Nothing.

It was so quiet in fact that you could actually hear the sea, ten or fifteen miles away.

His phone rang and he switched it to vibrate before answering it.

"Yes?" he whispered.

"Rocky's not answering."

A chill went through him. He thought and said the same thing: "That can't be good."

"No," Sean agreed. "Killian, are you armed?"

"Nope."

"You don't have a gun?"

"I don't have anything. I'm retired, remember."

"What did you do with your shooter?"

"I give it to Carly McAleese, 'member she was having a domestic with her ex?"

"Well, that was a f.u.c.king buck eejit move wasn't it? What are you going to do now without a piece?"

"I'll be okay, Sean. Look, I'm going in. Don't call me back. I'll call you."

"Son, I know you need the money, but this doesn't seem like a brilliant plan - why don't we abort and call the peelers like you said."

"Sean, I'm going in. I'll call you in ten."

Killian hung up and walked along the boggy sheugh to the Renault. When he got there he looked inside. n.o.body. A couple of school bags and a stuffed elephant.

He looked back at the hill.

The rain had stopped.

The clouds had blown through and the moon was shining right down the road. If someone was up there by the hedges and they were a half decent shot at all they could take him out easy.

He had to get off the street.

He climbed out of the sheugh and up over the fence. He started hiking through a boggy meadow. The moon and the Milky Way had really turned it up a notch and he could see down into a flooded valley on the windward side and back to the town on the lee. It was a part of the country he didn't recognise, he hadn't been out here before, even in all his wanderings.

He struggled to make out the main road to see if a distant car was driving away but another band of rain was coming in from the west and swallowing up virtually everything else in the valley.

Ivan might indeed be down there legging it but he couldn't tell.

He had nothing else. He was all in on this plan.

He ducked low and walked through the squelching waterlogged ground approaching the Andersons' place from the back. He jumped a stone wall between the fields and on a rise he finally saw the house.

No lights.

No noise.

No sign of the Range Rover.

"d.a.m.n it," he whispered.

He walked on, wading through little mounds of sheep s.h.i.t and sinkholes filled with water. He came to the edge of their field which was bordered by a river and it was either cross it or go back to the road.

The road was out of the question with the situation unknown.

The river was deep, fast moving, black. A barbed-wire fence had been stretched across it a little further up at another field boundary. That would do.

He ran to the fence and with his Nikes on the bottom wire and his hands grasping at the gaps on the top strand of metal he made his way gingerly across. It vibrated with every movement and he had to lean in to compress it.

Of course he got cut; in the darkness he couldn't avoid it and at the end he nearly sliced his thumb on a barb and almost slipped down into the water.

Blind panic.

He closed his eyes and made it to the far bank.

He stepped off the wire onto the tyre and sucked his thumb.

The moon was moving slowly back behind the rain clouds - darkness would have been nice but he couldn't wait for it.

He cut through a crude path in the heather worn by stray sheep and reached the back gate of the Andersons' house.

He peered through the iron bars. A two-storey farm lodge in white stone. Nice wee spot. Picture postcard scene in the daylight with Slemish and the sea in the background.

Killian scanned the driveway next to the house. An old farm Land Rover, no Range Rover, no other cars, no nothing.

The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up.

The gate was locked but he climbed it easily. He stood in the garden among rows of cabbages and clothes on a washing line. The house was still. Curtains drawn, back door closed, silent.

Killian walked down the path. Net curtains over a dining-room window. He looked through but saw nothing. He tried the back door. Closed. It was a Northern Ireland Yale Standard. By the age of ten he could open those in two minutes. Every boy in his clan could.

He took out his pick and was about to put the two ends in the lock when he remembered Ivan's gla.s.s-cutting proclivities.

He walked around the side of the house.

Footprints in a rose garden and the kitchen window wide open with a circular cut in the gla.s.s next to the handle.

Killian's hands were shaking now.

No gun.

No clue about what to expect.

This wasn't a pathetic gambling addict in a beach town in New Hampshire. This was a pro doing what pros do. Sitting in there, quiet, waiting for him.

Killian climbed onto the window ledge and noiselessly went through into the kitchen.

No gun and no flashlight either.

There was nothing else for it.

He turned on the kitchen light.

A tidy little Ulster kitchen: cooker, kettle, fox-hunting prints on the wall, chequered floor, a stack of crossword-puzzle books on a breakfast bar.

The kitchen door was open and Killian could see into the hallway beyond.

Something was on the ground.

Someone.

He turned on the hall light.

Rocky McGlinn was lying there face up with the top of his head blown off and the exit wound sprayed all over the Fleur de Lys wallpaper. He'd been shot twice. Once in the gut and then that kill-shot in the temple. There was a lot of blood from the belly slug, which meant that Ivan had questioned him first before checking him in the brain.

Killian knew what he'd find upstairs.

His head was throbbing.

He went back into the kitchen and poured himself a gla.s.s of water.

He called Sean.

"Sean boy, send someone to my house in Carrickfergus will you? There's a chance Ivan will wait for me there to come back. I don't think he will, but he might. He knows we set Rocky on him anyway."

"What's going on, Killian?" Sean asked.

"Everybody's dead. He killed them. He got the info and killed them."

"He knows where Rachel is?"

"If her da knew, now he knows."

"Do you know?"

"No."

"He killed Rocky?"

"Aye."

"Ach, for Jesus sake."

"I know, poor Rock."

"Doesn't make any sense. Why kill them? I mean he let you live? What the f.u.c.k could have happened?"

"It's b.l.o.o.d.y obvious what happened. Rocky came in to play hero. Ivan shot him in the gut, disarmed him, questioned him, topped him. After killing Rock he had no choice but to ice the parents."

"Jesus Christ, I've got chills, man, f.u.c.king time-tunnel back to the bad old days."

"Aye and you're not alone here. Christ, Sean, it's a gigantic cl.u.s.ter f.u.c.k. I b.a.l.l.sed it. I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. It's a cross. How could you know there'd be a man on the man."

"For half a million. Should have seen it. Also half a million? Who pays that for their weans? Even for Coulter, it was dodgy. I'm sorry mate. I should have stayed retired, declared bankruptcy, got a f.u.c.king job."

"Okay. That's enough. Don't beat yourself up. We did our best. It's over. Time to move on. You better get out of there."

"Aye, I will. I'm gone. One thing to do first," Killian said.

"No. No things to do. Just go. Are you sure our boy's gone?"

"He's away."

"Rock had three bairns. Remember to take his mobile, we can't have this coming back to us."

"Ivan may already have it," Killian said, but when he looked inside Rocky's raincoat pocket there was the phone. And something else. A piece of paper.

He unfolded it.

"JGI 3245," Rocky had written. The licence plate from Ivan's Range Rover.

"I have the phone," Killian said.

"Dump it in a deep dark place."

"I will."

"Now get out of there."

"I'm hanging up, I still have that one thing to do."

The one thing to do was go upstairs.

He took the stairs two a time and he was breathless when he made it to the landing. He turned on the light. Blood had oozed out from one of the bedrooms and was pooling in the varnished pine floor. There was an acrid burnt aroma to go with the sweet smell of a kerosene heater and all that coagulating blood.

He caught his breath and licked his dry lips parrot fashion.

He walked along the skirting and went to the murder bedroom and turned on the light.