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but for now no one could face that prospect. Everyone on the manor had respected Tory Delaney and they were all sick at heart to see him gone. The streets had been lined with bare bowed heads when the cortège drove through to go to the church. No one would be celebrating on the manor tonight.
    Davey and Redmond joined the rest of the family.
    ‘I want to know who did this,’ said Redmond. Unlike big golden Tory, Redmond’s hair suited his name. It was red like his mother’s had once been, long ago. He had green eyes and pale lashes. He did not appear a man of action, but he looked sleek and elegant in his black coat and leather gloves.
    Redmond hadn’t got into boxing like Tory and Pat, like their dad before them. Accountancy was his game, adding up figures and doing deals, and he was good at it, Pat had to admit that. Pat looked at his effete older brother and wondered if Redmond could ever hope to fill Tory’s shoes.
    And then Pat wondered, not for the first time, if he could do the job better. Jaysus, he knew full well that he could.
    ‘We’ll find out who did it,’ said Pat.
    The police seemed clueless about the shooting, or at least took pains to appear so. It was how the Bill always reacted to gang business. All the boys knew that the police’s attitude to a feud in the East End was, fair enough, so one of them’s dead, so what? Cut down the numbers a bit, that’s a good thing.
    And there were plenty of coppers in the pay of the other major gangs, everyone knew that. Sometimes a blind eye was turned because the payment had been right. A fortnight on the Costas, a cash sum, all helped to obscure the vision of the boys in blue. That was just the way it was. You couldn’t rely on the police to do your work for you.
    All this week the papers had been full of the news of this alleged ‘gangland killing’.
    The public were enthralled.
    The police didn’t give a fuck.
    ‘Let’s get home,’ said Molly from behind her veil. ‘I’m sick of this day. Kieron, you can show me all these paintings you’ve been doing and tell me all about your travels. Cheer me up a bit.’
    Kieron nodded. Padraig looked at him daggers, but Orla was smiling at him. His big sis had often saved him from a beating from the pugnacious Pat. Kieron looked at Redmond, but those strange green eyes gave nothing away at all. Not grief. Not elation. If Tory had been hot-headed, Redmond was unfailingly controlled.
    No, cold was more the word, thought Kieron, suppressing a shudder. Cold as fucking ice. That was Redmond.

8
    The minute Annie got home from work, she knew something was wrong. Connie was sitting at the kitchen table alone, chain-smoking, an ashtray brimming with stubs in front of her. When Annie came into the kitchen Connie jumped to her feet and gave her youngest daughter a heavy slap around the face.
    ‘What the hell was that for?’ asked Annie, holding a hand to her stinging cheek and watching her mother as if she might go for the carving knife next. Annie’s eyes were watering with pain.
    Connie waved her fag in Annie’s face, ash spilling down her tightly belted trench coat. Fucking English weather, she was tired and drenched through and now this.
    ‘You know what it’s for, you little slag,’ she yelled.
    Annie was about to open her mouth to speak when she saw a suitcase at the foot of the stairs through the open hall door.
    ‘What’s going on?’ she asked, her heart racing.
    ‘What’s going on?’ sneered Connie. ‘What’s going on? Christ, you’ve got some front, I’ll say that for you.’
    ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Annie, beginning to shake with the shock of her mother’s attack.
    ‘Oh you don’t?’ Connie took a deep drag, sucked the nicotine right back into her lungs. Christ, if Connie Bailey lasted until fifty Annie would be amazed. She was used to her mother’s bad temper, and it was even worse since golden-girl Ruthie had got married and flown the nest. It wouldn’t