‘Ah, Declan, we were just talking about Mary Kate. It seems she has herself married with two grown kids in Liverpool.’

Everyone laughed at the absurdity of it.

‘What a ridiculous notion,’ said Paddy. ‘She loved a party, did Mary Kate. If she had been married, the fancy do would have been here and that’s a fact.’

Declan didn’t speak, not even to ask for his drink, which appeared on the bar before him.

The sudden change in the atmosphere was uncomfortable and no one could quite work out why.

‘Mary Kate?’ said Seamus again, and as he spoke her name he felt a ghostly hand on his shoulder. He could almost hear Daedio whispering in his ear, ‘Hush now. Hush, leave it be, would you.’

Tig looked at his wife and at the serious expressions about him, laid his own pot back down on the bar and leant heavily onto his stick. ‘Jesus, Father, there’s more than one Mary Kate in Mayo. There’s feckin’ hundreds of them,’ he roared. ‘You think Mary Kate Malone would be living a married life and be a mother of two children and not one of us would know about it, eh? She’s only been gone for two years, how old could the two sons be? Has there even been time for two? And didn’t Michael himself go out to Liverpool to check that all was well and that she was settled. It’s not our Mary Kate, not on your life. Not unless our Mary Kate became the virgin Mary Kate, and even the good Lord himself couldn’t manage that in two years.’

He looked from one to the other, and the first to laugh was Seamus, and then Pete and Paddy and Keeva and Joe joined in. The only people not to laugh were Father Jerry, who picked up his pint and almost downed it in one, and Declan, who felt the flame in his heart burn until it hurt.

*

Out on the coast, the wind was high and wintery and the horizon was clear. The few fishing boats that had left in the morning were long returned and had been pulled up behind the large rocks to protect them from the wind. The vast cave hollowed out of the cliff hadn’t been used for years, not since the night of Angela’s murder, and only a local who knew of its whereabouts would have been able to locate it anyway, beneath its thick veil of vegetation. Those fishermen who did remember it believed it to be haunted. Even the occasional German tourist who had the audacity to wander along the shore was warned off. Kevin McGuffey, however, had no such qualms. It was his hideout.

The light was fading fast and he had planned to sail in under the cover of darkness, so that he wouldn’t be seen. He cut in, caught the wind and wove the curragh between the rocks. With one glance up to the clifftop, he saw that there was no light burning in his old cottage. As he’d expected, it had clearly been abandoned. Even so, he thought he saw someone on the clifftop, waving a shawl. He blinked and the image disappeared. It was Angela, the wife he’d murdered. His blood ran cold; he slipped the hip flask from his pocket and finished off the last of the whiskey within. ‘You have a fever, you eejit,’ he muttered to himself as his hand slipped down his thigh and fingered the blood seeping through the makeshift bandage.