There were neighbours across the road who stared at him. They stood with defiantly folded arms.

A Chief Inspector was at his shoulder.

"The garage had an alarm, and he could have expected that. He still went into the garage. He was prepared to take a hell of a risk. .

"So, was he stupid?"

There was the grate, now, of the shovels gathering up the fragments of glass and the metal mess from the roadway to tip into the dustbins.

They moved across to the pavement to allow the recovery vehicle to pass by with the winch to drag the Volvo onto its trailer.

"Ruthless, I'd say, determined to get it right. He used a heavy tool to get the garage window o p e n… "

The Commander said, "Sounds like him."

"Probably a big screwdriver."

"That's my old love, Jon Jo, taking risks again."

When he couldn't sleep, as he hadn't slept in the last ten weeks, when his wife chucked him out and into the spare room at the back of their house, then the face that filled the Commander's mind was that of Jon Jo Donnelly.

"Brennard? Hope I didn't wake you. Ernest Wilkins here…

Something's come up that I'd like to discuss with you. I can't talk about it on the phone. I hope you haven't anything that can't be switched on Monday morning… Let's say before the chaos starts, eight o'clock.

Goodbye, and have a good weekend."

2

It was the story that the child loved best, the story that had no ending.

"They called him Shane. He was from the family of the Donnellys, and they had a small castle at what was then called Ballydonnelly that had been built beside the Torrent river, where there was a ford. People could cross the ford, wade across the river, at that place, so it was right for a castle. Shane was one of the young men of the family of the Donnellys. His father was Patrick Modardha, a funny name because it means that he was called Patrick the Gloomy. It is 350 years ago that this all started. They were the Catholic people, they owned the land, and the English set themselves to drive them off that land just because they were Catholics and to put their own people, thugs and scum, onto that land…