“Fucking hell,” Kev said unhappily, rubbing one eyebrow and staring at the uniforms. “I don’t like this game any more, lads. I wish I’d just . . .”

“Sketch,” Shay said suddenly. “Ma.”

The three of us slid down on the steps, fast and in perfect sync, getting our heads well below the crowd horizon. I caught a glimpse of Ma, between bodies: standing on our front steps with her arms folded tight under her bosom, raking the street with a gimlet eye, like she knew well that this mess was all my fault and she was going to make me pay. Da was behind her, pulling on a smoke and watching the action with no expression at all.

Noises inside the house. One of the techs came out, jerking a thumb over his shoulder and saying something smart-arsed to make the uniforms snicker. He unlocked the van, messed around inside and ran back up the steps holding a crowbar.

Shay said, “He uses that in there, the whole gaff’ll come down around his ears.”

Kevin was still shifting, like the step made his arse ache. “What happens if they find nothing?”

“Then our Francis goes in the bad books,” Shay said. “For wasting everyone’s time. Wouldn’t that be a pity?”

I said, “Thanks for caring. I’ll be grand.”

“Yeah, you will. You always are. What are they looking for?”

“Why don’t you ask them?”

A hairy student in a Limp Bizkit T-shirt wandered out of Number 11, rubbing his head and looking impressively hungover. “What’s the story?”

I said, “Go inside.”

“It’s our steps.”

I showed him my ID. “Ah, man,” he said, and dragged himself back inside, weighed down by the massive unfairness of it all.

“That’s right,” Shay said, “use the badge to intimidate him,” but it was just reflex. His eyes, narrowed against the fading light, were on Number 16.

A great deep boom like cannon fire echoed through the street and off the houses, out over the Liberties. That concrete slab, dropping. Nora flinched and made a small, wild noise; Sallie Hearne pulled the neck of her cardigan tighter and crossed herself.

That was when I felt the shiver in the air, the electric charge starting deep down in the guts of Number 16 and rippling outwards: the techs’ voices rising and then falling away, the uniforms turning to stare, the people swaying forwards, the clouds tightening over the rooftops.

Behind me Kevin said something with my name in it. I realized we were standing up and he had a hand on my arm. I said, “Get off.”

“Frank . . .”

Inside the house someone called out an order, a sharp fast bark. I had stopped caring who knew I was a cop. “Stay there,” I said.

The uniform in charge of defending the railings was pudgy, with a prissy face like someone’s auntie. “Move along, sonny,” he told me. His accent was six foot deep in bog. “Nothing to see.”