‘I still can. But I can be beside you.’

‘Roisin, we don’t know each other …’

‘And yet you love me. I know you do.’

‘Roisin …’

‘Roisin McAvoy,’ she says, smiling wide. She nips his lip with her teeth. Strokes her fingers along the line of his chin. Puts her hands in his hair. ‘Say it for me. Say it, please …’

The smile is fleeing: an animal darting out on a country road. ‘I feel like I’m going mad. This doesn’t happen. Not to real people. Not to me …’

‘Say it …’

‘Will you marry …’

‘Of course I fecking will.’

THIRTY

‘You’ve nothing stronger have you?’ asks Constable Garda Daragh Kincaid, taking the mug of tea in a shaking hand. He’s a swarthy sort, thick lips, leathery skin, dark eyebrows that meet in the middle when he’s asking a question. He looks as though he needs to shave himself again within twenty minutes of putting his razor away.

‘No,’ says McAvoy, bluntly.

‘My nerves,’ he adds, as the tea sloshes over the lip of the cup. ‘And by Christ, my fecking head.’

McAvoy feels nothing. No whiff of sympathy, no spark of compassion. Just glares at the guard as he raises the mug to his mouth and then curses as he scalds his split lip.

‘I’ll just be pottering,’ says Barrington, quietly. ‘Outside, if you need me …’

It was Barrington who suggested they adjourn to the boathouse. Barrington who gently coerced the two big, bleeding men off the street and down Cliff Road and behind the metal shutters and red brick of the lifeboat station. Barrington who led them into the kitchen and made tea and offered both men a damp washcloth and a mirror.

‘Get yourself right, then tell me everything,’ says McAvoy.

The guard nods. Wraps both big meaty hands around the mug. ‘By Christ but you scared me,’ he says, offering a weak smile. ‘Always thought I was good at surveillance. Twenty-three years a guard! What was it? When did you …?’

‘I used to have a Ford Cougar,’ growls McAvoy, impatient. ‘Now, why did you drive off? Why were you following me? I swear, if you’re wasting my time when I should be out searching …’

Kincaid pats at the air. Takes a breath. ‘There’s a Threat to Life notice being delivered through the official channels,’ he says, his voice pure Dublin. ‘Last I heard, you still hadn’t signed for it.’

‘I’ve been busy,’ mutters McAvoy. Angrily, he snatches up his own mug of tea. Takes a sip. Scowls. It’s not sweet enough.

‘You’ll be regretting that, if I’m any judge,’ says Kincaid, sympathetically. ‘I was at your crime scene this morning. Bad business.’

‘I saw you,’ mutters McAvoy, leaning back against the wooden counter and staring into his mug as if it might contain answers.

‘Similarities to a certain case,’ says Kincaid, smiling. ‘Bringing back memories, I shouldn’t wonder.’

McAvoy is too angry to blush. Too angry to offer an explanation. ‘Dymphna Lowell,’ he says, flatly.