'Oh, I think so.'

'Good. Well, give me a cigarette and let's see what you know, then we'll see what I can teach you.'

Which he did. Every dirty trick in the computer book. By the time he'd finished, she was capable of hacking into the Ministry of Defence itself. And she continued to be an apt pupil until the morning she got yet another phone call – that was three, she thought; these things always seemed to travel in threes – the phone call that said Roper was in the hospital with kidney failure.

They'd managed to save him, but he'd gone to a clinic in Switzerland and she'd never heard from him again.

Now, typing from memory, she started trawling through files, entering names as she went. Some were readily available. Others, such as Ferguson, Dillon, Hannah Bernstein and Blake Johnson, were not. On the other hand, when she cut into Scotland Yard's most wanted list, there was Jack Barry, complete with a numbered black and white photo.

'They got you once, you bastard,' she mused. 'Maybe we can do it again.'

Hedley came in from the kitchen with the file and put it on the desk. 'The new barbarians.'

'Not really,' she said. 'Very old stuff, except that in other days we did something about it.'

'Can I get you anything?'

'No. Go to bed, Hedley. I'll be okay.'

He went reluctantly. She poured another whiskey. It seemed to be keeping her going. She opened the bottom drawer in the desk in search of a notepad and found the Colt. 25 Peter had brought back from Bosnia, along with the box of fifty hollow-point cartridges and the silencer. It had been a highly illegal present, but Peter had known she liked shooting, both handgun ind shotgun, and often practised in the improvised shooting range in the barn at Compton Place. She reached down and, almost absentmindedly, picked it up, then opened the box of cartridges, loaded the gun and screwed the silencer on the end. For a while, she held it in her hand, then put it on the desk and started on the file again.

Ferguson fascinated her. To have known him for so many years and yet not to have known him at all. And the Bernstein woman – so calm to look at in her horn-rimmed spectacles, yet a woman who had killed four times, the file said, had even killed another woman, a Protestant terrorist who had deserved to die.

And then there was Sean Dillon. Born in Ulster, raised by his father in London. An actor by profession, who had attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. When Dillon was nineteen, his father had gone on a visit to Belfast and been killed accidentally in a firefight with British paratroopers. Dillon had gone home and joined the IRA.

'The kind of thing a nineteen-year-old would do,' she said softly. 'He took to the theatre of the street.'

Dillon had become the most feared enforcer the IRA ever had. He had killed many times. The man of a thousand faces, intelligence sources had named him, with typical originality. His saving grace had been that he would have no truck with the bombing and the slaughter of the innocent. He'd never been arrested until the day he had ended up in a Serb prison for flying in medicine for children (although Stinger missiles had also apparently been involved). It was Ferguson who had saved him from a firing squad, had blackmailed Dillon into working for him.

She went back to the Sons of Erin and finally came to Tim Pat Ryan. His record was foul. Drugs, prostitution, protection. Suspected of supplying arms and explosives to IRA active service units in London , but nothing proved. He had a pub in Wapping called the Sailor by the river on China Wharf. She took a London street guide from a shelf, leafed through it and located China Wharf on the relevant map.

She lit a cigarette and sat back. He was an animal, Ryan, just like Barry and the others, guilty at least by association, and the thought of what had happened to her son wouldn't go away. She stubbed out her cigarette, went to the couch and lay down.

The great psychologist Carl Jung spoke of a thing called synchron-icity, the suggestion that certain happenings are so profound that they go beyond mere coincidence and argue a deeper meaning and possibly a hidden agenda. Such a thing was happening at that very moment at Charles Ferguson's flat in Cavendish Square. The Brigadier sat beside the fireplace in his elegant drawing room. Chief Inspector Hannah Bernstein was opposite, a file open on her knees. Dillon was helping himself to a Bushmills at the sideboard. He wore a black leather bomber jacket, a white scarf at his neck.

'Feel free with my whiskey,' Ferguson told him.

'And don't I always,' Dillon grinned. 'I wouldn't want to disappoint you, Brigadier.'

Hannah Bernstein closed the file. 'That's it, then, sir. No IRA active service units operating in London at the present time.'

'I accept that with reluctance,' he told her. 'And of course our political masters want us to play it all down anyway.' He sighed. 'I sometimes long for the old days before this damn peace process made things so difficult.' Hannah frowned and he smiled. 'Yes, my dear, I know that offends that fine morality of yours. Anyway, I accept your findings and will so report to the Prime Minister. No active service units in London.'

Dillon poured another Bushmills. 'Not as far as we know.'

'You don't agree?'

'Just because we can't see them doesn't mean they're not there. On the Loyalist side, we have the paramilitaries like the UVF, and then the LVF, who've been responsible for all those attacks and assassinations, we know that.'

'Murders,' Hannah said.

'A point of view. They see themselves as gallant freedom fighters, just like the Stern Gang in Jerusalem in forty-eight,' Dillon reminded her. 'And then on the Republican side, we have the INLA and Jack Barry's Sons of Erin.'

'That bastard again,' Ferguson nodded. 'I'd give my pension to put my hands on him.'

'Splinter groups on both sides. God knows how many,' Dillon told them.

'And not much we can do about it at the moment,' Hannah Bernstein said. 'As the Brigadier says, the powers that be say hands off.'

Dillon went to the terrace window and peered out. It was raining hard. 'Well, in spite of all that, there are bastards out there waiting to create bloody mayhem. Tim Pat Ryan, for example.'

'How many times have we turned that one over,' Hannah reminded him. 'He's got the best lawyers in London. We'd have difficulty getting a result even if we caught him with a block of Semtex in his hand.'

'Oh, sure,' Dillon said. 'But he's definitely supplied active service units with material in the past, we know that.'

'And can't prove it.'

Ferguson said, 'You'd like to play executioner again, wouldn't you?'

Dillon shrugged. 'He wouldn't be missed. Scotland Yard would break out the champagne.'

'You can forget it.' Ferguson stood up. 'I feel like an early night. Off you go, children. My driver's waiting for you in the Daimler, Chief Inspector. Good night to you.'

When they opened the door, it was raining hard. Dillon took an umbrella from the hall stand, opened it and took her down to the Daimler. She got in the rear and put the window down a little.

'I worry about you when things get quiet. You're at your most dangerous.'

'Be off with you before I begin to think you care.' He grinned. 'I'll see you at the office in the morning.'

He kept the umbrella and walked rapidly away. He had a small house in Stable Mews only five minutes away and as he walked in the front door, he felt strangely restless. The place was small, very Victorian: Oriental rugs, polished woodblock floors, a fireplace with an oil painting by Atkinson Grimshaw, the great Victorian artist, above it, for Dillon was not without money, mostly nefariously obtained over the years.

He poured another Bushmills, stood with it in his hand, gazing up at the Grimshaw, thinking of Tim Pat Ryan. He had too much nervous energy to sleep and he checked his watch. Eleven-thirty. He walked to the sideboard, took the stopper out of the decanter and poured the glass of whiskey back.