His hands seemed to remember that night better than his brain. The skin burned nearly black from trying to pull down the door as it was burning, but he hadn’t felt it at the time. Drunk, of course, too drunk. Some things he remembered but they had never fitted together: the way the flames burst out the windows after exploding the glass, the roar of the fire, the thatched roof she had liked collapsing with a whoosh. The heat on his face, his own screams that ripped at his throat so that he thought he had swallowed part of the fire itself, a Guard’s face inches from his own, shouting at him while he dragged him away by the neck. The hospital, the jail, his dejection at the trial were clearer memories. He hadn’t been interested in living, he recalled.

The wind blustered and flung rain into his face and he turned away. He looked at the shrubs and bushes that had run wild as they leaned with the wind. Stray leaves flew around him. His coat was heavy on him, pulling down his shoulders. He hadn’t slept last night and he still didn’t feel bad. Maybe he’d try to take a snooze when he got home and changed. A slap, like a hammer-strike on wood, was carried faintly on the wind to him. Thunder? The dog stood slowly, her ears pricked and her head rolling from side to side to hear better. She whined and looked to him. He called to her and began to make his way down to the road, stepping up over the mound of rubble which had been pushed out from the house to block the laneway against tinkers drawing their caravans in and settling. He stopped then and turned for a last look at what had been Jane Clark’s house. Here his own life had stopped too: like the floor dropping beneath him, he had tumbled into a nightmare which had lasted twelve years. And it still wasn’t over. He’d never met any of the Minogues. He had known them to see but, like the rest of them now, he knew they would be wary of him, pitying at best. Yet again the thought wormed into him that even Crossan had promised he’d get in touch with Minogue, the big-shot Guard in Dublin, just to get rid of him.