‘Sedition?’ Latimer almost shouted. ‘The Six Counties is a failed state, or would be, if it deserved to be called a state at all. I acted as a patriot—’

Dick Fitz pushed himself to his feet and leaned forward across the desk.

‘Don’t talk to me of patriotism,’ he said to Latimer, his voice tight with sudden rage. ‘I am as much a patriot as you are, Minister, but I abide by the law. You committed a felony by arming a band of gangsters—’

‘Gangsters, he says!’ Latimer said with a burst of laughter, turning at last to Gallagher. ‘Gangsters!’

‘—and when your nephew, Oscar Latimer, discovered what you were up to, and told his sister, his sister came to you and confronted you – and what did you do? You drove her out of the country, under God knows what sort of threats, and pretended to the world that she was dead, murdered by her own brother.’

Latimer drew back his head and looked at him with a broad, brazen smile.

‘Every family has its troubles,’ he said. ‘And every family solves them in its own way. It’s no business of yours, or of anyone else’s, how I chose to fix the things that were broken.’

Dick Fitz, his anger under control, sat down slowly and leaned back in his chair. He turned to Ned Gallagher.

‘It was you who arranged a false passport for her, I suppose?’ he enquired, in almost a conversational tone.

Gallagher made no reply, only sat looking miserable, with his hands in his lap. Keep quiet for now, he told himself. Afterwards he would find some way of putting the knife into Bill Latimer’s broad back. He was damned if he would take the blame for that man’s sins. Only, please, God, he prayed, please, don’t let this bastard know that it was me who hired the fellow to go down and shut that young one’s mouth for good.

‘Are we done here?’ Bill Latimer said, making to rise.

‘Not quite,’ Dick Fitz replied.

Latimer lowered himself back on to the seat, making a grinding motion with his jaws.

‘It’s nothing to do with me if some madman shot Quirke’s wife,’ he muttered.

‘The Ambassador tells me,’ Fitz said, ‘that the detective is convinced Mrs Quirke wasn’t the intended target.’

‘Then who was?’ Latimer snapped.

Dick Fitz took up the bundle of telegrams and tapped them on the desk on their edges, squaring them off. His manner had changed, had become brisk and businesslike.