A barrage of six molotovs tore through the air, two hitting caravans and setting them ablaze, the other four dropping into the dunes.

Now four caravans were burning and the men in the field gave a mighty cheer.

Donal released the camp dogs from their ropes and they ran fearlessly into the attack.

Donal turned to them. "Now's our chance, lads, let's go!" he shouted with a wild sort of glee about him.

"Come on, lads! We'll have to run!" Killian called.

With their dogs ahead of them they sprinted between the burning caravans, across the car park and into the meadow.

Tommy Trainer began screaming like a banshee and the scream got taken up by all the others including Killian himself.

"f.u.c.king h.e.l.l!" someone shouted ahead of them in the darkness and they could hear some of the attackers turn and leg it across the fields.

There was scuffling and confusion ahead but before the Pavee could close the gap completely a shotgun tore the air between them, flame shooting from the barrels and lead careening past them like white lightning.

"Keep going, lads!" Donal shouted and now they were close enough to pick out individuals.

Killian could see maybe ten or eleven men who had stood their ground. Four of them were armed with shotguns. One had what looked a lot like a pistol.

All were wearing balaclavas.

"Fire!" someone called and the four shotguns fired together, two sprayed wild, but a Pavee man fell to Killian's left and he felt a pellet strike his shoulder that burned like hot fat.

Killian and the remaining Pavee kept running.

Two more of the men ahead of them turned and bolted. Four were desperately reloading their shotguns.

The odds seemed more even now.

A man on the far left of the meadow lit a molotov and with practised form leaned his body well back to throw it.

On the fly Killian took aim at him, squeezed the trigger and got him in the shoulder; the bottle dropped and landed on something sufficiently hard for it to break. It exploded in a lovely jet of horizontal fire that must have caught a jerry can or a plastic jug filled with petrol.

There was a bang and a simultaneous flash and the man and the bloke next to him were tossed backwards through the air.

"An rud a lionas an tsuil lionann se an croi!" Donal yelled.

"Aye," Killian agreed.

But one of the men ahead had done a fast reload and from a crouch pulled one barrel of his shotgun getting another of the Pavee in the legs.

He went down next to Donal with a horrible scream, which left just four of them racing against double that number.

But Killian was close now, close enough to make every shot count.

"Thieving b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" the man directly in front of him yelled, which gave Killian sufficient warning to hit the dirt.

Both barrels sailed over the top of him.

Killian shot the man's legs from under him, taking him kneecap style in the left patella.

"Jesus!" the man yelled and Killian scrambled to his feet, walked to him and shot him in the right kneecap.

He grabbed the man's shotgun and tossed it away To Killian's right Tommy barrelled into another of the shotgun boys, knocking him down and beating him with his own gun.

Donal fired his old birdgun at another a.s.sailant who was preparing the last of the molotovs. The pellets. .h.i.t him in the back, sending him flat on his face. He got up and without looking back, ran - or rather, hobbled - away.

"I'm out of sh.e.l.ls," Donal said.

"Only three armed men left," Killian said. "Poor f.u.c.ks don't stand a chance."

His eyes had adapted to the moonlight and he knew the idiosyncracies of the gun.

He crouched, aimed and shot the nearest of the attackers in the fleshy part of the thigh. The man screamed and fell backwards in the gra.s.s. His companion accidentally discharged his gun right in front of himself catching his own shoes with a terrifying eruption of white fire and sparks. Before he'd even hit the ground big Tommy Trainer was on him, clobbering him with the tyre iron.

Only one gunman left and that fella wasn't daft. He had dropped his weapon and was legging it Usain Bolt style for his auto. "Stop and get your hands up or you're a dead man," Killian yelled, took careful aim and sent a shot whizzing over his head.

The man stopped and put his hands up.

"Lie down in the gra.s.s and don't move a f.u.c.king muscle," Killilan shouted. Killian patted the man down, confiscated his wallet and went to see the other "I think that's it," Donal said, looking about the meadow, "The armed men are all down. Get their guns and we've won it. The others won't bother us for a bit," Killian said to him.

Donal grabbed two shotguns from two of the p.r.o.ne men.

Tommy lifted a third shotgun.

Among the attackers everyone who wasn't shot was running or crawling for their lives.

They were amateurs.

He went to all the other attackers lying in the field, searched them, ripped their ski masks off and, with what was left in his clip, put a bullet in each of their right kneecaps. Disabling them and maybe teaching them a thing or two about social iniquity, if not the quality of mercy. He emptied the Glock and nodded with grim satisfaction.

"Come back, you f.u.c.king c.u.n.ts!" Tommy was yelling at the others who were distant forms in the far pasture.

Donal was looking at his new shotguns with grim satisfaction.

But still it had been ugly.

Six men were moaning in the field, four caravans were burning, the horses were running wild, the children in hysterics.

"It's finished," Donal was saying.

Killian nodded but it didn't feel quite right.

It was the old proverbial.

Too easy.

"We've got prisoners!" Tommy shouted.

"f.u.c.k that, let them go, we've got to get out of here," Donal said.

He turned to Killian. "None of those boys are gonna die, are they? We don't need that trouble."

"I don't think any of them will die and it was your actual f.u.c.king self defence-" Killian began.

"Even so, Aidh. Better to do a quick triage on the f.u.c.kers, mate."

They did a twenty-second walk around. It was as Killian had thought. Kneecappings and shotgun pellets were painful but rarely fatal and all of them were making a lot of noise which was a good sign.

"I think we can leave them. Their mates'll come for them after we scarper," Donal said.

"How long will it take you to get on the road?" Killian asked.

"Could be moving in half an hour. You'll come with us?"

"I don't know, I-"

Killian froze.

Wait a minute.

There'd been five men with shotguns, but one guy with a semiautomatic. In all the excitement he'd forgotten about him.

Where was the guy with the pistol?

He wasn't here.

And he hadn't run.

Where was he?

Killian knew.

He was going for the beach.

He had outflanked him.

Again.

"f.u.c.k!" Killian said and ran back towards the Pavee camp.

Gla.s.s was buckling and exploding in the four burning caravans, metal warping and bending in on itself. The smell of the melting plastic furniture caught him and made him retch.

But it didn't stop his pace.

He kept going towards the surf.

Fifty Pavee waiting around the beach, trying to calm their crying kids...

Fifty Pavee under the bright starlight.

Where were Rachel and the girls?

Where was she?

Killian made it through the dunes, stumbled, got up and saw Sue playing leapfrog with another girl.

"Where's your mother, Sue?" he yelled at her.

"She's over there with Claire," Sue stammered, a little frightened of him.

Killian looked to where the shaking little white hand was pointing. Further down the beach, almost in the blackness, Rachel was sitting on the sand with her arms around Claire, both of them staring out to sea.

"Thank you, Sue - go back to your game, everything's fine," Killian said quickly and stood.

Killian scoped the crowd for a man wearing a ski mask.

"Where are you, a.s.shole?" he muttered.

But he wasn't here.

"Where the h.e.l.l are you?"

Not one person in a balaclava, not a single...

But of course he would have taken it off. The Pavee would have jumped him if he'd still been wearing it, even with a gun.

Killian started eliminating individuals. He knew him, he knew him, he knew her, she was the mother of those kids, he knew that guy, who was that - oh yeah...

And then there he was: It was Ivan, of course, or the Starshyna, as Sean had called him. The balaclava was rolled up to the top of his bald head so that he could spot Rachel, pull it down immediately, shoot her and run for it.

Killian understood it all now.

Tom had planned everything.

Hired or rounded up the thugs through his paramilitary contacts.

Probably UDA or boys from the British National Party. People who would enjoy it.

Tom had hired a crew, paid them and sent Ivan with them.

Let's scare the s.h.i.te out of some f.u.c.king gyppoes.. .And oh dear, tragically something goes wrong and a woman gets shot dead.

By bizarre and tragic luck, the woman, unfortunately, was Richard Coulter's ex-wife, who was in the middle of a month-long meth- amphetamine-induced nervous breakdown.

Killian filled in the rest of the pieces as he ran.