‘Listen very carefully, Minister. My comrade will get out of the vehicle and when he gives you a signal, you’ll walk casually up the front path as if you are just home from work for your tea. I’ll be walking two paces behind you and if you so much as take a step out of time, I’ll happily blow a hole in you, before heading back up the road to pay your wee daughter a visit. Do you understand?’

Cormac said nothing. He was too caught up in thoughts of Annie. No matter what happened to him, he had to make sure she was alright. She would be alright! She’d realise something was wrong when he didn’t come home and she’d call someone, or do something. She was a bright girl. She’d know what to do. Now was not a time to die a hero. That would achieve nothing. He felt a sharp pain in his ear.

‘For fuck’s sake, do you understand?’

His head cleared.

‘Yes, I understand.’

He followed the spotty boy along the garden path, concentrating on his worn Adidas trainers. Cormac was sure had seen better days, probably when their first owner had worn them out five years previously.

Cormac walked through the front door of the house he’d left behind forever only three days before. It felt more alien to him today than it had when he had entered it in the dead of night, after a twenty-two year absence, earlier in the week. Something had changed. Something was fundamentally different. As he entered the living room, he realised what that difference was. It was the smell. His mother’s house always had the same smell. He couldn’t tell what that smell was, but he’d recognised it, even the other night, while she lay cold in this little front room. He’d smelled it in Maggie’s earlier today. He wondered if it must be the O’Reilly scent. If other families have that unique smell only they would recognise. The smell was now gone and was instead replaced by a pungent, masculine smell, like a changing room at a gym that has been left full of used clothing and has not been aired for a week. The voice with the gun, who now possessed a face as spotty as his friend with the second-hand trainers, pushed him down onto his mother’s settee. The room was exactly as he’d left it, except his father’s kitchen table sat where his mother’s coffin stood four days ago. There was only one kitchen chair positioned on the other side of the table from where Cormac was seated and now accompanied on either side by the acne brigade of the unit. It looked like the work of someone who wanted to feel important.

‘Is your big boss not around boys?’

The spotty boy, without the gun, answered.

‘He’ll be here in a minute.’

‘Where is he?’

The spotty boy, with the gun, answered.

‘Fuck up! It’s none of your business!’

‘What’s he doing?’