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Kirby’s phone buzzed and he answered it.

‘Grainne, hope you have something for me. I’m putting you on speaker.’

He heard the lead SOCO sigh. ‘I hate being on speaker. Anyhow, I don’t have good news, I’m afraid. It seems Robert Hayes is gone.’

‘What do you mean, gone?’

‘We called to his house and the door was ajar. We entered, having first identified ourselves. Not a sign of Mr Hayes. And his bedroom appears to have been ransacked. Either someone broke in or he left in an awful hurry.’

On the path outside Robert Hayes’s house, Kirby scratched his head, tapped his shirt pocket and walked in small circles. ‘If this isn’t the sign of a guilty man, I don’t know what is.’

‘We’ve issued an alert on his car,’ Martina said. ‘We should find him quickly enough.’

‘He’s had a head start. He could be anywhere by now.’

‘Try to be positive. We’ll catch him.’

‘Has Noel Butler been brought in yet? I bet any money he has bloody knuckles.’

‘McKeown went with Garda Lei to get him. Show of force, he said, or some such shite.’

‘I wish the boss was here,’ Kirby said quietly, as he crossed the threshold.

A SOCO worked diligently in the kitchen. There wasn’t much room for more people. Kirby couldn’t see any evidence of a disturbance or even a scuffle. Just the visible blood drops or spatter on the counter and wall tiles.

He went through the tight galley kitchen and out the back door. A small shed took up most of the tiny garden, almost flush to the house. He opened the door to find a narrow chest freezer the only item inside. Making sure his gloves were secure, he lifted the lid. Meat in clear bags. All dated. It seemed to be lamb. The top bag was the freshest; frost had yet to gather on the outside. Chops, dated that morning. He’d leave the freezer for SOCOs, but from what he could make out, it was all animal. A dead end.

Back inside, he went up the wobbly stairs to find the house had one bedroom and a bathroom. Wire hangers hung empty in the single-door wardrobe. The drawers hung open in the locker, a similar story to the wardrobe: empty. The bed covers were ruffled, but the bed was made up. He looked out the window at the busy road.

‘Where did you go, Robert Hayes? And did you go willingly?’

THE PAST

He was two years older than his girlfriend and he’d wanted to do the right thing. To marry her. He loved her and he was sure she loved him back. Okay, it was wrong that they had had sex before marriage, but they were committed to each other. Young love, his mother had scoffed. Love won’t put a crust on the table. And then his mother went and died.

He realised that she had been the one keeping the farm ticking over, because as soon as she was no longer around, his father had the freedom to drink in earnest. And the farm suffered. The family suffered. He was the eldest, and with few skills other than shearing sheep and digging the fields, he was left with no money, no income. And a burning hunger. Robbing a loaf of bread and a packet of Mikado biscuits, which had fallen out from under his jumper as he ran from the shop, had been his biggest mistake. He didn’t count getting his girlfriend pregnant a mistake; that was love. This was stupidity. And it wasn’t the first time he’d stolen. The guards had plenty of evidence of all that. The punishment for his many misdemeanours saw him being sent up to Knockraw, a school for wayward boys. An industrial school, it was called.

That was when his real nightmare began.

He knew he should never have been sent to Knockraw. Now that he was trapped, he had to make plans to survive. The second he entered through the imposing tall door, he realised he was too soft, too young, too naive to outlive his sentence. Stealing to keep his hunger at bay had landed him here, but before long he would know a hunger like no other. A hunger to escape the horror.

The other boys were stronger and meaner. He didn’t like them. But he didn’t fear them either. Not like he feared those in charge. One was a chaplain, but he’d heard he wasn’t really a priest yet, just studying to be one, and this was like work experience. That made him laugh. As if any experience in Knockraw could compare to the real world. Though he supposed if you could survive Knockraw, you could survive anything, anywhere.

As the days bled into months, he noticed a strange bond developing between the chaplain and one of the boys. That was when he came to know the meaning of true evil. And when those two got together, they were the devil incarnate.

Life became so bad that he almost forgot about his girl and their unborn child. Almost. Not quite. But by then it was too late.

15

CONNEMARA

He came up behind her as she stood at the sink, scrubbing a plate in the warm soapy water.

‘We do have a dishwasher, you know.’ His voice was soft and his words, whispered at the nape of her neck, brushed the hairs there. She felt his hands snake around her waist, the gentle squeeze, and then he turned to switch on the kettle.

‘I like the feel of the water,’ she said. ‘By using my hands I can clean better than any dishwasher can.’

‘Whatever floats your boat,’ he said with a smile in his voice. ‘You aren’t going to change now, are you?’