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Ward,” said a deep yet womanly voice. “Aren’t you busy? Or are you in need of expert help?”
    Along with her common-law husband, Hugh Ward, another former Murder Squad staffer, Ruth Bresnahan now ran a successful security fi?rm.
    “Orla Bannon—know her?”
    “Who doesn’t? She’s the diva of Ath Cliath. Co l umn, front page whenever she wants it, features with miles of space.”
    “She just got herself into the crime scene here. The ID had her head shot with your name.”
    “Go ’way.”
    “How would she have got hold of your ID?”
    There was a pause.
    With cell phone to ear, McGarr was weaving through a stream of students.
    “Let’s see—I still have my last ID in the glove box of the car. But maybe four or fi?ve years ago, I lost another when my purse was nicked at a pub in Enniskillen where we were staking out Eva Morrisey. Remember?”
    He did. Bresnahan had been undercover, trying to get a lead on an IRA squad leader who had murdered her lover in Donegal.
    “Orla Bannon had covered the story from Mo r risey’s arrest and trial to her sentencing. It was all hearts-and-sorrows. She portrayed her as an unloved child, the victim of an abusive upbringing and a social and court system that failed to address her obvious psychological needs.
    “And now that you’ve mentioned her name, I also remember her ringing me up around that time, wanting to know how the ‘Mata Hari of the Murder Squad’ had fared, north of the border, up Enniskillen way. She even sang it. At the time, I wondered how she knew.
    “But it’s classic Orla Bannon, all right. It’s not how you get the story, but that you get it. Which doesn’t bother her boss one bit, I bet.”
    Sweeney, who used Ath Cliath as his own literally bloody pulpit.
    “Although I hear there’s bad blood between them, with Sweeney wanting to sack her but the editors telling him she’s too well known and too knowledg e able of him and the paper to let her go.”
    “Would some other paper have her?”
    “In a heartbeat. Nobody comes through with new takes and evidence on old dead stories like O.B.”
    “She’s called that?”
    “With the allusion to the all-knowing Star Wars character not disavowed by her.”
    “She’s well scarred.”
    “On the head from truncheons. She was a kid during the civil rights marches, and it’s said by those who would know that she’s got other scars that are not merely physical.
    “Fetching, wouldn’t you say? Small, dark, fi?ne-boned but full-fi?gured. Yet she’s never married, never been in a serious relationship that I’ve heard about. And any word of one would be all over town in a jiff, given who she is.
    “If we can we help you with the Kells thing, Chief, you only have to say the word.” McGarr detected more than a little interest in her voice.
    Since leaving the Murder Squad, Bresnahan and Ward—with their knowledge of computers and dat a bases—had provided McGarr with information he could not have obtained otherwise.
    And none of what they came up with would have to be entered into Garda fi?les and shared with the likes of Sheard.
    “Call round at six”—when McGarr held his evening squad meeting. “And, thanks, Rut’ie.” He rang off.
    McKeon was waiting for him in what had been Sloane’s offi?ce in the Trinity security headquarters, a small room with a gas fi?re in the grate and a tall, paned window that looked out on a playing fi?eld.
    “Listen to this.” McKeon hit a button on what looked like a recording machine. “Hello, Tom,” a man’s voice said. “What can I do for you?”
    Another somewhat muffl?ed voice replied, “Jesus, Ray—get here fast. I don’t know who these yokes are, but—”
    “One, I guess, is Sloane, the other the guard at the gate, the one who got thumped. Problem is”—McKeon again worked the answering machine, spooling back— “this is the prerecorded message for incoming calls.”
    McGarr again heard Sloane say, “Hello, Tom—what can I do for