‘Fair play. If you absolutely guarantee that you’ll give me that letter, I’ll guarantee that nobody will ever know that it was you who told me whatever it is you’re about to tell me.’

Owen looked around the bar, and when he was sure that none of the other customers could hear him, or were even in his line of sight, so that they could lip-read, he said, ‘Barry Riordan it was who ordered Billy Hagerty to be shot.’

‘Well, I guessed that. After all, it was Feargal Grífin who actually shot him, and Feargal’s been working for Barry Riordan on and off lately, hasn’t he? Do you have any proof?’

‘I do, yes. I have a recording of an interview that Billy Hagerty gave me three days before he was hit.’

‘Billy Hagerty gave you an interview? What about?’

‘He needed money to pay for an appeal against his brother’s sentence for murdering Michael Riordan. The Sun pays for stories, as you know, and my editor was prepared to pay him two and a half thousand for this one. Even more, if there were any follow-up stories, like Barry Riordan getting himself arrested.’

‘To be honest with you, Owen, I don’t think there would have been much of a chance of Donal Hagerty having his sentence reduced, even if he had appealed. It wasn’t only Michael Riordan he shot, remember – he shot his wife and his two little children.’

‘Sure, like. I don’t think we’ll ever know what happened exactly because Donal was halfway out of his head, but things went badly wrong. The point is, he wouldn’t have taken the job at all if he hadn’t owed Thomas O’Flynn a rake of money for drugs. Thomas O’Flynn gave him the choice: either you shoot Michael Riordan or else I’ll have you and your family kicked out of your house and you can go and live in a homeless shelter, or Dunnes’ doorway.’

‘So is that the story that Billy Hagerty wanted to sell to the Sun?’

‘None of that came out in court, because Donal didn’t dare to rat on Thomas O’Flynn. But that was only part of the story. The real sensational story was that Billy Hagerty used to be Neala Hagerty, his sister. Billy Hagerty was transgender.’

‘I knew that, Owen. I saw his body at the morgue.’

Again, Owen looked around the bar, just to make sure that nobody had come to sit any closer. ‘But did you know that Neala Hagerty used to be Barry Riordan’s girlfriend, and that they lived together for over two years?’

‘No, I didn’t. My God. Is that really true?’