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Obioma said nothing, but waited for Michael Gerrety to answer her.

Katie arrived outside The Elysian with Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán and Detective O’Donovan.

She went up to the two gardaí who were standing outside the front door and said, ‘What’s the story? No more suspicious packages, I hope.’

‘Only the usual residents in and out,’ said one of them. ‘Apart from that, one pizza delivery, one CD from Amazon, and a letting agent.’

‘A letting agent?’

‘She was after taking pictures of one of the apartments, that’s what she said. She was black, and I’ll tell you, she was some beour. But she didn’t fit the description of the suspect and I checked her ID. She was in and out of here in five minutes, if that.’

‘Which letting agency did she come from?’

‘Carbery’s, on Grand Parade.’

‘When was this?’

‘I don’t know. I’d say she left about twenty minutes ago.’

‘Describe her. What colour was her hair?’

The garda looked uncomfortable. ‘It was, like, red, like yours. I mean, you couldn’t really miss it, a black woman with red hair. I mean, it must have been dyed, like, you know.’

‘Full marks for logic, officer,’ said Katie. Then she turned to Detective O’Donovan and said, ‘Sounds suspiciously like your African lasher who said that she didn’t give Obioma the keys to O’Farrell’s furniture workshop. What other ways can you get into this building, officer, apart from this one?’

‘There’s a door for the maintenance staff, but only the maintenance staff have a key for that, and then there’s a door from the basement garage, but that has a keyless combination lock and only the residents know the combination.’

‘But you could open the garage door from the inside, even if you didn’t know the combination?’

‘You could, yeah. I took a look in there meself this morning – just checking that nobody had wedged the door, like, or messed around with the lock so that it didn’t close proper.’

Katie said, ‘Okay. As it happens, we’re here to bring Michael Gerrety into the station with us for questioning. Stay here for the moment, but if we need you upstairs we’ll call you.’

As they waited for the lift, Detective O’Donovan turned to Katie and said, ‘What are you thinking, ma’am? Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?’

‘You mean, that your African lasher might have lied to you about the keys to O’Farrell’s workshop, and that she might have come here to let Obioma into the building? Well, we’ll soon find out, won’t we? If we find Michael Gerrety with no hands and half his face blown away, we’ll know that we’ve been outsmarted.’

They went up to Michael Gerrety’s floor, walked along the corridor and approached the front door of his apartment. Katie raised her hand to indicate that they should be quiet and pressed her ear to the door.

‘I can faintly hear a woman crying.’

‘If you listened at half the doors in Ireland you could probably hear a woman crying,’ said Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán.

‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the Gerretys having a row.’

She pressed her ear to the door again, but now the crying had stopped. She heard a man’s voice, and he sounded angry, but then there was silence.

‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘Whatever’s going on in there, here goes nothing.’

She pressed the doorbell and the chimes played ‘If I Were a Rich Man’.

They waited, and waited, but nobody opened the door and there was still silence inside the Gerretys’ apartment.

‘Try the doorbell again?’ suggested Detective O’Donovan.

‘They’d have to be deaf or dead not to have heard that,’ said Katie. ‘Something’s happening in there and they’re deliberately not coming to the door. Kyna, there’s a caretaker’s office in the lobby, can you go down and get a master key? And bring one of those guards up with you. Tell the other guard to stay on the door in case I’m wrong and Obioma hasn’t managed to get inside.’

Katie and Detective O’Donovan stood well away from the Gerretys’ door while Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán ran back along the corridor to the lift.

‘What’s the plan if she is in there?’ asked Detective O’Donovan.

‘I have no idea, Patrick. It isn’t easy to stop somebody who doesn’t care at all if they live or die.’

They waited, and listened, and Katie heard a girl’s shrill voice calling out something that sounded like ‘
Don’t – don’t do that!
’, but after that there was silence again.

Detective O’Donovan said, ‘Sounds like there’s somebody else in there, apart from the Gerretys. Let’s hope this isn’t going to be messy.’

They heard the lift whining, and then Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán was back, with one of the gardaí from the Elysian Tower’s front door, his high-visibility jacket rustling as he jogged close behind her.

‘The master key,’ said Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán, holding it up. ‘The caretaker was very reluctant to let me have it at first, but then I threatened to arrest him for obstructing a police officer, and he was most cooperative after that.’

As quietly as she could, she inserted the key into the door and turned it. Katie took her revolver out of its holster and stood to one side as Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán gingerly pushed the door open. To Katie’s relief, neither the bolts nor the safety chain were fastened, so there was no need to kick it.

She put her finger to her lips and they entered the Gerretys’ apartment without saying a word. Normally, they would have stormed in like they had at Lower Glanmire Road, shouting out ‘
Armed gardaí!
’, but she had no idea of what they were going to find here, and Obioma was so different from the usual armed suspects they encountered that she wanted to proceed with the utmost caution.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room it was almost dark, and the sky was the same prune colour as Katie’s bruised eye. Although the sun had gone down, the balcony outside was lit up and they could see Obioma out there, pointing her pocket shotgun. Only two metres in front of her stood a young blonde girl in a very short pink dress. She appeared to be struggling, but she was being forced to stay in front of Obioma by Michael Gerrety, who was holding her arms. Behind Michael Gerrety, at the very far end of the balcony, Carole Gerrety was kneeling on the floor with her back turned and her head bowed.

‘Let’s take this very, very easy,’ said Katie. Keeping her revolver raised, she crossed the living room towards the open balcony door. She was only halfway there before Obioma caught sight of her, although she kept her pocket shotgun pointed at the girl in the pink dress, and Michael Gerrety.

‘Obioma,’ said Katie, stepping out on to the balcony. ‘You need to put that weapon down, Obioma.’

‘I am here to finish my punishments,’ Obioma retorted, in a challenging tone. ‘This man deserves to die more than any of the others.’

‘Detective Superintendent Maguire!’ gasped the girl. Katie quickly glanced at her. She hadn’t recognized her without her water-buffalo hairstyle.

‘
Branna!
What in God’s name are you doing here?’

‘She’s a lying conniving bitch, that’s what she’s doing here!’ Michael Gerrety put in. ‘Now arrest this fecking black madwoman, would you? That’s your job, isn’t it? Keeping us citizens safe?’

‘Leave go of me!’ Branna shrilled at him. ‘Make him leave go of me!’

‘Oh, absolutely, and get myself shot dead? No thanks, girl! Come on, DS Maguire! Do your duty before somebody gets killed!’

Branna jerked her head back again, and this time Michael Gerrety wasn’t expecting it and she hit him with a sharp crack on the bridge of his nose.

‘Jesus!’ he shouted, and two streams of bright red blood poured from his nostrils and dripped from his chin. By way of retaliation he gave Branna a violent shaking, but he didn’t let go of her arms.

‘Obioma!’ said Katie. ‘This is all over now. Branna’s an innocent girl and I don’t want her hurt.’

‘Innocent?’ raged Michael Gerrety. ‘She’s just broken my fecking honk!’

‘I am not going to put down this gun and I am not going to leave here until this man is dead,’ said Obioma. ‘I will take away his face and cut off his hands so that he cannot be accepted into heaven, and then my mission will be finished. My sister Nwaha will be able to sleep in peace.’

‘I’m not going to let you do that, Obioma,’ said Katie.

‘You will not stop me. You could not stop me before and you will not stop me now.’

With that, she took a step nearer to Branna and Michael Gerrety, with her pocket shotgun aimed directly at Branna’s face. Then she took another step, until the muzzle was almost touching Branna’s forehead.

‘Are you going to be a man, Michael Gerrety, and let this young woman go?’ she said. ‘Are you going to take the punishment that you deserve?’

‘Oh, I will, yeah!’ said Michael Gerrety. His voice was panicky and bubbly with blood. ‘You’re mad, you are! You’re touched in the head! DS Maguire, aren’t you going to arrest this nutjob?’

‘If I have to kill one to kill the other, then so be it,’ said Obioma.

Over five seconds passed during which nobody spoke and nobody moved. Off to the south, an airliner rumbled as it took off from Cork airport. Tears were running down Branna’s cheeks, while Michael Gerrety was keeping his head down behind her and his shoulders hunched.

Close behind her, Katie heard Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán whisper, ‘My God. She’s going to do it, isn’t she?’

Katie fired. Obioma spun around, thrown off balance by the impact of the .38 Special bullet, and also startled. Her arm swung around, and she tried to aim her pocket shotgun at Katie, but Katie fired again, and this time she staggered backwards and hit the balcony railing with a clang.

Then, whether she did it deliberately or not, she rolled and toppled over the railing and disappeared. She didn’t cry out, she simply disappeared. Katie reached the edge of the balcony just in time to see her hit the pavement, seventeen storeys below.

‘Oh my God,’ said Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán. She reached out and laid her hand on Katie’s arm, but Katie pushed it away. Her ears were ringing from the two gunshots and her wrist hurt from the recoil.

Michael Gerrety released his grip on Branna’s arms and Branna sank to her knees on the floor and started sobbing – agonized, lung-wrenching sobs. Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán and Detective O’ Donovan helped her up on to her feet and took her into the living room. Carole Gerrety stood up and went to the railing and stared down into the street, both hands held up to her face in horror.

Katie turned to Michael Gerrety. He was smearing the blood from under his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Don’t think it’s broken after all,’ he said. ‘Just a bad nosebleed. Bitch.’

Katie returned her revolver to its holster. She was still partially deafened. ‘
You
did this,’ she heard herself say to him. ‘This is what happens when you treat human beings as if they were only put on this earth to make money for you.’

Michael Gerrety put his arm around his wife’s waist and said, ‘I’ll ignore that remark, detective superintendent, considering you just saved my life. Are you all right, Carole? Jesus.’

Katie took another look down to the street below. The garda from the front of the Elysian Tower was kneeling down next to Obioma and several bystanders had gathered, although they were keeping their distance.

Detective O’Donovan came back out on to the balcony and said, ‘I’ve called for an ambulance and the technical boys.’ He nodded towards Michael Gerrety and said, ‘What about him?’

‘What does he mean, what about me?’ asked Michael Gerrety.

‘The reason I came here this evening was to take you in for questioning,’ said Katie.

‘Questioning? What about? Jesus, you never leave me alone, do you? You’re obsessed, you are.’

‘I need you to answer some questions about payments made by you to certain police officers in exchange for their turning a blind eye to some of your illegal activities.’

‘
What?
What illegal activities? I never did anything illegal in my life.’

Katie said, ‘Under the circumstances, we’ll leave it until tomorrow. But I’d appreciate it if you’d make an appearance at Anglesea Street sometime in the morning. You can bring Mr Moody with you, if you wish.’

‘This is harassment! I almost got myself killed there and now you want me to answer questions about illegal activities which I’ve never even done! You’re fecking
obsessed
!’

Katie followed him into the living room. Branna was sitting on one of the couches, still crying, while Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán had her arm around her and was trying to calm her down.

‘All right,’ said Katie. ‘We’ll leave you in peace for now. There’ll be some technicians up here shortly to lift fingerprints and scuff marks from the balcony, if there are any. Otherwise, Mr Gerrety, I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.’

Michael Gerrety was still dabbing at his nose. Before she left, Katie leaned close to him and said, very quietly, so that nobody else could hear her, ‘Actually, you’re right, Michael. I
am
obsessed. I’m obsessed with finding you guilty of every disgusting deed you’ve ever done and showing you up in public for what a revolting louse of a man you really are.’

She smiled at Carole Gerrety, who smiled back at her, and then she turned around to Detective O’Donovan and said, ‘Let’s go, Patrick. I need to pay my respects to Obioma.’

‘Your
respects
, ma’am?’ said Detective O’Donovan, as they went down in the lift.

‘Well, not exactly respects. But I killed her and I need to see her. She may have been a murderer, but I could understand her anger.’

As they reached the ground floor she looked upwards. ‘She didn’t get her revenge against Michael Gerrety, but I will, I swear to God.’

Out in Eglington Street, Katie made her way through the crowd that was beginning to gather. She didn’t push, just gently touched people’s arms and said, ‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ until she reached Obioma’s body.

Obioma was lying on her side, almost as if she had simply decided that she was tired and needed to have a sleep on the pavement. Her eyes were open and she looked puzzled, but still beautiful. Her arms and legs, however, were all at impossible angles, and the back of her skull was smashed so that blood and brains were sprayed all the way across to the kerb. She must have fallen from the balcony head first, and it was over seventy metres to the ground.