‘I have other stories I’ll tell you, Tom.’

Before he could do so Haverty appeared. He made his way unsteadily along the quayside, the remains of a cigarette in the middle of his mouth. It was almost dark: on the other side of the calm expanse of water you could see lights in Carriglas.

‘I’ll be going so,’ Holy Mullihan said.

He went immediately, slipping into the gloom before Haverty was near enough to notice him. ‘Is that Tom?’ Haverty called out, and Tom said it was. He’d never seen anything like the knife-throwing, he added. The man had done it with his eyes bandaged. She’d stood as still as a statue.

‘Did you see the ferryman, Tom? Was he here at all?’

Tom said he hadn’t been. He’d only just arrived, he said.

‘The old fellow has the boat tied up. Isn’t that ridiculous, Tom, when he knows we’re abroad? I’ll have to rouse him from his bed.’

Tom waited again, listening to the music and imagining the knives cutting through the air and the woman smiling. A man in the audience had been saying that if a knife went into her head or penetrated her heart, she’d be as dead as a doornail while you’d wink.

‘The young lad delayed me,’ he heard Haverty saying after he’d knocked on the door of the quayside house. Tom hadn’t known the ferryman lived there, and he tried to ascertain which house it was so that he could examine it in the daylight. ‘Would we have a quick one before we start?’ Haverty offered, and Tom heard a mumble of protest, and further cajoling from Haverty, and then the two men set off in the direction of a public house. He had to wait a while longer before they appeared again. He had never been in the ferryboat in the dark before.