‘That’s not true,’ Tony said. ‘I just was uneasy with stealing things from a school.’

‘See what I mean? A conscience.’

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’

‘I’ve done rightly without one.’

‘You don’t regret anything?’

‘Me?’ Duggan laughed, without humour. ‘I’m that French bird, Piaf. Je ne regrette rien.’

‘Not even Martin Kelly?’ Tony asked.

Duggan stared at him, his eyes vacillating between anger and pain, then clouding and becoming unreadable once more.

It was Karen who spoke. ‘There’s times I get the smell of burning cloth in my nose and I’m back in that forest again. Those moments aren’t happy ones.’

‘And how do you deal with all that shit in your head?’ Duggan asked. ‘What do you do with all your pity and guilt?’

‘I try to forget it,’ Karen said. ‘I go about my day, go to work, make dinners, pack lunches, live a normal life. I’ve spent the past thirty years trying to forget.’

‘See,’ Duggan said, using his fork to point in Karen’s direction, though he spoke to Tony. ‘No change. She’s as pragmatic now as she was thirty years ago. Just more so now.’

‘I didn’t say I always succeeded in doing it. But I was doing OK until I got dragged back into this,’ Karen added. ‘You can’t forget when people are forcing you to remember.’

‘You had your reasons for doing what you did, back then,’ Duggan said. ‘For why you got involved. That never changes. Your reasons for joining.’

‘We all had reasons,’ Karen countered. ‘Mine was no better or worse than anyone else’s.’

‘Why did you get involved? Barr asked.

‘Various things,’ Karen said, her gaze drifting towards Tony momentarily. ‘That’s all.’

‘What about you, Hugh?’ he asked, the assonance of the words causing him to stumble on the final one, despite his best efforts to say it as casually as possible.

‘It was my duty.’

Chapter Thirteen

Tony’s duty on a Tuesday involved him patrolling the corridors for a period before lunch, in case a colleague needed support. Tony used the period as a chance to read ahead of his senior class on their novel. He’d deliberately circled round past the science labs four times, waiting for the classes to finish for lunch and for the staff to go to the staff room or canteen. He knew that only the science technician remained behind in the department and they always took their lunch in their own prep room. If he waited until the lunch bell rang, he could get in and out of one of the labs without being seen. He’d been on cover the day before and had, by chance, spotted a drawer of thermometers in the teacher’s desk. He hoped that this was standard. There were two labs, so he reckoned the best thing to do would be to take the thermometers from the two different rooms so as not to draw too much suspicion

On his final circuit of the corridors, the last teacher to leave, an English man called Peter, with the air of one who had studied for and left the priesthood, was just leaving his room. He looked up at Tony coming towards him, his open book in his hand. ‘At your breviary?’ Peter said.