And then, immediately, the stench of rotting meat. I stepped in, the door still opening. He was there in his hearth chair, sitting with his back to me, the unthatched pate of his skull cresting the antimacassar. I fired immediately. The top of his head vaporized. A shower of brain and bone went up as the slow, heavy bullet tore on unchecked, shearing a lump of masonry from the fireplace.

I circled around him quickly, taking in the room. Oil paintings dotted the walls: above the mantelpiece a pale mare galloped across the fields; on the opposite wall the sun set in oils over Drongawn Lough. By the window a stopped clock hung above a stuffed and mounted woodcock. It was bitterly cold and my breath fogged the foul, stinking air. A hurricane lamp by the window raked the room with thick, juddering shadows. The door to the bedroom was closed. Bolt upright, the target had hardly moved. Only his head had slumped forward. There was an open leather bag between his feet. I kept the SIG on him and kept moving. The front door banged to, muffling the rush of wind and waves. I faced him then.

I hadn’t killed him.

But he was dead all right.

Six-four, a hundred and seventy pounds and in good shape. The top of his head was missing, but his face was intact, eyes open, staring down into the hearth. His skin was blackening, cadaverous. And in the middle of his chest a dark ring alive with maggots spread out from the bullet to the heart that had finished him.

Held loosely between the fingers of his left hand was a folded slip of paper. I bent down and pulled at it, keeping the SIG at the ready. His hand fell away and left me clutching a hundred-dollar bill. As the body moved, I gagged. The smell was almost overpowering. He hadn’t lit the lamp that morning. He’d been dead for at least a week.

For the last seven days it was not his shadow I’d tracked from room to room, dawn to dusk, but his killer’s.

And then all hell broke loose.

2

‘So what happened?’

Commander Frank Knight sipped his Guinness and pinched the foam from his lip. Then he settled his glass and looked directly at me, evaluating the clues staring at him from across the table. I looked away and sank into the chair.

‘What didn’t happen?’

No matter how much I bit down on it, I was obviously in pain. I’d rubbed just enough fentanyl into my gums to make the drive bearable. As it wore off I could feel my muscles going into spasm.