‘How’re you going on, Katie? Feeling better today, hopefully?’

‘Oh, loads better, thanks. Still a little tired, but much more sorted in the head, if you know what I mean. Not nearly so stressed.’ When she said that, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking of herself and Kyna, and how she had woken Kyna up at two o’clock in the morning, and how she had made Kyna moan at such a high pitch that she had almost sounded as if she were singing.

‘Are you all tied up at the moment?’ Kieran asked her. ‘I’ll be going into court in about a quarter of an hour to pass sentence on Donal Hagerty. Justice O’Rafferty’s here with me now and we’re having a last-minute conflab about it. Maybe you’d like to come over to the courthouse and see me handing down the prison term for yourself.’

‘Yes, grand, I will. Of course DI Mulliken will be there because he was the officer in charge of the Hagerty case. But it’ll be interesting to see who shows up in the public gallery. The O’Flynns never missed one day of the trial. They were always there, at least two or three of them, and always with the death stare on them.’

‘They’re the bane of your life, aren’t they, those two gangs? Same as the Kinahans and the Hutches in Dublin. I don’t think that feud will come to an end until they’re all in the cemetery. Maybe you should have let the O’Flynns hold that birthday party of theirs at The Weavers and gone deaf and blind when the Riordans went in to wreck it. You could have rid this city of quite a few gowls without having to chase after them yourself.’

Kyna came into Katie’s office, in a grey check trouser suit and a grey silk headscarf. Apart from quick, noncommittal eye contact, they showed no affection for each other because Moirin was close behind, bringing Katie a file on a recent jewellery-shop robbery in Winthrop Street, which was still unsolved. Two of the stolen watches had turned up at Dooley’s auctioneers in Limerick.

Katie stood up. ‘Kyna – how do you fancy heading over to the courthouse with me to see Donal Hagerty sent down?’

‘Sure, like. Why not? Anything’s better than reading through the heap of paperwork I have on my desk about Doireann Greaney. There must be more than thirty reports on her behaviour from Children First, not to mention her school and her GP, too. I’m pure amazed that it was never flagged up before that she could be a risk to other people, as well as herself.’