The last time Michael had seen that shawl was when it was pulled from her shoulders and carried off by the wind, only moments before McGuffey’s bullet hit her. Seeing it again now, twenty years later, he tried to speak, but the words stuck in his throat. He looked to Seamus, who had comforted him and Sarah as Angela lay dead in his arms. His heart hammered in his chest.

Michael remembered searching the clifftop for the shawl while Angela was being laid out on her kitchen table in the cottage. He’d been sent to find it by Bridget, so that it could be placed over Angela’s body. But it was nowhere to be found. Everyone had assumed the fierce wind had carried it off – the storm had smashed the boats down on the shore and would have made short work of a shawl. No more had been said or thought about it, until now.

‘You don’t see many shawls like that,’ said Joe, reaching out and lifting a corner. ‘Could the thief be a woman?’

Paddy’s eyes met Michael’s. Paddy knew. Paddy used to travel to the coast and exchange meat for fish. He’d seen Angela wearing the shawl on many a day.

Seamus laid his hand on his son’s arm and squeezed lightly. Seamus knew. He said nothing.

Father Jerry pushed to the front, raised the shawl to his face and smelt it. Father Jerry knew.

All the men who’d been there on the night of Angela’s death knew who the shawl had belonged to, but no one dare speak her name out loud or talk of the worst night in Tarabeg in living memory.

‘A woman? No, Aedan saw him – ’twas a man,’ said Tig.

‘Aedan may be a young terror, but as his teacher, I can vouch for him being no liar,’ said Declan.

‘I’ll save this for the guard in the morning,’ said Paddy, shoving the shawl out of sight, under the bar. ‘I’ll call him first thing. Maybe one of the other villages has had something similar happen, someone on the road through to Belmullet, chancing his luck.’

Michael removed his cap and pushed back his hair. His life had been blighted by the tinker Shona and her curse, and he always had one eye on the road, watching for the caravan carrying the woman he called the witch – even now, although he knew she was dead and buried. The shawl on the bar perturbed him as much as if it had been the ghost of Angela lying there. Someone was trying to frighten them.

‘We all know what and who we are talking about,’ he said. ‘The only other person to have been there on that night was McGuffey himself.’

‘Who? What are you talking about?’ asked Joe, glancing around. ‘Do you think you know who it was? Because if you do, we can go after him.’

‘No,’ said Paddy, who, as owner of the bar, picked up as much of the news and the gossip as Mrs Doyle. ‘He was over the border on the boat and joined the IRA years ago, since the night of…’ The men shot each other furtive glances. ‘He’s not been back across since he left, and why would he? Holy Mother of God, he’s a wanted man. He wouldn’t last five minutes if he stepped foot near Tarabeg. If anyone knows that we have our own magistrate and guard, he does.’