Tony was struck by how the dynamic had shifted, with the youth now attempting to console him. And yet, strangely, he realized that he was not worried. Not because of Mullan or anything he might do to salvage the situation but because of himself.

He thought of his empty house, the church, cavernous and echoing as he cleaned it, Ann’s grave, narrow and silent, his rituals, designed to inure him to his own loneliness. He realized, with only the faintest note of pain, that if Duggan killed the lot of them, no one would really notice he was gone. He’d just be a footnote to the story of Mullan’s death in the papers; no one would mourn his passing.

‘Everyone’s gone,’ he said, and surprised himself to hear the words had been spoken aloud.

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ Tony said, unwilling to share something so personal.

‘I trust my uncle,’ Barr said, continuing with his own train of thought. ‘He’s come out of worse than this unscathed.’

‘How long have you been working with him?’

‘About three years,’ Barr said. ‘He took me under his wing; an apprenticeship, I suppose.’

‘Do you enjoy it?’

Barr nodded. ‘It’s important work.’

Tony wondered at the nature of the work that he considered so important. Driving old killers around the country, listening to their war stories, or multiple versions of them? Was that important? Perhaps, it was all part of the healing process that people said the country needed to undertake before it could be whole again. But none of this felt like healing, none of it cathartic.

‘I don’t understand why someone of your generation would want any part of this,’ Tony said. ‘I don’t get what the attraction is. I know why we all got involved; we lived through it, but your generation? You’ve a choice.’

‘A choice?’ Barr said, incredulously. ‘There’s no choice. The work that started a hundred years ago isn’t finished yet.’

‘What about the peace process?’

‘Peace and the absence of fighting are two different things,’ Barr said. ‘The war never ended, the rules of engagement just changed. If we stopped now, what would have been the point?’

‘Do you think there was a point? In the end?’

‘My granda was interned,’ Barr said. ‘When I was young, he used to talk about what happened to him in front of me. He wouldn’t tell his family, wouldn’t tell Uncle Sean, but he talked about it to me.’

Tony tried to keep his expression neutral, even as he privately considered the wisdom of a grandparent discussing such a thing with a child.