"Nothing," he said.

"Come on, what?"

"Oh, I don't know. I think you romanticise this life. What do you see when you look at these caravans and these people?"

"Why, what do you see?"

Killian didn't answer but he shook his head ruefully. The truth was that he romanticised it too. It was his childhood and he was an adult now.

She didn't belong here.

He thought back to his decision at the graveyard. They'd part soon. Him and her. There was no other way.

"I don't know, Killian, I'm just a wee, middle-cla.s.s girl from Ballymena, you know? I didn't want to be in a big flipping melodrama."

Killian laughed and finished the cigarette. "You don't know the half of it. My whole life has been about melodrama."

They went back inside.

The girls were safely down.

They lay together on the bed.

Her song and the moment and the remark about her da killed another opportunity to tell her about the murders in Ballymena.

It would have to be in the morning then.

He was annoyed at his cowardice but not that annoyed. He was lying with the star of the ceilidh and the most beautiful girl he knew.

He kissed her and she held him. It was the more perfect because of the bitter sweetness of the moment. He told her of the Pavee, of their pa.s.sions and their belief that the great enemy Death was conquered only if you lived, really lived when you breathed the world's air. You fought and you ate and you breathed and moved under the stars and that was enough...

They made love until they were drenched with perspiration.

Exhausted they fell asleep in one another's arms.

He dreamed of fire and woke up in the cold.

The tide was out.

The rain had stopped.

Everything seemed fine.

The dogs however were telling a different story.

Two of them were barking and Cora, the next door neighbour's border collie - the smartest of the lot - was growling. Killian shook Rachel. "What is it?" she asked groggily.

"Trouble. Where's the gun?"

"In the dresser. What's the matter? I don't want you to shoot anyone."

"Let's hope I don't have to. Wake the girls, get shoes on them, I'll go see what's happening."

He pulled on the hoodie, jeans and sneakers and slipped outside the caravan. It was a clear night and the moon was so bright you could see the hills in Scotland. The hairs on the back of his neck were up.

He found Cora who was still growling into the darkness. She was rigid and her tail was high above her body and her bright eyes were staring at the dark meadow next to the horse field.

He went two caravans down and banged on Donal's door.

Donal answered it immediately. He was fully dressed and carrying a twelve-gauge. He looked at Killian.

Killian shook his head.

"Aye," Donal agreed. "And I have a feeling it's going to be a bad one."

CHAPTER 17.

THE KILLING OF THE TINKERS.

Killian sniffed the air. There was an acrid tinge as if from an oil slick or a chemical spill out at sea.

"What's that smell?" Donal asked.

"I was going to ask you the same question."

"I don't know," Donal said.

"Cora seems to know," Killian said.

Donal broke open the shotgun and loaded a couple of sh.e.l.ls.

"It's only birdshot," he said. "I don't think we'll be in the business of trying to kill anyone."

Killian wasn't so sure about that. He took the clip out of the Hechler and Koch and counted slugs. Thirteen out of a possible fifteen max which wasn't bad. He reloaded the clip and chambered a round.

Donal stepped out of the caravan and went over to Cora.

She was straining at her rope, desperate to go.

"Not a fox?" Killian suggested.

"We'll see," Donal said.

He let Cora go and she ran across the car park into the overgrown meadow next to the horse field.

Nothing happened for a beat.

Two beats.

Three.

Then there was a scream. A man's scream and another man yelling, and a gunshot.

"Everybody up!" Donal yelled and starting rapping on caravan doors.

"What's going on?" Killian asked.

"Women and children onto the beach! Men and boys by your houses!" Donal yelled. "What is it?" Killian asked, straining to see into the meadow.

The dogs were all going crazy now and the horses panicking.

Before Donal could give him an answer, the first of the petrol bombs came sailing out of the darkness in an arc of white phosph.o.r.escence. It smashed short of the caravans in a whoosh of flame.

"What the f.u.c.k?" Killian said.

Three more molotovs came tumbling from the night, two also landing short but the third hitting a caravan roof and bursting into flames.

There was a cheer from the field and a man deep within the meadow yelled: "Tinkers go home!"

"f.u.c.k off gyppo thieves!" another called.

From the cheer Killian guessed that there could be twenty of them.

There was chaos in the camp now. Children were screaming, dogs barking and half the adult men and women were still drunk from the ceilidh. No one even attempted to fight the fire incinerating the top of the caravan.

"Rachel!" Killian called and he saw her standing at the entrance to Donal's caravan with a red shawl around both girls.

"What's going on, Killian?" she yelled.

He ran to her. "Get the weans down to the water."

"What's happening?"

"It's an attack."

"Is this about us?" she asked.

"I don't know."

The girls were trembling.

"Is it going to be okay, Mr Killian?" Sue asked, looking at him sternly.

"Aye, it's going to be okay," he said patting her on the head and gently shoving Rachel towards the beach. Rachel picked them both up and ran with them to the water, congregating on the strand with the other mothers with children; the women without kids were going to stand by their men in the camp.

"Go back to f.u.c.king Poland, ya gypsy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" a man yelled in the dark as another round of molotovs and petrol bombs arced through the air. Two exploded short in the field, one went long into the sand, but one hit the side of a caravan stowing in its window and exploding inside.

"Was there anyone in there?" Donal asked.

"Nah, I think wee Connie's on the beach," someone said optimistically.

Two more molotovs came gultering in, one hitting a car, another going straight into a chicken coop, setting it on fire.

"They've got the distance now," someone said.

A burning vodka bottle curved a steep parabola through the night air and smashed a yard from Killian's feet. He was knocked over and he hit his head on a plastic oil drum and, dazed, he swatted at the constellations and the sickle moon.

Fire surged across his ankles.

The moment elongated itself as those moments do: children screaming, men cheering, the smell of the sea and of burning.

"I'm on fire!" he yelled as the yellow flames shot up his leg, but Donal already had his coat off and threw it on him.

The smothered fire stopped immediately.

Donal pulled Killian to his feet. His trousers were scorched, his head was throbbing, but he was almost completely unscathed.

"Are you okay?" Donal asked.

"I think so," Killian said.

"Are you sure?"

Killian had moved on from his own needs to the needs of the clan, to the needs of Rachel and Katie and the girls. "We've got to do something. They're murdering us," he said.

Donal looked at him. "Will you come with me into their lines?" he asked.

"Aye, I will," Killian said. "Let's go, we've got guns," a little Pavee fellow said next to him.

"They'll have guns too more than likely," Donal said.

Of course they will, Killian thought, f.u.c.king skinhead cowards. But there was no choice; to stay here was death.

"Come on lads!" Killian shouted.

"No, after the next wave," Donal said and grabbed him by the arm.

Killian halted and nodded. He wasn't thinking straight.

He looked around him. Perhaps only half a dozen of the Pavee men were sober enough to go with them and only one other had a shotgun, the rest armed with tent pegs, kitchen knives, baseball bats. Big Tommy Trainer was with them though and he had a tyre iron which Killian wouldn't like to be on the other end of.