'I don't give a fuck what you're going to say, your time's up. Mr De Garza is busy now. Can't you see?' Sly was already standing by the executive lift, beckoning O'Brien over.

The lift doors pinged open and Sly stood aside to let O'Brien past.

'I think maybe I'll take you in the rear . . . Sorry, out the rear,' said Sly, giving O'Brien another cheeky smirk: playing the court jester now for De Garza's amusement. O'Brien caught the half smile on Hernando De Garza's face as the lift doors slid shut.

The two men stood in silence, Sly with a grin on his face and O'Brien watching the illuminated numbers decreasing as the private lift descended towards the basement. Eventually there was a slight shudder and it came to a stop.

As the doors squeaked open O'Brien took a step forward then spun round quickly from the waist and delivered a thick left hook that caught Sly full on the face. His head snapped back and smacked against the mirrored wall with a loud crack, then he slid semi-conscious to the ground, leaving a thin smear of blood marking the length of his fall.

'That'll wipe the grin off your face, ya cheeky fucker,' said O'Brien as he lent over and pulled Sly's Colt from the shoulder holster concealed under his jacket. Sly let out a low groan.

'What was that? You'd like another one? Sure enough!' said O'Brien.

He held the Colt high above his head then swung it in a wide arc across Sly's face. 'I wasn't told anything about keeping you on-side.'

Owen O'Brien waited for the lights to change before crossing to the telephone kiosks on the other side of the busy junction. It was common practice around the world for law-enforcement agencies to bug kiosks in the immediate vicinity of well-known criminals' residences or places of work, so he'd walked a couple of blocks north from De Garza's building. He also wanted to make sure no one was following him and take a little time to think. The news item he'd just witnessed in De Garza's office had set his mind racing.

O'Brien fed some coins into the slot then listened for the familiar UK ring-tone.

Only when the correct code word was given would he start talking. If he didn't hear anything or the code word was wrong he'd hang up immediately and walk away. Usually the person at the other end would just listen, but O'Brien knew tonight would be different.

'Peace Brother.'

'The beginning of philosophy.'

O'Brien launched straight in.

'Slim?'

'Yeh.'

'You know who I am?'

'Of course!'

'I've just seen a dead person on the news.'

'Eh?'

'Sean McGuire is not dead, I'll say it again not dead.'

'What the hell are you talking about?'

Owen had to talk fast before the money ran out.

'Everyone including the cops is looking for Finn O'Hanlon. It's all over the news here. But O'Hanlon is Sean McGuire.'

'Jesus Christ!'

'God knows how all this'll hit the ground, but I can guarantee there'll be blood enough to turn the Shannon red. We need insurance. Get McGuire's ma and the missus in detention as quick as possible and tell no one. Not a soul. I need to talk to The Farmer, but I want to do it in person. You're the only one who knows this information, Slim. If this leaks out before I get back you're dead: understand?'

'Understood,' replied Slim. 'D'you want the daughter too?'

'All of them.'

'Sean McGuire, Jesus eh?' said Slim.

'Big fella?'

'What?'

'Put the kettle on, I'm coming home early.'

The line went dead as the coins tumbled into the belly of the telephone.

Chapter 31.

Newry Easter Monday afternoon

rlaith had run out of ideas of who to phone. It was the fifth call she'd made: after this there was only one other person she could try.

The young girl on the other end of the line said, 'I'm sorry Mrs McGuire, I don't know. D'you want to speak to my ma again?'

'Don't worry, pet. Yes, put her on would you?'

There was a moment's silence while the young girl passed the phone to her mother.

'Sorry about that, rlaith! Let us know what happens and be sure to call us if we can help. I'm sure she'll turn up. Have you tried Betty Devlin? Niamh's probably round there.'

'She's next on my list. Thanks anyway, Lucy. Sorry to have troubled you.'

'No trouble at all, hon. Keep us posted. I'll call you if I hear anything this end.'

rlaith held down the black buttons on top of the phone for a few seconds before dialling again.

'Betty? It's me! You haven't seen our Niamh, have you? She's not come home. I just wondered if she's round there playing with Lisa?'

'She's not here, rlaith, I'm sorry,' answered Betty Devlin. 'Hold on and I'll ask Lisa if she's seen her.'

rlaith heard Betty shouting to her daughter, and Lisa's small voice in the background, innocent, unaware of the impact her words would have as she replied. 'Yeah, she went in the car with the men. They said they would take her home.' rlaith immediately felt the knot in her stomach tighten and had to concentrate hard not to throw up.

'Jesus! rlaith, did you hear that?' asked Betty.

rlaith couldn't speak: she could barely breathe.

Just over forty miles away in Belfast, Angela Fitzpatrick was sitting in the back of a maroon-coloured Vauxhall Astra staring out of the window at what passed for normal life. Her hair was scraped back off her face and what little make-up she was wearing did nothing to disguise the fact that she looked drawn and tired. She'd just finished a long shift at the Royal Victoria Hospital on the Falls Road and had been looking forward to nipping into Shannon's Cafe for one of their famous home-made sausage sandwiches before heading home for a long hot soak and a few hours' sleep. She was hungry: wishing now she'd taken up the offer of lunch in the staff canteen.

The weedy guy in the driver's seat kept checking the rear-view mirror like he was expecting her to disappear.

The guy sitting next to her on the back seat with the handgun digging into her side didn't look like he needed to eat anything else for the rest of his life. He was known as Slim Jim McMahon and had a huge stomach bulging over his tautly stretched tri-colour snake belt. Her nurse's training had him down as a candidate for late-onset diabetes.

They were travelling south on the Lisburn Road past shops and bars she knew well. Today, however, they appeared alien to her, almost like she was seeing them for the first time. Even the people in the street seemed different. It reminded her of arriving in a foreign country and driving in from the airport: everything familiar, but somehow unrecognisable: her perceptions coloured by fear.

The situation she found herself in was linked with Danny McGuire, but she had no idea how, or in what way. For the first time since she had met him, Angela wished she had driven past the half-naked figure she'd found collapsed by the roadside.

'If we're going somewhere posh I'll have to go home first and change,' she said, trying her best to sound casual.

There was no response.

She had tried a few times to get a conversation going, but each time she had been ignored. Neither of the men had spoken a word to Angela since they'd grabbed her in the street and bundled her into the back of the car. 'If you're the taxi I ordered, you're heading in the wrong direction.'

The big guy with the gut gave her a sideways glance. 'If you don't keep your gobby mouth shut you'll get a punch in the fuckin jaw, all right? Keep it buttoned.'

Angela pressed her knees together to try to stop them trembling. She turned her face to peer out of the window, hoping that Slim Jim couldn't see the tears rolling down her cheek.

No one spoke again for the rest of the journey.

The telephone started to ring. rlaith jerked her head up and snatched the receiver from its cradle.

'Hello.'

'rlaith?'

'Jesus Christ! Where the hell are you?'

'rlaith, I've got no time so just listen. You, Niamh and Ma need to get out of there. Don't take anything with you. Use the money Angela gave you to buy whatever you need, but get out of there now. Don't go to your sister's or your ma's, d'you hear me rlaith? Nowhere anyone would think to look!'

'What the hell's going on?'

'Go to the hotel you had your honeymoon in. Go there and wait for me to call, but you have to go now. And tell no one, not a soul, d'you understand, rlaith? rlaith, are you there . . . rlaith?'

'You're too late,' whispered rlaith. 'They've got her, they've already got Niamh.'

On the other end of the phone she heard Danny cursing.

'And Eillean McGuigan called here yesterday,' continued rlaith. 'Quig has been murdered. That's Eamon Ruairc and Quig McGuigan both murdered in one week.' rlaith started screaming down the phone. 'What's going on? What the fuck is happening Danny? They've taken Niamh, for fucksake.'

'I'm coming home, rlaith, and I'm going to fix everything, okay? Just get yourself and Ma away from the house as quickly as possible . . . I'm going to fix it.'

The Vauxhall Astra making its way through the quiet housing development in the north of Newry took a sharp right and drove into the garage of a small semi-detached house. The house was painted the same 'council cream' as all the others and had nothing to distinguish it from every other two-up, two-down on the estate.

The skinny guy got out first and pulled the shuttered doors down behind them, plunging the garage into darkness. The car door flew open and Angela was dragged out and shoved towards the internal door connecting the garage to the house.

The skinny guy pushed her through into a dim, airless hallway that smelled of damp and decay. At the other end of the hall she could see the dark, distorted outline of two figures gesturing animatedly behind the mottled glass of the kitchen door. There was a heated argument taking place, but the conversation was too muted to hear clearly.

'Up here,' said the skinny guy, pointing to a steep set of stairs that led up to a half landing.

Slim Jim McMahon was standing behind her, digging the gun into the small of her back. 'She's to go in the same room as the other one,' he said.

The skinny guy nodded back at him. 'Sure enough.'

The bedroom walls were draped in a black fabric and the windows had been boarded over with the curtains still in place. From the outside it gave the impression that the curtains were drawn, but it was really just a makeshift prison cell. Aside from a single metal-framed chair placed in the centre, there was no other furniture in the room. The carpet around the chair was heavily stained and the air choked with a rotting smell that made Angela gag. When her eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness Angela noticed the young girl cowering silently in the corner of the room. 'Dear God,' she exclaimed. Angela recognised her straight away. 'You're Niamh, aren't you? I met you the other day with your ma.' The look of fear on the young girl's face made Angela instinctively reach out to her. 'Come on over here, love, you're all right. I won't let those animals lay a finger on you.'

Kathleen McGuire stood on the top stair, looking down at the crumpled figure of her daughter-in-law sitting at the foot of the stairs, weeping silently, her hands cupped over her face. An image flashed into Kathleen McGuire's mind. She saw herself sitting in exactly the same position, years earlier, when she had heard the news of her son Sean's death. Kathleen knew instinctively that something terrible had happened.

'What's going on, rlaith?'

rlaith struggled to answer through her tears.

'Someone's taken her.'

Kathleen McGuire's knuckles whitened as her grip tightened on the banister.

'They've taken Niamh,' continued rlaith. 'Danny called. We have to leave here right away.'

'We'd better get going then,' replied Kathleen.

Danny stood clutching a twenty-dollar bill in his hand, trying to attract the attention of the man serving coffee at the other end of the counter.

The 'Must-go-Jean' truck-stop cafe was quiet, but the guy was engaged in a conversation with a heavily tattooed truck driver who had pulled in off the road just in front of Danny. From the length of time it was taking to pour one coffee it was obvious the two knew each other. Neither of them seemed in much of a hurry.

Eventually the guy serving looked over his shoulder at Danny.

'Be right with you.'