The battle between the gangs continued. The Burkes had killed one of Liam McPartland’s cousins. In return, the McPartlands had targeted an associate of Kenny Burke. The attack had gone wrong, and they’d ended up murdering an innocent woman who’d been collecting her children from school. There was uproar, the new government promising emergency measures. The minister for rural and regional affairs made a speech in which he paid tribute to his lifelong friend, Detective Inspector Conor Varley. He also spoke about how, as a young man, he’d worked in a shop around the corner from the Avondhu. ‘There are no better people in the country,’ he said, ‘than the people I met there.’ He went on to explain how his experience in Dublin’s inner city had been invaluable when he’d become a youth worker in Limerick and, later, in Templemorris. A listener would swear that Tom Crossan alone understood the blight of drugs and crime. The media lapped up his performance, with one tabloid anointing him the star of the new government, a genuine man of the people.

Conor read every news article about the feud and followed every radio report. He complained about the ignorance of journalists and the stupidity of politicians. When he started haranguing the television, even Sharon got fed up with him, and he’d never met anyone with a longer fuse than his wife.

The brass insisted he take more time off. Although he’d been doing physiotherapy, his arm still wasn’t fully functional. Sharon urged him to make the most of the break. ‘Haven’t you been run ragged for years?’ she said. ‘Why not relax for a few weeks?’ She was right, but then she was one of the most sensible people he’d ever met. In a world of fakery, Sharon was entirely herself.

They’d met when the bank where she worked had been held up by an armed robber. She’d been a dream witness: calm, thorough, reliable. It was rare for Conor to be overawed, but for Sharon Kirwan his brain had made an exception. A few weeks passed before he found the courage to ask her out. He discovered that, like him, she was forty-two and had all but given up on finding someone. Two months later, she put her apartment up for sale and moved into Conor’s house in Phibsboro.

Sharon was one of the few people who hadn’t asked if getting shot had been a transformative experience. Nowadays everything from cancer to a week’s holiday was labelled transformative. True, his life had changed, but he couldn’t quite nail down the changes. He couldn’t say, ‘This is how I’m different.’