Papa Teague turns right, moving swiftly down a staircase patterned with pigeon shit and smashed tiles. He can hear the echo of his own footsteps. Can feel the damp in his bones. The meeting place wasn’t his choice. The old mental hospital has been closed for years but he is old enough to remember the stories about what happened to people once they were dragged within its great forbidding walls.

‘Feck it, Danior, any more of this shite and I’m away, boy …’

He stops, the echoes of his voice disappearing into the walls like shy spirits. Only one door is open in the hallway. It matches the image that Danior Helden sent him an hour ago. They’ve been trying to meet for days, but each time they have left their hiding places in a desperate attempt to parlay, the presence of the Gardai or the mere presence of an unfamiliar vehicle has been enough for one or both of them to call things off. The Heldens and Teagues have known war far longer than they have ever known peace, but the relative truce between the clans has now lasted over a decade. There have been wobbles, of course, and there was that bad business with Valentine Teague and Shay Helden over in America, but by and large the peace has held. They still distrust one another, but for now, they are united. A common enemy has ensured they pool resources.

A large, broad-shouldered man with dark hair and a tatty bomber jacket steps into the corridor from the open door. He looks Papa Teague up and down, his eyes coming to rest on the weapon in his hand.

‘Won’t be enough,’ says Helden.

‘Why? You got more with you?’

‘No, cousin. I’m alone, as I swore I’d be. I mean that won’t be enough if you were followed.’

Teague opens his coat. Shows the revolver in the pocket of his waistcoat. ‘The knife’s got friends.’

‘They say you don’t hear him coming. By the time you get your gun out you’re already watching your blood pool.’

Teague sniffs. Spits. Shows his teeth. ‘Butcher’s bill?’

‘Duke and Lash,’ he says, quietly. ‘Menowin’s boy and his friend.’

‘Dead?’

‘Duke made it home. We won’t see Lash again.’

‘He badly hurt?’

‘If he was a horse I’d fecking shoot him. One side of him … just fecking hangs there. Went at his spine with a screwdriver.’

Papa Teague crosses himself. Looks down to the floor. ‘He came for my daughter, Danior.’

‘No,’ says Danior, shaking his head. ‘No he didn’t. I was there, cousin. We’d have put any of you boys in the ground but why the fuck would we waste a hired gun on some nobody across the water?’

‘Eva-Jayne?’ asks Papa, scowling. ‘He got himself confused – thought she was the target, or she disturbed him before he got to Roisin …’

‘How many times?’ snaps Helden. ‘Time and again, all through the peace, I’ve fucking told ye! We sent Cromwell over the water because those half breed animals, those Godless half-brothers, were offering her for sale. And by Christ, though we hated you then and we’d have been glad of the bargaining power, he was in the middle of the Irish sea when the fortune teller died. You had your boys tucked away all over. Doncaster, Hartlepool, Falkirk. Don’t act like you didn’t, but you think we’d have gone for your girl? Your pride and fecking joy? After what she’d already endured? Fuck, cousin – you’ve been torturing the wrong man.’