He took a large bite out of his custard tart and rocked back in his chair, cheeks bulging, to see my reaction.

‘Where is he now?’

‘Nobody knows,’ Gerry said. ‘Vanished. Incommunicado. I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interests to hear that bastard singing in public.’ He gave a sharp laugh: ‘Although I’d fucking well like to hear it.’

Gerry looked at his watch, made an alarmed face and quickly downed the last of his strong coffee.

‘Good coffee,’ he said. ‘Look him up. A bit of it’s got out already. There’ll be a lot more where that came from.’

He gave me another wee half-hug: ‘Well, sure I know where to find you now.’ With all the gigs and the travel, he’d got good at leaving gracefully. He was off to eat sushi with his manager, he said. I watched him as he walked out of the door and into the soft promise of the summer evening in Soho, navigating the clogged pavements full of outdoor drinkers as he checked the messages on his phone. I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

I did indeed look Dunne up, and the more I read about him, the more I thought that as a teenager Gerard had a very near miss. It seemed that for Dunne the decision to cross the line between a maiming and a murder could depend on something quite trivial, like how he felt about the quality of his lunch. There were pictures along with the news stories and, later, some longer feature pieces.

Dunne was a burly man with reddish, receding hair, a human pit bull who zealously sniffed out treachery against Irish republicanism wherever he imagined it was lurking, with the exception of his own interior. Those with experience of him told reporters that beneath his superficial conviviality lay a terrible coldness. Some people felt the chill too late to get away.

Dunne’s sniffing went on all the time, setting nerves on edge, but the sniffing and the edginess became so constant that sometimes people almost forgot it was there, like the rain pattering on the roof. Then a thin trace of something would come floating on the air towards him. A rumour, a nervy laugh, an operation gone awry. Something that didn’t quite sit right, something that snagged on the consciousness.

Something that snagged. It passed across the pit bull’s flared nostrils. Sniff, sniff, and Dunne was on the scent. He conducted his enquiries with energetic capability, exuding the heavy musk of intimidation. He followed betrayals, but what he was really after was the exhilarating stench of fear. That came next.