‘I don’t know if Kelly was the right person or not,’ Tony said, then added hastily, ‘I know it wasn’t me,’ but his comment lacked the conviction of Duggan’s comments. ‘And I trust Karen. But we can’t change what we did. We can only hope to make up for it, if we were wrong.’

Barr looked from one to the other of them. ‘Men, no one’s worried about what happened. We just need to give the moderates something to keep them happy. No one cares about Kelly.’

‘His family does,’ Tony said, tapping the paper.

‘You know what I mean,’ Barr said. ‘Uncle Sean wanted to make it very clear; the family just want the body back to bury him properly. For closure,’ he repeated, seemingly pleased with the word.

‘I’ll see how Karen is,’ Tony said, standing up, the boat’s rocking causing him to stumble a little and have to grip the back of the chair again for a moment to steady himself. He felt a heaviness in his chest, had felt it intensifying as he and Duggan had talked, dismissed it as indigestion, caused by the greasiness of the fry they’d just eaten.

Karen was standing on the deck, facing towards Scotland, the wind cutting along the sides of the ferry lifting the ends of her hair. As a consequence, Tony could not tell if she had been crying, though her eyes were reddened and glistening.

‘Are you OK?’

She nodded, her arms gathered around her. She raised her face to the wind.

‘I just thought this was all over. Thirty years ago.’

Tony nodded, stuffed his hands into his pockets and silently regretted having not lifted his coat to come outside to where she’d stood.

‘Me too.’

Karen looked at him, as if testing the veracity of his comment. ‘Have you thought about it? About Martin?’

He nodded. ‘Quite a bit.’

She shook her head. ‘That was another life to me. I came home and put it all behind me.’ She paused a moment, as if realising that, in so saying, she was including her time with Tony in the comment. ‘It was the only way I could deal with it. I used to wake up, thinking about him; the stench of burning so strong in my nostrils, I’d get up and turn on the light, looking for a fire.’ She looked at Tony. ‘It’s the smell I can’t forget.’

‘It was the crying for me,’ Tony said. ‘How vulnerable he was, naked, alone. We never let him say what he wanted us to tell his mother.’

‘Were we wrong?’

‘Hugh thinks so.’

‘Hugh does?’ she asked, incredulous.

‘Not wrong to do it; wrong in the person we chose. He thinks Martin wasn’t the one.’

Karen turned once more to the east, to where the Scottish headland loomed on the horizon. ‘Who does he think it was?’ she asked.

‘He’s not said.’

‘Was he not the right one?’

‘To be a tout?’

‘To die?’

Tony shrugged. ‘That’s not my call to make.’