And himself being brought out in a blanket. End of an era. I remember the days when ten thousand people lived in the Diamond. And all of them at work. Poor paid, mind you, but working. It took fifty years to create a slum in those days. Now they can do it in five.'

Hanley grunted. 'That's progress,' he said.

A second police car drew up at the door. One of the young officers who had been at Mayo Road jumped out, say/ through the glass that his chief was with the press and halted, irresolute. The cub reporter did not notice. Barney Kelleher pretended not to. Hanley slid off his stool and went to the door. Outside in the rain the policeman told him, 'You'd better come back, sir. They've… found something.'

Hanley beckoned to his driver who came out to the pavement. 'I'm going back,' said Hanley. 'Keep an eye on the old man.' He glanced back into the cafe.

At the far back the old man had stopped eating. He held a fork in one hand, a piece of rolled bread containing half a sausage in the other, perfectly immobile, as he stared silently at the three uniforms on the pavement.

Back at the site, all work had stopped. The demolition men in their oilskins and hard hats stood grouped in a circle in the rubble of the building. The remaining policeman was with them. Hanley strode from his car, picking his way over the shattered piles of brick, to where the circle of men stared downwards. From behind, the remnants of the crowd murmured.

'It's the old man's treasure,' whispered someone loudly from the crowd. There was a murmur of agreement. 'He had a fortune buried there; that's why he'd never leave.'

Hanley arrived at the centre of the group and looked at the area of attention. The short stump of the shattered chimney stack still stood, 5 feet high, surrounded by piles of debris. At the base of the stack, the old black fireplace could still be seen. To one side a couple of feet of outer house wall still stood. At its base, inside the house, was a collection of fallen bricks, from which protruded the shrunken and wizened, but still recognizable leg of a human being. A shred of what looked like a stocking still clung below the kneecap.

'Who found it?' asked Hanley.

The foreman stepped forward. 'Tommy here was working on the chimney breast with a pick. He cleared some bricks to get a better swing. He saw it. He called me.'

Hanley recognized a good witness when he saw one.

'Was it under the floorboards, then?' asked Hanley.

'No. This whole area was built on a marsh. The builders cemented in the floors.'

'Where was it, then?'

The foreman leaned down and pointed to the stump of the fireplace. 'From the inside of the sitting room the fireplace looked to be flush with the wall. In fact it wasn't. Originally it jutted out from the house wall. Someone ran up a quick brick wall between the chimney breast and the end of the room, forming a cavity twelve inches deep, right up to the room ceiling. And another on the other side of the fireplace to give symmetry. But the other one was empty. The body was in the cavity between the false wall and the house wall. Even the room was repapered to cover the work. See, the same paper on the front of the chimney breast as on the false wall.'

Hanley followed his finger; shreds of the same damp-mottled wallpaper adhered to the front of the chimney breast above the mantelshelf and to the bricks surrounding and part covering the body. It was an old paper with a rosebud pattern on it. But on the inside of the original house wall beside the fireplace, a dingy and even older striped wallpaper could be discerned.

Hanley stood up. 'Right,' he said. 'That's the end of your work for today. You might as well stand the men down and let them go. We'll be taking over from here.' The hard hats began to move back off the pile of bricks. Hanley turned to his two policemen.

'Keep the crowd barriers up,' he said. 'The whole place sealed off. More men will be coming, and more barriers. I want this place unapproached from any of the four sides. I'll get more manpower up here and the forensic boys. Nothing touched until they say so, OK?'

The two men saluted. Hanley heaved himself back into his car and called precinct headquarters. He issued a stream of orders, then had himself patched through to the technical section of the Investigation Bureau, tucked away in a grim old Victorian barracks behind Heuston railway station. He was lucky. Detective Superintendent O'Keefe came on the line, and they had known each other many years. Hanley told him what had been found and what he needed.

'I'll get them up there,' O'Keefe's voice crackled down the line. 'Do you want the Murder Squad brought in?'

Hanley sniffed. 'No thanks. I think we can handle this one at divisional level.'

'Do you have a suspect then?' asked O'Keefe.

'Oh, yes, we have one of those all right,' said Hanley.

He drove himself back to the caf6, passing Barney Keileher who was trying unsuccessfully to get back through the crowd barrier. This time, the patrolman on duty was not being nearly so helpful.

At the cafe, Hanley found his driver still at the counter. At the rear sat the old man, meal finished, sipping a cup of tea. He stared at Hanley as the giant policeman came over to him.

'We've found her,' said Hanley, leaning over the table and speaking so softly that no one else in the room could hear him.

'We'd better be going, had we not, Mr Larkin? Down to the station, now? We have to do a little talking, do we not?'

The old man stared back without a word. It occurred to Hanley that so far he had not opened his mouth. Something flickered in the old man's eyes. Fear? Relief? Probably fear. No wonder he had been afraid all these years.

He rose quietly and with Hanley's firm hand on his elbow went out to the police car. The driver followed and climbed behind the wheel. The rain had stopped and a chill wind blew toffee papers like autumn leaves down the street where no trees grew. The car drew away from the kerb. The old man sat hunched, staring ahead, silent.

'Back to the station,' said Hanley.

There is no country in the world where a murder investigation is a matter of inspired guesses as television would have it. They are 90 per cent plodding routine, formalities to be gone through, procedures to be fulfilled. And administration, plenty of that.

Big Bill Hanley saw the old man settled into a cell at the back of the charge room; he made no protest, asked for no lawyer. Hanley had no intention of charging him — yet. He could hold him on suspicion for at least twenty-four hours and he wanted more facts first. Then he sat at his desk and started with the telephone.

'By the book, lad, by the book. We're not Sherlock Holmes,' his old sergeant used to tell him, years before. Good advice. More cases have been lost in court by procedural screw-ups than have ever been won by intellectual brilliance.

Hanley formally informed the city coroner of the fact of a death, catching the senior civil servant just as he was leaving for his lunch. Then he told the city morgue in Store Street, just behind the bus terminal, that there would be a complex post-mortem that afternoon. He traced the state pathologist, Professor Tim McCarthy, who listened calmly on a telephone in the hallway of the Kildare Club, sighed at the thought of missing the excellent breast of pheasant that was on the menu, and agreed to come at once.

There were canvas screens to be organized, and men detailed to collect picks and shovels and report to Mayo Road. He summoned the three detectives attached to his precinct from their lunch in the canteen to his office, and made do with two sandwiches and a pint of milk as he worked.

'I know you are busy,' he told them. 'We all are. That's why I want this one tied up fast. It shouldn't take too long.'

He named his detective chief inspector to be scene-of-crime examiner and sent him to Mayo Road without delay. The two young sergeants got separate jobs. One was detailed to check into the house itself; the council official had said the old man owned it, freehold, but the rating office at the City Hall would have details of its past history and ownership. The register of deeds would clinch the final details.

The second detective sergeant got the legwork; trace every former occupant of Mayo Road, most of them now rehoused in the council apartment blocks. Find the neighbours, the gossips, the shopkeepers, the patrolmen who had had the beat including Mayo Road for the past fifteen years before its demolition, the local priest — anybody who had known Mayo Road and the old man for as many years back as possible. And that, said Hanley with emphasis, includes anyone who ever knew Mrs, that is, the late Mrs Larkin.

He dispatched a uniformed sergeant with a van to repossess all the personal memorabilia from the destroyed house that he had seen in the council van that morning, and to bring the abandoned furniture, fleas and all, into the police station yard.

It was past two in the afternoon when he finally rose and stretched. He instructed that the old man be brought to the interview room, finished his milk and waited five minutes. When he walked into the interview room, the old man was seated at the table, hands clasped in front of him, staring at the wall. A policeman stood near the door.

'Any word from him?' murmured Hanley to the officer.

'No, sir. Not a tiling.'

Hanley nodded for him to go.

When they were alone, he sat at the table facing the old man. Herbert James Larkin, the council records showed.

'Well, now, Mr Larkin,' said Hanley softly. 'Don't you think it would be a sensible thing to tell me about it?'

His experience told him there was no use trying to bully the old man. This was no street villain from the underworld. He'd had three wife-murderers in his time, and all of them mild, meek little fellows who had soon seemed relieved to get rid of the awful details to the big sympathetic man across the table. The old man slowly looked up at him, held his gaze for a few moments, and looked back at the table. Hanley took out a packet of cigarettes and flipped it open.

'Smoke?' he said. The old man didn't move. 'Actually I don't use them myself either,' said Hanley, but he left the pack invitingly open on the table, a box of matches beside it.

'Not a bad try,' he conceded. 'Holding on to the house like that, all those months. But the council had to win sooner or later. You knew that, didn't you? Must have been awful, knowing that they'd send the bailiffs for you sooner or later.'

He waited for a comment, any hint of communication from the old man. There was none. No matter, he was patient as an ox when he wanted a man to talk. And they all talked sooner or later. It was the relief really. The unburdening. The Church knew all about the relief of confession.

'How many years, Mr Larkin? How many years of anxiety, of waiting? How many months since the first bulldozers moved into the area, eh? Man, what you must have gone through.'

The old man lifted his gaze and met Hanley's eyes, maybe searching for something, a fellow human being after years of self-imposed isolation; a little sympathy perhaps. Hanley felt he Was nearly there. The old man's eyes swivelled away, over Hanley's shoulder to the rear wall.

'It's over, Mr Larkin. All over. It's got to come out, sooner or later. We'll go back through the years, slowly, plodding away, and we'll piece it together. You know that. It was Mrs Larkin, wasn't it? Why? Another man? Or just an argument? Maybe it was just an accident, eh? So you panicked, and then you were committed; to living like a hermit all your days.'

The old man's lower lip moved. He ran his tongue along it.

I'm getting through, thought Hanley. Not long now.

'It must have been bad, these past years,' he went on. 'Sitting there all alone, no friends like before it happened, just you and the knowledge that she was still there, not far away, bricked away beside the fireplace.'

Something flickered in the old man's eyes. Shock at the memory? Perhaps the shock treatment would work better. He blinked twice. I'm nearly there, thought Hanley, I'm nearly there. But when the old man's eyes moved back to meet his own, they were blank again. He said nothing.

Hanley kept it up for another hour, but the old man never uttered a word.

'Please yourself,' said Hanley as he rose. 'I'll be back, and we'll talk it over then.'

When he arrived at Mayo Road, the scene was a hive of activity, the crowd bigger than before, but able to see far less. On all four sides, the ruin of the house was surrounded by canvas screens, whipped by the wind but enough to keep prying eyes from seeing the job going on within. Inside the hollow square that included a portion of the roadway, twenty hefty policemen in heavy boots and rummage gear were pulling the rubble to pieces by hand. Each brick and slate, each shattered timber from the stairs and banisters, each tile and ceiling joist, was carefully plucked out, examined for whatever it might show, which was nothing, and tossed out into the roadway, where the rubble mounted higher and higher. The contents of cupboards were examined, the cupboards themselves ripped out to see if there was anything behind them. All walls were tapped to see if they contained hollow cavities before they were pulled down brick by brick and thrown into the road.

Round the fireplace, two men worked with special care. The rubble on top of the corpse was lifted carefully away until only a thick film of dust covered the body. It was bent into an embryo posture, lying on its side, though in its cavity it had probably sat upright, facing sideways. Professor McCarthy, looking over what was left of the house wall, directed these two men at their work. When it was done to his satisfaction, he entered the cavity among the remaining bricks and with a soft brush, like a careful housewife, began to whisk away the creamy dust of the old mortar.

When he had cleared the major part of the dust, he examined the body more closely, tapped part of the exposed thigh and of the upper arm, and emerged from the cavity.

'It's a mummy,' he told Hanley.

'A mummy?'

'Just so. With a brick or concrete floor, a sealed environment on all six sides, and the Warmth of the fireplace two feet away, mummification has taken place. Dehydration, but with preservation. The organs may well be intact, but hard as wood. No use trying to cut tonight. I'll need the warm glycerine bath. It'll take time.'

'How long?' asked Hanley.

'Twelve hours at least. Maybe more. I've known it take days.' The professor glanced at his watch. 'It's nearly four. I'll have it immersed by five. Tomorrow morning around nine, I'll look in at the morgue and see if I can start.'

'Blast,' said Hanley. 'I wanted this one sewn up.'

'An unfortunate choice of words,' said McCarthy. 'I'll do the best I can. Actually, I don't think the organs will tell us much. From what I can see there's a ligature round the neck.'

'Strangulation, eh?'

'Maybe,' said McCarthy. The undertaker who always got the city contracts had his van parked out beyond the screens. Under the state pathologist's supervision, two of his men lifted the rigid corpse, still on its side, onto a bier, covered it with a large blanket and transferred their cargo to the waiting hearse. Followed by the professor, they sped off to Store Street and the city morgue. Hanley walked over to the fingerprint man from the technical section.

'Anything here for you?' he asked.

The man shrugged. 'It's all brick and rubble in there, sir. There's not a clean surface in the place.'

'How about you?' Hanley asked the photographer from the same office.

'I'll need a bit more, sir. I'll wait until the boys have got it cleared down to the floor, then see if there's anything there. If not, I've got it for tonight.'

The gang foreman from the contractor wandered over. He had been kept standing by at Hanley's suggestion, as a technical expert in case of hazard from falling rubble. He grinned.

'That's a lovely job you've done there,' he said in his broad Dublin accent. 'There'll not be much for my lads left to do.'

Hanley gestured to the street where most of the house now lay in a single large mound of brick and timber debris.

'You can start shifting that if you like. We're finished with it,' he said.

The foreman glanced at his watch in the gathering gloom. 'There's an hour left,' he said. 'We'll get most of it shifted. Can we start on the rest of the house tomorrow? The boss wants to get that park finished and fenced.'

'Check with me at nine tomorrow morning. I'll let you know,' he said.

Before leaving he called over his detective chief inspector who had been organizing it all.

'There are portable lights coming,' he said. 'Have the lads bring it down to floor level and search the floor surface for any signs of interference since it was laid down.'

The detective nodded. 'So far it's just the one hiding place,' he said. 'But I'll keep looking till it's clean.'

Back at the station, Hanley got the first chance to look at something that might tell him about the old man in the cells. On his desk was the pile of assorted odds and ends that the bailiffs had removed from the house that morning and put into the council van. He went through each document carefully, using a magnifying glass to read the old and faded lettering.

There was a birth certificate, giving the name of the old man, his place of birth as Dublin and his age. He had been born in 1911. There were some old letters, but from people who meant nothing to Hanley, mostly from long ago, and their contents had no seeming bearing on the case. But two things were of interest. One was a faded photograph, mottled and warped, in a cheap frame, but unglassed. It showed a soldier in what looked like British Army uniform, smiling uncertainly into the camera. Hanley recognized a much younger version of the old man in the cells. On his arm was a plump young woman with a posy of flowers; no wedding dress but a neutral-coloured two-piece suit with the high, square shoulders of the mid to late 1940s.

The other item was the cigar box. It contained more letters, also irrelevant to the case, three medal ribbons clipped to a bar with a pin behind it, and a British Army service pay book. Hanley reached for the telephone. It was twenty past five, but he might be lucky. He was. The military attach^ at the British embassy out at Sandyford was still at his desk. Hanley explained his problem. Major Dawkins said he would be glad to help if he could, unofficially, of course. Of course. Official requests have to go through channels. Officially all contact between the Irish police force and Britain goes through channels. Unofficially, contacts are much closer than either side would be prepared to concede to the idle inquirer. Major Dawkins agreed to stop by the police station on his way home, even though it meant quite a detour.

Darkness had long fallen when the first of the two young detectives doing the legwork reported back. He was the man who had been checking the register of deeds and the rating lists. Seated in front of Hanley's desk, he flicked open his notebook and recited.

The house at 38 Mayo Road had been bought, so the records of deeds showed, by Herbert James Larkin in 1954 from the estate of the previous owner, then deceased. He had paid £400 for the property, title freehold. No evidence of a mortgage, so he had had the money available. The rating list showed the house to have been owned since that date by the same Herbert James Larkin and occupied by Mr Herbert James Larkin and Mrs Violet Larkin. No record of the wife's decease or departure, but then the rating list would not show a change of occupancy, even in part, unless advised in writing by the continuing occupant, which had not happened. But a search of the death certificates over at the Custom House, going back to 1954, revealed no trace of the death of any Mrs Violet Larkin, of that address or any other.

Department of Health and Welfare records showed that Larkin drew a state pension for the past two years, never applied for supplementary benefit, and prior to pensionable retirement was apparently a storekeeper and night watchman. One last thing, said the sergeant. His internal PA YE forms, starting in 1954, had shown a previous address in North London, England.

Hanley flicked the Army pay book across the desk.

'So he was in the British Army,' said the sergeant.

'Nothing strange in that,' said Hanley. 'There were fifty thousand Irishmen in the British Armed Forces during the Second World War. Larkin was one of them, it seems.'

'Perhaps the wife was English. He came back to Dublin in 1954 with her from North London.'

'Likely she was,' said Hanley, pushing over the wedding photo. 'He married her in uniform.'

The internal phone rang to inform him the military attache from the British Embassy was at the front desk. Hanley nodded at his sergeant, who left. 'Show him in, please,' said Hanley.

Major Dawkins was Hanley's luckiest find of the day. He crossed his pinstripe-clad legs elegantly, aimed a glittering toe-cap at Hanley across the desk and listened quietly. Then he studied the wedding photograph intently for a while.

Finally he came round the desk and stood by Hanley's shoulder with the magnifying glass in one hand and his gold propelling pencil in the other. With the tip of the pencil, he tapped the cap badge above Larkin's face in the photograph.

'King's Dragoon Guards,' he said with certainty.

'How do you know that?' asked Hanley.

Major Dawkins passed Hanley the magnifying glass.

'The double-headed eagle,' he said. 'Cap badge of the King's Dragoon Guards. Very distinctive. None like it.'

'Anything else?' asked Hanley.

Dawkins pointed to the three medals on the chest of the newly-wed.

'The first one is the 1939–1945 Star,' he said, 'and the third one at the end is the Victory Medal. But the one in the middle is the Africa Star with what looks like the bar clasp of the Eighth Army across it. That makes sense. The King's Dragoon Guards fought against Rommel in North Africa. Armoured cars, actually.'

Hanley brought out the three medal ribbons. Those in the photograph were the full ceremonial medals; those on the desk were the smaller version — the miniatures on a bar — for wearing with un-dress uniform.

'Ah, yes,' said Major Dawkins, with a glance at them. 'The same pattern see. And the Eighth Army bar.'

With the glass, Hanley could make out that the pattern was the same. He passed Major Dawkins the service pay book. Dawkins' eyes lit up. He flicked through the pages.

'Volunteered at Liverpool, October 1940,' he said, 'probably at Burton's.'

'Burton's?' asked Hanley.

'Burton, the tailors. It was the recruiting centre at Liverpool during the war. A lot of the Irish volunteers arrived at Liverpool docks and were directed there by the recruiting sergeants. Demobilized January 1946. Honourable discharge. Odd.'

'What?' asked Hanley.

'Volunteered in 1940. Fought in action with armoured cars in North Africa. Stayed until 1946. But he stayed a trooper. Never won a stripe on his arm. Never made corporal.' He tapped the uniformed arm in the wedding photograph.

'Perhaps he was a bad soldier,' suggested Hanley.

'Possibly.'

'Can you get me some more details of his war record?' asked Hanley.

'First thing in the morning,' said Dawkins. He noted most of the details in the pay book and left.

Hanley had a canteen supper and waited for his second detective sergeant to report back. The man arrived at well past 10.30, tired but triumphant.

'I spoke with fifteen of those who knew Larkin and his wife in Mayo Road,' he said, 'and three came up trumps. Mrs Moran, the next-door neighbour. She'd been there for thirty years and remembers the Larkins moving in. The postman, now retired, who served Mayo Road up till last year, and Father Byrne, also retired, now living in a retired priests' home out at Inchicore. I've just got back from there, hence the delay.'

Hanley sat back as the detective flicked back to the start of his notebook and began to report.

'Mrs Moran recalled that in 1954 the widower who had lived there, at Number 38, died and shortly afterwards, a For Sale notice went up on the house. It was only there a fortnight, then it came down. A fortnight later, the Larkins moved in. Larkin was then about forty-five, his wife much younger. She was English, a Londoner, and told Mrs Moran they had moved from London where her husband had been a store clerk. One summer, Mrs Larkin disappeared; Mrs Moran put the year at 1963.'

'How is she so certain?' asked Hanley.

'That November Kennedy was killed,' said the detective sergeant. 'The news came from the lounge bar up the street where there was a television set. Within twenty minutes everyone in Mayo Road was on the pavement discussing it. Mrs Moran was so excited she burst into Larkin's house next door to tell him. She didn't knock, just walked into the sitting room. Larkin was dozing in a chair. He jumped up in great alarm and couldn't wait to get her out of the house. Mrs Larkin had left by then. But she was there in the spring and summer; she used to baby-sit for the Morans on a Saturday night; Mrs Moran's second baby was born in January 1963. So it was the late summer of '63 that Mrs Larkin disappeared.'

'What was the reason given?' asked Hanley.

'Walked out on him,' said the detective without hesitation. 'No one doubted it. He worked hard, but never wanted to go out in the evening, not even Saturday, hence Mrs Larkin's availability as a baby-sitter. There were rows about it. Something else; she was flighty, a bit of a flirt. When she packed her bags and left him, no one was surprised. Some of the women reckoned he deserved it for not treating her better. No one suspected anything.

'After that, Larkin kept himself even more to himself. Hardly ever went out, ceased to care much for himself or the house. People offered to help out, as they do in small communities, but he rejected all offers. Eventually people left him alone. A couple of years later, he lost his job as a storeman and became a night watchman, leaving after dark and returning at sunrise. Kept the door double-locked at night because he was out, by day because he wanted to sleep. So he said. He also started keeping pets. First ferrets, in a shed in the back garden. But they escaped. Then pigeons, but they flew off or were shot elsewhere. Finally chickens, for the past ten years.'

The parish priest confirmed much of Mrs Moran's recollections. Mrs Larkin had been English, but a Catholic and a churchgoer. She had confessed regularly. Then in August 1963 she had gone off, most people said with a man friend, and Father Byrne had known of no other reason. He would not break the confessional oath, but he would go so far as to say he did not doubt it. He had called at the house several times, but Larkin was not a churchgoer and refused all spiritual comfort. He had called his departed wife a tart.

'It all fits,' mused Hanley. 'She could well have been about to leave him when he found out and went at her a bit too hard. God knows, it's happened enough times.'

The postman had little more to add. He was a local man and used the local bar. Mrs Larkin had liked to have her noggin on a Saturday night, had even helped out as a barmaid one summer, but her husband soon put a stop to that. He recalled she was much younger than Larkin, bright and bubbly, not averse to a bit of flirting.

'Description?' asked Hanley.

'She was short, about five feet three inches. Rather plump, well-rounded anyway. Curling dark hair. Giggled a lot. Plenty of chest. Postman recalled when she pulled a pint of ale from those old-style beer pumps they used to have, it was worth watching. But Larkin went wild when he found out. Came in and pulled her home. She left him, or disappeared soon afterwards.'

Hanley rose and stretched. It was nearly midnight. He clapped a hand on the young detective's shoulder.

'It's late. Get yourself home. Write it all up in the morning.'

Hanley's last visitor of the night was his chief inspector, the scene-of-crime investigator.

'It's clean,' he told Hanley. The last brick removed, and not a sign of anything else that might be helpful.'

'Then it's up to the poor woman's body to tell us the rest of what we want to know,' said Hanley. 'Or Larkin himself.'

'Has he talked yet?' asked the chief inspector.

'Not yet,' said Hanley, 'but he will. They all talk in the end.'

The chief inspector went home. Hanley called his wife and told her he would be spending the night at the station. Just after midnight he went down to the cells. The old man was awake, sitting on the edge of his bunk, staring at the opposite wall. Hanley jerked his head at the police officer with him and they all trooped up to the interview room. The policeman sat in a corner with his notebook at the ready. Hanley faced the old man and read him the caution:

'Herbert James Larkin, you are not obliged to say anything. But anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence.'

Then he sat down opposite the old man.

'Fifteen years, Mr Larkin. That's long time to live with a thing like that. August of 1963, wasn't it? The neighbours remember it; the priest remembers it; even the postman remembers it. Now, why don't you tell me about it?'

The old man raised his eyes, held Hanley's gaze for a few seconds, then lowered his eyes to the table. He said nothing. Hanley kept it up almost until dawn. Larkin seemed not to tire, although the policeman in the corner yawned repeatedly. Larkin had been a night watchman for years, Hanley recalled. Probably more awake at night now than during the day.

There was a grey light filtering through the frosted-glass window of the interview room when he rose finally.

'Have it your own way,' he said. 'You may not talk, but your Violet will. Strange that, eh? Talking back from the grave behind the wall, fifteen years later. But she'll talk to the state pathologist, in a few hours now. She'll talk. She'll tell him in his laboratory what happened to her, when it happened, maybe even why it happened. Then we'll come here again, and I'll charge you.'

Slow to anger though he was, he was becoming irritated by the silence of the old man. It was not that he said little; he said absolutely nothing. Just stared back at Hanley with that strange look in his eyes. What was that look, Hanley asked himself. Trepidation? Fear of him, Hanley? Remorse? Mockery? No, not mockery. The man's number was up.

Finally he rose, rubbed a large hand round the stubble on his chin and went back to his office. Larkin went back to the cell.

Hanley snatched three hours' sleep in his chair, head tilted back, feet out, snoring loudly. At eight he rose, went to the rest room and washed and shaved. Two startled young police cadets surprised him there at half past eight as they came on duty and went about their business like two dormice in carpet slippers. At nine he was breakfasted and working his way through a mountain of accumulated paperwork. At 9.30 the contractor's foreman at the Mayo Road job came on the line. Hanley considered his request.

'All right,' he said at last, 'you can fence it in and concrete over.'

Twenty minutes later, Professor McCarthy was on the line.

'I've got the limbs straightened out,' he said cheerfully. 'And the skin is soft enough to take the scalpel. We're draining and drying it off now. I'll begin in an hour.'

'When can you give me a report?' asked Hanley.

'Depends what you mean,' came the voice down the line. 'The official report will take two to three days. Unofficially, I should have something just after lunch. Cause of death at least. We've confirmed the ligature round the neck. It was a stocking, as I suspected yesterday.'

The pathologist agreed to come the mile from the Store Street morgue to Hanley's office by 2.30.

The morning was uninterrupted, save by Major Dawkins, who phoned at midday.

'Bit of luck,' he said. 'Found an old friend of mine in the records office at the War House. He gave me priority.'

'Thank you, Major,' said Hanley. 'I'm taking notes; go ahead.'

'There's not too much, but it confirms what we thought yesterday.'

What you thought yesterday, Hanley said to himself. This laborious English courtesy.

'Trooper Herbert James Larkin arrived on the Dublin ferry at Liverpool, October 1940 and volunteered for the Army. Basic training at Catterick Camp, Yorkshire. Transferred to the King's Dragoon Guards. Sent by troopship to join the regiment in Egypt in March 1941. Then we come to the reason he never made corporal.'

'Which was?'

'He was captured. Taken prisoner by the Germans in Rommel's autumn offensive of that year. Spent the rest of the war as a farm worker at a POW camp in Silesia, eastern end of the Third Reich. Liberated by the Russians, October 1944. Repatriated April 1945, just in time for the end of the war in Europe in May.'

'Anything about his marriage?' asked Hanley.

'Certainly,' said Major Dawkins. 'He was married while a serving soldier, so the Army has that on file, too. Married at St Mary Saviour's Catholic Church, Edmonton, North London, 14th of November 1945. Bride, Violet Mary Smith, hotel chambermaid. She was seventeen at the time. As you know, he got an honourable discharge in January 1946 and stayed on in Edmonton working as a storekeeper until 1954. That's when the Army has its last address for him.'

Hanley thanked Dawkins profusely and hung up. Larkin was thirty-four, turning thirty-five, when he married a young girl of seventeen. She would have been a lively twenty-six when they came to live in Mayo Road, and he a perhaps not so lively forty-three. By the time she died in August 1963, she would have been a still-attractive and possibly sexy thirty-five, while he would have been a perhaps very uninteresting and uninterested fifty-two. Yes, that might have caused problems. He waited with impatience for the visit of Professor McCarthy.

The state pathologist was as good as his word and was seated in the chair facing Hanley by 2.30. He took out his pipe and began leisurely to fill it.

'Can't smoke in the lab,' he apologized. 'Anyway, the smoke covers the formaldehyde. You should appreciate it.'

He puffed contentedly.

'Got what you wanted,' said Professor McCarthy easily. 'Murder beyond a doubt. Manual strangulation with the use of a stocking, causing asphyxiation; coupled with shock. The hyoid bone here' — pointing to the area between chin and Adam's apple — 'was fractured in three places. Prior to death, a blow to the head was administered, causing scalp laceration, but not death. Probably enough to stun the victim and permit the strangulation to take place.'

Hanley leaned back. 'Marvellous,' he said. 'Anything on year of death?'

'Ah,' said the professor, reaching for his attach^ case. 'I have a little present for you.' He reached into the case and produced a polythene bag containing what appeared to be a 6-inch by 4-inch fragment of yellowed and faded newspaper.

'The scalp wound must have bled a bit. To prevent a mess on the carpet, our murderer must have wrapped the area of the scalp wound in newspaper. While he built his oubliette behind the false wall, no doubt. By good fortune it's recognizable as a piece of a daily newspaper, with the date still discernible on it.'

Hanley took the polythene bag and through the transparent material, with the aid of his reading spotlight and magnifying glass, studied the newsprint fragment. Then he sat up sharply.

'Of course, this was an old piece of newspaper,' he said.

'Of course it's old,' said McCarthy.

'It was an old piece, a back number, when it was used to wrap the wound in the head,' insisted Hanley.

McCarthy shrugged.

'You could be right,' he agreed. 'With this kind of mummy, one can't be accurate as to the exact year of death. But reasonably so.'

Hanley relaxed.

'That's what I meant,' he said with relief. 'Larkin must have grabbed the newspaper lining a drawer, or a cupboard, that had been there for years untouched. That's why the date on the paper goes back to March 13th, 1943.'

'So does the corpse,' said McCarthy. 'I put death at between 1941 and 1945. Probably within a few weeks of the date of that piece of newspaper.'

Hanley glared at him, long and hard. 'Mrs Violet Mary Larkin died during August 1963,' he said.

McCarthy stared at him and held the stare while he relit his pipe. 'I think,' he said gently, 'we're talking at cross-purposes.'

'I'm talking about the body in the morgue,' said Hanley.

'So am I,' said McCarthy.

'Larkin and his wife arrived from London in 1954,' said Hanley slowly. 'They bought Number 38, Mayo Road, following the death of the previous owner/occupant. Mrs Larkin was announced as having run away and left her husband in August 1963. Yesterday, we found her body bricked up behind a false wall while the house was being demolished.'

'You didn't tell me how long the Larkins had been at that house,' McCarthy pointed out reasonably. 'You asked me to do a pathological examination of a virtually mummified body. Which I have done.'

'But it was mummified,' insisted Hanley. 'Surely in those conditions there could be a wide range in the possible year of death?'

'Not twenty years,' said McCarthy equably. 'There is no way that body was alive after 1945. The tests on the internal organs are beyond much doubt. The stockings can be analysed, of course. And the newsprint. But as you say, both could have been twenty years old at the time of use. But the hair, the nails, the organs — they couldn't.'

Hanley felt as though he was living, while awake, his only nightmare. He was bulldozing his way towards the goal line, using his strength to cut a path through the English defenders during that last Triple Crown final match in 1951. He was almost there, and the ball began slipping from his hands. Try as he might, he could not hold on to it…

He recovered himself.

'Age apart, what else?' he asked. 'The woman was short, about five feet three inches?'

McCarthy shook his head. 'Sorry, bones don't alter in length, even after thirty-five years behind a brick wall. She was five feet ten to eleven inches tall, bony and angular.'

'Black hair, curly?' asked Hanley.

'Dead straight and ginger in colour. It's still attached to the head.'

'She was about thirty-five at the age of death?'

'No,' said McCarthy, 'she was well over fifty and she had had children, two I'd say, and there had been remedial surgery done, following the second.'

'Do you mean to say,' asked Hanley, 'that from 1954, they — until Violet Larkin walked out, and Larkin alone for the past fifteen years — have been sitting in their living room six feet from a walled-up corpse?'

'Must have done,' said McCarthy. 'A body in a state of mummification, which itself would occur within a short time in such a warm environment, would emit no odour. By 1954, assuming she was killed, as I think, in 1943, the body would long since have achieved exactly the same state as that in which we found her yesterday. Incidentally, where was your man Larkin in 1943?'

'In a prisoner-of-war camp in Silesia,' said Hanley.

'Then,' said the professor, rising, 'he did not kill that woman and brick her up beside the fireplace. So who did?'

Hanley picked up the internal phone and called the detectives' room. The young sergeant came on the line.

'Who,' asked Hanley with deliberation, 'was the man who owned and occupied the house in Mayo Road prior to 1954 and died in that year?'

'I don't know, sir,' said the young man.

'How long had he been in it?'

'I didn't take notes about that, sir. But I recall the previous occupant had been there for thirty years. He was a widower.'

'He certainly was,' growled Hanley. 'What was his name?'

There was a pause. 'I never thought to ask, sir.'

The old man was released two hours later, through the back door in case anyone from the press was hanging around the front lobby. This time, there was no police car, no escort. He had the address of a council hostel in his pocket. Without saying a word, he shuffled down the pavement and into the mean streets of the Diamond.

At Mayo Road, the missing section of chain-link fence where the house had once been was in place, closing off the entire car park. Within the area, on the spot where the house and garden had stood, was a sheet of level concrete in the last stages of drying. In the gathering dusk, the foreman was stomping over the concrete with two of his workers.

Every now and then he hacked at the surface with the steel-capped heel of one of his boots.

'Sure it's dry enough,' he said. 'The boss wants it finished and tarmacked over by tonight.'

On the other side of the road, in the rubble field, a bonfire burned up the last of a pile of banisters, stairs, roof joists, ceiling beams, cupboards, window frames and doors, the remnants of the plank fence, the old privy and the chicken house. Even by its light, none of the workers noticed the old figure that stared at them through the chain-link wire.

The foreman finished prowling over the rectangle of new concrete and came to the far end of the plot, up against where the old back fence had been. He looked down at his feet.

'What's this?' he asked. 'This isn't new. This is old.'

The area he was pointing at was a slab of concrete about 6 feet by 2.

'It was the floor of the old chicken house,' said the worker who had spread the ready-mix concrete that morning by hand.

'Did you not put a fresh layer over it?' asked the foreman.

'I did not. It would have raised the level too high at that spot. There'd have been a fierce hump in the tarmac if I had.'

'If there's any subsidence here, the boss'll have us do it again, and pay for it,' said the foreman darkly. He went a few feet away and came back with a heavy pointed steel bar. Raising it high above his head, he brought it down, point first, on the old concrete slab. The bar bounced back. The foreman grunted.

'All right, it's solid enough,' he conceded. Turning towards the waiting bulldozer, he beckoned. 'Fill it in, Michael.'

The bulldozer blade came down right behind the pile of steaming fresh tarmac and began to push the hot mountain, crumbling like soft, damp sugar, towards the rectangle of concrete. Within minutes, the area had turned from grey to black, the tar raked flat and even, before the mechanical roller, waiting behind the spreaders, finished the job. As the last light faded from the sky, the man left for home and the car park was at last complete.

Beyond the wire, the old man tinned and shuffled away. He said nothing, nothing at all. But for the first time, he smiled, a long, happy smile of pure relief.