Tony could not move. He felt a tightness in his chest, felt the raggedy hoof beat of his heart. Duggan’s gun was now less than a foot from him, the man’s face set, his eyes blazing, his mouth tight with fury.

Tony shook his head, glanced at Mullan, Barr, Karen. Duggan followed his gaze to her.

‘You both set him up!’ he snapped. He turned now, towards Karen, pointing the gun at her, but looking at Tony. ‘How do you know his name?’

Tony looked at Karen, her eyes wide, fearful. She had people to lose, people who would miss her.

‘How do you know his fucking name?’ Duggan shouted, the gun closer to Karen now, waving a little in his hand as he struggled to control his rage.

She looked back at him in terror. He thought again of how, when talking to Barr, he’d realized that, if he died, no one would miss him.

He thought now too of all that had happened since the death of Kelly. The passing of his son, his parents, Ann. His teaching career was over, his friendships, all with Ann’s friends not his own, lost with her passing. He thought of the emptiness of his house, everything in its place, neat, the way Ann would have wanted it. And he realized, with a pang, that the life he’d been living, not just since Ann, but even before, had not been the life he’d expected, the life he’d imagined as he’d lain in bed with Karen thirty years ago, her very breaths pacing the rhythm of his heart.

And that realization brought with it resolution. He was not afraid to die; he no longer had reason to live. The thing he’d been looking for, here in the woods, he realized, had not been forgiveness at all, but confession.

‘I knew his daughter,’ he said. ‘It was me who went to his house that night. I was the one who warned him. It was me.’

He felt strangely invigorated by the words, even as his guts tightened, his chest heaving. He glanced at Karen who groaned and wondered at her reaction.

Duggan stared at him, though remained in front of Karen, his gun still wavering before her.

‘You?’ Mullan asked.

‘I taught his daughter, Alice,’ Tony explained. ‘I saw her at his house the night I went to Hugh, but I didn’t recognize her until Open Day. He came to school to collect her that afternoon and I made the connection. I’d not planned it,’ he added, hastily, as if in mitigation for what he’d done.

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Nothing important.’

‘Our names?’

‘No,’ Tony protested. ‘I told him nothing important. Just that his life was in danger and he needed to leave. I didn’t give him anyone else’s names, I swear.’