Lisa was Dympna’s second oldest sister, twenty-four, by general consensus the prettiest of the Devers’ girls; that Fannigan’s molestations were intended for another of Dympna’s siblings, albeit one of legal age, would have done little to mollify the big man.

‘Jesus,’ Arm said, ‘fair play.’

‘No,’ Dympna said, ‘no fair play at all.’

Arm wound the wires of his iPod neatly about the device and placed it on the dash. When he stepped out of the car, Dympna handed him the bathroom key.

‘Light damage,’ Dympna said, ‘lesson damage.’

Fannigan was on the couch in the sitting room, in front of a low wooden coffee table. A shining black plasma hung on the wall, a talk show on, switched to mute. It was a Yank show; tanned people with bleached teeth and sports jackets mooing and grimacing at each other like pantomimes. Arm could hear a clock, an old-fashioned mechanical tick-tocker in the hall, and faint scrabbling noises from behind the bathroom door.

‘I don’t want to keep her too long in there,’ Fannigan said, nodding towards the hall. He was a bit drained looking, but there was no tremor in his voice. His limbs were pinned to the couch. Fannigan was somewhere in his fifties. He was gaunt, with dirty silver-tinged rocker hair. He wore a bushy grey moustache he presumably considered distinguished, the whited ends tamed into tapered points by regular, finger-tipped applications of spittle, and he might once have been a handsome man. All Fannigan had on were jeans and a vest. His ropey arms were decorated with the murky green-blue blotches of old tattoos, their original shapes and lines mottled into illegibility by age. The lack of clothing was on purpose, Arm decided. Fannigan wanted to advertise the frailty of his scrawny frame.

‘Have a seat,’ Fannigan said.

Arm stepped forward.

‘Arm—’ Fannigan said and raised an open hand.

Arm grabbed the back of Fannigan’s head and flipped him off the couch onto the floor. Fannigan’s cheek smacked the coffee table. He moaned, and a dark rivulet, meaty and viscous, slipped from his mouth. Arm stepped back and guided his foot up under the old man’s ribs.

‘Up,’ Arm said, ‘look, Fannigan. Look.’

Fannigan raised his face as requested. Arm hit him two, three, four times. To his credit, Fannigan was still conscious after that, though swimming on his elbows on the carpet. It was often hard to tell if a person was crying in that state—there was usually a lot of liquid running from their face, necessitating all manner of soggy expulsions and clogged snorkelling noises. But Arm thought Fannigan was crying. Certainly, Fannigan was struggling to say something.

‘I—I—I didnnnn efffin ged, ged haa nnnnnnickers off!’