He held out his phone to Thomas. ‘It’s Willie. He’s just heard it on the radio, like. Judge Quinn’s dead. He’s been killed in a car accident.’

‘You’re codding me,’ said Thomas, but he raised his hand to show that he wouldn’t take the phone. He never carried a phone, not even a burner or a stealth phone, because he was convinced that the Gardaí could still track his whereabouts and listen in to his calls. His philosophy was that if they didn’t know where he was and they didn’t know what he’d been talking about, they couldn’t lift him and they couldn’t prove what he was planning to do next.

‘Yeah, no. I’ll tell him,’ said Darragh. ‘See you later, boy. Okay.’

‘When did this happen?’ asked Thomas.

‘This morning sometime, that’s what Willie said. Somewhere up by Dublin Pike. There was no other cars involved. The cops are looking for a grey or a silver SUV, though, because whoever was driving that might have been a witness.’

‘No other cars involved?’ said Thomas. His long, thin jaw slowly rotated as he began to grind his teeth. He took several deep breaths and his eyes seemed to disappear altogether. Everybody else at the table leaned away from him, almost as if they were worried that he might physically explode and spatter them all.

‘No other cars involved? I’ll fecking murder that eejit O’Malley! I’ll fecking strangulate him myself and throw him off the Shakey Bridge. I can’t believe it! I cannot fecking believe it! After all the fecking trouble I took, Billy! All that fecking wheedling and needling! And there’s Quinn due to hand down your brother’s sentence this afternoon!’

‘Maybe it was just an accident, Tommy,’ said Muireann. ‘You know, like what Darragh said.’

‘Be whist, will you, you stupid slag. It was fecking O’Malley, it must have been. What was Quinn doing up at Dublin Pike when he lives in Tivoli? “Have a last word,” that’s what I told O’Malley. “Give him a final reminder.” But polite, like. Polite.’

Thomas sat simmering while everybody else at the table finished their drinks in quick, uncomfortable gulps.

After a few minutes Thomas swallowed the last dregs of his Murphy’s, and his Paddy’s chaser, banging both glasses down on the table so hard that everybody jumped, and stood up.

‘Right, lads,’ he said, ‘we’re up to Farranree to have a word with O’Malley. I want to know exactly what kind of an “accident” it was that Quinn was killed in. The razzers could well be after coming around looking for us before too long, asking awkward questions, do you know? And how can you say that you don’t know nothing about something unless you know what that something is that you don’t know nothing about – am I right?’