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recognized his name. I phoned Kershaw’s Funeral Directors, and after being put through to the boss, Derek Kershaw, I traded the relevant information with him and ended the call. I ticked the applicable boxes and handed the form back to Christy. “Never as complicated as you think,” I said.
    â€œYou’re a pal,” said Christy.
    I’d known Christy ten years, since his days as a chauffeur, when he drove for the Spanish and Australian embassies whenever they had visiting dignitaries. He used to drive with Gallagher’s in a casual capacity when he was in between jobs. After Christy’s three years of part-time work, Frank offered him a full-time position, and Christy jumped at it. He was without a doubt the best driver Gallagher’s had ever had: conscientious, dependable, polite, and mannerly. He was, as Frank often remarked, cut out for the funeral business like few others before him. Our friendship extended to our free time, too. We’d even organized a betting syndicate with a few of the lads from the yard, Christy and I being the horse-racing lovers in the group. Christy had a niece named Aoife, who was a stable hand in a prominent stud in Kildare, and for a slice of the action, she fed us inside information she gleaned from other stable hands, or grooms, or trainers, or even jockeys. Over a two-year period, we’d worked our seed money from two grand up to twelve. When we’d place a bet at the track, we’d generally lay down between five hundred and a grand, with our horse usually running at short odds, and we’d each take home between four and eight hundred on the day if we were lucky. There were five of us in the group: Christy, Jack and Eamonn from the yard, Aoife down in the stud, and I. Every month we’d have an outing, and more often than not, come away with our pockets lined.
    But my mind was far away from horses today; it was focused on the funerals of Michael and Lucy Wright, and Dermot Hayes.
    â€œOverdose or suicide?” I said.
    â€œSuicide by overdose.”
    â€œDid he leave a note?”
    â€œYeah, apparently he did.”
    I pulled out my cigarettes and lit one. I could see Christy’s disappointment even though he tried to conceal it. When I’d given them up three years ago, I convinced him to do it with me and had made him feel we were in it together. Now that I’d broken the arrangement, I could sense he felt betrayed.
    â€œYou’re smoking,” he eventually said.
    I nodded, blowing smoke out through my nostrils, feeling like a defector.
    â€œYou know they’ll kill you.”
    â€œAnd get out of this kip sooner?”
    Christy shrugged like it meant nothing. “Fuck it,” he said.
    â€œFuck it,” I said, letting a smile sink in.
    â€œWhat happened in Pembroke Lane?”
    â€œShe went upstairs to get the clothes and dropped dead while she was up there.”
    â€œAnd where were you?”
    There were secrets to tell good friends and secrets to keep to yourself. The Lucy Wright situation fell into the latter category. Neither Christy nor I had anything to gain from his knowing, and beyond that, considering what could be coming down the pike, I didn’t want to involve him or put him under suspicion of collusion.
    â€œDownstairs in the kitchen writing down the details. I hear a bump upstairs, a loud one, so I go up to the bedroom just at the top of the stairs and see her legs sticking out from the bedroom. I go into the room and there she is on the floor beside the wardrobe, the life gone out of her.”
    â€œGood Jaysus,” said Christy. “And no other family there?”
    â€œThe daughter arrived after, so I told her.”
    â€œHow’d she take it?”
    â€œShe thought it was romantic.”
    Christy shook his head a little. “Like the McKinleys. Remember?”
    â€œYeah,” I said, “the McKinleys.”

FIVE
    2:30 p.m.
    B rigid Wright was crouched on