Katie thought, My God, he was one of the two fellows who tried to shoot me and Justice Connolly outside Greenes. She could see now that he was wearing the identical pair of glasses.

She could have retreated downstairs, leaving him up here on the landing for the ASU team to deal with. But that would give him the opportunity to take out his gun, and the stairs were so narrow that the armed support unit could climb up them only one at a time to confront him. Even if they used tear gas to smoke him out or a thunderflash to shock him, there was still a risk that a garda could get shot.

‘Come here to me – if you give yourself up now, things will go much easier for you,’ Katie told him. ‘It wasn’t you who set this raid up, was it? It was Barry. And you wouldn’t have done it at all if you weren’t so scared of him.’

‘What? Are you trying to say that I’m a jibber? I’m not scared of nobody and that’s Barry Riordan and you included!’

He staggered slightly on his left leg, and from that, and from his posture, and the way he was talking to her, Katie was sure that he was drunk. If he had been sober, he probably would have waited up in the attic for much longer, to make absolutely sure that the last of the gardaí had gone.

Almost immediately she was proved right, because he suddenly shivered and urinated, flooding the front of his jeans.

‘Now look what you’ve fecking done!’ he screamed at her. He was obviously so mortified about wetting himself in front of her that he didn’t care if he was risking his life. He dropped both arms and thrust his right hand into the pocket of his puffer jacket, yanking out a black Glock automatic.

Katie shot him through the hand, so that he dropped the pistol on to the carpet and shouted out ‘Shite!’, flapping his hand in the air so that blood sprayed all over the mustard-coloured wallpaper. She shot him a second time in the left knee, so that he pitched over sideways, hitting his head against the frame of one of the bedroom doors. He lay there, alternately groaning and swearing, holding up his bleeding right hand as if he were appealing to God and clutching his bleeding knee with his left.

Sergeant Mullally came storming up the stairs with his gun raised, followed by Detective O’Donovan and Kyna. The landing was pungent with gun smoke, and Katie’s ears were singing.