Father Brendan Murphy watched warily as Lena Bailey crept into the church with her husband. She had the grace to be ashamed even though she was too loyal to admit to anything that might show her husband in a bad light. She deliberately overlooked all the talk about him. In a way, he admired her for it; she took the Catholic sacrament of marriage seriously, and he had to give her credit for that. But knowing what he did about this man meant he loathed being in his company. He knew he had no choice about this meeting, but that didn’t mean he was looking forward to it. He was, Christ forgive him his sin, dreading it.

Daniel Bailey was a hard man – that was common knowledge – but it cut no ice with him. Father Murphy had been a boxer in his day, and seen his fair share of hard men. He had grown up in Dublin, the son of a bare-knuckle fighter, a drunkard and one of the hardest men he had ever come across. Michael Murphy had been a legend in his own lifetime; if only he had had the brain capacity to use the money he had earned sensibly, he could have been a man of means. Instead, he had squandered his hard-earned cash in the nearest pubs, buying drinks for the hangers-on, slipping money to anyone with a hard-luck story.

His mother, God love her and keep her – Father Murphy blessed himself then, as he always did when he thought of her – had been drawn to an early grave trying to raise eight children. Along with feeding them and cleaning for them on a pittance, she had worked tirelessly to make sure that they were good Catholics and decent men and women. He had entered the priesthood, having known from an early age that it would eventually become his calling, but he had returned home and looked after his mother and sisters after his father’s untimely death. The drink had taken him quickly in the end, and it had been a relief to them all.

His older brothers had gone to America, never to be heard of again, his younger brother was doing life for murder, and his sisters were all married with families – and problems – of their own. Good women, but laden down by the men they had settled for, and wondering why they had not listened to their mother instead of taking the first men who had shown any interest in them.