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skip somewhere.
    Then she noticed the shallow drawer beneath the desk.
    A plain brass knob at the centre. Rea gripped it and pulled. Wood whispered against wood. She stared at the object within for a time before she could make sense of it.
    A large leather-bound book, like a ledger, or an oversized photo album. Yes, that’s it, she thought. Like a wedding album. Was it from her uncle’s marriage? It didn’t appear to be more than thirty years old, but perhaps it had been well looked after.
    She reached into the drawer and lifted the book. The weight of it surprised her. As it thumped onto the desk, Rea pictured Raymond sitting here, leafing through the pages, gazing at photographs of his dead wife. She felt an ache of pity for him, the latest of many in recent days.
    Rea wondered what her aunt had looked like. She had to think for a moment to remember the name. Carol. Yes, Carol, that was it.
    She opened the book.
    Inside, wedged into the crease between the cover and the first page, was a manila envelope. Rea could tell by its fatness that it contained loose photographs. She lifted it from the book, slid her finger beneath the flap, and slipped the bundle of prints from their paper sheath. Maybe fifteen or twenty in various shapes and sizes.
    The first photograph caused a moment of confused recognition. She stared at the three faces, knowing but unknowing.
    Rea, her mother, and her father. A restaurant with gaudy decorations. Ida Carlisle’s face and arms lobster red, Rea’s the same. A family holiday, one of the very few they’d ever taken, more than a dozen years ago. Rea had just graduated from university, and Ida had insisted they go away to celebrate. Graham had resisted, saying he had far too much work to do, but eventually he gave in.
    They’d gone to Salou in the Costa Dorada for a week, and it had been seven days of solid misery for Rea. If she went out to any of the bars, her parents made their disapproval clear, so she spent most nights rereading the books she’d brought while her father grumbled about the time he’d have to make up when he went back to work.
    Why did her uncle have this picture? Where did he get it? As far as Rea knew, Ida and Raymond hadn’t spoken in years, so it seemed unlikely they would exchange photographs.
    She leafed through the bundle, examining each in turn. A few more portraits of her family, a day trip here, a birthday there, going back perhaps twenty years. A crawling sensation across her skin as she imagined her uncle alone in this room, studying these images.
    Half a dozen older prints showed Raymond in his merchant navy days, two of them in formal uniform, the rest casual shots. Eating at a galley table. Bare-chested on the deck of a ship. Only one showed him smiling, and even that looked like a painful effort for him.
    Rea turned over the last photograph, a Polaroid print, worn and faded. A group of six men, three in the foreground. Paramilitary flags pinned to the wall behind them. Those at the back wore military-style sweaters and trousers with camouflage patterns. Balaclavas covered their faces. They held weapons in their hands, two of which she recognised as AK-47s. The third was a pistol of some kind.
    The front row, three young men, somewhere in their twenties, hunkered down, casual clothes, hands empty. On the left, Raymond Drew, his face expressionless, his eyes burning through the print. In the middle, a young man she didn’t know, grinning. A tattoo on his neck.
    To the right of the row, Graham Carlisle, Rea’s father, smiling. The first thought in her mind: So young. Twenty-four, twenty-five?
    Then she wondered what he was doing with those people, the paramilitaries. And Uncle Raymond. Had they been friends?
    She touched her father’s face and asked herself if she knew him at all. So many questions, and he would answer none of them. Rea determined to take the photograph to her mother, ask her to explain it. She tucked the bundle of pictures back into the