She smiled sadly and said, “I’ll be here.”

He paid the bill in cash and headed out to Great Victoria Street, where Keller waited behind the wheel of the Škoda. Lying on the backseat, wrapped in clear cellophane, was a bouquet of flowers. The small envelope was neatly addressed MAGGIE DONAHUE.

“What time does she get off work?” asked Keller.

“She said eight o’clock, but she might have been trying to avoid me.”

“I told you to play nice.”

“It’s not in my DNA to be nice to the wife of a terrorist.”

“It’s possible she doesn’t know.”

“Where did her husband get a hundred thousand pounds in used bills?”

Keller had no answer.

“What about the girl?” asked Gabriel.

“She’s in class until three.”

“And then?”

“A field hockey game against Belfast Model School.”

“Protestant?”

“Mostly.”

“Should be interesting.”

Keller was silent.

“So what do we do?”

“We deliver some flowers to Eight Stratford Gardens.”

“And then?”

“We have a look inside.”

But first they decided to take a detour through Keller’s violent past. There was the old Divis Tower, where he had lived among the IRA as Michael Connelly, and the abandoned cleaning service on the Falls Road, where the same Michael Connelly had tested the household laundry of the IRA for evidence of explosives. Farther down the Road was the iron gate of Milltown Cemetery, where Elizabeth Conlin, the woman Keller had loved in secret, lay buried in a grave that Eamon Quinn had dug for her.

“You’ve never been?” asked Gabriel.

“It’s too dangerous,” said Keller, shaking his head. “The IRA keep watch over the graves.”

From Milltown they drove past the Ballymurphy housing estates to Springfield Road. Along its northern flank rose a barricade separating a Protestant enclave from a neighboring Catholic district. The first of the so-called peace lines appeared in Belfast in 1969 as a temporary solution to the city’s sectarian bloodletting. Now they were a permanent feature of its geography—indeed, their number, length, and scale had actually increased since the signing of the Good Friday accords. On Springfield Road the barricade was a transparent green fence about ten meters in height. But on Cupar Way, a particularly tense part of the Ardoyne, it was a Berlin Wall–like structure topped by razor wire. Residents on both sides had covered it in murals. One likened it to the separation fence between Israel and the West Bank.

“Does this look like peace to you?” asked Keller.

“No,” answered Gabriel. “It looks like home.”

Finally, at half past one, Keller turned into Stratford Gardens. Number 8, like its neighbors, was a two-level redbrick house with a white door and a single window on each floor. Weeds flourished in the forecourt; a green rubbish bin lay toppled by the wind. Keller pulled to the curb and switched off the engine.