Jim McGlynn and his SOCO team were still at the scene in one of the roofless terraced houses by the train station.

Lottie scanned the area under the glare of the temporary lights. No sign of any other life except the SOCOs working like ants, quickly and efficiently. She left them at it and entered one of the old carriages to her left and switched on her flashlight.

‘He has to be somewhere,’ she said, upturning empty sleeping bags, a stench rising with the material in her hands.

‘He’s not here,’ Kirby said, standing well away from Lottie’s frenzied search.

Lottie heard a shout.

‘Are you looking for me?’

She turned, dropping the matted strip of cloth that had come away from a damp cardboard box. Patrick O’Malley. Standing outside the crime scene tape, his hands deep in his pockets. He looked a lot cleaner than when she’d last seen him.

‘Where’ve you been?’ she demanded, walking toward him. She couldn’t visualise him as a murderer but evidence was suggesting otherwise.

‘Trying to knit my unravelled life back together,’ he said.

Ducking under the tape, Lottie grasped him by the elbow and steered him up the hill to the car. She was anxious to get away from the oppressive air of deprivation emanating from the old wooden railway carriages. It clawed at the back of her throat. A small black hump of movement caught the corner of her eye and she hurried her steps, thinking of the vermin who had feasted on the faceless man who’d sought nothing more than shelter.

O’Malley leaned against the car door.

‘Sit in out of the cold,’ Lottie said and followed him into the back seat.

Kirby sat up front, chewing his cigar and watching in the rear-view mirror. O’Malley was clean-shaven, his clothes fresh. Gone was the scent of sickly unkemptness.

‘Where have you been?’ she asked again.

‘The hostel on Patrick Street,’ he said. ‘They took me in.’

‘Why did you not go to them before now?’ She twisted round to look at him.

‘I never bothered. Just drifted along. But . . . after Susan and James . . . I felt different.’ He paused. ‘Inspector, I owe it to them to pick up the pieces of my life and begin again.’

‘Mr O’Malley, I ought to bring you to the station for questioning.’

‘Grand so. I’ve nothing to hide.’

Lottie considered him. His face seemed naked of any fear or guilt.

‘The note,’ she began, ‘found in a sleeping bag. You wrote it?’

‘Ah yes. You could say that,’ he said. ‘I started it. Didn’t finish it. I decided to get myself together. Never came back for my stuff. Not that there was anything worth getting.’

‘So why are you here now?’

‘I heard earlier this evening that a body was found. I only came up to see what the commotion was all about. I think it’s old Trevor over there. Frozen to death, poor eejit.’

‘Tell me what you were writing,’ she insisted.

‘Things started coming back to me. After we talked at the station, like. Thought I was going to be next. I didn’t want to die, so I picked myself up, brushed myself down and told myself I wasn’t going without a fight. Just like young Fitzy.’

Lottie took the old file from her bag and showed him the photograph of the missing boy.

‘Might this be Fitzy?’

O’Malley tore at his chin, scratching. ‘I’m not sure, Inspector. It was a long time ago.’

‘But you think it could be?’

He studied the boy’s face for a few more seconds. ‘Like I said, I’m not sure.’

‘The murder you described, can you think when it took place? What year?’

‘I can’t remember much. Too many bottles of wine since then. But like I told you before, we called it the night of the Black Moon. ’75 or maybe ’76. It was after Christmas so it might’ve been January.’

‘Black Moon,’ Lottie said.

‘When there’s two new moons in the month,’ Kirby piped up from the front seat.

‘When evil stalks the earth,’ O’Malley said.

Lottie felt an icicle slither along her spine.

‘Mr O’Malley, you baffle me. Did you kill Susan and James? Father Con even?’

‘I’m shocked . . . totally shocked that you . . . you could even think such a thing of me. But then again, who am I? I’m only a nobody to you.’

‘That’s not an answer,’ Kirby said.

Lottie shrugged. ‘It’s obvious to me that everything connects to St Angela’s. You too. You knew Susan and James, and Father Con back then. Now they’re dead and you’re the last man standing.’

‘Don’t forget Brian . . .’

‘What about him? We’ve tried to find out about him but it’s possible he changed his name. He might even be dead. Can you tell me anything about him?’

‘I haven’t seen him from that day to this.’

Lottie recalled Mrs Murtagh’s recent revelations. ‘Mr O’Malley . . . Patrick, have you ever met Bishop Connor?’

His laugh broke up in a fit of coughing.

‘What’s funny?’ Lottie asked.

‘Me? Me! You think I’d know a bishop. I’m a down and out, a homeless nobody. What would I be doing with a bishop?’

‘I take it that’s a no.’

‘For sure,’ he said, ‘and . . .’

‘And what, Mr O’Malley?’ Lottie snapped. She was caught up in his riddles and he was wearing out her patience.

‘You do your job, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Just do your job and leave me out of it.’

‘Mike O’Brien is next on my list.’

Lottie watched O’Malley walk sluggishly up the hill, away from the train station. She didn’t think he had it in him to be a murderer. But he was a deeply wounded man with a scarred past. Anything was possible.

‘You’re going to let O’Malley go, just like that?’ Kirby said.

‘I’ve nothing to hold him on,’ Lottie said. ‘Plus I don’t think he has the strength to strangle a kitten let alone three people.’

She checked in with Lynch while Kirby turned the car.

‘Shit,’ she said, finishing the call.

‘What?’ he asked, switching the wipers on full.

‘No sign of Sean. But they’re contacting his friends again and also their parents. I need to find him.’

‘Wait till they finish checking out his friends.’

‘And Lynch can’t locate O’Brien,’ Lottie said. ‘He’s not at home or at the gym.’

She followed O’Malley’s progress. He crossed the canal bridge and disappeared under the yellow hue of the evening streetlights. He seemed smaller somehow, as if the weight that anchored him to an unstable ground all his life had suddenly become embedded in a mud bank. She doubted he would ever be cut free to sail with the wind at his back.

She silently wished him luck. He would need it. So would she.