"Ach s.h.i.te, that's the whole week."

He blinked so slowly that she thought for a moment he'd taken a micro sleep. He made a fist and banged it into his leg. It made her jump. He wasn't tall, but he had long, sinewy, powerful arms.

"Love, just let me sit down for a wee minute," he said and lurched further into the room. He grabbed the top of a chair, steadied himself. "I could have opened that letter, you know, it came to my house," he continued and looked over at the girls for a third time.

"I'm glad you didn't."

"You have a nice family," he muttered.

Rachel walked to the fridge and took out the bag. She set it on the counter next to the sink. She walked back to Eric, steadied him and leaned him back from the chair. Touching him sent a chill along her spine. He was burning up.

"So are you on for Friday?" she asked as calmly as she could.

"I dunno."

"I'll get wine, or beer if you prefer."

"Definitely prefer beer," he said and wiped his arm across his nose.

He wasn't that drunk, she concluded, not paralytic, just enough to plane off a little of his caution and reveal the inner psyche. She wondered if his name would come up under one of those paedophile checks at a public library.

"So are we on for Friday?" she attempted again.

He blinked, shook himself.

"Friday? Oh. Yes. Of course."

She saw him to the door, opened it, gently pushed him out into the rain.

"Goodbye, goodnight," she said. "We'll see you on Friday then."

"Huh, okay," he muttered.

She closed the door and put the gun back in the freezer.

She opened the envelope.

A letter from her father and four fifties.

It wasn't necessary. She'd been doing okay for cash; if it wasn't for the problems with the Volvo...She had an idea. She went back to the front door, opened it. The rain had turned to drizzle and the wind had dropped. Out in the Atlantic she could hear white caps breaking on the reef.

"Oh - Mr Brantley, what's that boy called who does the tune-ups?" she yelled.

He turned, looked at her for a second, processed what she'd said to him.

"That's Reese Piper. Sometimes we call him Rowdy. Fair special with his hands that boy."

"You couldn't ask him to come over tomorrow morning to look at my car?"

"Ask him yourself."

She mimed not having a phone.

"Oh, aye," he said. "I forgot about that. Well, if I remember I'll give him a call."

"Oh, please do - and you're definitely on for Friday?"

"I'll be there. Friday night, sounds good," he said.

She closed the cabin door, heard him trip on something and swear.

Friday was good. She'd bought seventy-two hours. They'd be gone in twenty-four.

She gave the girls hot dogs and put them to bed.

She destroyed receipts and began packing suitcases.

She slept well.

In the morning the sun was shining, the sky an eggsh.e.l.l blue.

She let the girls run out onto the sand. The cabin faced dunes and the long wide beach that hardly anyone ever came to because it was usually wet, windy and cold.

"Keep an eye on your sister," she told Claire and watched them from the porch, thumbing through a Vogue magazine she'd taken from the bin at the library.

"Morning, love, what can I do for you?"

Reese was six-three, blond, skinny as anything but he was only seventeen and wouldn't fill out for a couple of years yet. He was wearing tight, old-style blue jeans, wrecked Converse hi-tops and a loose black T-shirt. His accent was a Sligo variety that could make him a small fortune as a barman in London.

"The Volvo wouldn't start yesterday. I have to go to Fermanagh tomorrow - you couldn't look it over for me could ya?"

"Not a problem," he said.

He popped the hood, did his thing.

"Well?" she asked.

"Where do you want me to start?" he asked.

"It's that bad?"

"Aye," he said grinning.

"What do you need to fix just to get me to Enniskillen?"

He thought for a minute, scratched under an armpit, grinned.

"Sparks, belt," he said.

"Do it."

"Need to go to the garage to get sparks if you want to wait."

"I'll wait."

She called the girls and gave them cheese and pickle sandwiches and orange lollies.

She sent them back onto the beach. Spring was coming, it could be lovely - she'd be sorry to leave. This was one of the places they'd all enjoyed together. Maybe it reminded the kids of Richard's beach house, not a million miles away.

She saw Reese driving back along the sh.o.r.e road with the supplies.

She went inside the cabin and looked in the bathroom mirror at her hair. It was long and straggled and a lot of the natural copper had bleached blonde. The wind and elements had brought out her freckles. A huge line of them across the bridge of her nose looked like scar tissue. Still she knew she was an attractive woman. She brushed her hair and changed into a denim shirt and left the top three b.u.t.tons undone so that her black bra showed. She disciplined the freckles with powder and applied a little dusky eyeshadow.

She waved to him through the window. He nodded and went to work on the truck.

She wanted him. Badly. Two birds with one stone. What did it matter what that made her? At least she wasn't doing it for drugs.

"Well love, I suppose that about does it," he said after forty-five minutes.

"What do I owe you?"

"Forty euros would cover it."

She checked on the girls. The tide was two miles out and not due to turn for a couple of hours. Eric's Ford Sierra was gone.

She opened her purse, pretended to look inside. "I may be a little short," she said.

"Whatever you've got," he said.

He didn't know his lines. She sighed. She found her purse and gave him the money, leaving him with a vague sense of disappointment.

She watched his truck kick dust and called the girls and got them ready.

It was hard to tell Claire that they were moving on again. She went to the bathroom to secretly cry. Sue didn't really get it at all.

Rachel packed the suitcases, made sandwiches, looked out the puzzles and games from the Coleraine drive.

"Where this time?" Claire asked wearily. There was only one place left. "Well we can't go east cos that's the way we came." "We can't go west cos that's the Atlantic," Claire said, playing along. "We can't go north because that's the edge of the world," Rachel said. Claire smiled, that little toothed double-dimpled grin of hers. "So, it's south then."

"Yeah, south, south-east really."

I have one place left that's off the grid, Tom, she added to herself. She loaded the Volvo and belted the girls in the back seat. She put the 9-millimetre in the pa.s.senger's seat, safetied and trigger-locked, just like Tom had shown her.

"Take a last look at Donegal, girls," she said. "It's too misty to see anything," Claire muttered. "Look anyway."

She drove up the private road until it looped back and joined the N58. "South," she said and turned the clunky dial that flipped the lights as a small spell against a fog.

Rachel had good instincts. She was right about Tom. As soon as he'd finished speaking to her he'd gone to see his boss, who was packing for the return trip to Ireland.

Helena was downstairs swimming a couple of laps.

They'd talked about the laptop.

The conversation grew heated.

Tom was flabbergasted. Angry. Amazed.

But then his temper cooled and he sat down to think.

He thought for several hours.

Killian was the wrong man for this job.

He had read Killian's CV. He was a thieving tinker's brat from some s.h.i.tehole north of Belfast. Unfortunately he and Coulter had hit it off, which was fine when all that was at stake was a couple of brats. Bints at that.

But now everything was at stake.

It would have to be someone from outside.

No Irish or English sandman could risk the heat.

The flight from Hong Kong to London was due to leave in an hour.

Tom wanted it settled before they got into the air.

He called Michael Forsythe in New York.

"What is it?" Michael asked.

"You sent us a f.u.c.king gyppo," Tom said.

"Jesus, don't tell me you're prejudiced."

"So you knew?"

"Of course I knew. Listen, Killian's one of the best."

"His name's not even Killian is it? He's one of the f.u.c.king Cleary Clan isn't he? f.u.c.king north Belfast f.u.c.king tinkers, the f.u.c.king worst."

"Tom, what is it? I did Richard a favour here. As a friend. I don't normally deal with this kind of stuff. I'm up on a whole other level these days."

"Aye, I know, sorry - look Mike, I'm in the red zone here. There's been a wee complication."

"Oh aye?"

"Aye, nothing I can talk about over the phone even on this line, but Killian's not the boy I want on this case. Pity of it is that he and f.u.c.king Coulter hit it off. d.i.c.k likes him."

"He's good, he's very good, Tom. Nearly as good as me back in the day," Michael a.s.sured him.