Katie said, ‘It’s up to you, Feargal. It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other, except that you’ll save me a whole rake of boring paperwork. If you choose to spend the rest of your days in a cell, good luck to you, that’s all I can say.’

‘Come on, Feargal,’ Kyna coaxed him. ‘Whoever told you to do these jobs, they’ve kept their hands clean, haven’t they, while you’ve been hauled in? Sure, we can understand that you might have owed them a favour, or felt some loyalty towards them – all gang members together-like – and maybe you were a touch afraid of them, too. But think ahead to ten years from now. Unless you give us a clue to who they are, they’re going to be jetting off to holidays in Majorca and drinking champagne at the races at Mallow while you’re sitting on your bunk in Rathmore Road counting off the years.’

‘Feargal, for your own good, I strongly advise you not to name any names,’ said Sheenagh. ‘The legal ramifications… they’d be enormous. And you’d be laying yourself open to mortal danger, there’s no question about that.’

Feargal was gnawing at his lip. Katie was sure that he wouldn’t be concerned at all about any legal complications, even if he could understand what they were. But he must know without a doubt that if he betrayed them, whoever had put him up to killing Billy Hagerty and Timbo Coffey would come looking for him, and it was likely that they would take their sweet sadistic time in exacting their revenge.

‘We can give you witness protection,’ said Kyna. ‘You’d still have to serve some time, but you could do it in Cloverhill, which is medium-security, or even Loughan House, and we’d give you a new identity, so none of the other inmates would know who you were.’

Feargal still looked uncertain, and when he looked across at Sheenagh she shook her head yet again. But it was then that Katie said, ‘Justice Quinn.’

‘Justice Quinn?’ Sheenagh asked her. ‘What exactly do you mean by that, DS Maguire?’

‘We wanted to see how Feargal would respond if we offered our help in reducing his likely sentence for murdering Billy Hagerty and Timbo Coffey. All we wanted to know is why they were murdered and who wanted them dead, because it obviously wasn’t Feargal himself. He was just the hit man. But – since he seems to have rejected our offer, for whatever reason, I’ll have to ask him about the much more serious charge of murdering a justice of the High Court, Mr Justice Garrett Quinn.’

‘You’re not suggesting that Feargal murdered him, are you?’

‘I am, yes, and what’s more we have the evidence to prove it. I’ve come here this evening prepared to charge Feargal with his murder and caution him accordingly.’