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be a hint of sunshine in the west.
    ‘They’ll torture him, he’ll talk, and then they’ll kill him. I’ll never forgive myself.’
    Her phone stayed silent. She assumed her agent’s would have been left switched off in the car. He would have been taken in one of their vehicles to the meeting place. If they had called him over it was not to discuss the next consignment of cigarettes shipped out of a Spanish or North African port and brought ashore on the wild south-west coast of Ireland. Gaby Davies had gone through in her mind, many times, every contact with her man to explore the chance of a show-out. She couldn’t see the danger moment when suspicion might have arisen. Of course they couldn’t have called him off.
    The crying was louder.
    A policeman spoke, a soft voice, faintly mocking: ‘Makes a habit of it, does he?’
    She said, brittle, ‘It’s brightening in the west. That was what my mum used to say when we were kids on the beach at Blyth and it rained. It always did the week we had the caravan – brighter in the west . . . but it was the bloody east coast.’
    He was a big man, overweight, and his vest bulged. He held his weapon as though it were part of him – he most likely slept with it, was fonder of it than he was of his wife. The weapon entitled him to sneer. ‘Not what you’d call suited to the work.’
    ‘We’ll save the inquest for later.’ It was her way of telling him, a uniformed oaf, that it was none of his effing business how Hugo Woolmer behaved. ‘Could be OK here by late morning.’
    ‘And he’s not suited for the place, miss . . . Mind if I say something?’
    ‘If it’s about the weather.’
    The cloud remained locked on the mountain’s slopes, still dense, but she could see a little gold on the summit ridge – watery sunshine on dead bracken.
    ‘You’ve not been here before, miss. It’s about as bad a part of the Province as you’ll find, plenty of wicked wee boys here. There’s communities that have bought into what we laughingly call the ‘peace process’, and there’s communities that haven’t. They keep going at it in these parts. It’s tribal and the families don’t know another life. Me, going off into that mist on my own, no panic kit, no one listening and watching out for me, I’d want to be in a main battle tank, hatches down. This part of the Province, they’ve not given up on the war.’
    ‘I’ve had that briefing, thank you.’
    ‘It’s a hard place, the hardest. Lawless now and always has been . . . You were saying, miss, that the weather’s clearing. You’ll see the high point – that’s Shane Bearnagh’s Seat, a fine vantage-point on a better day. I’m talking of more than three hundred years ago and Bearnagh was what we call a ‘rapparee’, a thief, smuggler and killer. Before the military got him, he bedded the wife of a British officer while they were all out hunting him. It’s a nasty place, miss, and has been for centuries. Has your man strong nerves?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Pity you didn’t find that out before he went up there.’
    ‘Have you got a cigarette?’ He gave her one. ‘Thanks.’ Another man passed her a flask of coffee. She detected a trace of brandy in it. The cigarette and the drink warmed her. As an officer in the Security Service she wouldn’t normally discuss an operational deployment with a police constable but asked: ‘How long until we worry about him?’
    ‘I heard there was a drone they were wanting to use, but it’s broken. The helicopter can’t deal with a low cloud base. What would you say, Baz?’
    ‘I’d say, Henry, that if he’s for the jump they’ll have started on the heavy work. By now they’ll have your name, miss, and his over there,’ he nodded at Hugo Woolmer, ‘and they won’t hang about after that. They’ll assume the mountain’s crawling with security and that there’s vehicle blocks. They’ll want to nut him, then clear off home for a wash.’
    ‘Too