‘But, you know – considering the past between us – you can scarcely blame me for thinking that you would have wanted it as much as I did.’

‘Brendan, that was fourteen years ago, and in between times I’ve been married, and widowed, and lost a man that I dearly, dearly loved. Jesus – it wasn’t four hours ago that I was throwing a handful of soil on to his coffin. And you want me to sit here now and think about that sordid thing you did to me and give you absolution?’

Brendan stood staring back at her, his hands by his sides, biting his lip. He looked more like a chastened schoolboy than a chief superintendent.

‘Yes, okay, then, let’s leave it for now,’ he told her. ‘But I hope that you’ll find it in your heart to put it behind you and see it for what it was. An honest and genuine misunderstanding.’

On any other day, at any other time, Katie would have rocketed up out of her chair and given Brendan a blistering retort. Today, though, and now, she was grieving too deeply for Conor, and still numb from having seen Garrett sitting burned to a cinder in his Jaguar.

‘I’ll be discussing what to do with my solicitor first,’ she said, almost as if she were talking to herself. ‘Then I’ll decide if I want to report it to the Ombudsman.’

‘The Ombudsman? Oh, come on. You wouldn’t do that, surely? It’s just a personal matter between us, nothing to do with the GSOC.’

Katie was about to answer him when her phone rang. It was Superintendent Michael Pearse.

‘Kathleen? We had a 112 call fifteen minutes ago from The Weavers, on Gerald Griffin Street. The barman reported a shooting and a fellow down. Killed stone dead, he was. Hickey and O’Dea were up at Fair Hill so they responded within only a couple of minutes, like. You’re not going to believe this.’

‘Go on, try me.’

‘The victim is Billy Hagerty, Donal Hagerty’s brother. They clear blew out his brains so he didn’t stand a hope in hell.’

‘Mother of God, Michael. Are you serious?’

‘Oh, believe me, it gets even more complimicated than that. There were two eyewitnesses to the actual shooting, and you’d never guess in a million years who they were – Thomas O’Flynn and Muireann Nic Riada. Three of O’Flynn’s heavies were there, too.’

‘Thomas O’Flynn was there? And Muireann?’ Katie covered her phone with her hand and said to Brendan, ‘Billy Hagerty’s been shot dead. And one of the people who saw it happen was Thomas O’Flynn.’

‘Holy Jesus. The Riordans, it must have been,’ said Brendan. ‘The court had to put off Donal Hagerty’s sentencing hearing, didn’t they? I’ll bet the Riordans decided to hand out some vigilante justice of their own.’