He didn't.

"Ed, I want to talk to you."

"Sure, Dave. Harcourt Square?"

Harcourt Square was where the elite National Bureau of Criminal Investigation was based. DI Donnelly wanted to be seen with me there like he wanted to be caught drunk driving.

"That's funny, Ed. I'm still out in fucking Wicklow here. How about your place? When can you make it?"

"I'm on something now, but I don't know how long it'll last."

"It's seven now. Say eleven?"

"That should be fine. What's it about, Dave?"

"It's about those bodies."

"What bodies?"

"The one you found, and the one we found earlier."

"Are they connected?"

"I'll see you at eleven."

The Shelbourne Hotel was built in 1824 and every so often they closed it and refurbished it and put a bar where a restaurant had been, but it was pretty much the same now as always, except smarter, although there was a tendency, if you got drunk here, to forget where the toilets were. Or so I was told; having left for L.A. when I was eighteen, I had only crossed the door for the first time a few months ago, to confirm to a Southside Lady Who Lunches that her suspicions about her errant husband were well founded. She took the photographs, wrote me a check and told me she'd double it if I joined her in a suite upstairs for the afternoon. Maybe I might have if she hadn't offered to pay; she had gambler's eyes, and a sense of humor, and a good head for drink. Next thing I knew, she had taken her husband for ten million and the family home in Blackrock and she was photographed on the back page of the Sunday Independent at an MS Charity Ball with new breasts spilling out of a dress twenty years too young for her getting very friendly with a member of the Irish rugby squad. Well done everybody. Another one for the PI scrapbook. Wonder what the Garda commissioner made of that.

I didn't have to look too hard for Miranda Hart; her silver dress blazed like magnesium ribbon amid the deep red and dark wood tones of the Horseshoe Bar. She had piled her dark hair high on her head; her black eyes flickered and her lips were the color of blood. Six foot in heels, she wore her dress calf length and cut high on the thigh; one of her stockings was already laddered. I was trying to get a look at her companions before she saw me, but she was restless, laughing quickly and nodding impatiently and chewing her gum and smoking and drinking and casting her gaze about the bar as if she expected me.

When our eyes met, her face turned to stone for a second and I thought she would start to scream; instead she turned her lamps full on, mouthed "Darling" at me and beckoned me over with the hand she held her glass in, flicking some of its contents over a fat red-faced man of sixty or so with a wispy strawberry-blond comb-over who affected to find this as hilarious as he appeared to be finding everything else. A well-preserved, shrewd-looking blonde in her fifties turned around to take an appraising look at me as the barman brought me the pint of Guinness I'd ordered. I had to remind myself that none of them, and nobody else here in this opulent Christmas melee, none of the lush young women or their overweight, red-faced partners in candy-stripe shirts and blazers or the older horsey types in tweed and corduroy and their sleek beige-and-ivory women groomed within an inch of their lives, not one of them had paid a cent for me, and I owed them nothing in return.

I carried my pint across to Miranda. Her party had grabbed banquette seats around a small table. Miranda kissed me on both cheeks, and in the ear farthest from her friends, said, "Sorry about that earlier. I do want you to find Patrick. I can pay you."

"I'm already getting paid," I said. "But thank you."

We were cheek to cheek, the room a clamor of laughter and jostling voices. Her bathroom had been full of Chanel No. 5 and I could smell that on her now, but faintly; her own scent overpowered it. Deep salt with a tang like oranges, it had gotten under my skin in her house; now I almost felt like the sole reason I had trailed her here was to breathe it again. She smiled at me, and opened her mouth; she still had lipstick on her teeth and I could see her tongue shift her chewing gum to one side. I laughed, and took a drink of my beer.

"What's so funny?" she said.

"You are," I said. "Is there any situation in which you don't chew gum?"

"That would be for you to find out," she said. "Mr. Private Investigator."

The shrewd-looking blonde, who was wearing cream and gold and the slightest hint of leopardskin, said something pointed to the comb-over and he exploded in a fit of convulsive laughter, his hair slipping in a long unruly strand down his face. She looked at him pityingly, like a mother would glance at her obese child when no one else was looking, then raised an appraising gaze, and her glass, to me; I saluted her in the same fashion and we both drank.

"Jackie Tyrrell," Miranda said quietly. "It's our works do. The fatso is Seán Proby."

"The bookie?"

"The father. The son, Jack, runs the day-to-day now. Seán is the figurehead, on TV telling war stories. He was a great comrade of F. X. Tyrrell's. They made a lot of money for each other. Then they fell out."

"Over what?"

"Whatever came to hand. F.X. falls out with everyone sooner or later. You can be my date, if you like. We're going to the Octagon for supper."

"Did you not have a date?"

"Are you worried he might show up and want to fight you?"

"I only like fighting in the morning. At least then there's a chance the day might improve."

"Scaredy-cat."

"Are Proby and Jackie an item?"

They were cackling with each other on the banquette, hand in hand. Miranda did an eye-rolling silent laugh at my question and shook her head at me.

"Oh dear God no. Seán bats for the other side, darling."

"Despite being someone's father. This is all getting a bit too sophisticated for me. Why did you go to pieces when you heard Father Vincent Tyrrell's name?"

Jackie Tyrell, who had been giving a very good impression of a drunk, stood bolt upright and apparently sober.

"We can't be late," she barked in a highly polished accent with a trace of Cork in it. "Gilles will sulk. What's his name?" This last to Miranda of me.

"Ed Loy," I said, extending my hand.

"Ed's writing a book," Miranda announced. "About horse racing and the Irish."

"Oh God no," Jackie Tyrrell said. "That book gets written every year. It's always a fucking bore. You're not going to be a fucking bore, are you?"

"Compared to you?" I said.

She looked me up and down as if she had been offered me for sale.

"At least he's tall," she said to Miranda. "Not a skinny little boy. He's actually like a man, Miranda."

"Thank you," I said.

"Don't get smart with me," Jackie Tyrrell said. "I'm hungry."

On his feet now, Seán Proby was pumping my hand up and down and laughing uproariously; the more I tried to retrieve my hand the tighter he held it, and the harder I struggled the louder he laughed; there we were like two clowns in hell until Jackie Tyrrell punched him sharply in the arm and he came to and beamed genially at me, now apparently sober himself.

The Octagon was a converted meeting hall around the corner in a lane off Kildare Street that had been painted white and gussied up with a lot of stained glass and indoor trees hung with fairy lights and gauze. People sat at several different levels on a succession of balconies and mezzanines. The staff were Irish and French and they made a big fuss of Jackie and Miranda; I heard Jackie speaking in immaculate French to Gilles, the maître d', and Gilles instructing a wine waiter to bring Mrs. Tyrrell "the usual." The restaurant was full of the same kind of people who had been in the Shelbourne, and I quickly discovered why: the prices were absurdly high, but the food was very straightforward: onion soup and egg mayonnaise, pork belly and Toulouse sausages, steak frîtes; none of your two-scallops-on-a-huge-white-plate nonsense. Thus Irish people could indulge their aspirational need to get all fancy and French, and sate their ferocious desire to spend as much money as possible, while getting a huge amount of meat inside them.