He had left the North on bad terms. He knew too much, had been involved in some of the worst underground operations. The IRA commanders were never going to let him escape. He had managed it, but only just. ‘You need a plan. You need a plan,’ he said as he felt the whiskey burn into the lining of his empty stomach.

He was sailing into his past and the only other place he knew outside of the North, but he could not stay here for long. He would meet Jay Maughan, settle some scores, find money and get away to somewhere the IRA commanders would never find him.

A turn to the left and further up along the clifftop he saw a light in Bee’s cottage. ‘Feck,’ he hissed. Bee was Angela’s sister and no friend of his. He’d been told she was living in Liverpool these days, but she was either back now or someone else was living there.

The coastline had remained unchanged for centuries and his memory of the route returned as he avoided the rocks that routinely took less experienced sailors down. He sailed in over the very spot he’d forced Bee’s young husband, Rory, to sail to all those years ago. A journey from which he’d never returned. McGuffey felt a shudder below the curragh and at first thought he’d skimmed a rock he’d forgotten about. But then an icy coldness crept in on the edge of the breeze and an image of Rory’s face, dead and white, lying below the surface of the water flooded into his head unbidden. It had never happened before and he would not let it happen now. ‘You deserved it, you weak, British-loving bastard,’ he hissed into the dark water, trying to dispel his fear. The image flew from his mind, leaving no remorse in its wake, and he took up the oars and pushed on, keeping them skimming and pumping just below the surface, clearing rocks with only inches to spare sometimes. Rory had been his first conscious act of murder, albeit not by his own hands. McGuffey had wanted to keep the best fish for himself. He’d known there was only danger awaiting Rory in his makeshift curragh that day; he understood the conditions out at sea and knew what the swell, the treacherous currents and the storm would do.

It took McGuffey a further twenty minutes to reach the beach and it was almost black as the rain began. Lumbering into the water as best he could with the gash in his leg, the salt stinging like hell, he lifted the curragh and carried it with huge effort to the mouth of the cave where he would hide it. It wasn’t as easy to find the cave as he’d expected, and he had to push against the vegetation until he felt a small indentation. Clawing his fingers between the shingle and the moss, he scooped up the mass of roots, seaweed and coastal grass from the bottom and finally it lifted like a damp green curtain, revealing the cave behind. It was empty. Dank, dark, eerie and untouched since his last visit.