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aberration to cloud my judgment, but I see sense now. I’ve been wrong, but at least when you see you have, you can put it right.”
    “Are you going to talk to Ferguson about it?”
    “Eventually, but I need to consult Roper first.”
    Ferguson switched off the screen, turned, and called to them, “That’s it for me. I’m taking a pill. With any luck, I’ll sleep through to Farley Field,” and he pulled out a blanket and settled down.
    Sara lowered her voice. “Come on, Sean, what’s going on?”
    “Well—I believe I know the identity of two people involved in the Nantucket business.”
    She was astonished. “But you haven’t said a word of this to anyone. Why not?”
    “There’s an Irish connection, a question of mistaken loyalty to family on my part. It has to do with the death of my father in Belfast in 1979, when he blundered into a firefight with British paratroopers and was killed. I can see now I was wrong. It will be put right, that’s all that counts. God knows what Ferguson will do, but I’ll take that as it comes.”
    “Sean, what are you talking about?”
    “Well, if you’ll shut up for a while, girl dear, I’ll tell you,” Dillon said. “In my early years in Collyban, my father in London trying to make a place for us, I was raised by my uncle, Mickeen Oge Flynn. His son, Tod, and I were like brothers. We tackled the old upright in the front parlor together, learned to play passable barroom piano, accompanied by our friend, Tim Kelly, on clarinet. A boy with a real gift, believe me. Then I went to London and got involved with the theater, as you know.”
    “Sean, what on earth has this to do with anything?”
    “It has to do with everything ,” Dillon said. “Be patient. What with the Troubles, we just kept in touch with the family by phone from London, and I knew that Tod and Tim Kelly had made something of their music, played in bars and clubs, and it was Uncle Mickeen who phoned me with the news of my father’s death. He said that nobody from Collyban would be going up to Belfast for the funeral, as it would be too dangerous.”
    Sara said, “And I imagine he thought the same for you.”
    “I suppose so, but I told him I’d be there, and he said he ought to warn me that Tod and Kelly, who were going to take care of thefuneral, were Provisional IRA and on the run as far as the army and police were concerned.”
    Sara shook her head. “So, needless to say, you went?”
    “A rushed flight, Belfast greeted me with pouring rain. Taxis were available, though expensive. I was dropped at St. Mary the Virgin Church in Samson Street near the docks. Three vans had men standing around them under umbrellas, watching. I hurried through a decaying graveyard and entered the church.”
    “And what did you find?”
    “It was like most of them, half dark, burning candles, an effigy of Mary and the Christ child by the door. I remember putting my fingers in the holy water—habit, I suppose. There was the aisle between the pews toward the altar, a closed coffin on trestles, an old priest in a cassock, no vestments. Tod stood there, obviously startled by the door opening, a Browning ready, and Tim Kelly was opposite, a clarinet in his hands.”
    “‘God in heaven, you’ve come.’ Tod stepped forward and gave me a hug.
    “‘It’s where I should be,’ I told him, ‘But there are vans outside, and we seem to be attracting attention.’
    “‘UVF Protestant bastards,’ Kelly told me. ‘They’d hang the lot of us if they could.’
    “‘Never mind that now,’ Tod said. ‘Father Murphy’s done with his prayers and will see to the burial with the sexton after we’ve gone. It only remains for Tim’s tribute.’”
    “Tribute?” Sara said. “What was that?”
    “My father had a favorite old Irish folk song, ‘The Lark in the Clear Air,’ and the sound of that clarinet played in the Gershwinstyle, soaring up to the roof, was the most poignant thing I’d ever heard, has remained