Gardaí were still trying to find more witnesses to the shooting of Billy Hagerty outside The Weavers, although they had so far had no luck at all. They had also appealed for anybody who had seen a grey or silver SUV being driven at speed through Dublin Pike at about 11:15 that morning to come forward. The bodies of Billy Hagerty and Mr Justice Garrett Quinn had both been taken to the mortuary at Cork University Hospital to await forensic examination and post-mortems by Assistant State Pathologist Mary Kelley.

As she eased herself stiffly up from her desk, Katie realized that she had scarcely thought about Conor since his funeral this morning. Although it had taken three different tragedies to preoccupy her, she was relieved in a way. The pain of watching Conor’s coffin being lowered into his grave had been almost unbearable, especially since she had known how mutilated his body was inside it. It had taken all of her strength not to sink down on to her knees into the wet graveyard grass and scream at the top of her voice in grief and bereavement. She had been so sure that she had found happiness at last with Conor, and she had even joked with him about how they would spend the time together when she eventually retired from An Garda Síochána.

‘We’ll take ourselves off to Ballymaloe cookery school and learn to be professional chefs,’ he had told her, and even now she could still hear his voice. ‘You’ve not tasted my beef hand pie yet, have you? I swear to God you won’t want even the doonchiest nibble of anybody else’s – not after you’ve tasted mine. It’s neamh i do lámh – Heaven in your hand.’

But before Conor had died he had never found the time to bake his beef hand pie for her, so now she would never know what it might have tasted like. That was only the smallest part of the emptiness she felt, yet the memory of him saying that filled her eyes with tears. For the short time that she and Conor had been together she had held Heaven in her hand, but now it had slipped for ever out of her fingers.

She was buttoning up her raincoat when Kyna came into her office. Kyna already had her furry yellow anorak on, ready to leave.

‘You’re off home now?’ she asked Katie. ‘You need to, ma’am, and I mean it. You’ve had one desperate day altogether and you’re only human.’

‘Any updates from Superintendent Pearse?’

‘No, nothing at all. I mean, Jesus. There’s a shooting right out in the street in broad daylight and nobody saw it. You’d think the whole population of Blackpool needed guide dogs.’