‘No, Kathleen, I’m not putting down the gun and the only way you can stop me is to kill me. My Bryanna is standing here right beside me now, or at least the ghost of her is, and she would never forgive me if I didn’t give Tommy the punishment that he should have been given before he was even born. He should have been aborted. I’m only doing what his mother should have done, even if it is forty years too late.’

‘Megan, put down the gun,’ Katie told her.

Megan shook her head, too. ‘The day that your husband smashes your face into your kitchen sink, then you can tell me that I’m wrong to do this. And you know as well as I do that he’s had other people killed himself. Poor Billy Hagerty – he had him done for, for one, and what harm did Billy Hagerty ever do to anybody?’

Katie could faintly hear the echoes of shouting from the reception area downstairs. The uniformed backup must have arrived to take away the bodyguards.

‘I’m going to give you one last warning, Muireann. You too, Megan. Put down the guns, put up your hands, and step away from the table.’

‘Are you deaf, or some kind of mongo?’ said Barry, turning his head around. ‘You heard what Mrs Maguire told you, and she’s the law.’

There was a moment of extreme tension. Megan shifted from one foot to the other, and nervously licked her lips. Muireann pointed her pistol even closer to the back of Thomas’s head. Beside her, Katie could see out of the corner of her eye that Robert was lifting his pistol and aiming it at Megan.

‘No, Robert,’ she said very quietly, and she reached out with her left hand to lower his pistol down again.

Megan fired. Even though Katie had been prepared for it, the bang still made her jump. Half of Barry’s face was blasted away in a shower of blood and jawbone. His tongue lolloped out of the side of his mouth and one eye was left dangling on a string of optic nerve.

A split second later, Muireann fired. The top of Thomas’s skull flapped up like a pelican’s beak and his brains were splattered in bloody beige lumps all across the table. Some of them clung to the front of Barry’s coat.

Both men’s heads dropped forward, surrounded by acrid whorls of gun smoke.

‘Holy Christ in Heaven,’ said Robert, lifting up his pistol again. But both Muireann and Megan laid their guns on the table and raised their hands. They were trembling, and their faces were as white as if they had been dusted in flour, and it was obvious to Katie that they were deeply shocked.