Katie and Kyna went up to Katie’s office. It was dark outside now, and hundreds of sparkling raindrops were clinging to the windows. Katie sat down at her desk, picked up a blue folder that had been left there for her, and then put it down without opening it.

‘Did you?’ asked Kyna gently.

‘Did I what? Did I buy it for him?’

She stood up and walked to the window, and her ghostly reflection walked through the raindrops towards her, until they stood face-to-face. In Moirin’s office, the phone started ringing, although Moirin was no longer there to answer it.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I bought it for him. He bought one for me, too, although I never wore it.’

‘Was there a reason for that?’

‘What – for not wearing it? Yes. And I pray to God that those nosy reporters never find out what it was.’

7

Detective Inspector Robert Fitzpatrick and Detective Ronan Caffrey walked into Eugene’s just as Thomas O’Flynn and his gang were finishing their drinks and standing up to leave.

‘Well, if it isn’t Robbie the Razzer,’ said Thomas. ‘I was wondering if you’d be sniffing around sooner or later.’

‘How’s she cutting, Tommy?’ asked Detective Inspector Fitzpatrick. He said it in his usual tone of voice, which was expressionless, just as his face was expressionless, too. He never needed to be openly threatening, though. He had tousled grey hair, which made him look older than his fifty-four years, but he was built like a rugby prop, with an S-shaped broken nose.

‘I’m in good form, boy, thanks for asking,’ said Thomas.

‘You don’t mind if me and Detective Caffrey ask you a question or two?’

‘So long as you don’t ask me where I get my green diesel from. That’s a joke.’

‘Oh, stop. I’m in stitches.’

Thomas turned around and gestured to his gang to sit down. Eugene’s was a long narrow lounge with an L-shaped bar at one end, with stools clustered around it, but Thomas and his henchmen had been lined up shoulder to shoulder along the red padded seats that ran along the right-hand wall, as if they were sitting in a doctor’s waiting room. Muireann had been sitting next to Thomas, and Darragh and Milo were still there, as well as four leather-jacketed young men with tattoos and bad teeth. Detective Inspector Fitzpatrick recognized three of them. They had all served several short prison terms in Rathmore Road for robbery or drug possession or threatening behaviour, or all three. They stared back at him with open hostility.

‘If you’re here to ask me about Billy Hagerty getting himself shot, I saw nothing,’ said Thomas.