“Where are you, in New York?” I asked.

“Belfast, I’m in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She’s been missing for three days. I am worried sick. She’s only eleven years old, Michael.”

“What? Eleven?” I said hesitantly.

“Eleven,” Bridget confirmed.

“She’s Darkey’s kid?” I asked, making an intuitive leap.

“Yes.”

This information was another shocker. Bloody hell. So she had been pregnant the night I’d smacked her and knocked her unconscious and then killed her old man. In mitigation she had been trying to shoot me, but still, I’d hit a pregnant woman and I’d murdered the little girl’s da in cold blood. What a charmer I was and no mistake.

“Where do I come in?” I asked.

“I want you to find her, Michael. You know Belfast like nobody else, you have the contacts, you can ask around. I need you, Michael, and by God you owe me.”

“Well, that’s debatable, love,” I said. “Darkey kind of got on my bad side. I’d say the score’s pretty even.”

“This isn’t a request, Michael. If you don’t tell my boys the stop command they are going to kill you.”

Not just playing the tough nut, she was the tough nut. She’d changed a lot, but that side of her was always there if I’d been smart enough to see it. I smiled to myself. Hmmm. What would she look like after all these years?

“I do as you say, or I’m toast,” I said.

“Either you are going to be dead or they are going to accompany you to the airport and then fly with you to Dublin to make sure you take the flight. And then I’m going to meet all three of you at the Europa Hotel in Belfast. And if you don’t find Siobhan I’m going to shoot you myself,” Bridget intoned with clinical, controlled malice.

“Just to be clear, certain death, or near certain death, are the two choices,” I said.

Bridget sighed with impatience. And suddenly I saw her on the other end of the line. Older, yes, but still the curves, the red hair, the alabaster skin, those not quite human eyes. Always a bit of an unearthly quality about my Bridge, as if she’d come from that part of the west of Ireland where the people had supposedly descended from the union of elves and men.