‘Maybe the canteen, sir. I could do with a coffee.’ When Katie said that, she gave Brendan a look that meant, I don’t want to be alone with you in your office – not now, and not ever again.

They went down in the lift together, not speaking. When they reached the canteen they sat by the window, out of earshot of three gardaí who were having a late lunch of bacon and cabbage and talking loudly about hurling. Outside, the rain had eased off, and the clouds were tearing apart like damp grey tissue paper.

‘So that’s three of Riordan’s gang down and eight lifted?’ said Brendan. ‘But Barry Riordan himself wasn’t among them. That kind of defeated the whole object of the exercise, didn’t it? All he has to do now is find himself eleven more gurriers and that’s the Riordans back up to strength. There must be dozens of corner boys who’d give anything to say they’re one of his gang.’

‘Sean Begley’s fetching Barry Riordan in right now for questioning. And we’ll be questioning all of his gang individually. They’re not the brightest bunch that you’ll ever come across, so there’s a fair chance that one of them will slip up and give us the evidence we need to hold your man on a charge of conspiracy. One in particular.’

‘Oh, yes?’

Katie told him about Feargal Grífin, and the strong possibility that he had murdered Justice Quinn.

‘He’s fierce unstable. In fact he’s a header. There I was, not three metres away and pointing my pistol directly at him and he still tried to pull out his own gun. If we can charge him with Justice Quinn’s murder he could well go for a plea bargain and testify that Barry Riordan organized the raid on The Weavers.’

‘But we have no firm evidence that he killed Justice Quinn.’

‘We have the CCTV of him driving off with him less than an hour before his car was set on fire. And I firmly believe that I can come up with more evidence, too.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like who paid him to kill him.’

‘Kathleen, this is all pie in the sky. The number of times I’ve heard you saying that you don’t believe in hunches. But admit it – you’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you, just to make the media believe that you’re getting on top of the gangs, when you’re not. This Operation Hubbard was nothing but a fiasco. We’ve ended up killing three men and wounding another with almost no legal justification. They were armed, yes, but you knew that they weren’t going to be shooting anybody because you’d already arranged it yourself that there was nobody in the pub for them to shoot.’

‘Sir – they opened fire on us first.’