'And Peter blown up?'

There was a pause as Emsworth swallowed the whiskey, then he got up and lurched to the sideboard and poured another with a shaking hand.

'Actually, no. That's just what you were told.' He swallowed the whiskey, spilling some down his chin.

She drank the rest of her whiskey, took out her silver case, selected a cigarette and lit it. 'Tell me.'

Emsworth reached the chair again and sank down. He nodded to the file. 'It's all in there. Everything you need to know. I'm breaking the Official Secrets Act, but why should I care? I could be dead tomorrow.'

'Tell me!' she said, her voice hard. 'I want to hear it from You.'

He took a deep breath. 'If you must. As you know, there are many splinter groups in Irish politics, both Catholic and Protestant. One of the worst is a nationalist outfit called the Sons of Erin. Years ago, it was run by a man called Frank Barry, a very bad article indeed, and almost unique – he was a Protestant Republican. He was eventually killed, but he had a nephew, named Jack Barry, who had an American mother. He'd been born in New York, then gone to Vietnam in 1970, when he was eighteen, on a short-term commission. There was some kind of scandal – apparently he shot a lot of Vietcong prisoners, so they turfed him out quietly.'

'And then he joined the IRA?'

'That's about it. He took over where his uncle left off. He's a murdering psychopath who's been doing his own thing for years now. Oh, and another bizarre thing. Jack's great-uncle was Lord Barry. He had a place on the Down coast in Ulster called Spanish Head. It's part of the National Trust now. His father died when he was a child and Frank Barry was killed just before his old uncle died.'

'Which leaves Jack with the title?'

Emsworth nodded. 'But he's never attempted to claim it. He could be proscribed as a traitor to the Crown.'

'I wonder. I think executions on Tower Hill went out some years ago. But Tony, please, get to the point.'