PROLOGUE
This novel uses British English, so if there is a word or phrase with which you are unfamiliar there is a handy list in the back of this book.
‘There'll be another one along in a minute’—wasn't that what they said? Inspector Joseph Rafferty gazed at the very dead old lady in the bed, and mused that usually it was in respect of buses, not bodies.
But this week the bodies were bunched like the rush-hour double-deckers on Elmhurst's congested streets. The first suicide had been of a World War Two veteran whose suicide note had derided the notion that this was land fit for heroes to live in. This old lady was the second suicide. And it was still only Wednesday morning. Rafferty, chockful of Irish superstition, felt he could be forgiven for becoming equally chockful of the convictio
