Katie persisted. ‘You do understand, don’t you, Feargal, that if you confess to those two murders and that attempted murder, the judge will reduce your sentence by a fair few years? I mean, that’s the law. But if you plead not guilty… well, your view of the world will still have steel bars across it when you’re a white-haired old man.’

‘I’m saying nothing, cailleach, nothing at all.’

‘Feargal, you won’t help your case by being derogatory,’ Sheenagh clucked at him. Then she closed her laptop and said, ‘Is there anything else you wanted to ask, DS Maguire?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact. Who put you up to shooting Billy Hagerty, Feargal? If you tell us that, you could be looking at an even greater reduction in your sentence. Was it Billy Hagerty you were after, or was it Thomas O’Flynn? Or both of them?’

Feargal took off his glasses and looked over at Sheenagh in what appeared to Katie to be the first sign that he was panicking. He might be gang-hardened, he might be close to psychopathic, but she could see that the desperate quandary he was facing had started to sink in.

Sheenagh shook her head, as if she were telling him to say nothing, but Kyna leaned over to him and said, ‘It’s all very well to tell us to eff off, Feargal. I don’t blame you. The guards have never done you any favours, not once in your life, have they?’

‘Well, you’re not, either, are you, girl?’

‘Don’t be so sure. If you can tell us who told you to take out Billy Hagerty, then we may be able to help you. I mean, think about all those years and years in prison. You’ll have to do twelve. That’s the minimum. But supposing it’s twenty? Supposing they never parole you at all before you die? Whatever you’ve done, do you really want to pass away in a prison cell? Do you never want to see the sea again, or stroll down Pana, or drink with your pals in a pub?’

‘Don’t listen to her, Feargal,’ said Sheenagh. ‘I know this one. She’s the honey-talker.’

Feargal lifted his bandaged hand up and down like a fretful child with a fat white teddy bear. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘She’s telling the truth, isn’t she? They do knock years off your sentence if you tell them what they want to know. I spent three years in fecking Wheatfield and two fecking years in Limerick so I know what it’s like inside. You think you can stick it out but some days you just feel like hanging yourself or cutting your fecking throat to get it over with.’