‘Just after midnight I caught some gowl prowling around my back garden. I gave him a few kicks where it hurt and chased him away, but he left this behind. I’m wondering if that IT whizz of yours might be able to unlock it and find out who the fellow was.’

‘He didn’t hurt you at all?’

‘No, and he took nothing – not that I have anything in my garden worth taking – and he caused no damage. All I want to know is who he is and what he might have been doing there at that time of night.’

‘Okay,’ said Bill, taking the phone. ‘If anybody can open this for you, our man Conall the Phonecracker can.’

He left, and as he left, Moirin came in with a fresh mug of latte.

‘Are you all right, ma’am?’ she asked her. ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but when you came back from that meeting just now anybody would have thought that you’d swallowed a mouthful of wazzies.’

‘I’ll be grand, Moirin. Nothing to get upset about. Not too much, anyway. Sometimes you can find out quite unexpected who your friends are, and other times quite unexpected you can find out who your friends aren’t. It’s not worth weeping over.’

*

Katie asked Moirin to ring Orla, Justice Quinn’s widow, to see if she could arrange to meet her and offer her condolences. At the same time, Katie wanted to find out discreetly if Justice Quinn had received any unusual phone calls or threats that he hadn’t reported to the Garda, or if they had seen any suspicious characters lurking around their house in Tivoli Park in the past few days.

Moirin came off the phone to say, ‘She’s in town at the moment, but she can meet you at Isaacs in half an hour, if that’s okay.’

‘That’s perfect. I have to pop into Neville’s anyway and get a new battery for my watch. Do you know, Paul bought it for me seven years ago when I was promoted to inspector, and this is the first time it’s stopped.’ She looked down at it, and said, ‘I hope that’s not an omen.’

‘Oh, come on, ma’am, you know what they say about the papers. Today’s news, tomorrow’s cat litter.’

As she was buttoning up her coat, Detective Inspector Robert Fitzpatrick knocked at her door. He was accompanied by Detective Caffrey.

‘Off out, ma’am? Won’t keep you, but we’ve made some progress with the Billy Hagerty murder. A Honda Accord LX was found only an hour ago burned out behind a derelict barn in Bottlehill. It was Kona Coffee Metallic – that’s the official Honda name for that colour – and it matches the few descriptions we were given of the car that Billy Hagerty was shot from.’

‘Lord help us, not another burned-out car.’