No matter what happened inside The Weavers, none of the gang would be able to get away. Katie had arranged that seven unmarked cars would be parked in tactical positions in every side street all around. As soon as the Riordans arrived they would move in to block every exit. Gardaí would be staked out in the back yard too, so that they couldn’t escape that way.

‘Most of the members of Barry Riordan’s gang we know well,’ said Katie. ‘He still has his old-time hard cases that he keeps close around him – what you might call his imperial guard. As we’re aware, though, he’s recruited more than a dozen young local gurriers in the past eighteen months. He’s done that so that he can extend his drug-trafficking as far west as Mallow, as far north as Fermoy and at least as far east as Youghal. But of course he’s also done it to replace those eleven members of his gang who we’ve been able to haul in and successfully put behind bars – for the time being, anyway, until they get parole.

‘So it’s not the old-timers I’m so concerned about today. They know when they’ve been snared rapid and they usually give up without a fight, so that they don’t end up with too long a prison sentence. It’s the young ones whose only experience of detention is Oberstown and who spend most of their time whacked out of their brains on coke or krokodil or Molly or the Lord God only knows what. They’re the ones who worry me.

‘I’m hoping and praying that they’ll all give up without a fight, do you know, but you have my express authority to open fire instantly if any of our officers’ lives appear to be at risk.’

She hesitated, and then she said, ‘I want this day to be the turning point. I want this to be the day when we start to eliminate the drug gangs in Cork for good and all. Then we can tell the Sun to stick their stories where the sun doesn’t shine.’

*

Only a few minutes after Sergeant Mullally and his fellow officers had left Katie’s office, Kyna knocked at her door. She was wearing a smart black trouser suit and a blouse with a crisp white collar and her blonde hair was tied up with a black silk scarf.

‘Look at you la,’ said Katie, getting up from her desk. ‘Perhaps you ought to go swimming more often.’

‘Oh, stop. I’ve never been so cold in my entire life as I was then. I was Baltic, right down to the bone. I thought that I was never going to feel warm again, ever.’