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felt no grief, but the trouble his killing would stir could derail years of hard work.
     
     
The hard work of Hargreaves and the Secretary of State’s predecessors, admittedly, but still.
     
     
God help him, he might even have to visit the forsaken place again this month. He’d just returned from a solid week there, and surely that was enough? Had it been up to Hargreaves he would have cut the hellish waste of land adrift years ago. But there were those in government, and in royalty, who felt some misguided sense of duty to the six counties across the sea, so it was his burden to carry.
     
     
Now Northern Ireland’s factions had finally agreed to share governance amongst themselves, Hargreaves’s role was largely a matter of passing papers on to the Secretary for signing, so it wasn’t altogether a disaster. Just as long as the natives behaved, that was.
     
     
The phone in his pocket vibrated. The call he dreaded. He answered it with a heavy heart.
     
     
A woman’s voice said, “The Chief Constable is ready to speak with you now, Minister. It’s a secure line. Go ahead.”
     
     
“Good afternoon, Geoff,” Hargreaves said. “What have you got?”
     
     
“Not a great deal,” Pilkington said.
     
     
Hargreaves didn’t like the Chief Constable, but he respected him. Geoff Pilkington was a hard man who had worked the streets of Manchester before climbing the ranks. He was one of the few Chief Constables who had done any real police work in his career, rather than using a public school and Oxbridge education to grease his way into the position. He took grief from no one, but had a keen political savvy that belied his rough exterior. He knew when to shout, and when to whisper. If Pilkington had aimed for Parliament instead of the senior ranks of the force, Hargreaves was sure he’d have been in the Cabinet by now. He had taken the top job in the Police Service of Northern Ireland as it completed its transition from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and it had been a testing time. But he had weathered it, achieving the impossible by earning the respect of the whole of Northern Ireland society, albeit begrudgingly from some quarters.
     
     
“Who was it?” Hargreaves asked. “Loyalists? Dissidents?”
     
     
“Neither, we think. It was done at close range, no sign of a struggle. We’re pretty sure it was someone he knew.”
     
     
“His own people?” Hargreaves walked after his ball, Compton and the caddy following.
     
     
“Unlikely,” Pilkington said. “There’s been no indication of a split. Even if there was, they wouldn’t want to rock the boat. Not now they’ve got their feet under the table at Stormont.”
     
     
“Then who? I have to tell the Secretary something.”
     
     
“We know he was doing business with some Lithuanians, bringing illegals up over the border from Dublin. Girls, mostly, for the sex trade.”
     
     
“I didn’t think McKenna’s lot were into all that. More the Loyalists’ forte.”
     
     
“The official line from the party is no criminal activity at all, but they don’t control what individuals choose to do. Leaves people like McKenna with a little more freedom to operate. If there’s money in it, they’ll do it. And whatever the party says, the money still flows uphill.”
     
     
It never ceased to amaze Hargreaves that people would vote for criminals in full knowledge of their nature. He doubted there was a more cynical electorate in the world. The average Northern Irish pleb could read between the lines of a speech better than any professional political analyst, disbelieving every treacherous word. Yet still they voted as predictably, election after election. He wondered why they didn’t just have a sectarian headcount every four years and be done with it.
     
     
He’d desperately hoped for a Cabinet spot, anything, in the last reshuffle. As it turned out, he didn’t even get Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the job no one wanted. No,