"But you knew Patrick Hutton there too."

"I met Patrick there, and then he came across to Tyrrellscourt as an apprentice, the pair of them did."

"Miranda Hart told me F.X. made a point of taking boys from St. Jude's on as apprentices. Did he rely on you to choose them?"

"Not in every circumstance. But I recommended Patrick and Leo, yes."

"And would you have been aware of the relationship between them?"

"I was aware that they were friends. What you're suggesting-"

"That they were lovers."

"Yes. I don't believe any such…nothing like that. Really."

Vincent Tyrrell looked appalled at the very notion of homosexuality, or at least, he wanted me to believe he was. He shook his head, looked at his watch and lifted up his pad.

"Blank page, Edward Loy. If I can't have it finished, I like at least to break the back of the damn thing by lunchtime. Otherwise it's a joyless meal, and no wine either."

"I wanted to ask you about Regina. Your sister."

"I know who Regina is. What about her?"

"Are you close? Is she close to F.X.? Where does she fit in the family?"

Vincent Tyrrell's face reddened. He stood up and started to shout.

"Why on earth should I answer that? I didn't pay you to…who the hell do you think…What gives you the right to ask all these questions?"

I stood up now. The days when I sat in my seat while an angry priest shouted at me were done.

"You did. I don't know what you intended. Maybe you don't know yourself. Maybe you wanted Patrick Hutton to remain a mystery. Maybe you wanted me to throw a scare into Miranda Hart. Maybe it has something to do with Leo Halligan, something neither of you is willing to tell me, and you hoped I could somehow brush it under the carpet for you both. But it's too late now. You see, you didn't ask me to find Patrick Hutton. You didn't ask me, in the event Hutton was dead, to locate his killers. You just told me his name. And you paid me. Way too much, as it happens. And now I can't stop until I know the truth. Maybe you thought you were clever just giving me a man's name. But it looks like it's enough to build an entire world around. And I won't stop until that's what I've done."

Vincent Tyrrell had retreated behind the supercilious smile that had served him so well, the smile that didn't know whether to mock or pity the rest of humanity. I wanted to wipe that smile off his face.

"You know your former sister-in-law was murdered this morning? And nobody thought to ring you, not your brother, nor your sister, not the Guards, nobody. You charged me with having a footfall too light upon the earth for comfort. Well, it takes one to know one, Vincent Tyrrell. You have no one belonging to you who cares enough to tell you one of your family is dead. How did that happen?"

I don't know how I thought I'd feel when I succeeded in wiping the smile off his face. Not very good would have been my guess, to reduce an old man dying of cancer to a pale, twitching frame of flesh and bone. I made a gesture with my hands, something approaching an apology but not going all the way, and made for the door.

"Maybe I shouldn't have been so hard on Miranda Hart. But it would have been impossible to tell the child the truth," Tyrrell said.

I opened the door. Father Vincent Tyrrell stopped me with what he said next.

"By Your Leave was an experiment. Very unusual. Something of a freak, you know. If you get to talk to Francis face-to-face, ask him what he thought he was doing. If you don't, ask someone who knows about close breeding."

Tyrrell was standing behind me now; I felt his breath on my collar, and then he tugged my arm with his claw of a hand and spun me round to face him. He was smiling again, a gleeful, more than half-mad smile I wanted to look away from but couldn't.

"By Your Leave. That is all you know on earth, and all ye need to know," he said. And then Father Vincent Tyrrell kissed me on the mouth.

Back in Quarry Fields, I showered, shaved and changed into a fresh white shirt and a clean black suit. I had fallen into dressing like this when I arrived back in Dublin but my luggage did not; I was dressed for a funeral and, once I'd taken off my tie, I found no great reason to dress any differently afterward. Occasionally I felt a little overdressed, but that was rare in the city of suits Dublin had become; mostly it suited my purposes, whether to curry favor with a headwaiter or at a reception desk, or to impress a client, or simply to remind myself in the hours when I was flagging to keep my shoulders back and my head held high. I looked at my face in the mirror: it was drawn and sallow, but something in the eyes was different; the ghosts of the past had lifted, and there was light instead of darkness; for the first time that I could remember, as I heard the front door slam and the creak of floorboards below, I had a glimmer of a future, by which I meant a woman. The fact that the woman bore an uncanny resemblance to my ex-wife was a detail that appeared lost on me.

In the kitchen, Tommy Owens was making tea. He greeted me with a shake of the head and a look of appalled fascination, as if to say he'd seen some gobshites in his time but I could be their king. I didn't much care though, as Miranda Hart was by then in my arms, her tears wetting my cheeks, holding me as if she'd never let me go; what was Tommy next to that?

"Is Patrick dead? Is he one of the bodies they found?" she said.

Tommy looked at me keenly.

"I think so," I said. "I can't be sure."

She was shivering, in coat and scarf with her gloves still on.

"We need to talk, Ed," Tommy said.

"Let's talk then," I said. "If we're going down to Tyrrellscourt, Miranda can help us: she knows the place inside out. There's nothing to say she can't hear."

Tommy and Miranda exchanged glances, and I got the impression that Tommy had already had a go at her on the journey here.

"Ask her about Leo Halligan," Tommy said. "The phone call."

I shook my head.

"What's up, Ed?" Tommy said. "Gauze on the lens, is there?"

Miranda Hart understood immediately what was happening.

"Ask away, I've nothing to hide. I don't need kid gloves," she said to Tommy.

"Did you ring Leo Halligan on Saturday night?" he said.

"I didn't even know he was out of jail," she said.

"But you'd've had his number," Tommy said.

"I used to have his number, years ago. That was another life, as far as I was concerned, until-"

"Until what?" Tommy snapped.

"Until Ed came around yesterday asking questions about Patrick, about the Tyrrells, about the whole bloody thing. And now there are these dead bodies…"

"One of them is Don Kennedy, the private detective you hired to find Patrick two years back."

Miranda Hart shook her head.

"And Patrick, and now Jackie…good Jesus, what's happening?"

"That's what we need to find out."

"Someone-a woman with a posh accent-called Leo and told him that the story of Tyrrellscourt was about to blow, and that Vincent Tyrrell knew the full story," Tommy said.

"Do you want me to draw you a fucking map? That wasn't me," Miranda said to Tommy.

"Maybe it was Regina Tyrrell," I said.

"Regina Tyrrell doesn't have that kind of accent," she said in that crisp, faux-objective way women take care to use when slighting one another.

"What kind of accent does she have?" I said.

"Oh, you'll find out. You'll find out soon enough."

She colored after she'd said this, and looked down, and I wondered again what had passed between her and Tommy.

"Tommy followed a car that left Jackie Tyrrell's house last night," I said. "The bells had begun to toll, and the car screeched out from the stables, an old Land Rover with UK plates. Tommy followed down the N81 past Blessington and then west toward Tyrrellscourt. He lost it somewhere in the approaches to the village."