At the sound of their arrival, a squirrel scampered up the bough, bounding up through the branches of the oak, frightened by their appearance. Tony stopped, gazing up. The woods were still, the road far enough away that the sounds of traffic had silenced, the soundtrack to their journey the whistling of birds, the raucousness of crows. After a moment, he heard again the familiar building of a jet engine’s roar as a plane took off from the nearby airport.

‘Do you recognize any of it?’ Duggan asked, drawing alongside him. His breath wheezed in his throat, a sheen of sweat shining on his forehead.

‘Nothing,’ Tony admitted. ‘Apart from the sounds of the planes. It could be anywhere.’

‘I suppose you were far enough gone the last time we were here,’ Duggan admitted, with a brief nod. ‘After our chat and everything.’

‘Our chat?’ Tony repeated incredulous at the euphemism.

‘Our questions,’ Duggan said.

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Three

‘We’ve a few more questions,’ the unnamed man said.

Tony had asked if he could use the bathroom, to which the three men opposite him had laughed.

‘What’s the situation with you and Karen?’ Mullan asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Are you an item?’

Tony glanced again at Duggan, once again clearly the course of this information. He wondered just how much the man had been feeding back to Mullan in Derry.

‘No,’ Tony said, simply.

‘Were you one?’

Tony scowled lightly. ‘For a while.’

‘How serious was it?’

‘That’s none of your business,’ Tony said, the turn in questioning angering him.

The unnamed man stood up and walked in front of the desk. He leant against it, no more than four feet from where Tony sat.

‘How serious was it?’

‘That’s not relevant,’ Tony said, the man’s size tempering his earlier bravery in challenging them.

Despite this, the man moved forward quickly, hitting Tony on the side of the head with his cupped hand, just over the ear. The blow knocked him off his chair, onto the floor.

He looked up at the man, more stunned by the blow than anything. His ear sang, a high-pitched whistling that he tried to shake away. He reached out for the chair to steady himself, in an attempt to get to his feet. The man held out a hand which he refused, scrabbling for the seat.

As he rose, the man cut in sharply near him and punched him this time, a quick, curt blow to his cheek bone, not hard enough to break it, but enough to leave his teeth hurting, his eye stinging as he hit the floor again. His head spun and it took him a moment to orientate himself enough to sit up.

He looked up at the man, reluctant to rise again lest it elicited a third blow.

‘You can get up,’ the man said, moving away from him. ‘Don’t tell us again what’s our business and what isn’t.’