‘We saw it through then,’ Karen said. ‘For good or bad. We have to do so now.’

‘I don’t want to see Mullan again,’ Tony said.

‘He’s hardly going to do anything,’ Karen said, misunderstanding his comment.

‘He sickens me,’ Tony said, realising in that moment that he had become his own father. He understood now the man’s revulsion when Mullan had laid his hand on his by Danny’s grave. Understood too why his father had sent him away, to this place, thirty years ago. And yet, through Tony’s own fault, he had blindly walked into an event that had blighted his life since. And knowing that brought him no comfort, no profit gained from his wisdom. Shauna Laird came to his mind, sitting in class, hand held high. And again, in Betty’s, getting off her knees while Martin Kelly exposed her shame. And again, the last time he saw her, on the morning of her funeral, before the lid was screwed down on the coffin.

For a moment, he felt that the past had overlaid on the present, as if the girl’s death had only just happened. Perhaps it was being back here again, perhaps it was being with Karen again, the touch of her hand, the calmness in her voice, the light in her eyes as she smiled at him.

‘Are you OK?’

‘She was just a child,’ he said.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Three

‘He has a child,’ Tony said.

He was standing in Duggan’s flat, his first visit. He’d called the man from a phone box once he’d made it back. Duggan had not wanted to talk on the phone, had cut him short and told him to come directly to him instead.

‘A child,’ Tony repeated, a little incredulous that Duggan showed so little reaction to the news. Then it dawned on him.

‘Did you already know?’

Duggan nodded. ‘Of course. We’ve been keeping an eye on him, sure. He goes out with her every morning.’

‘And you’re still going ahead with it?’

Duggan nodded again. He’d not invited Tony to sit, had met him at the door and allowed him no further than the entrance to his living room. Behind Duggan’s head, Tony could see a single shelf, mounted on the wall, with a scattering of political books. On the wall above, a family coat of arms, a blue shield embossed with nine golden stars, and at the centre of which curved what looked like a crescent moon, sickle-shaped. A TV set jabbered somewhere out of sight.

‘We can’t.’

‘You need to hold it together,’ Duggan said, his jaw clenched. ‘This pussying about, one minute you’re in the next you’re not; you need to suck it up and settle your head.’

‘I can’t agree with killing a child.’

‘Who said we were going to kill her?’