‘I checked high and low and didn’t find a penny. However’—Cy held up a driving licence—‘this I did find. Was in a rucksack on the floor. Don’t know if she’s just stumbled into this shit or she’s been playing us all along. Either way, find her, I believe I find my money.’ He handed the licence to Dolan.

They looked at it.

Orla McCabe. Thirty-five years old.

‘You know where she lives, talk to her yourself,’ Dolan said.

‘A message needs broadcasting loud and clear to any weaselly cunts who think they can cross me.’ Cy took off his flat cap and touched his dyed-black hair and smiled with only his mouth, teeth small and grey, well used. ‘Your eminent presence is that message.’

They conferred in silence while Cy looked west at the clouds gathering over the distant mudflats and the thunderous sea beyond. The dog hadn’t moved an inch or taken its eyes off the brothers. It stood rigid in its steaming gloss coat while vapour from its breath wreathed its head. Cy glanced at the men out the corner of his eye and then looked away again, back to the mudflats, feigning interest in the littoral wastes of the rolled-back sea.

With Cy looking away, Joseph bent at the waist and reached into the tall grass. The dog’s head followed him. Cy turned back, holding his cap, and was about to speak when Joseph rose and swung the curved blade of a sickle into his neck and pulled him to his knees in the glasswort. The speed of the attack shocked open Cy’s mouth and eyes. Cap and rifle hit the ground. The dog leapt. 15Dolan put a boot in its muzzle but it recovered quickly and went for him. This time he kicked it hard in the head and it yelped and backed off. Joseph jerked the blade free in a welter of blood and stropped the dripping steel on his thigh, while Dolan knocked aside Cy’s flailing hands and strangled the rest of the life from him, arterial blood running through his fingers. The whites of Cy’s eyes clouded red as capillaries ruptured.

They hauled the body down the bank to the inlet and cast him out into the silted depths. Insects blowing out of the reeds on cellophane wings. They stood watching blood ribbon and disperse through the turbid water while the dog paced the riverside, baying and whining as its master went under. Incurious gulls soared the soft blue void on invisible axes. They threw cap and rifle into the water and then ascended the bank and retrieved their kitbags and went to the dead man’s grey Land Rover Defender.