‘That’s sound, Sonny, thanks for arranging all of that,’ he was saying. ‘And you won’t be forgetting the fizz?’ As he spoke, though, he picked up a copy of the Irish Sun from his desk and held it up, waving it, so that Katie could see the front page. Katie made a point of looking away, out of the window, where the rain was still trickling down and the gutter was spouting down to the car park below.

‘Okay, then, I’ll catch you at the weekend at Fota,’ Brendan finished off, and put down the phone. Fota was Cork’s most prestigious golf club, so Katie could guess what kind of weekend he had been planning.

‘Well, Katie, you’re all over the papers again,’ he said, standing up. ‘Thank God you weren’t hurt – neither you nor Justice Connolly. Is he okay?’

‘Shaken, like we both were, but otherwise grand. He rang me this morning to ask after me, and he didn’t sound so bad.’

‘Do you have any notion at all who was shooting at you?’

‘They both had their faces covered, and it all happened so quick. And like Owen Dineen says, there’s plenty of criminals in Cork who’d be happy to see me dead and spit on my grave.’

‘You should have taken the day off so. You must be exhausted.’

‘I can’t, sir. I’ve far too much to take care of today. I’m up the walls.’

‘Well, I hope you have a few minutes to spare because I need to tell you what was decided at my meeting at Phoenix Park yesterday.’

‘I don’t think so, I’m afraid. There’s something critical I have to tell you about first.’

‘Katie – Kathleen—’

‘Detective Superintendent, if you don’t mind, sir. And I’m sure that your discussion with the Director of Communications was all wonderfully upbeat. Going forward, as they say, I’ve no doubt that you’ll be able to portray An Garda Síochána in a glowing light that’s almost holy. You’ll show the public that you’re not a tight-knit secret society of misogynists who won’t tolerate whistle-blowers, and who conveniently lose embarrassing files, and whose only fearful misjudgement was to appoint a woman to lead Cork’s detectives. You’re saints in uniform.’

Brendan took a deep breath and tightly puckered his lips. Katie could see that she had seriously riled him, and he was doing everything he could to stop himself from shouting at her.

‘It was nothing like that at all,’ he said, with a controlled tremble in his voice. ‘But we did discuss in detail how to refocus the negative image that the media have of policing in Cork. Statistically, yes – we may not be doing so badly. It’s the way that you’ve been presenting yourself personally that’s led to the media giving us such poor publicity.’