Chapter 1

ONE

Conor Dowling stood outside the gates of Mountjoy Prison and breathed in the city air. It was the same air he had breathed inside the walls for the last ten years, but somehow it seemed fresher out here. Free. He blew out a long breath, shouldered the bag that held his meagre possessions and took his second step to freedom. Alone.

There was no one waiting to pick him up. No reporters even. But he hadn’t expected any. Once he’d been found guilty and consigned to spend the best part of his life, his twenties, behind the grey walls of the prison, his story had gone so cold it had merged with the snow of time.

He listened to the city sounds as he walked away, one foot in front of the other, without a backward glance.

Back in Ragmullin, Conor stared from across the road at the terraced house. It hadn’t changed at all in the last ten years. It appeared the grass hadn’t even been cut. It was still early morning as he crossed the road and opened the creaking gate hanging on one hinge. He didn’t have a key, so he raised his hand to knock on the door. It was his own home, and here he was, like a stranger. Lowering his hand, he moved to the front window. The reflection of a stranger stared back at him.

At thirty-five, he was tall and skinny, with a head of uneven stubble. Gone was the shoulder-length hair his mother had called high-maintenance. When he was fourteen, she’d gifted him a second-hand battery-powered razor, which he’d become fascinated with, and along with shaving his head, he had taken to shaving his body hair. That was what he wanted to do again now. His fingers itched to find a razor and feel the sharpness run down his chest and legs. To free his skin of fuzz.

He moved back to the front door. Tried the latch. It opened. He put one foot on the worn laminate floor inside, and then the other. The familiar smell was the first thing to bring back memories.

The pungent odour of bacon and cabbage, along with stale grease, wrapped around him. How could that be? Conor knew his mother had been the recipient of Meals on Wheels for at least the last four years. His friend Tony Keegan had told him that. Some friend, Conor thought. At least he visited him in prison every couple of months. But Conor had the feeling he only did that to check that he was still safely inside. His mother had never visited him.

He opened the door to the living room, expecting it to be empty. Gulping down a deep breath of the fetid air, he saw his mother sitting in a faded, well-worn armchair. She looked taller than he remembered, but then he noticed that the legs of the chair were propped up on slats of timber.

Vera Dowling was only sixty-five years old, but she was eaten up with rheumatoid arthritis, which gave her the appearance of a woman at least twenty years older. Standing behind her, he noticed her lumpy hands crooked around the arms of the chair. Slowly she turned.

‘Today’s the day, is it?’

Her voice had once been sharp and strong. It was still sharp, Conor conceded, but no longer strong.

‘Yeah, Mam. I’m home.’

‘I hope you weren’t expecting a party with balloons and flags. Not my scene at all.’

‘I wasn’t expecting anything.’

Still he stood behind her chair. He’d faced up to the most dangerous criminals in jail, and here he was like a schoolboy frightened of the class bully.

‘Come round here where I can see you, lad.’

He didn’t want to face her, but eventually he shunted the message from his brain to his feet and moved to stand in front of her.

‘Did they not feed you in that place?’ She raised a swollen hand; scrabbled around the side of the chair and found her walking stick. Holding it like a sword, she pointed it at him, jabbing his chest. ‘Bones, that’s all you are. Now that you’re back, you can start cooking for me and for yourself. You can cancel that plastic food, too.’

Taking a step backwards, out of range of the stick, he said, ‘Plastic food?’

‘Whatever about the wheels, I wouldn’t call them meals. Only old Mrs Tone going around with her arms full of plastic tubs, and by the time she gets to me, it’s cold. How do they expect these knobbly fingers to turn the dial on the microwave?’

Conor was about to say she could have got a new digital model, but he stopped himself. His mother was displaying all the signs of the bully he remembered from his childhood; there was no way he would win this or any other argument. It was as if the last ten years had just folded into themselves and absolutely nothing in this house had changed. But he had.

Rubbing his hand over his head, he felt the beginning of bristles sprouting and itched to get upstairs to his razor, if it was still there. He guessed it probably was; the living room looked as though his mother had slept downstairs for years. Then a thought struck him. They only had an upstairs bathroom and toilet. How did she …? His eye was drawn to the bag of urine nestled between her veined legs.

‘I’m glad you’re home, son,’ she said, stretching out her hand. He stuffed his own resolutely into his jeans pockets. ‘You can cook for me. Did they teach you new recipes in … in there?’

Shrugging his shoulders, Conor walked to the window and stared out through the dirt and grime. He rubbed a hand on the glass and it stuck to the grease lining the inside of the pane. Where the hell did she think he’d been? Cookery school?

‘I’m going to have a wash,’ he said, and turned to leave. She shot out a hand and grabbed his arm. Goose bumps erupted on his flesh as he tried to shuffle away. Still she held firm.

‘I know what you did, Conor. I know. So you’d better treat me right.’

As the knobbly hand fell away, Conor rushed from the room, almost tripping over the holdall he’d dropped in the hall. In the kitchen, he glanced briefly at the mess, at the commode she’d once used, standing in the corner beside an overflowing rubbish bin. The odours infested his nostrils, and old memories threatened to drown him, like a biblical flood.

To distract himself, he stared out through the small window. And there it was. Still standing. His shed, his place of escape, his refuge from reality, rising like a castle in the midst of reedy grass and discarded furniture.

But what was that? He leaned over the sink, full of plastic food containers, and tried to see more clearly. No use. He opened the back door and stepped out into the garden, where the flattened grass made a pathway to the shed door. No, he hadn’t been mistaken. The lock on the door was hanging open.

‘Mam! Who the hell has been in my shed?’

Conor stood amongst the chaos of the shed that had once been his haven. His tools looked okay, though they were not in the correct order. Not on the right shelves. Not laid out the way he had left them. He shook himself. It was so long ago, maybe he was imagining it. But he wasn’t imagining the padlock in his hand. Someone had been in here.

He’d begun by making little wooden dolls for craft fairs. He felt a flush creep up his pale cheeks as he remembered how he’d started that, aged thirteen, not long after his father had left. Went to work one morning without a goodbye. Only when he didn’t return home did they discover he’d taken a small case with his few possessions. A lifetime ago, but Conor recalled it like it was yesterday. Abandoned by his father and left to his mother’s wrath.

The prospect of spending the rest of his life with his mother was decidedly more chilling than the memory of the years he had spent in jail. He reminded himself miserably that she was only sixty-five, so the odds of her croaking any time soon were remote. Not of her own accord, in any case.

Running a finger over the woodturner, he stepped back in shock. There was something missing. One of his tools. The one he’d moved on to when he’d got fed up with working with wood. There was only one other person who knew how to use his tools. And it wasn’t his mother.