‘He took the train, like.’

Thomas lifted his trilby, flicked the rain off it, and then carefully replaced it. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said. ‘I reckon he’s inside there now hiding in the press or under the bed and he just doesn’t want to see me. That’s what I reckon.’

‘I told you. He’s not here.’

‘You can carry on telling me that until the cows give cheese, but I still won’t believe you. Go back in there and tell your man to come out or else we’ll be coming in to get him. He has ten seconds, tell him.’

The woman hesitated, but then without another word she disappeared. Thomas said to Milo, ‘Visiting his sister in Waterford… what kind of a fecking gom does she think I am? I’ve met his sister and she runs an online knocking shop down in Grafton Street. Great fat ganky she is, too. Mountainy isn’t the word. I’ll tell you how fat she is, when she was standing on the corner by the GPO a guard came over and told her to break it up.’

He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and then he shouted out, ‘Eight – nine – ten! Your time’s up, Eamonn! We’re coming in so!’

Immediately the door opened wider and there was Eamonn O’Malley. His face was round and smooth and strangely doll-like, with protuberant blue eyes and greasy black scraped-back hair. He was wearing a white open-necked shirt and navy-blue suit trousers held up by red braces, although his feet were bare, with bunions.

‘Well,’ said Thomas, ‘that was a fierce quick sprint back from Waterford. You should be in the Guinness Book of Records. How’s your sister keeping?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Tommy, I’m beat out, like,’ Eamonn told him. ‘I have the holy mother of all hangovers and I was only trying to have a couple of hours’ kip.’ He nodded towards Milo and Darragh and the other four men. ‘What’s the craic? What do you want to see me for? And why’ve you fetched all these fellers with you?’

‘What do you think I want to see you for? Did I not pay you to have a quiet word in Judge Quinn’s ear, and warn him what could happen if he didn’t go easy on Donal?’

Eamonn O’Malley looked back at him guardedly. ‘I did, like. That’s exactly what I did. I waited for him in the car park yesterday outside the court, and when he came out about four o’clock after yesterday’s sessions I went up to him and asked him pure polite-like how he was going on. You said to be pure polite-like, didn’t you?’

‘So what did he say?’