As soon as she returned to Anglesea Street, Katie convened a meeting with Superintendent Pearse and Inspector O’Rourke, as well as Sergeant Mullally and three other officers of the station’s armed response unit. They sat in a circle in the squad room while the rain continued to gurgle in the gutters outside. It was so gloomy they had to switch the lights on.

Katie explained to them what Muireann had told her about the O’Flynns’ twenty-first birthday party, and how the Riordans were planning to invade it and ‘mess it up’.

‘Holy Saint Peter,’ said Inspector O’Rourke. ‘If I know Barry Riordan, and his idea of “messing things up”, him and his gang will be charging in there armed to the back teeth.’

‘Ah you’re spot on there, sir,’ said Sergeant Philip Mullally. At forty, he was the oldest of the armed response unit, but fit and tense and muscular with a bald, bullet-shaped head and a nose that looked as if it were being pressed hard against an upstairs window. ‘This is going to be sheer bloody revenge for Micky Riordan and his family, you mark my words. They’ll be doing a whole lot worse than throwing sponge cake around.’

‘What I’m desperately anxious to avoid is a three-way gunfight between the Riordans, the O’Flynns, and us,’ said Katie. ‘That’s obviously my main concern, but there’s another consideration, too. When we show up, Barry Riordan is bound to realize that we must have been tipped off, and the first person he’s going to suspect is his wife, Megan. He treats her badly enough, always beating her, and he’ll probably assume that she did it to get her own back on him – which of course is partly why she did.

‘Not only that, but Muireann will have made an excuse not to be there, and there’s a strong possibility that Thomas O’Flynn will want to know why. It’s vital that neither of those women are put at risk, especially Muireann. She’s an invaluable informant when it comes to the O’Flynns, even though I’ve told her time and time again that she’s putting herself at fierce grave risk.’

‘I don’t see there’s too much we can do about that,’ said Sergeant Mullally. ‘We’ve been given the advance information so we can’t ignore it. We have to show up, or else it’s going to be a massacre. There’s going to be innocent women and kids there, and we can’t risk any of them being hurt – or killed, even, God forbid. Surely we can offer this Muireann and this Megan witness protection afterwards, can’t we?’