"Fuck me," Campbell said. He felt his calm mask slip. He caught it and wetted his upper lip.

"You've heard about Michael McKenna's demise, obviously."

Campbell smiled. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer fella."

The man in the passenger seat spoke for the first time. "It's no laughing matter," he said. "This is going to cause some major problems for us."

Public school, Campbell thought. The handler was Army, maybe even ex-SAS, going by his haircut and the scars on his face. He'd seen action. But this other was government. Northern Ireland Office, probably, one of the bureaucrats who'd run this place when it was too busy fighting to run itself. Chinless office clerks at the helm of a country drowning in its own blood. Not for much longer, Campbell thought.

"I don't need to tell you how delicate the situation is," Public School continued. "The political process is on the right track, at last, but it's as fragile as ever. We can't afford any upsets, not with the money and time that's been invested. Relations between McGinty's faction and the party leadership have been strained enough as it is. We can't have it turning into a feud. Have you seen any news this morning?"

"No," Campbell said. He hadn't even turned on the car radio for the journey across the border.

"Well, it's not pretty. As soon as word got out Caffola was dead, what should have been a minor skirmish turned into a major riot. It only settled down in the last few hours. The leadership want to play it down, but our friend inside tells us McGinty is going to say the police did it, even if it's proven to be an accident. He'll make a song and dance about it at McKenna's funeral today. He'll make out Caffola was beaten by the police, then left to choke to death in an alley. We're told he'll threaten to withdraw support for the PSNI, even though the party hasn't approved it. He wants to stir up some headlines for himself, show the party leadership he's not going to be sidelined. Problem is, talk like that will rattle the Unionists. If they think the party wants to back out of policing, they might walk away from Stormont, and the Assembly will collapse. Again."

"And you're sure the cops didn't do it?" Campbell thought it was a reasonable question.

"We're not sure of anything," Public School said.

"So, where does Gerry Fegan fit into this?" Campbell asked, thinking of the tall, thin man he'd met only once. It was on an industrial estate north-west of Belfast, and it had been bloody. He thought about it as seldom as possible.

"That's what we need you to find out," the handler said. "Fegan was the last person to see McKenna alive. It seems he was also the last to see Caffola. A bit of a coincidence, don't you think?"

"Why don't you nab him, then?"

"He was questioned last night," the handler said. "Said he and Caffola got split up when they were running from the police."

Campbell snorted. "And you think he's above telling lies?"

"Our friend inside says McGinty believes him. Fegan's been keeping his head down for years. There's no reason he would turn on his friends now. Besides, there's nothing to actually tie him to McKenna's killing. All evidence says he was at home at the time, piss-drunk."

"Then who did kill McKenna?" Campbell leaned forward, following the blood-scent.

"McKenna was dealing with a Lithuanian, Petras Adamkus, on some people trafficking. A very shady character. The leadership had got wind of it and were putting pressure on McGinty to nix it. The last contact anyone had with McKenna was when he phoned a barman and told him he was meeting someone on business at the docks. Next thing we know, McKenna's brains are all over his windscreen, and Mr. Adamkus is nowhere to be found."

"But you're not satisfied with that," Campbell said.

"No, we're not," the handler said. "On the surface it looks like the party cleaned up their own mess over McKenna and Adamkus, and it suits them to blame the police for Caffola's death. We know Caffola wasn't happy with the political end of things, particularly the party supporting law and order. The party won't tolerate dissent in the ranks. They've done it in the past, taking out one of their own and blaming the security forces or the Loyalists, so it would be par for the course. Still, something doesn't add up."

"And you want me to find the missing pieces." Campbell sat back, burying a peal of excitement deep inside himself.

Public School shot the handler a condescending smile. "You said he was bright," he said, his voice oily. He peered around the headrest at Campbell. "We need you to go back to Belfast, tell them you're not happy with the dissidents, that you want to come back into the fold. See what you can find out about Fegan. If he's behind it, deal with him. Or tip the party off and let them do the honors."

"They'll tell me to fuck off," Campbell said. "They know I was running with McSorley's lot in Dundalk. McGinty won't like it. Have you no other mug to do it?"

He knew the answer.

"We've never had an agent as close to McGinty as you," Public School said. "Our friend inside will smooth things over for you. Besides, if I'm correctly informed, Mr. McGinty owes you a pretty big favor. You'll be welcomed with open arms. Trust me."

"Not for a second," Campbell said.

Public School gave him a hard look. "There'll be a generous bonus, of course. Fifteen thousand for going in. Another fifteen if you're able to resolve matters to everyone's satisfaction."

Campbell looked from Public School to the handler and back again. "Twenty-five first, twenty-five after. And I want what I'm owed for Dundalk. It wasn't my decision to leave."

"You're a mercenary bastard, aren't you?" Public School said, smiling. "All right. I'm sure you'll give us our money's worth."

"Every penny," Campbell said. He tried not to picture Gerry Fegan's blood-spattered face or the bodies at his feet.

13.

Fegan stood among the gravestones, sweat drawing cool lines down his back. It had been the warmest spring he could remember. Black Mountain loomed over the graveyard, its craggy slopes bright and hard in the May sunlight. Father Coulter droned on by the graveside amid polite coughs and gentle weeping.

Fegan looked around the cemetery. It was a decent turnout, a few hundred, but not as many as he'd expected. Some had chosen to stay away. Fegan had heard grumblings, loud whispers, as the mourners gathered. Some called it an insult, a slap in the face. Certain men, certain politicians, should have been here to bear the coffin, to stand solemn-faced by the graveside. Their absence glared like a sore.

As Fegan scanned the crowds he watched for a flash of ash-blonde hair, a long and slender frame. She was here somewhere, but she was keeping her distance. And why did he care?

"God knows," he whispered to himself.

He took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead and the back of his neck. His eyes were dry and heavy, and his skull was full of sand. The cops had kept him until nine this morning and he'd had barely two hours' sleep before he'd had to get up for the funeral. He savored the peace, but it didn't last long enough.

A haze of pain hovered around his temples, and shadows moved at the edge of his vision. He pushed them away. In this place, among these people, the shadows were sure to gather and pick out the living. Fegan was certain of it, and wondered how long he could hold them back.

Luck had been with him so far. But then, he'd always been lucky when it came to killing. He had a knack for it. Last night's riot had provided the perfect cover. If his luck held, it would even look like an accident. He had stashed the brick deep inside a bin five streets away, and then found the makeshift petrol-bomb factory. He took one of the bottles and used the fuel it contained to burn the gloves.

He had returned to the Springfield Road, wanting to be seen there, away from Caffola's body. McGinty was already negotiating with a senior police officer in view of the cameras, the man of peace restoring order to the troubled streets once more. Not for long, though. As soon as cops searching for petrol bombs discovered Caffola's body, all hell broke loose.

Fegan spent the rest of the night in the company of the police. Their questioning had been half-hearted and perfunctory. They did not grieve over the loss of Vincie Caffola, and Fegan doubted they would expend much effort on the investigation. He left the station unafraid of being charged with Caffola's killing.

Now, in the windswept graveyard, he covered his mouth to yawn. The pressure increased in his head and he shuffled his feet for balance. Chills washed through him, and he wrapped his arms tight around his midsection.

Father Coulter's service over, it was time for politics. A platform stood by the grave, and two men took up position holding a banner that read Building for Peace, Building for the Future. Another man joined them, holding a portable amplifier with a microphone. Fegan's stomach churned, knowing who would follow.

Paul McGinty, fifty-five years old, tall and handsome, stepped up to the podium. Low whispers crept through the crowd; it should have been one of the party leaders up there, eulogising the departed. Instead, McGinty faced the mourners, his countenance grim. The breeze tousled his hair as he waved for the applause to stop. The assistant raised the microphone to McGinty's mouth.

He greeted the assembly in forced Irish, as was the custom. Some embraced Ireland's native tongue, others did not. Fegan didn't care for words, English or Irish, so it meant little to him.

The formality over, McGinty began his speech.

"Comrades," he said in his carefully maintained West Belfast accent. "Today would have been a sad day without the news that came to us last night. But it is sadder still for the passing of Vincent Caffola, a tireless community worker and party official. And I have much to say about his passing, but ladies and gentlemen, I must first pay respect to the man who was buried here today.

"Michael McKenna was a great man." McGinty paused, his blue eyes taking in the cemetery as applause and isolated cheers rippled through it. "Michael McKenna was a great man because he believed in the fight for justice and equality on this island, and he fought for justice and equality every single day of his life. It is a tragedy for all who knew him that that goal was just within his reach when his life was taken."

Pain, bright and fiery, burst in Fegan's skull. "Christ," he hissed.

A few heads turned in his direction. He ignored them.

The shadows moved in from the edges of his vision. The pain flared again, brighter than before.

"Christ. Not now."

One of the funeral-goers, a stocky man in his mid-twenties, turned to scowl at him. Fegan stared back until the scowler turned away.

He closed his eyes and breathed deep, willing the pain and shadows to recede. A cry almost escaped him when he opened them and caught a glint of ash-blonde. He turned his head towards it, searching. There, another flash, between the black-clad bodies. He watched as she emerged from them, her face glowing in the spring sunlight. Her hair fluttered in the breeze, and she calmed it with her delicate hand. She caught him staring and froze.

Fegan's heart lurched in his chest as his eyes locked with Marie McKenna's. He wanted to raise his hand to wave, but it hung useless at his side. Time became an abstract notion, a meaningless measurement. Then her eyes slipped away from his, and time moved on. She retreated back to the throng, losing herself among them, sparing him only one glance over her shoulder.

Only when he'd lost her did Fegan realise the nine followers surrounded him. The pain dissolved, leaving a feathery lightness behind his eyes. The woman rocked her baby and smiled at him.

"What's happening to me?" he asked her.

The scowler turned to face him again. "Shut up and listen to the speech."

Scowler's friend tugged on his elbow and whispered in his ear, "That's Gerry Fegan."

Scowler's face greyed. "Sorry," he said, and turned back to the platform.

Fegan watched the followers move among the living, studying the mourners as if they were creatures in a zoo, sometimes touching them. The woman stayed close to Fegan. Her skin caught none of the sunlight beating down on the cemetery, and the breeze did not disturb her black hair. She smiled up at him again, her fine features showing none of the hate she must have felt.

Turn away and be quiet, Fegan thought. He ignored her and concentrated on McGinty's speech.

'Vincent Caffola's murder," he blustered, "And it can only be described as murder, throws us back to the bad old days. The days when the young people of our community lived in fear of the RUC. The bad old days when sectarianism was the law. When bigotry was the law. When instilling terror into the Nationalist and Republican people was the law."

A rumble of agreement rolled through the faithful. McGinty paused, letting it subside.

The woman turned her black eyes to the politician as the baby writhed in her arms.

"But I say no more," McGinty continued. "No more will our community stand by and allow such brutality to go unchallenged. Last night a good man, a tireless worker for his people, was viciously assaulted by the forces of so-called law and order. He was beaten until he passed out, his head split open, his wrist shattered, and left to choke to death on his own vomit. And still they say we should support an institution steeped in the traditions of oppression and fascism."

The crowd rumbled again, louder now. McGinty let it pass, his eyes marking the beat.

"But I say no more. I will not rest, my party will not rest, my community will not rest until those responsible are brought to justice. And that will be the test, comrades. When those witnesses I spoke to this morning, those witnesses who saw Vincent Caffola dragged into an alley by the forces of so-called law and order, when they go to the Police Ombudsman and tell what they saw, will justice be served?"

The crowd inhaled in expectation, and McGinty held his chin high. The audacity of the lie shouldn't have surprised Fegan so.

"And if it isn't . . ." McGinty's chest swelled as he sucked in air. "I WILL SAY NO MORE!"

An angry roar tore through the men and women; fists stabbed the air.

"I will say no more. The test will have been failed, and I will not hesitate to recommend the party withdraw its endorsement of the PSNI. We know the implications of that action, and believe me comrades, the decision will not be taken lightly. But that is the choice faced by the British Government, by the Ombudsman and by the police service that claims to represent all sections of our society."

Fegan wondered at McGinty's conceit, at his temerity in making such threats. The leadership would never have approved it, Fegan was positive. But then, he had no stomach for politics. Not any more. The cause he once killed for was long gone, swallowed up by the avarice of men like McGinty.

Sometimes he wondered if he had ever believed in any of it. As a boy, he'd seen the scars left on his community. He remembered the raids, the cops and the Brits breaking down doors. They pulled young men out of their beds to imprison them without trial at Long Kesh, the old RAF base that would later become the Maze, or on the prison ship at Belfast Docks. He remembered the anger, the hate, the poverty and the unemployment. The only way to have anything, to be any - thing, was to fight. Get the Brits out, seize power from the Unionists, take freedom at gunpoint. That's what they said, and he believed them.

But there was more than that. Fegan had been a solitary boy, quick with his fists but slow with words. When McKenna befriended him thirty years ago, it seemed to be a path to a bigger world. A world where he mattered. McKenna fought for Fegan to be brought along on the camping trips across the border, to the forests and lakes around Castleblaney, where he and the other boys played soldiers and shot air rifles at paper targets.

McKenna called it a youth club. Fegan's mother called it indoctrination.

Paul McGinty drove them on the first trip, picking them up in an old Volkswagen Camper. McGinty was not yet in his late twenties, but everyone knew his name. He had been interned at Long Kesh a few years before. He went in a snot-nosed thug, and came out six months later quoting Karl Marx and Che Guevara. He sat at the camp fire reading aloud from Das Kapital while the boys ate beans and passed cigarettes around.

Now McGinty stood dressed in a designer suit, about as far from the young revolutionary of Fegan's memory as a man could be.

Somewhere between Fegan's sentencing for the murder of three innocents in a Shankill butcher's shop and his release twelve years later, the world had changed. South of the border, in the Republic of Ireland, the old parochial ways vanished, washed away by money and the country's new vision of itself. The North had become the poor relation, the bastard child no one had the heart to send away. The struggle for the North's reunification with the rest of Ireland was rendered pointless.

The rest of Ireland didn't want them any more.

So the longing for freedom, whatever that was, had given way to the lust for money and power. The paramilitaries, Republican and Loyalist alike, maintained the facade of their political ideals, but Fegan knew the truth. Sometimes he wondered if, deep inside, he'd always known the true desires of men like Michael McKenna and Paul McGinty.

Fegan looked again to the nine followers wandering around him, the three Brits, the two Loyalists, the cop, the butcher, the woman and her baby. What was it for? To line McGinty's pockets?

The woman stared at McGinty, as did the butcher who died with her. Slowly they raised their hands, forming them into pistols. The woman turned to look at Fegan, her soft smiling lips like a knife wound.

She nodded.

Fegan shook his head, his mouth open.

She nodded again. Fegan wanted to turn and run. He closed his eyes and tried to force the followers back to the edge of his consciousness. Lightning arcs flashed between his temples. He gritted his teeth and pushed, but the shadows resisted. Air escaped his lungs in a slow hiss of defeat. He opened his eyes, resigned to the followers' presence.

But they had more to tell him.

Father Coulter approached.

The three Brits watched him move among the crowd, shaking hands with the mourners. The priest was a squat barrel of a man, with thick grey-black hair. From Sligo originally, Fegan thought. The Brits' arms stretched and aimed at Father Coulter. But why would they possibly want him?

Then, one memory finding another, Fegan knew. As the sun seared the back of his neck, he closed his eyes and remembered.

The family, three girls and their parents, squealed in unison when the blast rattled their windows. They were safely tied to one another upstairs, well away from any glass that might shatter. Fegan and Coyle had made sure of that. As the rumble faded, rolling off across the rooftops, a silence fell. Then moaning came from the street outside. Moaning grew to crying, and crying grew to screaming.

Fegan peered out through the crack in the door. He looked at Coyle. "You didn't get them all."

"Fuck," Coyle said. "What do we do?"

"You tell me. You planted it, you triggered it."

"Do we go and finish them?" Coyle's voice edged on panic.

Fegan took the pistol from his pocket and held it out butt first.

"Fuck, no!" Coyle said. "I can't do that. You do it."

"Christ," Fegan said. "You're grand when you're fifty feet away, but you don't like getting close."