‘Ach, I don’t know whether he’s on the drink or not,’  Lati mer said with savage dismissiveness. ‘God knows he was a martyr to the booze, and I imagine he still is. There’s no cure for being an alcoholic.’

‘And yet I hear he got married,’ Gallagher said smoothly. ‘To some foreign doctor, I believe, on a promise to mend his ways.’

They exchanged a look, and Gallagher snickered.

‘From what little I know of him,’ the Minister said, ‘I can’t see that bucko reforming himself, wife or no wife.’

A cloud passed abruptly, and a shaft of sunlight struck down at an angle through the big window at the far end of the room, bright and swift as a javelin.

‘So anyway, tell me,’ Gallagher said, ‘do you think it might be your niece that he came across?’

The Minister looked aside, pursing his lips.

‘It could be her,’ he said quietly, through clenched teeth. ‘It could be.’

Gallagher, he saw, was having a hard time of it to contain his glee, though of course he was putting on a great show of concern and sympathy, the two-faced bastard.

‘But wasn’t there an inquest, and didn’t the coroner pronounce the poor girl officially deceased?’ said Gallagher, all innocence. The Minister made no reply, and kept his eyes turned angrily in the direction of the sunlit window. ‘Ah, so she’s not dead, then,’ Gallagher murmured, nodding slowly. He sat forward eagerly. ‘What happened, at all? Was it that she had to be sent away? There was that business of the black fellow she was going around with, I remember—’

‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ the Minister said sharply, turning his head and fixing Gallagher with a glare. ‘It was because of a – a family thing.’

A short silence followed. Gallagher lifted his hands and joined his fingers at the tips again, gazing up at a far corner of the ceiling. He was contemplating with pleasure the hardly credible prospect of the final downfall of the mighty Latimers.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Family business. Yes.’ He watched Bill  Lati mer fumbling to light another cigarette. ‘And tell me, Minister,’ he said, lowering his voice further and adopting the hushed tone he usually reserved for funerals, ‘what can I do to help, at all?’

The Minister shifted in his chair, wincing as if at a twinge of pain somewhere low down. Gallagher looked away – the state of Bill Latimer’s nether parts was a thing he didn’t wish to contemplate.