‘Something will have to be done, Ned, whatever it is,’ the Minister said. Gallagher noted the use of his first name. Things must be serious, all right, when a Latimer lowered himself to that level of intimacy. ‘If it is my niece,’ Latimer went on, ‘and Quirke has found her, then it will have to be dealt with. You know what that man is like, always sticking his nose into other people’s business.’

A heavy stillness fell, as if some stealthy thing had entered soundlessly and settled itself in a shadowed corner of the room.

‘Dealt with in what way, exactly?’ Gallagher softly enquired.

Latimer pushed himself up from his chair with a violent movement and paced the floor, three tight steps forward, three tight steps back.

‘God damn it,’ he snarled, ‘how do I know? It’ll just have to be dealt with, that’s all. That girl can’t come back here. There’s too much—’ He clamped his mouth shut with an almost audible snap. He stopped and stood still, his troubled glance darting here and there about the room and taking in nothing. ‘I thought it was all over and done with,’ he said, the words grating in his throat. ‘I thought it was finished. And now—’

Again that stillness, at the heart of which something seemed to stir itself, with a crackling of brittle wings.

‘And now it’s all starting up again,’ Gallagher finished for him, giving him a heartfelt look.

Latimer, drooping suddenly, made a sound like that of a limp balloon expelling the last of its air. He sat down, joining his hands and clamping them between his knees. A big man, he looked suddenly small.

‘I tell you, Ned,’ – his voice trembled – ‘it could be the end of me.’ He shook his head, and cast about the room again with a look of desperation.

‘Oh, come on now, Bill—’ Gallagher began, cajolingly, but the Minister rounded on him.

‘And I’ll tell you this,’ he said in a hoarse whisper, ‘I’m not the only one who’ll go down. There are others – plenty of others.’

Gallagher returned him an unflinching stare. Is it to be threats now? he thought.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked, in a voice become suddenly hard and businesslike.

The Minister looked away.

‘It’s what I say,’ he said. ‘It will have to be dealt with, that’s all.’

‘Yes, but dealt with how, Minister?’

‘I told you, I don’t know! You’re the one who’s supposed to be up with these things and how to sort them out. Suggest something.’

Gallagher assumed his mandarin’s blank mask.

‘I’m a civil servant, Minister,’ he said primly. ‘I act at the directive of others.’

The Minister put a hand to his forehead. Sweat glistened on his upper lip.

‘Send someone down there,’ he said. ‘Send someone to deal with her.’

‘To deal with her?’ Gallagher repeated, lifting an eyebrow.