Levy smiled and got to her feet.

‘You’re right,’ she said, taking Hale’s once-again empty glass from his hand. ‘We should both be getting home. This day’s been too long already.’

THIRTY-ONE

Michael sat at his desk with one hand on his unopened Simon Kash working file. His eyes, though, were on something else entirely.

Michael’s office sat at the very top of the house in what would no doubt have been the maid’s quarters years before. Converted long before Sarah’s father had bought the property, the space had been an obvious choice for a working room. Big enough for two large bookcases, three half-height floor cupboards and a comfortable L-shaped desk, it was exactly what Michael needed.

But tonight Michael had achieved little. The encounter with Patrick O’Driscoll was still playing on his mind. But that paled into insignificance next to Michael’s real concern: the danger that faced Simon Kash.

Michael’s eyes had been drawn to the photograph from the moment he had taken his seat. At first he had not understood why. It had sat there since the office had been furnished. And he had seen it countless times before that. But gradually he realised its significance, and with it he began to understand why saving Kash from himself had become so important to him.

Two faces stared back at Michael from the photo. Two young men, one with blonde hair, one with brown, but unarguably brothers. Both younger when the photo was taken than Simon Kash now, but, Michael knew, much more streetwise. Not that it changed what was about to happen to the elder boy who, unknown to him, was just weeks away from facing allegations almost as serious as those that now hung over Kash.

Michael’s gaze bored into the face of his dead brother, Liam. The face in the picture was the Liam that Michael preferred to remember; the young, carefree force of nature that his brother had been, rather than the violent, angry man he became in prison. A prison term that should have been Michael’s.

You were taking bullets for me even then. A threatened tear was now staining Michael’s cheek.

He stood up and placed the photo back onto the windowsill ahead of his desk. Hard as the memories were to take, he was grateful for the clarity it had given him. Seeing Liam so young and remembering what he had gone through for a crime he did not commit – for Michael’s crime – Michael understood his own urge to ‘save’ Simon Kash.

Protecting Simon is the closest I’ll ever come to protecting my brother. The closest I’ll ever come to repaying him.

The sound of chinking glass drifted through the open window, interrupting Michael’s thoughts.

It had come from the garden patio, three floors below the office. Michael knew what it meant. Sarah and Anne were in the garden. And the wine was now flowing. He was surprised it had taken this long; Sarah might be determined to cut back Anne’s drinking, but Anne rarely took ‘no’ for an answer.