A June of Ordinary Murders by Conor Brady

the Irish National League to advance both aims, and for a time he and Davitt had made common cause. Although Parnell denied it vigorously, the constant threat of Fenian violence lay behind both demands. Much to the relief of the authorities, however, Parnell had more recently stepped back from the alliance.
    The new Chief Secretary’s approach was two-pronged. He pushed legislation through Parliament giving the police and the courts sweeping new powers to counter terrorism and to break the League’s ‘Plan of Campaign.’
    The ‘Plan’ was reducing many of the once-powerful landlords to penury. At the same time, Balfour wanted to accelerate the purchase of land by the tenant farmers. His policy was to achieve this with a scheme of generous loans and grants.
    But the processes of reform were slow. If it was to contain the threat of social and political breakdown, the administration desperately needed quality intelligence with which to direct its police forces and its legal machinery. And John Mallon was the master of intelligence gathering.
    The clerk in Mallon’s outer office was shocked at what he had already heard of Swallow’s business during the morning.
    â€˜The chief was expecting you, Sergeant. Jesus, it sounds like a terrible affair at the Chapelizod Gate. Do you know what it’s all about?’
    â€˜A bad business but it’s early days,’ Swallow said non-committedly. He had learned that the one person to whom he should not drop information was his boss’s clerk. It was rarely passed on without some inaccuracy or distortion.
    â€˜He’s not here,’ the clerk explained. ‘He’s been called to a meeting with the Chief Secretary. He got the report you sent earlier from Kilmainham. He said you’re to complete whatever you have now and leave it here for him. We’ll get it to him before he finishes this evening or we’ll send it across to his house later.’
    Swallow was familiar with Mallon’s procedures. If an urgent crime report was ready he wanted it delivered to wherever he might be, whether on duty or otherwise.
    In earlier years, the Castle’s messengers were frequent callers at Mallon’s home on the North Circular Road. But since his promotion to head of the G Division, he and his family had the privilege of being accommodated in a house in the Lower Yard of the Castle. A few steps across the Yard and Mallon could be back in the office at any hour, day or night. Urgent information or documents could be in his hands literally within a minute of their arrival at Exchange Court.
    Swallow retreated to the crime sergeants’ office. He spent two hours trawling through the files of the official police publication, Hue and Cry, to see if any incidents or reports might indicate some connection with the double murder. Then he went through the missing-persons file and the daily report on goods deposited in the city’s pawn shops. Nothing out of the ordinary suggested itself.
    Late in the afternoon he began to put together his report of the day’s events on a battered Remington typewriter. It was one of the DMP’s acquisitions from the brief expansion of its resources in the aftermath of the Cavendish and Burke murders.
    He had taught himself to use the machine. He enjoyed the sharp action and counteraction between key, hammer and paper. He saw it as a mechanical evolution from the process of creating images on a pad with the point of a lead pencil.
    He made four copies, interleaving the foolscap sheets with carbon paper. One would go to the Detective Chief Superintendent’s office, one would go into Pat Mossop’s murder book, one would be circulated at the crime conference in the morning and one was for his own use.
    By the time he finished, the heat had abated and it was evening. He had been on continuous duty for 21 hours without rest. He was tired and frustrated with no investigative results to show for his