The phone call had taken Conor by surprise. ‘I don’t want to make a nuisance of myself,’ a quiet north Clare voice had said, ‘but I’ll be in Dublin for a couple of days, visiting my daughter, and I was hoping we could have a few words.’ Conor had reassured Hannah Galvin that she wasn’t a nuisance and arranged to meet in a city-centre café. Chances were that she wanted to know if he’d made any progress. If so, she wouldn’t like what he had to say. All the same, he had to hope that she had something else in mind.

That was why he was striding down Dame Street when he should have been in Kilmitten, paying his last respects to Mercedes Talty. Poor Mercedes had suffered a stroke while out doing her Christmas shopping. Conor’s father had wanted him to attend the funeral. ‘It’ll only take a couple of hours,’ he’d argued. ‘You’ll be back in Dublin before anyone notices you’re gone.’ Conor had shuffled around the request, lying about how busy he was. He couldn’t give the real reason for his absence.

The city was in the grip of pre-Christmas mania, the streets crammed with shoppers and party-goers. Girls in skyscraper heels, lads in flimsy jackets, beleaguered mothers, befuddled men: they didn’t walk so much as ooze. Stalls appeared, laden with wrapping paper, cheap perfume and fake designer handbags. The homeless were knocked to the periphery, forced to huddle back into doorways and hope that someone remembered them. That was Dublin: beautiful and tawdry, glittering and sad, all at the same time.

After his confrontation with Tom, he’d effectively given up on the Galvin investigation. He’d had little choice. All he’d managed to do was stoke up bad feeling and alienate most of his family.

Five months on, relations with Tom were strained. How could they be anything else? Based on no more than an old piece of paper and some wild supposition, he’d practically accused his friend of aiding and abetting a killer. Even so, Tom’s revenge had been petty. Conor’s father hadn’t forgiven him for looking through the files. Every time they spoke, his dad found an excuse to rail against sneaky behaviour and disloyal children.

The previous day, Conor had seen Tom in the papers. According to one report, ‘speculation was intensifying’ that he would be one of the main beneficiaries of the upcoming cabinet reshuffle. He was being tipped for a move to the Department of Justice, an enormous achievement for an independent politician without a legal background. Underneath the news report, an opinion writer weighed in: