Tony lay still, afraid to speak, knowing that whatever he uttered would be completely inadequate. And, he sensed, the story was as much for her benefit for his, as if she’d not had a chance to tell it to anyone else and needed to talk.

‘The man next door was in by then and kept saying over and over that an ambulance was coming, to hold in there. But Daddy had already gone by then. The man started saying an Act of Contrition and he held Daddy’s other hand in his. I leaned over and kissed my daddy on the forehead and when I looked, I thought I’d left a lipstick mark, but it was blood. His blood.’

She raised her head and wiped her face and nose with the edge of the bed sheet. ‘That’s what happened to my daddy.’

‘Jesus,’ Tony said softly. ‘I’m so sorry.’

She nestled against his chest again, her gaze still directed towards the foot of the bed. ‘The police never got who did it. I tried to describe the man I saw, but it made no difference. They didn’t really care; Daddy had represented so many people they’d been trying to put away. One of my uncles said afterwards that he thought the cops had probably helped his killers, but what can you do with that? Who do you go to when the people breaking the law are the law?’

She lay a moment, her fingers still playing with his chest hair, then finally lifted her head and looked up at him.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘Jesus, don’t be. I’m glad you told me,’ he said, and realised he meant it. He tightened his hold on her, felt her press against him.

‘That’s how I met Hugh Duggan,’ Karen said. ‘He came to the funeral with a guy called Sean Mullan. Daddy had represented him at one stage. He called a few times afterwards and I told him I was moving and coming over here. Then, when he moved across here, he contacted me and asked me to help him with something. Some details about a patient of the practice. An address was all he needed. And then another week he needed me to find out what time someone collected their morning paper from the shop opposite the health centre.’

‘Mullan came to Danny’s funeral, too,’ Tony said. ‘Then I met Duggan for the first time that night. We were both lifted for a cop who was shot in retaliation for Danny’s death.’ He thought no more about the similarities in their stories, the manner in which Mullan and Duggan had recruited both of them, raw in their grief.

She peeled off her bra now and pressed herself against him, the softness of her breasts against his side. But the gesture was not sexual and he made no effort to make it so. She held onto him and, after a few minutes, her breathing became low and even.

‘Are you sleeping?’ he asked, himself drifting a little, his mind wandering back to Danny, to his father, to the sight of his brother in the coffin. For the first time since the funeral, he felt tears slide down his cheeks, felt a sudden pang of grief gripping him as he grasped, fleetingly, the permanence of his brother’s absence, the immensity of the breach his death had caused. He tried to stifle the sob building in his chest.