No, he was back in the land of his fathers and forefathers. The world of men who shook hands on horse deals and debts and kept their word in the face of the abyss.

And he knew he had been fair. Even in the labyrinthine world of tradition and obligation that made up Pavee society there were ways out. There had to be. Tradition was not meant to be moribund. It was a living argument. You were not a puppet following a preset script. You were a live actor with permission to improvise.

There were one or two things that Coulter could have said that would have saved his life.

He had, however, said none of them.

The gla.s.s was falling.

His time had run out.

Killian sighted the MP5 on Coulter's forehead and pulled the trigger once.

Coulter was killed instantly.

From existence to black non-existence just like that.

Amazing really.

Killian unstrapped the gun, let it drop, walked out the back of the greenhouse and across the garden.

He climbed the garden wall, jogged to the exterior fence, climbed that, and then ran deep into the Antrim hills, running until he reached the high bog - an ancient and traditional place of refuge for men seeking shelter from the authority of kings.

EPILOGUE.

ON GOG MAGOG STREET.

Michael Forsythe walked through the Green Channel of Heathrow's Terminal 5 and was not stopped by the Customs inspectors. He was wearing a charcoal grey Armani suit, black Testoni Norvegese shoes and his luggage was a Floto men's garment bag. He didn't look like a heroin mule, although heroin smuggling was a residual part of the criminal empire he shared with his wife Bridget.

He took off his sungla.s.ses and scanned the chaotic arrivals area for his contact.

A pale, cuddly-looking character in a uniform was holding up a sign that appeared to say: Michel Fireside. He was a curly bap, only about twenty-three or twenty-four. He was listening to something on an iPod and you could just tell it was Coldplay.

Michael approached him.

"Are you waiting for Michael Forsythe?" he asked.

"Are ye he?" the man asked in a friendly Scottish accent that should have been a voice on a cartoon.

"Yes."

"I'm Douggie. Gimme yer wee bag and we'll gay outside, Mr Paulson is weeing in the car."

Michael gave him the bag and followed him to a black limousine where Mr Paulson was not, alas, "weeing". He was a tiny but not unimpressive character in a three-piece suit with scarred knuckles and DM shoes.

He was listening to the cricket and fiddling with The Times crossword.

He shook Michael's hand with un-English enthusiasm.

"Pleasant flight?" Paulson asked.

"Very," Michael said. "On time, no problems."

"I love Virgin. They treat you well," Paulson said in an accent that Michael now realised had a touch of Geordie in it, which perhaps explained the handshake.

"They do," Michael agreed.

"I booked a hotel room if you want to go freshen up," Paulson said.

Michael shook his head. "No, I feel fine. Let's do this."

Paulson looked about the car park. "I've a few things to give you, let's go inside the limo, okay?"

"Fine," Michael agreed.

Once inside Paulson opened a Sainsbury's bag and gave Michael a ski mask, a map, a mobile phone and a Biretta 92 FS with an ambidextrous manual safety and an AAC Evolution 40 pistol suppressor.

Michael took the Biretta, stripped it and put it back together.

He took off the silencer, blew through it and reattached it.

"Everything okay?" Paulson asked.

"Spare magazine?" Michael asked.

"Two in the bag. Forty-five rounds all together."

Michael nodded.

"Everything's okay?" Paulson asked, sensing that something might be up.

"We're not going there in this, are we?" Michael asked.

Paulson nodded nervously. "Uh, Douggie knows the road and we've got satnav and-"

"From what I understand it's a small English village, right?"

"Yes."

"Don't you think a big honking limo's going to look a wee bit out of place in a scene like that?"

"What do you want me to do?" Paulson asked.

Michael yawned. "I'll go inside, get something to eat; you get me another car, programme the satnav and I'll drive myself."

"Are you sure? I thought Douggie would be your backup. He's got experience."

Douggie's "experience" had resume inflation written all over it. He was somebody's nephew or little brother.

"I'm sure he's very capable, but I'll be fine. I'll meet you back here in an hour."

"Yes, of course," Paulson said, a little chastened.

Michael left his gear, went back inside Terminal 5, had breakfast at Gordon Ramsey's and read the English papers. He too tried The Times crossword but he had been so long out of the UK that he got few of the contemporary references.

When he returned Paulson was standing beside the limo and smiling.

"We got you a black BMW 5 series. Common as muck up there," he said.

"Great," Michael replied with satisfaction.

"And Douggie's programming the satnav right now, he's taking you the easiest route, i.e. not through London, is that okay?"

"That'll be fine."

"Did you get breakfast?"

"Went to Gordon Ramsey's. Got the Spanish omelette."

"It was okay?"

"If you want to eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day," Michael said, attempting to diffuse the tension a little.

It didn't work. "You want another breakfast? Ramsey's famous for his small portions. You know there's a McDonald's on the slip road. The last thing you wanna be is hungry on a job like this."

"Where's this Beemer?" Michael said with a little inward sigh.

He resisted the temptation of the McDonald's and had no difficulty finding the M25.

He listened to Radio 4 until the satnav's saucy female voice began warning him about the turn-off for the M11.

He took the M11 to Duxford and then almost immediately took the A505 and finally the A1301 to Sawston.

He found that he was in East Anglia. A part of England he had never been to before.

Flat: wheat, barley and rapeseed fields.

It was attractive countryside.

At the village of Sawston he let the satnav take him onto New Road, Babraham Road, Woodland Road and at last Gog Magog Street.

He parked the car, got out, stretched.

The street only had houses on one side. Nineteen-thirties-style Mock Tudor mansions that looked across the fields to a small set of hills to the north.

It was drizzling.

His watch told him that it was five past five in the morning, which meant that it was 10.05.

The scouting reports had been consistent and at this time of the day he was not expecting trouble. Killian worked at the Royal Mail sorting office in Cambridge. He cycled the eight miles into the city each morning at five and came back around one.

And the traveller camp itself was not difficult to spot. A line of a dozen caravans on the common next to the wood.

The field looked boggy.

Michael winced.

It would play havoc with his shoe leather but there didn't appear to be any actual road so there wasn't much of a choice.

He stood for a bit and let the warm English drizzle coat him. The rainwater slowly reservoired in his sandy hair, awaiting a critical ma.s.s when it would pour down his face in baptismal streams. "This is stupid," he said and got back inside the car and texted Bridget: ARVD SFLY NO PRBS LUL M.

He put the silenced Biretta in the specially cut pocket of his jacket, got out of the BMW and locked the car.

He stepped over the sheugh onto the common and walked gingerly across the field to the traveller camp.

A dog came and kept him company. Thinking he must have food or something, a goat began following him too.

He reached the camp without adding to his menagerie.

There were a few people pottering around. Michael nodded a good morning to a kid and looked for the caravan with the blue door.

He found it a little apart from the others on a small rise near the wood. It was tiny and dented but on a good site, protected from the easterlies by an ancient oak tree and with a view to the north and west. There was a goat outside it too on a long tether. A nanny goat that Killian obviously used for the milk in his tea.

It nuzzled at the pocket of his trousers and he had to shoo it.

Michael looked for a spare key under a breeze block and a rubbish bin and finally under a spare tyre. There was no key.

He went round the back to see if any of the windows were open, but they were all locked.

"It's the old skelly then, isn't it?" Michael said to the goat. This was not his field of expertise and it took him nearly ten minutes to get the door open with the wire and the skeleton key. If any of his boys had ever taken that long he would have fired them on the spot.

He was fortunate in having not drawn any serious attention or, worse, comments from any of Killian's neighbours.

He'd had a yarn prepared - "I'm a cousin from Belfast, I'm here to surprise him, don't say anything" - but he was glad that he didn't have to use it.

Killian's caravan was uninteresting.

A fold-out bed. A TV. A radio. A tub of rice. A bag of new potatoes. Cans of mushroom soup. A couple of paperback novels. A distinct aroma.

Michael sat on a rather grubby-looking sofa, set the Biretta on a Formica table in front of him and rifled through the novels, finally selecting a bruised copy of Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger.

The first story was about a newly wed couple who were on holiday in Miami - she was uptight and he had mental problems. Michael had never read Salinger before though Bridget and Siobhan swore by him; that was perhaps the reason why he'd avoided him, he reflected: the girls, G.o.d love them, did not share many of his tastes.