‘None of your business,’ said McGuffey. ‘I need money. My granddaughter, she’s here, isn’t she? My flesh and blood. We need to take her, and when we do, we’ll make them pay for her.’

Jay snorted. ‘What the feck are you talking about? Have you lost your head? She’s a grown woman.’

‘I’m talking about a way to make us rich. I only have one granddaughter and she can get us money. Kidnapping is something we did a lot over the border. I know what to do. Have you brought tobacco?’

Jay removed the tin from his pack and thrust it into McGuffey’s grasping hand. McGuffey seemed to be having trouble talking. ‘Does it hurt ye much, that leg?’ Jay asked, gesturing at the dark brown bloodstain on the thigh of his trousers.

Again, McGuffey didn’t answer, just pushed a pipe towards Jay. ‘Light that for me,’ he said.

Out of habit, Jay did as he was asked without question, his eyes never leaving McGuffey. He might not be as scared of this sick man as he’d once been, but he would still never trust him or take his eyes off him. The gun was strapped to his belt, as always. He might look older, unrecognisable almost, but some things appeared not to have changed at all; he was still mad.

‘I thought she was in Liverpool,’ said Jay. ‘Been there more than two years, she has.’ A stunned look crossed McGuffey’s face. ‘But as luck would have it, she’s back. I saw her with my own eyes, tonight, from the Sacred Heart. She was stood out the back of Malone’s, talking to the teacher, Declan. The tinkers in Ballycroy told me she was back. Come home, she has. It was her, all right.’

‘I’ve seen her too, before you.’ McGuffey grunted. ‘I was up at the cottage until she arrived with that witch Bee. They’ve been up there all day – I can’t even get into my own house. But I’m invisible down here. Only yards away from them, and they have no idea.’

Jay wanted to tell him that he couldn’t get into any house because the moment he was seen, the guards would be hot on his tail. McGuffey the murderer was still spoken about into the cups of men who drank too much in every bar along the west coast. But he appeared to be oblivious to his notoriety, even in a county where the news was still handed down by the storytellers. ‘There’s a rich American staying up at the farm too,’ he said. ‘The tinkers at Ballycroy said he’s related to Daedio through the Malones who went out to America. They say it was his family money that Daedio bought the seven acres with.’

McGuffey pushed himself up against the cave wall and shoved his rucksack behind his back for support.

‘Shona knew the money must have come from somewhere.’ Jay picked up the tobacco tin from the ground and stuffed a pipe for himself. ‘He’s a big fella, though. A giant of a man, he is. You wouldn’t want to be kidnapping him.’