And who exactly is Murphy and what s it all about? Holley asked.

As you two well know, several dissident groups, all IRA in one way or another, have raised their ugly heads once again. The security services have managed to foil a number of potentially nasty incidents, but luck won t always be on their side. You ll remember the incident in Belfast not long ago when a bomb badly injured three policemen, one of whom lost his left arm. Since then another policeman has been killed by a car bomb.

I heard about that, Dillon said.

Police officers are having to check under their cars again, just like in the bad old days, and some of them are finding explosive devices. We can t have that. And there s more. Attempts have started again to smuggle arms into Ulster. Last week, a trawler called the Amity tried to land a cargo on the County Down coast and was sighted by a Royal Navy gunboat. The crew did a runner and haven t been caught, but I ve firm evidence that the cargo of assorted weaponry originated with Murphy Son.

Was your source MI5?

Good Lord, no. You know how much the security services hate us. The Prime Minister s private army, getting to do whatever we want, as long as we have the Prime Minister s warrant. At least that s what they think. They just don t appreciate how necessary our services are in today s world

Holley cut in. Especially when we shoot people for them.

You know my attitude on that, Ferguson said.

Getting back to Murphy Son, why not get the FBI to handle them? We are in New York, after all.

I d rather not bother our American cousins. This comes from Northern Ireland, and that s our patch. Part of the UK.

I ve always thought that was part of the problem, Dillon said with a certain irony. But never mind. What do you want us to do?

Find out who ordered the bloody weapons in the first place, and I don t want to hear any crap about some Irish American with a romantic notion about the gallant struggle for Irish freedom.