It grew cold in the booth by the window. Heavy rain clouds had rolled in from Donegal and lightning was stabbing at ships lost in the immensity of the Atlantic.

The rain turned to hail.

Sue played with the Powerpuff toy from her Happy Meal while Claire, concealing her worry, affected sang-froid and asked: "Mummy, where exactly are we going?"

Not too far with a broken driver's side window.

Rachel stared at the grey water and black clouds and shook her head.

"I really don't know," she said.

CHAPTER 2.

BACK IN THE LIFE.

Someone must have been telling lies about the special K. He wasn't an expert on breakfast cereals, but this stuff, advertised as Kellogg's, was an ersatz concoction of toasted corn shavings injected with flavourings and high fructose corn syrup, and moulded into quarter-sized wedges. He poured half and half into the plastic room- service bowl and ate. A chemical buzz on the roof of his mouth. Shooting pains near his heart.

It actually tasted rather good. He sipped the thin coffee. That didn't.

Killian picked up his luggage, had a final look in the mirror and left a twenty-dollar bill on the dresser. He'd wanted to leave a five but after shepherding it all day he'd foolishly put it into the vending machine last night to get a Kit Kat; now it was either twenty or change.

He walked across the quad of the Union Theological Seminary and skidded to a halt in front of the chapel. A friendly sign said "All Faiths Welcome". The wooden door was locked. The keyhole was iron. He had it open in forty seconds. He took a pew at the back and sat and tried to feel something. This went on for a dispiriting couple of minutes before he finally slipped away.

He left his guest room key with a dozing security guard and stepped out onto Broadway. A shiv attack wind from the Hudson. An empty drinks can blowing along the pavement like a demented xylophone. The sky had a jet-lagged, early-morning-ferry-terminal aspect to it that he didn't like at all. He saw a taxi and hailed it with a fading "Taaaa..." but it cruised on by. Two more did the same and finally a gypsy cab stopped. He got in, heaving his bag into the back seat next to him.

"Which airport?" the driver asked.

"The Logan shuttle."

125 blurred. He name-checked memories from his twenties. M&G, the Manhattanville post office, the A train stop, the boys of Engine Company 37/ Ladder 40.

A line of people in business suits was weaving out of La Guardia into the parking lot. From long experience of the misery of human existence the taxi driver said: "I bet this is the Logan shuttle right here."

Killian nodded and rounded the fare up from thirty-six to an even forty dollars. The driver, some kind of Russian or East European, thanked him without sarcasm. He took his place at the rear of the line.

"Excuse me, is this Boston?" he asked the guy in front - a large man in a blue overcoat.

Getting no response, he tried again. "Is this the line for Boston?"

The guy in front twitched but nada surfed. Killian looked beyond him to the airport where planes on their skittery approach down the East River consistently seemed to miss disaster by only a few seconds. A wave of depression hit him. He was tired, off kilter, punchy. The Special K crash was coming and it wasn't just that. It had been a hard week, hard month, hard year. He had three hundred thousand quid negative equity on l hose Laganside apartments, the Northern Irish property crash typically coming after twelve years of solid growth and just when he had quit The Life and turned the trajectory of his existence in a new direction at the University of Ulster.

To mention that it was raining and he had no coat would have been redundant. Course it was. Drizzly greasy stuff that got you so much wetter than a hard rain because people felt it was okay to stand out in it.

He tilted his head back, let the drops spatter on his cheeks, closed his eyes, listened: trucks on the Cross Bronx, planes at the Marine Terminal and a banshee wind blowing through the car park as if across the mouth of an Absolut bottle.

A raindrop caught him in the left eyelid. He opened his eyes. That sky again. Malevolent, not exactly evil, but certainly not good - the sky of a petty thief, or a drunken, sentimental spousal abuser. He considered poking the man in front between his broad shoulders. What was his problem? He checked for a hearing aid and, seeing none, Killian's fight-or- flight response began to kick in. Adrenalin flooded his endocrine system. His pulmonary artery expanded and his funereal white cheeks became red. He clenched and unclenched his fists, his hands remembering a hundred ways of disabling a man even though that wasn't exactly his metier.

"Hey mate, is this the line for the Boston shuttle or what?" he asked in ba.s.s-profundo, old timey West Belfast.

On this iteration the man turned. He was reading the New Yorker and without looking up and after a pause which seemed to communicate some deep but inexplicable contempt, he said: "What do you want?"

Killian felt pleased and then irritated by this reaction - really what was so terrific about getting into a fight with a stranger in a damp airport car park? These days they processed you for a thing like that. Central booking, the Island, many ha.s.sles. The guy was big and broad, but Killian was bigger if considerably less broad.

"What do you want, a.s.shole?" the man barked.

A 1990 freshly minted Killian, trying to impress Darkey White, might have kicked him in the left kneecap, pulled him down by the hair, taken the man's briefcase and smashed it on his head. But this was not 1990.

"Look at me," Killian said in a voice like the rasp of steel on flint.

The man looked. "Yeah?"

In forty years on planet Earth - twenty-three of them in The Life - Killian's eyes had seen a lot of unpleasantness and he knew that they could convey a frighteningly deep well of seriousness. A person with any expertise in human relations could read them immediately: This is not a man to be f.u.c.ked with.

As it was, Killian's interlocutor took a second or two before he got it.

"Is the queue for Logan?" Killian asked.

Belated recognition, fear, panic.

"Oh.. .yeah, I'm sorry, yes, this is the shuttle," the man muttered, lips trembling, eyes downcast - a posture Killian had seen a tedious number of times before. It failed to gratify him. It bored him. This whole world bored him which was part of the reason he was at the University of Ulster.

"Thank you," Killian said and released him from the look.

"You're welcome," the man replied and brought the New Yorker up to his face like a shield. Killian looked behind him where a dozen more people had joined the line, which hadn't moved an inch.

"How long is this going to be?" he wondered aloud.

The guy in front flinched but sensed Killian was being rhetorical.

How long?

Fifty minutes in the queue.

Forty in the plane.

A grim forty. Middle seat/wedged/talkers/baby/five f.u.c.king dollars for a c.o.ke.

Logan looked like an airport failing an audition for the part of Airport. The jetway was on the fritz. The replacement bus took forever. Inside nothing worked. The ceilings were low, flickered, leaked. Cops, state troopers and National Guard milled. Frozen lines snaked across and into one another.

Baggage came to the wrong carousel.

Of course because it was St Patrick's Day there was a festive air: bunting, green cardboard things on string, inappropriate drunkenness.

He called Sean. Sean wasn't available so he asked Mary to connect him directly to Michael Forsythe in Park Slope. He worked his way through a couple of flunkies before Michael came on.

"Yes?" Forsythe said.

"It's your mate from Belfast."

"They told me. We were all looking for you last night."

"I didn't want to be found."

"When you're working for us you make yourself available," Michael said coolly.

"With respect, if you'll allow me to correct you, from this morning, I'm working for you. Last night I was on my own clock," Killian said.

Killian and Michael came from the same world: self-improving north Belfast petty criminality. Michael knew the type and the angles. But more than that he knew Killian of old. He wasn't going to out-argue him. Michael decided to let it go. "I just wanted to catch up, not a big deal. Where are you now?" he asked.

"Logan."

"Good. Do you know the Fairmont Hotel?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Go to the concierge, I'll fax you the address."

"Okay."

"You'll need a car."

"It's not in the city?"

"No. The North Sh.o.r.e. You can drive, right?"

Yes.

"Maybe I can get you someone, we'll see."

"It's not necessary."

"Call me if you have any problems, I'm anxious to get this resolved today."

"I can a.s.sure that one way or another this will be resolved in the next few hours."

"Good. The old lady's coming back from Chicago this afternoon for our big Saint Paddy's Day do and I'd hate to have to tell her that this eejit is still giving us s.h.i.te."

"You won't need to," Killian said.

"My people booked you a room if you want it, unless you're taking the red-eye."

"I'll see."

"Do your lot celebrate Saint Patrick's Day, Killian?" Michael asked in a friendly but borderline racist kind of way.

People had a lot of crazy ideas about tinkers.

"Of course we do," Killian said. "In fact last night I was giving a wee lad in the Bronx your trademark spiel about the Trinity and shamrocks."

"How did that go down?"

"Like talking to a wall."

"Aye. All right. Happy Saint Pat's. Good luck, mate."

Killian hung up, grew thoughtful. He and Mike had met several times. The most memorable, of course, Christmas Eve 1992 when Michael had murdered his employer Darkey White while he and another couple of guards were humiliatingly out of commission.

Killian had been outmatched then by Forsythe, who was his own age and in his own profession, but just so much better at it than he.

Killian had quit New York after that and gone back to Belfast which had turned out to be good timing as the ceasefires had begun by then and the paramilitaries were moving into regular criminality. Everybody needed help for the brand new narco trade and Killian with his "New York experience" was a man in demand. Previously the IRA and UDA had killed drug dealers to prove that they were the legitimate defenders of the community, but after the ceasefires and the end of the Troubles, drugs became the vector for their boredom and ambition and by the mid-2000s narco trafficking and manufacture had become the paramilitaries' primary raison d'etre.

Killian had risen and got a reputation, initially as a heavy and then as a persuader, so that even a year after his retirement an "old pal" like Michael Forsythe could put in a call and get him to cross the Atlantic.

Still he wouldn't have come - Mike Forsythe or no Mike Forsythe - but for those b.l.o.o.d.y apartments. Killian tried Sean again. This time Mary put him through.

"Where were you a minute ago?" he asked.

"Where were you last night?" Sean asked.

"I asked you first," Killian said.

"c.r.a.pper, and you?"

"A place I know," Killian said.

"Like that is it?"

"Aye."

"I rang a few of the hotels."

"I knew you would."

"Don't be smart. You bollicksed it ya big eejit. There were a couple of extra clients we could have squeezed in."

"No way. Not my scene. This is a one-off for you know who."

"You weren't staying in Jersey were you?"

"You're not going to get it out of me, Sean. Quiet little spot right in Manhattan. n.o.body knows about it but me."