"Okay," Killian said.

"I'll call you back in a couple of hours," Tom said.

"No, no, I'll be trashing this phone as soon as we're done here. I'll call you back in a couple of hours."

"Our friend's in London, I'll have to track him down, why don't you stay on the line and I'll see where he is."

"Come on Tom, don't play me-"

"I'm not playing you, Killian, I'm a f.u.c.king glorified PA based in f.u.c.king Belfast; when he's across the sheugh our friend has a million things to do, half the time his mobile's off for an interview, I'll have to call Paula and get his itinerary."

"I'm not holding on, Tom, I'm trashing this phone, I'll call you back later," Killian insisted.

"Okay, okay, keep your hair on. Call me at five, okay? I'll have our word by five."

"Five o'clock it is."

"Just to be clear: you'll square your girl, I'll square my boy and we'll shake hands in the middle?"

"That's the plan."

"Okay. Oh, and Killian?"

"What?"

"Don't f.u.c.k it up this time," Tom said and hung up so that that would be the last word.

Killian smiled.

"Well, that certainly wasn't a no," he said to the ghosts. There might, actually, be a way out of this muck that didn't involve bashing heads.

Killian had topped people in his career as a heavy. He had also six- packed a few people and beat the s.h.i.t out of a couple dozen more, some of whom had been guilty of nothing more heinous than forgetting to pay their protection money on time.

But over the years he had gained a rep as a man who could convince people to pay their bills and keep their beaks shut without the necessity of having to shoot them in the kneecaps. He had gained a rep for diplomacy, as the Tallyrand of the Tinkers.

He was competent with a gun, but he preferred not to work with one.

That's why Enniskillen had been so satisfying.

Clean. Neat. Apart from that poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d ferry operator that Ivan had obviously topped.

And perhaps this could be finessed too. No one else need die.

The hard part would indeed be breaking the news of her parents' murder to Rachel, but Killian knew that if anyone could do it, he could. He would put on his serious face and explain. As nice as it was here, this was a fantasy, a holiday, and it couldn't go on forever.

He walked a little further into the surf, flipped the phone shut, c.o.c.ked his arm and skimmed it into the sea. It bounced four times before it sank.

"Not bad," he muttered.

He strolled back through the Kick a Tin game, over the dunes and up to the Pavee camp.

He nodded to Katie who was feeding sc.r.a.ps to the chickens outside her caravan.

She gave him a smile and jerked her thumb behind her which meant that her old man Tommy was inside. Killian nodded.

He walked to Donal's caravan.

"Hi," he said to Rachel.

She looked up from her book.

"Hey," she replied, grinning.

She too had put on weight in her three days here. She'd slept well and the wind and sun had caught her face and brought out her colour. She looked great. Beautiful.

"Whatcha reading?" he asked.

"The Catcher in the Rye."

"I missed that one. Any good?"

"So far. He wants to know where the ducks go in the winter."

Killian rubbed his chin. "Well, the teal go to Spain and the mallard go to Morocco."

"These are New York ducks."

Killian shook his head. "Oh. I don't know. Mexico?"

Rachel put down the book and smiled. "I don't think we're going to find out. That's not really the point."

Killian cleared his throat ruminatively.

Rachel recognised his ticks by now. "What's up?" she asked.

Killian squatted beside her and his mind filled with the image of Rachel's cigarette-burn tortured stepmother and dead father.

"Well?" she insisted.

Killian shook his head. She was so pretty and happy that Killian couldn't bring himself to mention it at the moment. And there was no hurry on it anyway. He had all day. "Oh, uhm, I was wondering if you.. .if you'd mind...I was thinking of going to help Donal out this afternoon at his wee job. I feel I should give him a wee hand you know."

Rachel looked concerned. "Because we're imposing on him?"

"G.o.d no. He would mortified if you thought that. No, I'm just a bit bored."

"Oh okay, yeah sure."

"You're comfortable here? You'll be okay by yourself?"

She pulled the hair back from her face and tied it in a ponytail. She grinned. "I'm comfortable here in a way I've never been comfortable in my whole friggin' life," she said. Killian repeated her remark to Donal two hours later in the small, ancient, Mill Bay graveyard on the Larne Lough side of Islandmagee.

"Oh aye? I'm glad to hear it," Donal said, pleased.

Killian had been waiting for Donal to hint that they might want to look for a caravan of their own or something like that but no hint had come. And wouldn't come. Donal had given them his place for as long as they wanted and that was all that needed to be said.

Killian paused on his spade.

"How do you like the work?" Donal asked.

"It's nice to build up a wee sweat," Killian replied.

They had taken their coats off and were digging a grave.

It was a navvy job and Killian had had plenty of those over the water.

He moved onto a new square and pushed in the spade. He lifted the spade out and turned the edge perpendicular to the first cut and dug, the shovel again meeting no resistance in the soft gra.s.s. He withdrew the spade and cleaned the muck off the bottom and then he dug again, perpendicular to the previous cut, parallel to the first. A final cut completed the shape and when he had made four incisions in the moist earth, he stepped back and looked at the rectangle he had created in the ground. He paused only for a moment and then shifted his weight on the shovel, hooking his left hand over the "t" of the handle and his right hand firm on the metal staff, and then in one motion he scooped up a cube of turf and dropped it a few feet away to his left.

He grunted and looked with satisfaction at his third square-foot done.

"Aye, it's not too bad," Killian said.

After ten minutes with sweat running along the sheugh of their a.r.s.es they were done with the first part of the job. All the surface gra.s.s was turned over and stacked in a neat triangular pile.

They could be less careful with the rest of the task, as it required only a raw labouring against the ground. They got big snow shovels from the gravedigger's shed and commenced hoiking out the soil. It was moist, with the texture of chocolate cake, and they scooped it out easily.

"Doing well now," Donal said.

They shovelled on in the musty heat until the rain clouds came and filled the western part of the sky.

"When's the funeral?" Killian asked.

"Ach we've a wee while yet, I think," Donal said.

"Who's it for?"

"Some old boy. This cemetery is officially full, I was told. You have to be from an old family to get in here. Nice wee ground though," Donal said. Killian agreed. There was a view of Larne Lough and the green Antrim hills beyond, and it was quiet. Sheep fields and wee lanes choked with nettles and blackberry bushes.

As the rain began to fall gently on the outlying houses of the peninsula the grave was nearly done. They were working in the hole now and Killian paused to wipe the sweat off his hands on the back of his trousers.

Water was pooling underneath them and it was getting slippy.

"What do you think? Enough?" he asked Donal.

They were a good five feet down.

"Aye, I think that'll do," Donal said.

They climbed out, covered the hole with tarp and retreated under an oak to wait.

Donal produced a bottle of red wine, thick Irish batch bread, a wrapped package of b.u.t.ter and homemade raspberry jam. They drank the wine and ate jam pieces and watched curlews and oyster catchers on the mudflats of the lough. Red wine and horizontal att.i.tudes made Killian think of the Symposium. Was Rachel the other half of his splintered self? It didn't seem likely. She was her own other half. And they could never be. These days with the tinkers had shown him that.

She wanted certainty and an end to the madness and a return to the steady life. But that was the world Killian had failed in. He saw an older world which Donal and the others had shown him still existed. A world where the past wasn't a dead story in a book but was a living history in the mouth of a storyteller or a bard, where paper rules were trumped by the older principles of natural law and justice, where family and clan mattered more than money, where your name was everything, where the landscape was teleological and every hill and stream had a legend, where the great thing was to move. He grinned and joined Donal in a pipe and finally around four when the rain had eased once again the funeral arrived. Six or seven cars led by a black Daimler.

The two men went over and lifted the tarpaulin from the grave, folding it over like a bed sheet, water slithering onto their hands. They carried it across to the next grave along and set it down. The minister came in a white ca.s.sock, nodded to them and stood patiently at the head of the grave. The mourners, coughing and fixing their hair in the wind, formed in a polite semicircle around him. Killian listened to the words respectfully for a while before his mind drifted back to the curlews and the other birds. He watched the lough water fill back in again and wondered if the tide ever got so high that Islandmagee actually became an island rather than a peninsula. Maybe in the distant past.

The bearers brought the coffin, the minister gave Donal a nod and Donal whispered, "Give us a hand mate." While the minister ended the Psalm they took cloth ropes and slid them through the bra.s.s handles and lowered the coffin into the ground. The widow threw in some soil and a boy too young to know what was going on was lifted up and carried, and the whole procession walked sullenly back to their vehicles.

A windy burst of weather was rolling in from the hills, conjuring up an outcry among the crows and ravens. "Let's finish up quickly before the storm comes," Donal said.

They shovelled the earth back into the hole, perspiration pouring down his back and the rainwater falling on his head. With the big snow shovel he slid the earth in over the coffin and buried it forever under the thick and inky soil.

It took them fifteen minutes to refill the grave and when they were done they replaced the sods and put soaked wreaths on the small mound that was a good two feet above the level of the ground. They put the tools back on the cart and wheeled it over to the shed.

They locked the shed and took a well-needed drink from the standpipe.

"What now?" Donal asked.

"Do you have the time?" Killian wondered.

"A quarter to five," Donal said.

"Need to make a phone call, is there somewhere around here I can do it? A payphone."

"Might be one at the pub," Donal suggested.

They walked to the Mill Bay Inn and Donal got a couple of pints and Killian called Tom.

Tom sounded cagey and maybe a bit annoyed. "I'm sorry Killian, I haven't been able to reach him," he said.

"You've got to tell him that this the best and only way out of our difficulties," Killian said.

"I know! But it's another big cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k Monday for him. They're closing all the Manchester routes, it's a big thing over there, he's having a h.e.l.l of a day."

"This is more important than anything else in his b.l.o.o.d.y life, don't you think?" Killian said, irritated at this runaround.

"Who are you arguing with, mate? I agree. For me, too. Look, I'm sorry. I know what you're saying. He's flying back tonight. I'll speak to him in person. Call me first thing in the morning. I'll have it sorted by then. Okay?"

"Okay," Killian agreed reluctantly.

"And you worked on our girl? Is she okay with everything?"

"She'll agree if your boy agrees. No press, no peelers, no f.u.c.king Russkies, no nothing. Status quo."

"Status quo. Call me in the morning, Killian."

"I will."

Killian hung up, p.i.s.sed off. Sure he had a million b.a.s.t.a.r.d things to suss: an airline, a casino, a f.u.c.king trip to s.p.a.ce, but only Rachel could destroy him. That boy needed to get his priorities straight.