He closed his eyes for a moment, then sighed and continued. 'There was a man called Doolin who used to drive for Barry. He ended up in the Maze Prison and we put an informer in his cell. Our man had an ample supply of cocaine and eventually had Doolin telling his life story from birth.' 'My God.' She was horrified.

'It's the name of the game, my dear. Doolin had not been with Barry during the time in question, but his story was that Barry was on a high as he drove him north to Stramore, on pills and whiskey. He told Doolin he'd just taken out an entire undercover British group thanks to the New York branch of the Sons of Erin, and with a little help from someone he called the Connection. Doolin asked who this Connection was, and Barry said no one knew, but that he was an American, and then he started acting all coy, and talking about the detectives who'd operated out of Dublin Castle for Mick Collins in the old days.'

'So the implication was that this Connection was someone very high up and on the inside? But where? How?'

'For years, British Intelligence has had a link with the White House, especially because of the developing peace process. Information has been passed to what were supposed to be friends on a need-to-know basis.'

'Including information on my son's group?'

'Yes. I thought that was going too far, but those more important than I, people such as Simon Carter, Deputy Director of the Security Services, ruled against me. And then Doolin was found hanged in his cell.'

She went and poured another whiskey and turned. 'It gets more like the Borgias every minute. And as you've avoided explaining your remark about Peter not being blown up, I think I'm going to need this.' She swallowed half the whiskey. 'Get on with it, Tony.'

'Yes, well, the Sons of Erin. They passed on information obtained from the Connection. They all had contacts in Dublin and London.' He was in agony and showed it. 'It's in the files. Everything's in there, all the players, photos, the lot. I copied the Top Secret file and