Ned Gallagher told the taxi man to drop him off at the King’s Bridge, on the left-hand side of the road, by the railway station. He waited until the taxi was out of sight before crossing the river. Taxi drivers had remarkable memories, and liked nothing better than to be called as court witnesses.

He walked along the north side of a small, deserted square, and entered a cobbled street with a crooked church at the far end of it. Halfway along he stopped in front of a pub. O’Driscoll’s, it was called, but everyone knew it as The Hangman. There was a garage on one side, and, on the other, an extensive patch of waste ground where there had been a mattress warehouse the last time he was here. The look of this empty space gave him a feeling of unease. How could so substantial a building just vanish, leaving hardly a trace of itself? All that was there now was ragged grass and a few low mounds of rubble and a sign warning that trespassers would be prosecuted. He had an urge to turn on his heel and walk away as fast as his legs would carry him.

When had he been here last? Three, four years ago? More? He wished he wasn’t here now. He craned his neck and scanned the frontage of the pub. It was a dingy-looking establishment, dour and uninviting. The lowering sun shone on the upper windows, blinding them. Inside, they were hung with cretonne curtains. Why curtains? Why cretonne? They made a ghostly impression, hanging lankly there behind the soot-grimed glass. Those rooms must have been empty since the house was turned into a pub, before the war. He thought of the people who had lived there once and were dead now.

In the saloon bar a single paraffin lamp glimmered; he smelled its sweetish, oozy smoke. He took off his hat and peered about. Nothing had changed. There was even the same skinny barman, with sloped shoulders and a purplish tip to his long, thin nose. He too looked the same. Only his long black apron was a bit older, a bit shabbier.

‘A ball of malt.’

‘Will you take a drop of water in it?’ the barman asked, in his nasal voice, with weary indifference.

‘It’ll do by itself.’

Ned Gallagher leaned on his elbows on the bar and drew his head as far down between his shoulders as it would go. Though it was unlikely anyone would recognise him from the old days. The type he used to come here in search of tended to die young, or end up in jail, or just wither away, like the leaves of autumn.