‘No,’ she replied. ‘I wouldn’t.’ She unlocked the cell phone I’d used to speak to Ezra and slid it back across the table towards me. ‘I would say it was one hundred per cent our problem.’

I rested my cigarette on the edge of the ashtray and picked up the phone. A single photograph filled the screen. It was a mid-shot of a smiling man and woman, standing arms entwined, each holding in their free hand a slice of what looked like an apple. I separated my thumb and forefinger across the screen and zoomed in. Rachel stood on the left, eyes downcast above her smile, trying to avoid the lens. A length of black, silver-striped hair had fallen against her cheek. In the background, the unmistakable entrance to the building I was sitting in. The balding man on Rachel’s right grinned at the camera, leaning forward as if sharing a joke with the photographer. Six-four, a hundred and seventy pounds and in good shape for his age. I recognized him immediately.

‘The guy on the left,’ I asked, ‘who is he?’

‘Stein. Amos Stein. Senior lecturer here in applied mathematics.’

‘Israeli?’

‘Of course. His father survived the Shoah. He’s been with the faculty since the late seventies.’

The last – and only – time I’d seen him, his skin was turning black and the back of his head was missing. It was, without doubt, ‘Chappie Connor’ – who was, without doubt, not Chappie Connor. I looked at the date stamp: 20/09/2017 – Rosh Hashanah the year before.

‘He is most definitely,’ she concluded, ‘not Irish.’

I stared at her impassively. It was the first time I’d been debriefed by two different intelligence agencies for the assassination of a target I hadn’t killed.

‘I didn’t kill him,’ I said. ‘I shot him, but I didn’t kill him. He was already dead.’

‘And why did you do that?’

‘Because I was ordered to.’

The woman reached out and retrieved the cell phone from me.

‘Who gave the order?’

‘OK,’ I said, lowering my voice, ‘write this down.’ She picked up the phone, poised to take dictation. ‘Mike-India-Charlie-Kilo-Echo-Yankee, uh, Mike-Oscar-Uniform-Sierra-Echo.’

She put the phone down again. ‘Tell me,’ she sighed, ‘was that the same rat who ordered you to shoot Jacob Levy?’

‘Ah, you see, that’s the problem with rats,’ I said. ‘I don’t like them. But I don’t want to fuck them, either.’

She was still angling for the connection between the hit in the cottage and Doc’s murder. ‘But you did kill him,’ she continued. ‘Ken?’