As the morning sleet eased, the temperatures rose unexpectedly.

‘Listen to that,’ Garda Gillian O’Donoghue said.

‘To what?’ asked Garda Tom Tierney.

‘Snow melting.’

The sound was like a forest of humming birds, such was the intensity of the thaw. They were standing at the door of James Brown’s cottage.

‘Positively balmy,’ Tierney said. ‘A warm plus one beats minus ten on New Year’s Eve.’

‘I’m going for a walk around the garden. My feet are in a state of perpetual frozenness,’ O’Donoghue said.

‘Is that even a proper word?’

‘Who cares?’ she laughed and headed along the path to the back garden, enthralled by the greenery being slowly exposed through the shifting snow. The white beauty had been magical for the first few days until it became an unbearable burden. She breathed in the cool air and listened to the thaw.

As she turned, a snatch of colour under a tree caught her eye. She walked toward it, then backed away, shouting, ‘Tom. Tom!’

A hand, cuffed in black, protruded from the snow.

O’Donoghue reached for the radio pinned to her chest.

By the time Lottie and Boyd arrived, the garden was a scene of organised commotion.

Lottie groaned. This was more work in three days than they’d seen in the last two years. She hadn’t even had time to get her head around her mother’s revelations. Boyd and Maria Lynch had met her on the station steps with the news and they’d driven to James Brown’s house as quickly as the slush allowed.

She walked with Lynch around the back, both keeping their eyes peeled for any evidence that might be exposed. Boyd spoke with the uniformed officers.

Lottie spotted the SOCOs team leader, Jim McGlynn. He smirked.

‘The bastard,’ Lottie said.

‘Who?’ asked Lynch.

‘McGlynn.’

He was laughing at her. Pity he wasn’t under her command. She’d have him sifting pig shit for the rest of his working life, looking for invisible dioxins.

The garden was compact. A shed and a wooden table with chairs leaning against it occupied the patio area to the left of the back door. Evergreen trees bordered two sides of the enclosure, a wall at the end and snowy fields beyond. McGlynn worked the area, painstakingly removing snow and revealing the victim.

Lottie waited. Eventually the body was fully exposed. Male, face down, clothed in a black jacket and trousers. The visible hand appeared wrinkle free, with a silver ring. Pieces of glass and black plastic were scattered around and over the body. McGlynn was picking them up with tweezers and placing them in an evidence bag.

‘A phone?’ Lottie asked.

‘Smashed to bits,’ he said. ‘I doubt even our best technicians will get anything from it.’

‘How long has the body been here?’

‘I’m waiting for the state pathologist,’ McGlynn answered, sharply.

‘Prick,’ Lottie said, under her breath.

Jane Dore breezed on to the site suited up in her protective gear and acknowledged Lottie with a swift shake of her head.

‘Someone must think I’ve nothing to do, they keep supplying me with bodies.’

‘Agreed,’ Lottie said, standing to one side while the pathologist carried out her preliminary examination.

‘Appears to be strangulation,’ Jane said. ‘There’s a ligature mark on his neck. On initial observation I can determine frozen snow under the body. It’s quite possible he was killed within the last week. The arctic temperatures have preserved him in perfect condition.’

Perfect condition, except he is dead, thought Lottie. She felt like puking, her hangover unrelenting.

‘Do you think this is the crime scene?’ she asked and realised that if the body had been here a week, the man had been killed prior to the Sullivan and Brown deaths.

‘I’ll know more when I get him on my table.’

‘And you’ll inform me if he has a tattoo?’

‘Of course,’ the pathologist said and, with short, careful steps, left the scene.

Lottie’s headache intensified. The body count was rising. Corrigan was boiling. The press were baying. The public were terrified and her team were no nearer any explanation for all or any of the murders. Welcome to La La Land, Inspector Parker. She scratched her head. Fucking hell.

‘You okay?’ Boyd was at her shoulder.

‘Who is he?’ she asked.

‘How do I know?’

She bit back a retort and looked at Boyd. His face seemed thinner, if that were possible. ‘It was a rhetorical question. The victim was more than likely killed before Sullivan and Brown.’

With the body turned over on to his back, Lottie looked at the bloated, blackened face.

‘I’d estimate mid-thirties,’ she said and watched patiently as the SOCOs bagged the body and removed it from the scene.

McGlynn held up a small plastic evidence bag.

‘Blue fibre,’ Lottie noted.

‘From around the neck,’ he said.

‘Thanks,’ Lottie said. Similar rope to that wound round James Brown’s neck.

‘No wallet or identification but there are two cigarette ends here,’ McGlynn said, picking up one with tweezers.

‘Belonging to the victim?’

‘Possibly. Or his killer.’ He dropped it into an evidence bag.

Lottie watched McGlynn at work for a few minutes before going into the house.

‘That body isn’t a million miles from the description we have of Father Angelotti,’ Boyd said, trailing her inside.

‘The face is unrecognisable and we’ve no record of distinguishing marks to check for,’ Lottie said. ‘We’ll have to wait for a formal identification. Otherwise, it’s down to DNA analysis.’

‘Whoever he is, someone has to be missing him.’

‘There’s no car,’ Lottie remarked, looking out the front window. ‘How did he get out here?’

‘Maybe the killer drove him or he got a taxi,’ Boyd said. ‘Why was he here? That’s another question.’

‘And did Brown know him?’

‘We have too many questions and not enough answers,’ Boyd said.

‘Find out what you can.’

‘He could’ve been Brown’s lover. He drove him here and killed him in a jealous rage,’ Boyd ventured.

‘I suppose now you think Brown killed this man, strangled Sullivan, then hung himself?’ Lottie shook her head in annoyance.

Boyd said nothing, pulled out another cigarette and went outside to light it. Following him, Lottie stepped into the slushy yard. Her brain was a muddle.

She could do with a drink.

She settled for one of Boyd’s cigarettes and told him about the conversations with Doctor Annabelle O’Shea and her mother.