We fucking showed that little cunt.

Richard took Laura’s hands and said in a measured voice, ‘Conor’s dead.’

Laura’s tears were noiseless and immediate. They fell from her face and landed softly in an unwashed cereal bowl, mingling with the last of the milk.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh. Poor Conor.’

There was an interlude of silence: Laura cried silently, and Richard looked at a magnetized ornament that Laura’s mother had attached to the door of the fridge. It said: ONLY BORING WOMEN HAVE IMMACULATE HOUSES.

Then Laura looked at Richard and remembered, or seemed to remember, his final, gratuitous kick. She felt an oddly multiform sensation, a mixture of feelings too dense to be examined. Later she would identify this feeling as the sense that many things had suddenly ended.

She put her hand on Richard’s face and said, ‘You look scruffy.’

‘Yeah well I didn’t have time to shave.’

‘You poor thing.’ Laura rubbed her eyes and left a wet grainy smudge of mascara on the back of each hand. ‘Did you sleep?’

Richard shook his head.

‘When did you hear?’ Laura said.

‘On the radio this morning.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Laura said. ‘It wasn’t anybody’s fault.’

Pat Kilroy had said the same thing, of course. But Richard had needed to hear it from Laura. And when she said it, and Richard realized that she didn’t mean it, that it wasn’t true, he was again immersed in a vision of his future – all those visits to important buildings.

‘I called Foxer and O’Brien,’ he said. ‘We went to see Pat.’

Laura began to cry again. ‘Oh Jesus. Oh fuck. Conor’s dead. Conor’s dead. Oh I should call his parents. Oh Jesus.’

‘I don’t think you should call his parents, babe.’

‘Well what the fuck am I supposed to do?’ Laura stood and began to pace the kitchen.

Richard unrolled a wad of paper towels and offered them to her. She blew her nose and began shredding the damp tissue with her fingers. Richard had already digested the worst: Laura was not surprised that Conor was dead. He tried to remember the fight. How serious had it been, how heavy-handed?

‘I just need to think,’ Richard said. Then he said: ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about this.’

‘Well if you hadn’t been fucking fighting,’ Laura said.

He wondered if he should have prepared something to say to Laura. Sorry, babes, but I think I may have killed your ex-boyfriend. The humour of this thought emboldened him.

‘Well he fucking started it.’

(There is the question of whether Richard or Barry or Stephen were in any sense gratified by Conor’s death – gratified, I mean, in the short term, during the day or so following the night of 31 August. We fucking showed that little cunt, Stephen O’Brien had said. This kind of triumphalism – brought about by adrenaline, by righteous anger – takes time to fade. The recovery from violent anger, as Richard Culhane already knew, is a period of wilfulness and intractability. The body doesn’t easily relinquish such a sense of power and purpose. This would be the physiological interpretation. There is also the moral aspect. Were the boys, even for a day, glad that Conor Harris was dead? Did they think he deserved it?)