I knew Eve well enough to recognise genuine indignation and felt strangely vindicated: of course it hadn’t been Eve.

‘She has this ex-boyfriend,’ I reasoned, ‘a bit of a stalker. He’s obviously tracked down her new address. He must be doing this from abroad. Speaking of which, how did you find out where I lived?’

Eve searched my face, weighing up how I’d cope with bad news.

‘I rang your mum,’ she said quickly.

My defences sprang up: ‘You did what?’ I felt like screaming.

‘You don’t mind do you, Donal? I’ve always really liked her and I didn’t know who else to ask.’

‘What did she say?’

Eve grimaced. I braced myself.

‘She sounded in a bad way. She really needs to see you, Donal. She didn’t say as much, but I could tell …’

The flimsy dam I’d hastily constructed to block Mum out gave way, sending guilt gushing through me like a mountain stream.

‘Why don’t you go see her?’ said Eve, mirroring my desperation. ‘There must be a way.’

I couldn’t think how: not with Martin still capable of whisky-fuelled fisticuffs.

‘She sounded so lonely,’ Eve said quietly.

How could I have done this? I’d cut Mum out, my only ally. I didn’t need Martin’s permission to see my own mother. Fuck him. Eve seemed to be reading my mind.

‘Your dad doesn’t even have to know. You can stay at the bungalow, meet your mum in town?’

This sounded too weird, even for me, but Eve had already made up her mind. ‘I’ll call the rental people. Just let me know the dates. It’s no problem at all.’

Her voice softened. She moved closer, her hand touching mine: ‘You need to reconnect with your mum. It’ll be good for you.’

‘You’re right,’ I said, squeezing it and realising no one else knew me like Eve.

She leaned into me, her cool skin still smelling of fresh pines.

‘You do know that today was the day three years ago we were supposed to move to London? August 18th.’

I couldn’t believe she’d remembered. After all she’d been through.

‘The 18th of the 8th, ’88,’ I whispered.

‘If you want to try again,’ she breathed, ‘I know we can make it work.’

I knew already. Deep down, part of me realised that I could never move on with my life until I gave it one more go with Eve Daly. Nor could she move on with hers. My brain just couldn’t fathom how my gut felt so certain of this.

I turned my lips to hers. Both our mouths opened, ready to kiss. As I leaned in, she turned away.

‘I’m sorry, Donal,’ she said, ‘but I have to finish with Fintan first, properly. I want to tell him we’re back together. If we’re going to make this work, we’ve got to do everything the right way, by the book, right from the start. I’m done with lying and sneaking around. Let’s do it right this time.’

Chapter 44

Dublin Airport

One Week Later

I had arranged a secret rendezvous with Mum tomorrow afternoon at Tullamore’s Bridge House Hotel. I couldn’t wait for a proper face-to-face. I now knew the debt I owed her, one which I would spend forever trying to repay.

Tonight’s plans were altogether less straightforward. As promised, Eve had put me in touch with the rental company, and I’d managed to get the old Daly bungalow for the weekend. I then paid a week’s wages for a tiny hire car and headed West. Soon, a low, grey Tupperware sky levelled the land. The air thickened, dampened. I wound down the windows: all that yawning was wearing me out.

I stopped off in Kinnegad and bought four bottles of the only red plonk I could find. As I loaded them into the boot, I unzipped my travel bag to check that the Grade A skunk I’d rolled inside a pair of socks had come through unscathed. I now had all the tools I needed for tonight’s mission.

When forensics had found Laura Foster’s unique footprint on the flat door of 21 Sangora Road, I had felt certain that Marion had directed me to the clue from the other side. This seemed confirmed to me when, a few days ago, I returned to the murder scene. I didn’t tell the unwitting new tenants why I needed to examine their landing. I just flashed my badge and hung about for ten minutes. Every time I’d attended that address in the past, Marion’s raging spirit had appeared to me later. But that night, she didn’t come. I’d done it. I’d caught her killers.

But there was one ghost I still needed to exorcise. My personal bogeyman. If I didn’t, I was scared that he’d always be there, waiting in the corners of my dreams.

I turned left off the Dublin–Galway road for the last leg. Now I’d learned how to prolong the sleep paralysis experience – lots of red wine and weed – I no longer felt scared. I was ready. Tonight felt make-or-break: come to me, Tony Meehan.

As I approached Tullamore, a soft rain made the windscreen squint. I welcomed the watery cover. It would take just one sighting for my arrival to become known to all. I wasn’t here on a homecoming tour. I was here to make peace with Mum and, in a weird way, Tony Meehan.

I turned right into the tiny lane that led to Frank Daly’s vanity project. More spanking-new, splayed-out bungalows leered at me from both sides of the boreen. I turned into Daly’s driveway: the house looked smaller than I’d remembered it, dwarfed now by the sparkling white mini-mansions all round it.

I parked up. The house keys swung gently in the back door. Just five hours ago, I’d been in South London: this was another world. I saw my distorted face in the back door’s window and remembered that night, cooling my raging skin on this glass. I turned to look at the crazy paving and the pebbledashed shed. The blood from my scrabbling, minced hands had long since been soaked up by the interminable damp air.

I stepped inside. It looked the same but it didn’t feel the same. The family furniture had been replaced by processed, generic Ikea products. It felt cold, empty, unloved, making us perfect holiday companions. Eve’s old bedroom now contained a single bed and a cot. My eye snagged on a single familiar item: the clock radio. I picked it up and cradled it in disbelief. How many times had I visualised this clock, my fellow witness to the events of that fateful night?

It was just gone seven p.m., a good time to light the fire, hit the couch and uncork bottle one.

By nine thirty, the sun had fallen behind the Slieve Bloom mountains and bottle number two had dropped below the label: surely the signal to roll a big fat Tullamore Torpedo.

At about midnight, the national anthem heralded TV closedown. I stood and clutched my chest. Just as Amhran na bhFiann reached its vainglorious climax, I zapped the TV off and laughed: in the Irish pubs of North London, that type of behaviour would get you murdered.

I basked then in the vast, suffocating quiet. A tree branch creaked. A dog barked into the void. Something rattled in the roof. The lamp went out, causing my heart to race.

‘Fuck,’ I said, just to break the silence. I walked over to the light switch, flicked once, then twice – nothing.

‘A power cut, great. Just perfect,’ I told the house.

I reminded myself how much I was being charged per night and rang the rental company’s emergency number. No one answered, so I left a rambling message. I’d have to wait until morning. Now I had just the light of the fire to work with, so I threw on two more logs.

‘Could be worse,’ I told myself, uncorking bottle number three and rekindling the Torpedo. I decided to lie back on the couch so that I faced the door. Say what you like about these psychopathic spirits, but they’ve got manners: they always come through the door.

The room felt thick with smoke so I stabbed out the joint. I laid back, willing the chemical swimmers through.

Out of nowhere, a slamming sound jolted me upright. My heart broke into a jog. Not so calm now hey, Donal? I could hear footsteps in the hallway, slow but deliberate, getting closer and closer. My ribcage seemed to shrink until it strangled my thrashing heart. The fire hissed like a snake. This was no fucking dream.