‘We don’t need to be exact about the spot,’ Tony said. ‘They have all this technology now where they can scan the ground to see if soil was disturbed. We just need a general part of the woods. I remember there was a big oak near to where we buried him. And spruce trees. And there was a fallen tree trunk over a stream along the way.’

‘I don’t remember that,’ Karen frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

Tony nodded. ‘I took your hand to help you across. We’d barely spoken since the row, the party.’

‘It wasn’t quite a row,’ Karen said. ‘That diminishes it a little.’

Tony mumbled an apology, keen to drop the subject.

‘We’ve all kept our secrets,’ she said, clearly still annoyed by his comment.

Before he had a chance to tease out the implications of her comment, a black car swept down the road, skittering loose gravel as it did so. It ground to a halt next to Barr’s car and Sean Mullan stepped out.

‘Folks,’ he said, by way of greeting, then moved across to his nephew’s side of the car and waited for the boy to get out, business-like. Impatient.

Tony studied him. The man had aged more than any of them, he reckoned. The weight of power, perhaps: uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. His moustache was narrower now, more grey-blond than the brown of his youth. His hair had thinned and, though still brushed to one side, revealed more of the scalp below. His weight had settled at his gut, his belly hanging over the top of his belt. Only his clothes were better quality, his trousers a heavy canvas, his brown walking boots supple and well-polished. Either he’d been planning on a walking holiday when he was in Scotland, or he’d had to buy them new on the way here. Or, of course, he’d half expected that Duggan would demand his presence at the wood and had come across prepared for that eventuality.

‘Let’s get a move on,’ Mullan said, tersely. ‘Hugh,’ he added, acknowledging the man who had now made his way out of the car and was draining the can. ‘You’ve started early.’

‘I started on the boat,’ Duggan laughed.

‘So I heard,’ Mullan said, deliberately not looking at his nephew who had clearly been reporting back to his uncle.

‘Good to see you, Seanie,’ Hugh said, raising the tin.

The informality of the nickname seemed a little forced, a little desperate, as if he were letting everyone know that his relationship with Mullan was different from theirs. But the fact that he felt he needed to do so at all suggested it was not as close as perhaps he believed.

Mullan came across to Karen and Tony and shook hands, a little stiffly, with both of them. ‘Thanks for doing this,’ he said.

‘Happy to,’ Karen commented. ‘It’s the right thing to do.’