Two of the concrete slabs were man-sized, and whoever had put them in had slapped lumpy cement around the edges, for the satisfaction of a job well done. The third one was even more half-arsed: just a lopsided chunk, maybe four feet by three, and fuck the cement.

“Right,” Kevin said, a notch too loudly, behind me. “There you go. The gaff is still here and it’s still a dive. Can we go now, yeah?”

I moved carefully into the middle of the floor and pressed a corner of the slab with the toe of my boot. There were years of grime holding it in place, but when I put my weight down I felt a very faint shift: it was rocking. If I had had some kind of lever, if there had been an iron bar or a chunk of metal in one of the heaps of debris in the corners, I could have lifted it.

“Kev,” I said. “Think back for me. Those rats that died in the walls: was that the winter I left?”

Kevin’s eyes slowly widened. The sickly gray bands of light made him look transparent, like a projection flickering on a screen. “Ah, Jaysus, Frank. Ah, no.”

“I’m asking you a question. Just after I split, rats in the walls, yes or no?”

“Frank…”

“Yes or no.”

“It was only rats, Frank. They were all over this place. We saw them, a load of times.”

So that, by the time the weather warmed up, there would have been nothing left to cause a serious stink and start people complaining to the landlord or the Corpo. “And smelled them. Rotting.”

After a moment Kevin said, finally, “Yeah.”

I said, “Come on.” I got hold of his arm-too hard, but I couldn’t loosen my grip-and steered him up the stairs ahead of me, fast, feeling boards twist and splinter under our feet. By the time we got out onto the steps, into the sweep of cool damp breeze and fine rain, I had my phone in my other hand and I was dialing the Tech Bureau.

The tech I got hold of was not a happy bunny, either about working the weekend shift or about being dragged out of his nice warm geek-pen. I told him that I had information indicating that a body had been dumped under a concrete slab in the basement of Number 16 Faithful Place-I didn’t go into minor details, like dates-that I needed a Bureau team and a couple of uniforms, and that I might or might not be on scene by the time they arrived. The tech made weaselly noises about search warrants, till I informed him that any possible suspect would have been an intruder on the premises and therefore could have had no expectation of privacy, and-when he kept whining-that in any case the house had been in public use for at least thirty years and therefore counted as a de facto public place by right of seisin, no warrant needed. I wasn’t sure how well either of these would hold up in court, but that was some other day’s problem, and it shut the tech up. I filed him in my mental database under Useless Prick, for future reference.

Kevin and I waited for the tech and his buddies on the steps of the student gaff at Number 11, close enough to give me a good view, far enough that with a little luck no one would associate me with what was going to be happening. If this went down the way I thought it would, I needed the Place to see me as their homecoming homeboy, not as a cop.

I lit a smoke and pointed the packet at Kevin, who shook his head. “What are we doing?” he asked.

“Staying out of the way.”

“Do you not need to be there?”

“The techs are big boys,” I said. “And girls. They can do their job without me holding their hands.”

He still looked unsure. “Should we not…? You know. Check if there’s even something there, before we get the Guards out?”

Surprisingly enough, that very option had already occurred to me. It was taking every ounce of willpower I had not to haul up that slab, with my fingernails if necessary. I managed not to bite his head off. “Evidence,” I said. “The techs have the equipment to collect it properly, and we don’t. The last thing they need is us fucking things up. That’s assuming there’s anything in there.”

Kevin shifted his weight to examine the seat of his trousers; the steps were wet, and he was still wearing his good work clothes from the day before. He said, “You sounded pretty definite on the phone.”

“I wanted them down here. Today, not sometime next week when they were in the mood for an afternoon out.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Kev’s sideways glance at me, bewildered and a little wary. After that he stayed quiet, flicking dust and cobwebs off his trousers, head down, which suited me fine. Patience comes with the job and I’m generally considered to have a gift for it, but after what felt like a week I was considering taking a trip over to the Bureau and dragging the tech away from World of Warcraft by his stunted little gonads.

Shay came out onto the front steps, picking his teeth, and sauntered over to us. “Story?” he inquired.

Kevin started to say something, but I cut him off. “Not much.”

“I saw you go into Cullens’.”

“You probably did.”

Shay glanced up and down the road; I saw the door of Number 16, still swinging half open, catch his eye. “Waiting for something?”

“Stick around,” I said, grinning up at him and patting the step beside me. “Maybe you’ll find out.”

Shay snorted, but after a moment he headed up the steps and sat at the top, with his feet in my face. “Ma’s looking for you,” he told Kevin. Kevin groaned; Shay laughed and flipped up his collar against the cold.

That was when I heard tires on cobblestones, up around the corner. I lit another smoke and slumped down on the steps, going for anonymous and vaguely disreputable-Shay was sweet enough to help me out with that, just by being there. As it turned out, there was no need: two uniforms in a patrol car and three Bureau boys jumping out of their van, and I didn’t know any of them. “Jaysus,” Kevin said, softly and uneasily. “There’s loads of them. Are there always…?”

“This is about the minimum. They might call more in later, depending.” Shay let out a long, mock-impressed whistle.

It had been a while since I’d watched a crime scene from outside the tape line, like a field undercover or a civilian. I’d forgotten just how the machinery looks in motion. The Bureau boys wrapped in their head-to-toe white, swinging their heavy boxes of sinister tricks, snapping their masks into place as they headed up the steps and vanished into Number 16, made the hairs on the back of my neck go up like a dog’s. Shay sang softly to himself: “Three big knocks came knocking at the door, weela weela waile; two policemen and a Special Branch man, down by the River Saille…”

By the time the uniforms had unrolled their crime-scene tape along the railings, even before they had it secured, people smelled blood in the air and came looking for a taste. Old ones in curlers and head scarves materialized out of doorways and clumped up to swap commentary and juicy speculation (“Some young one’s after having a baby and leaving it there.” “God forgive you, that’s terrible! Come here, Fiona Molloy’s after putting on a load of weight, d’you think maybe…?”). Men suddenly decided they needed a smoke on the front steps and a look at the weather; spotty young fellas and pram-faced young ones slouched against the end wall, pretending not to care. A handful of razor-headed little kids on skateboards zipped back and forth, staring at Number 16 with their mouths open, till one of them banged into Sallie Hearne and she gave him a smack across the back of the legs. The Dalys were out on their steps; Mr. Daly had an arm out across Mrs. Daly, holding her back. The whole scene made me edgy. I’m not happy when I can’t keep track of how many people are around me.

The Liberties always did have a piranha sense for gossip. Back in Dalkey, if a crime-scene team had had the nerve to appear on the road without planning permission, no one would have been caught dead showing anything as vulgar as curiosity. One adventurous soul might have felt a sudden urge to trim the flowers in her front garden, and relayed anything she heard to her friends over herbal tea, but on the whole they would have found out the story when the newspaper was delivered the next morning. The Place, on the other hand, went straight for the information jugular. Old Mrs. Nolan had one of the uniforms firmly by the sleeve and looked to be demanding a full explanation. He looked like basic training had not equipped him for this.