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'He must have been all of sixteen at the time.'

'Eighteen, Asa,' O'Hagan said. 'He turned up with a .45 Webley revolver his grandfather had brought home from the First World War. Fought at my side that night. Has looked after my interests ever since.'

'Looked after you?'

'With a handgun, he's the best I've ever seen.' Seumas returned with a mug of tea which he put down at Morgan's elbow. He went back to the counter and sat on a stool at the far end, watching the door as he drank his tea.

'I'm impressed.'

O'Hagan said, 'What is it you want, Asa?'

'The winter of nineteen fifty, Liam, in Korea when you were the worst National Service second lieutenant in the Ulster Rifles.'

'Those were the days,' O'Hagan said. 'God, but we were impressed when a big man like you turned up on attachment. A real soldier, medals, everything.'

'When the Chinese encircled us on the Imjin, when the regiment had to carve its way out, I went back for you, Liam, when you took that bullet in the foot. I brought you out. You owe me for that.'

O'Hagan wiped his mouth, took half a bottle of whiskey from his pocket and sweetened his tea. He did the same for Morgan.

'Paid in full,' he said. 'Bloody Friday, Asa, you were standing in Lewis Street at midnight, outside Cohan's Bar which was burning rather well at the time. The boy and I were on the roof opposite. He wanted to blow your head off. I wouldn't let him. So if you've come looking for any special favours, you've wasted your time.'

'A good day for you, that,' Morgan said bitterly. 'Around one hundred and forty dead and injured.'

'Be your age. The fire storm those RAF bombs raised in Hamburg in July forty-three killed more people in three days than the atom bomb did at Hiroshima. The only difference between the bomb dropped from twenty thousand feet and the one left under a cafe table in a parcel is that the airman can't see what he's doing.'

'And where does it all end, Liam, all the violence, the killing?'

'A united Ireland.'

'And then what? What do you do when it's all over?'

O'Hagan frowned. 'What in the hell are you talking about?'

'You're going to win, aren't you? You must believe that or there wouldn't be any point to it or don't you ever want it to stop? Do you want it to go on for ever, like stage six at MGM? Up the Republic! Thompson guns and trenchcoats. My life for Ireland.'

'To hell with you, Asa,' O'Hagan said.

'Remember my daughter, Megan?'

O'Hagan nodded. 'How old is she now? Fourteen or fifteen, I suppose?'

'You read about the Maxwell Cohen shooting last week?'

'That was the Black September, not us.'

'The man responsible had to hijack a car to get away with the police hard after him. Megan was cycling home from school through Paddington tunnel. He ran her down. Left her lying in the gutter, like a dog.'

'Mother of God!' O'Hagan said.

'I wouldn't let it upset you. It happened on Bloody Friday, so what's one extra more or less.'

O'Hagan's face was grim. 'All right, Asa. What do you want?'

'Full details haven't been released to the press for security reasons, but it looks as if the man responsible is the one known as the Cretan.'

'The Cretan Lover? I've heard of him. Some kind of international hit man who's knocked people down from both sides of the fence.'

'That's him. He shot Cohen using a very unusual handgun. A silenced Mauser, one of a batch made for SS security men during the war. They don't often turn up now.'

'I see,' O'Hagan said. 'If you could trace the dealer who supplied it?'

'Exactly. According to Special Branch, the only recorded killing in the UK using such a gun was of an Army Intelligence sergeant in Londonderry by a Provisional gunman named Terence Murphy. He was shot dead by Commandos while making a run for it along with a man called Pat Phelan who also had one.'

'And you'd like to know where they got them from?' O'Hagan shrugged. 'There's only one problem.'

'And what would that be?'

'Terry Murphy and Phelan weren't Provos.