‘This person, now,’ Gallagher said, going cautiously, ‘would it be someone you know, or knew, personally? Someone close to you? A relative, say?’

The Minister narrowed his eyes. What did this fellow know? – had he heard something about Quirke, and Spain, and his niece? Word got around fast, in this city, and Gallagher had a gundog’s nose when there was the faintest scent of scandal in the air. Few things gratified Gallagher more, the Minister knew, than the spectacle of a politician in a fix. He sighed, and took the plunge.

‘It’s my niece,’ he said, ‘April Latimer. You remember—?’

He let his voice trail off. Gallagher leaned back and set his elbows on the arms of his chair and made a steeple of his fingers and nodded slowly, solemnly. He was like a priest, Latimer thought with disgust, like a bloody priest in the confession box.

‘Oh, of course I remember,’ Gallagher said, in a tone of unctuous sincerity. ‘A terrible business, terrible altogether.’ He lowered his head, as if to offer a silent prayer for the dead. Bloody hypocrite. He looked up again. ‘The poor young woman’s body was never found, isn’t that so? It struck me as odd, at the time.’ Oh, but he was enjoying himself, Bill Latimer could see. He clenched his fists in his lap. ‘And now,’ Gallagher said, crushing the stub of his cigarette into the ashtray, ‘now you tell me it may be she didn’t die at all. Is that right?’

‘It can’t be her,’ Latimer said brusquely. ‘Somebody has made a mistake.’

‘And who, may I ask,’ Gallagher purred, ‘might this somebody be?’

Latimer was in the corner now, trapped there by a large, slow-moving and inescapable cat.

‘Quirke,’ he said, through clenched teeth.

Gallagher fairly threw himself back on his chair in exaggerated surprise and shock.

‘Doctor Quirke? The State Pathologist?’

‘Yes,’ the Minister said, as if he were spitting out a stone. ‘He’s in Spain, on some sort of a holiday. Last night he phoned – he phoned someone here and claimed to have seen my niece, to have met her, in fact, and spoken to her.’

‘And did she admit to him who she was?’

Latimer leaned forward and crushed his cigarette into the ashtray with an angry turn of his wrist.

‘No. She gave another name. Lawlor, Lawless, something like that. I can’t remember. First name Angela. The same initials, though – A. L.’

‘The same initials?’ Gallagher said incredulously, doing his impression of a smile. ‘Is that what has Doctor Quirke convinced it’s your niece? The same Doctor Quirke who, as is well known, is subject to – well, to seeing things, shall we say. I presume he’s still—?’ He made the motion of lifting a glass to his lips.