The room was silent. Bill Latimer had still not acknowledged Gallagher’s presence. I’ve become a non-person, Gallagher thought, and almost laughed. He was curious to know by what means the Minister would try to wriggle out of this one. Well, he could wriggle all he liked, he would only draw the noose tighter around his own thick neck. They would go down together, the two of them, Gallagher would make sure of that.

Dick Fitz sighed, and rose from his chair and paced slowly along the length of the room and stopped by the window, in the spot where Bill Latimer had stood earlier. He still had the telegrams in his hand.

‘As I say, it’s very confused. I’ve spent the last hour trying to understand what happened. I spoke to the Ambassador in Madrid. Doctor Blake – Quirke’s wife, that is – was shot by a so far unidentified assailant. No one knows who he is – no papers on him, nothing.’

‘Is he refusing to talk?’ Bill Latimer asked, his voice toneless and flat.

‘He’s dead,’ Dick Fitz said, without turning from the window. ‘He was shot by one of our people, fellow called Stafford, a detective.’

‘What was an Irish detective doing down there?’ Ned Gallagher asked, playing the innocent.

‘Chief Superintendent Hackett, down in Pearse Street, sent him there, along with Quirke’s daughter.’

The little bitch! Bill Latimer thought.

Dick Fitz turned, but stayed by the window.

‘Quirke was convinced he had met someone, someone he recognised, and asked his daughter to come down and tell him if he was right. She went to Hackett, and Hackett sent his Stafford fellow to – I don’t know. To look out for her, I suppose.’

A gust of raindrops rattled against the windowpanes, and a ball of smoke rolled out of the chimney above the fireplace, where a small coal fire was burning. Gallagher caught an acrid whiff of the smoke, and thought of Hell.

‘Who is the person Quirke thought he recognised?’ Bill Lati mer asked, in the same dead tone as before.

Dick Fitz took a deep breath.

‘Your niece, Minister,’ he said. ‘April Latimer.’

*

Tea was ordered. Ned Gallagher, with a graveyard laugh, wondered aloud if there might not be something stronger on offer, given the circumstances – ‘I’ve heard tell you keep a bottle of Crested Ten in a drawer in your fine big desk there.’