He made his way down the stairs. That madman in Libya… a favour in return for guns to the Provos? It could be a message to the State’s judiciary too, the ones who had reluctantly ruled that the Offences Against the State Act, the most powerful and abused legislative weapon against the IRA, was constitutional. Madness. But hadn’t there been several prominent British Jews assassinated in the Seventies? No wonder Jimmy Kilmartin had waved him on with this one, bad ‘cess to him.

The Garda who had been questioning Miss Connolly met Minogue in the hall. “You were right, sir, she doesn’t miss much.”

Hoey reached for the telephone as it rang.

“Run that through a typewriter, like a good man,” Minogue said to the Garda. “And shoot it up to John’s Road for my attention. Investigation Section.”

Hoey held a hand over the receiver and waved it at Minogue.

“Get it hand-delivered before tea-time this evening too, if I can put you to that trouble?”

The Garda hid his resistance well.

“It’s a tall order, I know, but the matter could be urgent in the extreme.”

Minogue took the phone and listened. A bus or a lorry passed close to where Gallagher was making his call.

“Sergeant Gallagher? Matt Minogue. Yes, yes, and how are things with you, now? I’m running an investigation on this murder of the judge’s son, Paul Fine. Did you know about it, a possible connection with some Palestinian group or the like here? You did? Oh, the Commissioner’s office, were they?”

Minogue listened to Gallagher while Hoey leaned against the door-frame, his arms folded.