He saw the masked man at the door wave to him.

He felt he was suffocating long before he disappeared into the balaclava.

37

He heard her long before he saw her. He’d only just closed the front door and entered the living room, when he heard her distressed sobbing. There was a young woman wearing a white blouse and a black skirt sitting on the chair opposite the door. She had blonde hair tied back behind her head and looked like she’d just arrived home from a long day at the office. The house smelled of garlic and onions and the dining room table, which was directly behind her, was strewn with the remains of a mid-week family dinner. By far his abiding memory of entering the giant cream and brown room was the sound of her sobbing. It sounded at first like the blonde-haired woman was the one crying, but one look at her face suggested steely determination and disgust at their unwelcome intrusion into her home. She was not one who was going to fall apart in front of her unwelcome guests. The noise was instead coming from behind her back. Liam shouted something to the woman, who turned and pulled the child from behind her. She had a mass of curly blonde hair tumbling across her face and ending at her shoulders. He couldn’t see her face too clearly, but well enough to see she was as delicate as a porcelain doll. She was still in her school uniform of grey skirt and green jumper. She could have been no more than six years old. She clung to her mother so tightly it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. He wanted to comfort her, but instead realised with a sickening clarity he was the cause of her terror. Liam spoke and flashed the long steel at them which drained the colour from the woman and increased the volume of the little girl. He screamed at the mother to shut the child up. When she proved unsuccessful in the task she’d been set, he lunged at them both and tore the child from her grip. Cormac told him to leave them alone, but he wasn’t listening and was throwing the child against the staircase that rose along the wall behind him. He grabbed Cormac’s shoulder and pushed him after her. The little girl scampered up the stairs, turned left, and darted through a bedroom door. Liam ordered him to follow her and keep her quiet.