Detonation would follow immediately after the mercury tilt switch was jolted and the battery-powered circuit completed. He picked up all the tape and the box, which he crushed, and the plastic bag, and put them in his anorak pocket with the torch and the screwdriver. He set the lawn-mower box upright and rubbed the window catch clean – unthinking instinct, unnecessary because he wore the rubber gloves, care his life style – and then stood still beside the window, listening. When, for a minute, he had heard nothing, he climbed back out and eased the window to its closed position.

Jon Jo went back the way that he had come, in shadow. The car was as he had left it. He dropped down into the passenger seat. The driver looked at him, questioning, and Jon Jo nodded. The excitement would be later, at that moment he felt only the extremes of exhaustion.

They drove away.

He had never seen his target, not even a photograph. All he knew of him was his occupation and his address and the make of his car. The occupation was enough to make him a target.

The streets were dead. They went over Putney Bridge and through central London. He dozed, and hazily he heard the murmur of the driver's song. It was an Irish song of the heroes and the martyrs of the Organisation, a song that he might have heard in any of the bars that were on the mountainside that was his home. So long, near to a full year, since he had last been home. The car stopped beside the entrance to the mainline railway station.

He opened his door, then in play punched the shoulder of the driver.

"Thanks, you were fine."

The words gushed. "You're Jon Jo Donnelly, right? We all talk about you. You're feckin' brilliant. Without the likes of you, this war's over.

It's been my privilege to meet you, Mr Donnelly…"

The words were strangled. He held the driver's throat in his hand.

"Don't ever speak my name again. Don't ever think of going careless with my name. You ever do that and I'll gut you."