Both of them were naked from the waist up. They were younger than Killian had been expecting. The man was late fifties, the wife slightly younger than that.

She had blonde hair, his was black with only a few grey traces.

They were on the bedroom floor.

She'd had her hands cuffed behind her back. Her face had not been smacked about but her ghostly, pale, still lithe body was covered with cigarette burns. The mortal wound was a single gunshot to the forehead. He was untouched except for the gunshot wound above his ear. Ivan had tortured her to get the information from him.

The father had talked.

The thing about it was that as bad as the wounds were, clearly Ivan had been dialling it down. He hadn't raped her, he hadn't sawn anything off. He probably would have let them live if Rocky hadn't come in. Ivan didn't want trouble. He wanted the pay day and his instructions were to go easy - this case involved a millionaire who owned an airline and a casino, who hobn.o.bbed with Richard Branson and who was going to be the first potato-eating Mick in s.p.a.ce.

"Go easy," Killian thought as he looked at the dead woman with only half a brain.

d.i.c.k Coulter's former mother-in-law. This level of violence made no sense.

But it was Rocky who had caused this. Ivan might have been happy enough to tie them up in the bas.e.m.e.nt to give him time to find Rachel.

He was heavy mob, yes, but Forsythe wouldn't have recommended him if he was a total loon. Killian examined the wife. The cigarette burns were fresh. In the last half hour.

He sat on the edge of the bed and recapitulated everything up to two minutes ago: Ivan flies to Ireland, follows him, breaks in to his house, knocks stupid old Killian for six, gets Rachel's da's letter, drives up here and ties up the two old folks, starts bracing them in a fairly scarily conventional way until Rock comes blundering in with a six-shooter and then it all goes to f.u.c.king s.h.i.t.

Aye.

Something like that. He kills Rock and then, pressed for time, strips Mrs Anderson and burns her till her husband talks.

"Probably missed them by a matter of minutes," Killian said out loud. He looked into the lifeless face of Mrs A.

What he'd actually missed was being killed along with them by a matter of minutes, for with no gun or weapon of any kind Ivan would have taken him down too.

The phone rang.

"Aye?"

"You're still there aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Get the f.u.c.k out. Go. It's not your fault. Get in your car and go."

Killian shook his head. "Something's not right about this, Sean. This can't be about custody. It can't be about the kids. I've been thinking about it. Forsythe wouldn't have sent a guy like Ivan for a wandering- daughter job."

"Half a million dollars."

"Forsythe gets a finder's fee? Twenty-five grand. Chicken feed to him. Bridget's worth millions. All legit too. No. This is something else. Something we haven't clocked to yet."

"What then?"

"I don't know."

"Think about it in the car."

"Okay, Sean," Killian said, utterly defeated. He hung up, took out his handkerchief and wiped his prints from the light switch. He walked back downstairs past Rocky and back to the kitchen. He wiped the hall light switch, the kitchen light switch and the water gla.s.s.

He wiped his prints from the kitchen window and slipped outside.

He scuffed over the footprints in the roses and wiped his prints from the gate.

When he reached the Ford Fiesta the first hint of sun was rising over Scotland. He got in, stuck the gear stick in first and drove past the Renault and the death house in the direction of unlucky Slemish.

Sean called.

"Please tell me you've left."

"I'm in the car driving to Larne."

"Good. We'll forget this ever happened. I'll tell Tom that you were the victim of a break-in and you've been shook up and we're dropping the case. Okay?"

"Well, there's no way we can go on is there?"

"No."

"We'll have to return the retainer."

"That's okay."

"I don't see how Tom keeps this out of the papers."

"Oh, they'll blame the paramilitaries. They always do."

"Aye I suppose you're right."

"Are you okay, mate?"

"It's funny I was feeling so good after New Hampshire. I handled that well. Not a drop of blood. Everybody happy. I thought I was getting my groove back. I'm too old, Sean. I don't have the stomach for it."

"Aye, I know. Don't worry about it. Circ.u.mstances beyond your control. Go to bed and try and get some sleep and get that window fixed if you can."

"There's one other thing though, isn't there?"

"What?"

"Well, he'll probably kill Rachel now, won't he? Now that he's off down this road he's got nothing to lose."

"That's someone else's problem, mate, not ours. Come and see me in Belfast tomorrow, okay?"

"I will."

"Get some sleep if you can."

Killian hung up.

The Larne road was deserted but there ahead of him was the North Channel and all of Galloway. He could see the ferries and blue mountains and even the lights of planes on the approach to Glasgow.

He drove through a whitewashed traditional village he didn't know existed, through chimneys curling peat smoke over thatched roofs. There were horses in fields. Big hunters and fine racing mares.

Of course because it was early morning he got caught behind a herd of cows on their way to milking. A kid driving them about eleven years old in jeans and Barbour jacket and a flat cap.

The kid was smoking. Killian was time travelling. To cattle markets and horse fairs of his youth. He still didn't know where he was, except that Slemish was in the rearview now. The satnav was showing blankness and even the Welsh girl was suspiciously quiet.

The cows were going slow and Killian stalled the Ford Fiesta.

Of course Sean was right. Go to bed. Sleep. Forget about it.

Sean was older than him by fifteen years. Killian had gone to work for him when he was twenty-one after he'd returned from America.

Sean had become a kind of surrogate dad.

His real father, of course, would have given him completely opposite advice to Sean: The tinker code did not rely on paper. Your word was everything. Your name was everything. Duty was more important than right. You fulfilled your obligations above all else. Even unto death...

Killian had read a thousand books since Sean had taught him his letters. He had tried to transcend that code.

But he knew better.

You are where you came from.

There are no disembodied selves. There are only humans embedded in practices, places, cultures. The man without a culture is a myth. No such being exists.

In the Pavee code of honour a life is given meaning by the narrative each narrator imposes on himself within the story.

Killian's journey could not end at this place. It just wasn't possible.

He called Sean.

"Yes?"

"I want you to do something for me."

"What?"

"I've got the licence plate of the Range Rover: JGI 3245. I'll bet it would be pretty easy to get the guy's credit-card details through the hire-car company. Find out who he is."

"Aye, probably."

"And it's bound to have satnav, isn't it?

"Aye."

"If he's running it, which as a stranger to Ireland, he probably is, the car rental company can trace the car through it, can't they? We can find exactly who he is and where he's heading."

"Killian, you're not thinking of-" Sean began but Killian cut him off.

"Aye I am thinking of. Call me back when you've got a bead on this motherf.u.c.ker."

"It'll cost us. I'll have to lay out a couple of grand."

"Lay it out."

"You can't let it go mate, can you?"

"No, I can't."

"Is this some sort of f.u.c.king tinker thing?"

"Yeah. It is some sort of tinker thing."

A long pause.

"I'll call you back when I have anything."

The Fiesta had reached the edge of Antrim Plateau now and beneath him was the ferry port of Larne. The sea had white caps and a navy helicopter was flying close to the water churning spray as it searched low for some lost comrade or missing boat or dog walker swept out to sea.

Up here in the high country, however, everything was calm.

CHAPTER 10.

THE HIGH WINDOW.

The phone rang in apartment 14D of 1738 East Tropicana. Marina was on the balcony watching the planes carve big ellipses in the azure air above McCarran. It had been a full morning. She had ridden her bike to her cla.s.s at UNLV and on the way back had bought fruit at the Safeway. As usual she was the only cyclist in any direction. When she got back to her apartment building a bus had collided with a jeep right outside the Liberace Museum. No one was hurt and the cops were just standing around. Broken gla.s.s had made it to the sidewalk on the north side of Tropicana and she'd gotten off the bike and carried it gingerly into the lobby.

In the elevator Greghri, the Lithuanian dealer from the MGM, hit on her a little, asking about her bike and telling her that he liked her with short hair. She was feeling lonely and enjoyed the compliments. Sasha knew that Greghri often talked to her but for some reason Sasha had gotten it into his head that Greghri was gay and he didn't mind.

She'd spread cream cheese on rye bread and made tea and gone up to the balcony to watch the accident but gradually had been drawn to the aircraft in their holding patterns. She knew Sasha wouldn't be in any of them, not for a while yet, but she still wondered. Often he surprised her, coming home unexpectedly. She used to think he did this to try and catch her in the throes of an affair, but now she knew that he did it because he missed her and because Las Vegas was home.

At the first ring of the telephone she ran to the living room. She picked up on the second.

"Hi," Sasha said.

"Oh, hi, darling!"

"I miss you very much," Sasha said.