“‘Turn around,’ I said.

“He turns, and I push him forward toward the patio doors, using him like a shield. As I get closer, I can see…ah fuck it, disgusting so it was.”

“Fat pigs are raping us,” said Maria, her voice low and wavering, like an old man’s. “We live in hell.”

“I get Taylor to open the door, and then I push him in,” said Tommy, breathing heavily now. “And I’m just standing there, like a statue, you know, because I don’t want to shoot anyone. I’m not supposed to be shooting people. I’m a mechanic, for fuck’s sake. And Moon says something like, ‘Good man, Brock, you can have the next go.’

“And I shoot over him, into the wall. And he’s up in an instant, his trousers around his ankles, and he’s going in his coat on the chair, and he has a submachine gun in his hands, a Steyr just like mine, and it’s him or me, and I shoot him twice, three times, center on, hit him twice, and he gets a burst out before he goes down, he’s on automatic fire, and he clips Brock in the side, and I see Bomber fumbling in his clothes and I warn him, drop it, hands where I can see them, and he comes up with a handgun, don’t know what it is, I shout again, and then I shoot him twice, and that’s it. He had a chance, they both had a fucking chance, now they’re both dead, or they look dead, they’re not fucking moving anyway, I’m not going any closer to them to check.”

Tommy was shaking now, and tears were in his eyes. We had passed Seafield Harbour, and I told him to pull in at a stopping place by the Promenade.

“I didn’t want to do it, Ed, I didn’t want to do it. I mean, they’re fucking scumbags, but…”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. Maria could though.

“They would kill you, send us to hell. Savage cunts. Better off dead.”

I looked in the rearview. Both Anita and Maria had bruises on their faces; the misery and fear in their eyes would take longer to heal.

I put my hand on Tommy’s shoulder. Sobs wracked through his body like a rolling tide. Then he sniffed and caught his breath, and took up the story.

“The girls are huddled together, weeping, I tell them to get dressed, we need to get out: the fucking noise of all the gunfire, Saturday night in Beirut, I can hear doors opening down the street. Brock is trying to lam out the front door, and I hit him on the side of the head with the butt of the Steyr. I go through Moon’s coat, get your phones, and the Sig Sauer you took from the Reillys. By the time we’re out the patio doors, Brock’s back up and vanished. There’s three of us now, and we take the route I took, back between the river and the backyards, then round the corner, through the brambles, over the fences-a bit trickier when there’s three-and made it down the lane to the car. When I passed the cul-de-sac, the Guards were already there.”

Tommy stared out at the black expanse of sea. The fog looked to be lifting, and you could see a trickle of moonlight slating the rippled surface of the water.

“You killed two men, Tommy, and I can’t tell you how to feel about that,” I said. “But I can tell you this-you did well tonight, better than I did. You saved these girls, and you probably saved my life. I think you’ve more than made up for everything you did, and then some.”

Tommy nodded silently.

“So you can have your key back. Now let’s get going, we’re not done yet.”

Tommy drove the short distance to Quarry Fields, and we took Anita and Maria inside. They were frightened about staying there, and I persuaded Tommy, whom they now, rightly, considered their protector, to stay with them. That settled, they set about washing away at least some physical traces of what had happened to them.

The answerphone light was flashing. I listened to the message and immediately wished I hadn’t. It was from my ex-wife. It was hard to make out what she was saying, as she seemed to be crying, or laughing, or both. But the gist was that she had given birth to a baby boy that morning, that she knew he could never take the place of Lily, our daughter, but that she felt happy today for the first time since Lily died, and she hoped I could share that happiness too. I couldn’t. I listened to the message again, then a third time. When Tommy Owens came out I was huddled in a ball on the stairs with my head in my hands. He wiped the message, and got me up, and talked me down, and made me wash my face, and fed me coffee and Nurofen, and put the Sig Sauer in my pocket, and told me to go back to work.

I CALLED DAVE DONNELLY AND TOLD HIM THE REASON the Reillys weren’t coming home to Woodpark was because they were lying dead in the Dublin Mountains. I gave him the location of the quarry and told him Sean Moon and Brock Taylor had been responsible. I also told him that the murder weapon was one of two Steyr 9mm Tactical Machine Pistols that could be found in Taylor’s house in Fitzwilliam Square. He had already heard about the killings there and in Ballsbridge. I said I hadn’t heard about any of that, and didn’t know anything about it either. Dave called me a few names, and I let him. Then I said he should get up the mountains fast, before the workforce at the quarry showed up and some other station got the collar. I asked him if he had traced the phone calls made to Jessica and Shane Howard on Halloween morning. He gave me one mobile number, an 087, which had called Shane Howard; the other mobile, which had called both, used a concealed number. The 087 I recognized as Denis Finnegan’s. I told Dave I expected to have something for him soon on the Stephen Casey/Audrey O’Connor murders. Before I ended the call, Dave said they’d uncovered something about Jonathan O’Connor-he had a record of fire-starting back when he was twelve or thirteen, schools and churches, never detained but close to it, social services were involved, went on for about a year, then stopped.

I switched on Emily Howard’s iBook and read through the most recent e-mails, a sequence of three highly emotional notes negotiating an urgent session with David Manuel. But these e-mails had been sent this evening, when the laptop was in Jonathan’s room in Mountjoy Square, so they couldn’t have been sent by Emily. They had been sent by Jonathan masquerading as his cousin. The last message from Manuel read:

Dear Emily,

Will cut short my scheduled ten o’clock; come at ten thirty and we can have forty minutes. But it will be all right-although let me repeat, I believe this to be a legal matter as much as it is anything else, and I am reaching the stage where I can no longer stay silent.

All best,

David

When I had left Jonathan last night in Trinity, I thought I had heard him crying. Maybe he had been laughing. I called Dave back and went straight through to message: I told him why Jonathan O’Connor should be considered the favorite for the killing of therapist David Manuel last night, gave him Jonathan’s address in Trinity, and said I considered him extremely dangerous. Then I called both numbers I had for Sandra Howard and, in my best Dave Donnelly impersonation, left the message that Jonathan was not only being sought in connection with the Manuel killing, but was also the prime suspect in the murders of David Brady and Jessica Howard. It was time to stir things up.

I drove fast to Jerry Dalton’s house in Woodpark. It was five in the morning, still dark, the lights in the church still on. I banged on the door, and Dalton answered it as if a caller at this hour was nothing out of the ordinary. He led me into the living room. There was no sign of Emily, or of any of the photograph albums and journals she had taken from Rowan House. The room was a mess of paper, though; handwritten sheets from a lined A4 pad were scattered about; an acoustic guitar lay among them.

“You writing a song?” I said.