Tommy looked at me with a defiant smile.

“All right, you took me by surprise, well done. What’s Brock Taylor doing peddling amateur porn?”

He shook his head, his expression contracting into its usual pasty combination of suspicion and anxiety.

“I think he’s after Brady in some way. I don’t know how. He told me to take the DVDs, but to wait for the word before I started hawking them. Said if I sold any before that, he’d want to talk to me.”

“Did he mention Brady by name?”

“No. It was all, a certain party this, a certain party that.”

“And was there a deadline? A cutoff point, after which you could go ahead?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

I could hear him say it, but there was a reverberation, a kind of psychic echo to it, as if I had heard it many times before. As of course I had: not this specific detail, but the connection, the way on a case, nothing is accidental, everything forms a pattern, and what you thought you were looking for marks only the first step along the path. Tomorrow was Thursday; the deadline for Shane Howard to pay his daughters’ kidnappers the ransom was midday Thursday; now a porn movie directed by her ex-boyfriend was ready to flood onto the market after that time-if the ransom wasn’t paid? Or despite that?

Not the detail, but the connection.

“He did say, one of the places to sell was outside Castlehill College. Which is where David Brady went to school. So that maybe says there’s some kind of threat going on.”

“And how did he hook up with you?”

“You mean, me being such a fucking loser an’ all?”

“If the cap fits. What I meant was, Brock having his own boys to do the necessary.”

“I don’t know that he does. Or at least, not on the street, you know? He doesn’t want to be associated with any of that now. He’s a member of Seafield Rugby Club and the Castlehill Lions Club and the fund-raising committee to buy a new dialysis machine for St. Anthony’s and all this.”

“And it didn’t occur to you to wonder about the wisdom of working for Brock Taylor? Did you not learn your lesson with Podge Halligan?”

“Ed, nobody knows what Brock is up to. I mean, he never dealt drugs, he’s not robbing, he owns the pub and a few houses and apartments scattered around. That’s all he looks like he’s doing, property development.”

“And a little hard-core porn.”

“All right, I don’t know why he called me, and I didn’t expect him to be into all this.”

Tommy gestured disgustedly at the TV and his bag of DVDs.

“He said there was some kind of underage scene going on, and he was trying to get to the people behind it.”

“Child porn?”

“Not children, young teenagers. Thirteen, fourteen.”

“Your daughter’s age.”

“I’m not the only one with a daughter. So I thought, if that’s what’s going on, and if Brady’s involved, and if Brock is after him-for whatever reason-and he can’t get the evidence, and he wants to shame him around town, and there’s a few bob in it for me, why not?”

I looked at Tommy, who was lying about at least some of it, of course, but who had worked himself into believing that he had told the whole truth and nothing but. The problem was, it didn’t add up.

“Shane Howard told me David Brady was one of the most promising fullbacks in the country. What’s he doing still playing club rugby for Seafield? The best players are all professional now, why isn’t he playing for Leinster, or any of the Celtic League sides? And what’s he doing making hard-core porn films and…I mean, if he shot the photographs of Emily, we have to assume he’s in on the blackmail attempt as well.”

Tommy looked at me and shrugged.

“That’s where you’d earn your money, by doing your job. Boss.”

If he had grinned, I might have slapped him, but his face was a mask of earnest and diligent apprenticeship. I gathered the DVDs together and put them in a paper carrier bag.

“I hope you’re being straight with me, Tommy. Because this is serious business, and if you’re fucking around, I won’t take it lightly.”

“On the level man, on the level,” Tommy said, as usual looking far from. “I swear on my daughter, on Naomi man.”

And held my gaze, and I felt he understood how serious it was, and I knew if anything had meaning for him, it was his child, and I believed him.

We all make mistakes.

DAVID BRADY HAD AN ADDRESS IN THE SEAFIELD WATERFRONT apartments. I stood outside the security door to the complex with my car keys in one hand and my phone in my ear, nodding and saying “absolutely” and “no problem” and “Monday at the latest” until a short man with his hair gelled into the spiky fin that for some reason was the current style of choice for young male estate agents appeared in the lobby, a sheaf of apartment specifications under his arm. The Waterfront had sold off the plans eighteen months before; now that the complex was finally open, half the apartments were on the market again as investors sold up for sixty or seventy grand more than they had paid. I pointed at the door, still nodding into the phone, and Spiky Fin, who I noticed had acne, and possibly short trousers, opened it and extended an apartment spec to me. I waved my keys at him, too busy by far, and slipped around to the elevators.

As the elevator rose, I inspected myself in the mirrored walls. I wore a black suit, a white shirt and black shoes. I wore a black overcoat in deference to the season. I had a black knit tie in my pocket, but it was rarely necessary these days. I had fallen into dressing like this partly by accident: I got off the plane from L.A. in a black suit and the airline promptly lost the rest of my luggage. I couldn’t think of anything else to wear, so I simply bought more of the same. It meant I rarely had trouble with a doorman, a maître d’ or a corporate PA, quite the opposite in fact. And if it also meant in certain situations I was a shade conspicuous, well, that can work to your advantage too, provided you don’t mind leading with your chin. After an October off the booze and working hard at the gym, I was a few pounds below fighting weight, loose-limbed and ready for action. I went for a reassuring smile. Then a look of reliable authority. Neither worked. The darkness in my eyes and the drawn clefts in my cheeks seemed to anticipate what I would find in David Brady’s apartment. I was trying to sell my reflection an impression of life, but it was no good. I was calling on death, and my face knew it before I did.

I knocked on the door and it gave against my fist; it had been left on the latch. The apartment was eight floors up and looked out over Seafield Harbour through one wall of glass; if the mist hadn’t been so thick, you’d have seen right across the bay to Howth; as it was, you could see about as much as David Brady, who was lying on his tiled kitchen floor with a halo of blood around his head and a Sabatier carving knife stuck in his chest. He had been stabbed a number of times in the stomach and chest, and the back of his head looked like it had been smashed repeatedly on the glazed terra-cotta tiles. I took a pair of surgical gloves from my coat pocket, put them on and gave the body a quick once-over. Brady’s flesh was still warm to the touch, even around the hands: there was no visible lividity, no evidence of early rigor in the eyelids or the jaw; he could have been killed ten minutes ago.

I looked at the photograph Jessica Howard had given me, of Emily and her boyfriend David Brady. It must have been after a match; Brady jubilant, red-faced and mud-smeared in a striped rugby shirt; Emily, all blond highlights and orange tan, gazing adoringly at her prince. My tongue felt swollen and dry in my mouth, and sweat suddenly sparked in my hair and on my brow. I crossed to the glass wall and slid the balcony door open and stepped out into the clammy cold air. Petrol fumes mingled with the salt tang from the sea; behind the roar of buses and trucks, a foghorn sounded, a dark bass note of mourning beneath the traffic’s metallic clamor.