He let the stiff breeze enter before him, took the matches he’d brought with him out of the oilskin pouch, unhooked the pack on his back and pulled out the lantern. Only then did he begin to trace the familiar steps to his smuggling hideout down at the far end, deep inside the huge cave, where no one else ever went for fear of sudden flooding. On one of the high ledges stood a crate of whiskey he’d been unable to fit into the curragh on his last smuggling trip. He almost roared out loud with laughter. Lifting a bottle, he slipped it into the pocket of his thick black donkey jacket.

He would stay the night in the old cottage. If anyone was searching for him, that would be the last place they’d look. Only a madman would go back to the scene of his original crime. It would be the safest place to hide. He had left a message with the smuggler in Donegal for Jay to come. He would find him. The smuggler would get a message back to him with one of the gypsies travelling along the coast to Newport. In the meantime, he would find shelter, provisions and fresh water to wash his wound. And a fire. He needed that more than anything.

He was relieved to have found the whiskey. He would drink most of it, but some of it he would pour into the wound to sterilise it, and then he’d light the fire in the cottage and cauterise the wound with the cast-iron poker, assuming it was still there.

He had a granddaughter, Mary Kate. She had no idea who he was, and he had no idea where she was, but that was about to change. Michael Malone had money. Mary Kate was his daughter, and according to the smuggler in Donegal, he worshipped the ground she walked on. He would get money from Michael Malone in exchange for his peace of mind; Malone would pay for that. Jay would help – the only man on earth he knew, other than himself, who would do anything for money.

‘That’s the plan,’ he said as he drank the old whiskey, which was none the worse for having been left for so many years. ‘Feck, you taste good,’ he said as he held the bottle away from his lips and tried to read the label. For the first time in weeks, he smiled.

*

William had rescued Jet from the Marcus house and brought him round to Mrs O’Keefe’s. ‘If Lavinia had been planning to take him down to live with her parents and the boys, I wouldn’t have done it,’ he said as he stood with Jet’s lead in one hand and his wicker basket resting on the floor next to him. ‘But she already told me she was calling the vet to have him put down. I hope you don’t mind. I told her I would take him, but we have cats.’