It came when Miranda Hart hired Don Kennedy to investigate Hutton's disappearance. The first thing Steno knew was when this fucking heap of an ex-cop lolloped into the bar, heaved his fat arse up onto a stool and started asking questions. Steno felt hurt that he hadn't been consulted, but he knew that his feelings were useful only if he could transform them into something productive. He called Miranda and assured her that all would be well, thereby reminding her that it didn't have to be. Soon Miranda was ringing him five times a day freaking out about all manner of things Kennedy was digging up. Steno wasn't sure what those things were, not at first anyway, but they resulted in Kennedy blackmailing Miranda for a couple of years, until they'd hit on the new plan.

He still wasn't sure he knew all of it-the part about Hutton being Regina 's son wasn't all of it, he knew that much-but on one level, it didn't matter: the dead couldn't blackmail you. But he knew whatever it was had something to do with Hutton and Miranda. Kennedy had gone up to the Staples place and…well, it wasn't known what was said, but the next thing, Patrick had gone and cut out his own tongue. Steno assessed that one and came up blank, unless you just called him a fucking mental bastard like everyone else: What kind of analysis could you make of a fucker who'd do something like that? But Miranda assured him later that Hutton was sound, and sane enough up there, clean and fit and back in training she said, and Steno had seen the horse, and fair enough, Hutton had his weight down and looked capable enough, and then gradually Miranda presented him with a revised appraisal of Hutton's and her ambitions: the new plan.

The new plan. Steno had to laugh sometimes at the plan: the symbols, the tongues, the thirty pieces of silver, like one of those movies you watched on DVD, drunk with a pizza. He didn't know whether it had all been Miranda's idea, or whether it came from Hutton; the idea had been partly to throw everyone off the scent of what was really happening, but everything they used meant something too, and that appealed to Steno. Miranda had timed it to kick off when Leo got out of jail-she'd been communicating with him when he was inside, Steno believed, playing on his past loyalty to Pa Hutton-in the hope that Leo would join their enterprise. Steno had advised against this, but he was reminded yet again that working with a woman was a hazardous fucking endeavor: she'd sometimes agree completely with what you said and then go out and do the complete fucking opposite, like a monkey or a child. Leo had always been a volatile little fuck, and Steno had had no confidence that Leo would act in concert with them. That shrewd evaluation of the situation turned out to be more than vindicated by subsequent events, not that Miranda Hart had thanked him. But Leo was never gonna be a tout, not even to your man Loy.

Steno still wondered whether he shouldn't have taken Loy out of the picture that night up in Jackie Tyrrell's. He conceded privately that he'd been troubled by the idea of killing them both in one go, especially since Loy did not appear to present a clear and present danger-although Steno believed he was, and that he should go down. Steno suspected that he had succumbed to the worst kind of initiative deficit; he had weakly allowed himself to be defined as a hired hand, simply carrying out orders. Steno didn't need reminders from history to understand just what a cop-out that defense was.

He hadn't particularly enjoyed cutting out the tongues; at least with Folan's, and even Kennedy's, there'd been time, and so the blood wasn't an issue: dead bodies don't bleed in any significant way. With Jackie Tyrrell, Loy was on the premises and there were servants around and he'd had to work fast; he'd started on the tongue when she was still warm, and there was a certain amount of mess. It was a bit of a fucking downer, truth be told. He wouldn't say it had rattled him, but it took all his concentration to set the body up on the ropes and ring the bells, and lay in wait for Loy and not kill him, and maybe that was how Steno glossed over what deep down he considered a failure on his part: despite everything, he had stuck firm to his purpose, and acquitted himself with distinction. Spilled milk under the bygone bridge, whatever: he was ready now for what was about to ensue. The beauty-and-the-beast malarkey Miranda had been running with Hutton was nearly done. Brian Rowan, the head man up at Tyrrellscourt, was bought and paid for: he'd soon be assuming a lot more responsibility at the Tyrrellscourt yard.

Jackie Tyrrell's murder hadn't been part of Miranda and Hutton's original plan, but Steno demanded it as the only adequate recompense for his ser vices: Jackie's riding school and lands were all bequeathed to Miranda; Steno had made sure the papers had been drawn up in advance with Miranda transferring the same bequest to a company he controlled. All that remained was the final spectacular. It was that aspect once again that appealed to Steno: the art of it. Provided Beauty and the Beast played their parts correctly, and they would, he'd make sure of that. No, it would be spectacular, it would be public, it would bring Tyrrellscourt to its knees at last-Steno just wished he could sign his name to it. Maybe that was the ultimate act of self-sacrifice. Not that Steno expected anyone else to understand that.

He looked at Miranda Hart before they got in the Range Rover, and mentally shook his head in despair: her lipstick was crooked, her hair was askew and her eye makeup was asymmetrical. What a fucking downer. It was the problem with democracy, as Steno saw it: some fucking people, no matter what you gave them or did with them, they were never going to get their act together. She smiled at him, and he could see she'd been crying. Was he supposed to feel guilty about that? Well he didn't. She looked scared. At least that showed judgment on her part. She had good reason to be scared. They all had. If there was an enterprise worth the hazard that didn't strike fear into your heart, Steno wondered what it might possibly be.

The door swung open and the cold relentless wind brought, first Tommy Owens, his hands on his head and his right eye bruised, then Miranda Hart, wearing riding boots and a long Barbour jacket and carrying a black Adidas sports grip, and finally Steno, who wore a broad-brimmed hat and a long coat like an Australian and had a Heckler & Koch MP5K submachine gun in one hand. I didn't check to see what he had in the other. Steno pointed the SMG at me, and I held my hands up and out to be searched. Just as the doorknob had creaked, just before the door opened, I had hidden the Glock 17 I was carrying among the cushions on the sofa. Miranda Hart appeared terrified, her hands shaking as she fumblingly unzipped the grip, her lips trembling as she produced hanks of nylon cord and bags of nylon grip ties and rolls of silver duct tape. Regina Tyrrell stared at what was unfolding before her eyes in astonishment and fear, then made a rush for the door, only to be brought up short by Steno waving the MP5 at her.

"Karen," she cried. "Karen! What have you done with her?"

"Calm, calm, she's all right, she's fine," Steno said.

"Where is she?" Regina said.

"She's locked in her room. Miranda has the key. We've left food and drink there for her. It's just for a short while, until Leopardstown is done. Miranda, why don't you get things tied up with our friends here?" Steno said. "Take Mr. Loy first, if you would."

I had quickly calculated that there was no percentage in trying to make a grab for the Glock: it wouldn't make much of a show against an SMG. But it might come into its own later on. Miranda looked as if she wanted to say several things, but she didn't say any of them; instead, she got her sports grip and Steno pointed me into a chair with the SMG, and without a word, Miranda tied me up with plastic grip ties around my wrists and ankles and nylon cord around my waist, and then frisked me. When her hand passed over my mobile phone in my jacket pocket, she tensed and looked me in the eye, and I waited for her to come to a decision. It was a moment in which time seemed to slow to a crawl, in which I sensed both her power over me and her powerlessness, now that she was in Steno's thrall. And the strange thing is, in that instant, I felt so much toward her, such a mix of feelings: compassion, and sympathy, and fear for her welfare, and, despite all I knew then and all I suspected and was subsequently to discover, the hope that she and her daughter could somehow escape together, and put all the bad history behind them. And even as I tried to hold the thought in my mind, it turned to dust, like all dreams that involve fighting the past again and winning this time do, turned to dust and was scattered on the relentless wind. She passed over my phone and leant into my ear.