There was a knock on the door that sounded more like a thump, and Mrs McGuire looked up from her ironing with a quizzical expression before she balanced the iron on the rack and wiped her hands on the pinafore she wore over her clothes of a morning. Squinting through the spy hole Patrick had insisted she have fitted, the even rounder than normal familiar face of Danny took her by surprise, though her fingers eagerly flicked the latch to open the door wide

“Danny love! Well there’s a turn up for a morning! How are you doing? Will you come in for a minute?” Now that she looked closer she would have to say that he didn’t look so good but she would have considered it rude to mention it and instead she resolved to find the biscuit tin. “How have you been keeping? Do yer have any work yet?”

“Oh not so bad Mrs M, you know, keeping busy” He would have to play this straight, but it appeared his first prayers had been answered already since evidently she nothing knew about his and Jamie’s little fight, nor the resulting court case. His gamble thus far had paid off. It was absolutely classic that Jamie and his uncle would have kept that one quiet for the sake of an easy life “How’s yerself? Looking well I see!”

“Oh you are a charmer Danny, always were! In this old thing?! Will I get you a cup of tea or are you in a hurry?” This was really going much better than he expected, Chocolate Digestives and not a hint of suspicion in her eyes to boot “Are yer here to see Cathy? Only she’s popped to the High Street for me”

His eyes narrowed a bit “No no I’m not Mrs M, did yer forget that me and your Cathy broke up a while back? I have been living a girl called Megan over in Hoxton” Mrs McGuire swept her hand through the air as if to dismiss such a silly notion and tutted a little

“So if it’s not her then…? You know that Jamie is in Dublin of course, he’ll have told you that, thick as thieves you two eh? Not that he came by to say goodbye to his mother- of course not, I just heard from Seamus that he’d given Jamie the week off. Apparently Jamie went off to pick up some Lass he knows and skedaddled off to Ireland without so much as a by your leave! He never tells me anything, never a one he brings home for me to meet.” She frowned a little before continuing “I hate to think who he is taking up with these days- you see such sights wandering round the streets” It was as much as Danny could do to stand on his legs as a wave of red anger swept up through his heart. Dublin eh? With Megan no doubt. The fuckin’ bastard. It was lucky for him that she seemed too wrapped in her thoughts and the finding of the tea cosy to pay much mind to him swaying against the counter, his mind racing through images and sounds of his betrayal. “Anyway Seamus arranged it all, got him set up somewhere with old pals of his I shouldn’t wonder. Are you alright Danny love? You look a bit peaky!”

Steady, keep it steady. “I am fine, well actually to tell you the truth it is Jamie I am worried for, I don’t want to upset yer but I think that you’d want to know, the police are looking for him Mrs M! I hate to be the bearer of bad news but I wanted to find him- warn him yer know?” Perfect now, she was on the back foot, her mouth dropped open and the colour disappearing from her cheeks

“No! Whatever for? Oh Danny! Is he in trouble? Wait while I phone Seamus! Oh no…he is out on a job, he told me that, be back tomorrow he said, something about building supplies from the Continent, some people these days with their fancy patios!” she was babbling  now looking  round for her phone book, sure to find someone “Oh what will I do? Have you spoken to him” Danny knew he had to act now and standing he took her arm to help her to the chair, crouching down to take control of the situation

“He isn’t answering the phone” he did his best to keep the bile from his voice and smile instead “too busy I expect, enjoying himself. I am not sure what the police want with him but I know that they raided his flat, stripped it bare I heard, searching for something, and they have been out looking for him ever since , so my guess is that they found something.” Her watched that widen her eyes some more before he spoke again, this time quiet and confidential “Maybe he got involved in that stuff again” The look on her face told him he was nearly home dry “Listen, you know me and him always looked out for each other, that’s the reason I am here, I thought to get him come back and clear up this mess before it gets out of hand, only like I say he is not answering the phone. Do you know where he is?”

To be truthful it was all a bit of a blur and she looked at him confused before she answered as if trying to remember something else, something that was gnawing in her stomach “not exactly, I know Seamus mentioned he sent him to some bar…oh what was it now? Fibber McGees, some nonsense like that, but that they’d see him right. That’s it, that’s all I know! What can I do Danny?” her fingers grabbed the white shirt sleeves he had worn for 2 nights running, her eyes filling up

“Leave it to me Mrs M, I will get out there- sure to be a standby flight from Stansted, I can be there in a couple of hours and bring him back to sort out the mess he has got himself into, after all it will be worse for him if the Garda pick him up at customs and Immigration, you know what bastards they can be! Better if he turns himself in eh? What do you say to that? Let me sort it out, no need to let the whole of Dublin know that your son is wanted by the police eh? Especially for drugs…I will bring him back quiet and I am sure he will be able to smooth things out- you know that silver tongue he has!”

But it might have been the kettle calling the pot, her response, as she looked up with pleading eyes, was exactly what he wanted to hear and feel more delicious self indignant pain “Oh Danny, I knew you were a good lad, always told Seamus to leave you be, that those old days had gone, and it was time to look to the future. And here you are, chasing all over to do right by our Jamie, like one of the family. At least you aren’t off gallivanting, least you’ve settled down, even if it is with that Megan.” The final sting made him grit his teeth and turn a way for a second to collect up the victory that was his before turning to pat her hand

“Don’t you worry, I will find him alright” As Mrs McGuire shakily shut the door and plopped back in her seat watching the iron steaming wildly to itself, she held her hand to her stomach stifling the  queasy ache that turned over her guts, a silent Hail Mary silencing a doubt by touching her thumb to her lips.

*

“For Christ’s sake Jamie! Answer the bloody phone!” Megan almost screamed into the receiver, only sure now that she had the right number as his soft voice told who ever was calling to leave a message and he would be sure to call back. Funny how it sounded like seduction even on an electrical device. Fuck it...She had no way to get in touch with him, had no idea where he was apart from not on the end of his phone and having spent an hour discussing metaphysics with Orlando Bloom she had both good and bad news for him. ‘Yes Jamie, you are in deep shit for Class A drug possession, no doubt by now boosted to dealing, and Yes the sizzling hot film star Pirate come Elf come Outlaw come Knight who I should be sitting in a quiet bar with, watching him do that thing with his tongue in this life, is prepared to ride fittingly to your aid by supplying the lawyer on the grounds that he believes at least in the principle of reincarnation and you spooked the shit out of him in another. Nice one Jamie.’

*

It was late afternoon before Jamie and Emmy turned the corner of the street that led back to the Bed and Breakfast. Having persuaded him at last that she really could not walk around in an Odeon outfit all week, however much he liked the poppers, they had found themselves out on O’Connell street in the swirl of buses, trams and history of Dublin, swept up in a day of holding hands and stealing kisses in a swell of blissful ignorance of now and exploration of past. Not even the cold November rain straight off the sea, which ran down the middle of Grafton Street in rivulets until the clouds passed once more, pressed more than a dent into her smile. Wet shoes? So what? She had him and if the grin on his face said anything it was that he didn’t care either. “What do you say I get changed and then we head out for some music Jamie? Maybe a bit of a sing song eh? See if you can remember any of them old ones” she was teasing as she pulled him along almost by a force of will as he spun around looking at everything with new eyes, Dean Moriaty on speed digging everything that Dublin had to offer. As they turned the corner his eyes alighted on an off licence at the other end

“Aye sounds grand! Maybe I will sing a few of me own! Listen, you go up to the room and I will catch you up with a couple of bottles” his tongue however in the curl of her ear told a different story about what his immediate plans were “won’t be long” and before she could answer he was half running off down the street, a rush of late autumn leaves in his wake, curls and the edge of his jacket mixing in the wind. Emmy shook her head slightly and turned the key in the door to climb those same stairs to the room on the third floor, apart from her own footsteps the place was quiet, one of those old fashioned Boarding Houses where the residents were expected to vacate their rooms during the day, come rain, or more rain. The very distant sounds of pans clattering followed her up the stairs from the kitchen basement where the optional evening meal was being prepared. Already imagining the feel of him, an anticipation of the first touch of his mouth, she mistook a slight flicker of something else that passed through her as she pushed open their door. In an instant her blood stood still as a century spun into reverse, the worn but jolly furnishings of the room paling into dark and sparse

“Aaron Sherrit!” out of her mouth before she could even think “what the hell are you doing turning up here like a bad penny?”  But there he was sitting on the bed, his hands turning Jamie’s phone over and over. He was taken aback for a second, by both the name and her outburst but most of all that she wasn’t Megan

“Who the fuck are you? The woman downstairs said this was Jamie McGuire’s room and I could wait up here and my name is Danny” he might have been telling himself as he stood up to put his heavy hand on the door closing it with a slam.

Emmy stared back at him ‘traitor’ forming on her lips as she backed a way from him.

“I said who the fuck are you? And where is Megan?”

Emmy felt the clunk of realisation sink down her backbone as she slipped in and out of time “Megan? She is back in London! Why would she be here? Now what do you want with Joe?”

He was gritting his teeth now. Looking her over, devising another scenario that fitted his need to find vengeance for it all as the din of noise in his head drowned out sense “I have come to even things out with him”

She had no idea where it came from just her voice piercing his mind “you forget Aaron, I know you, I remember you, we met before, you are a fucking stool pigeon, a coppers lackey” words this pure hatred for him that surged up and goaded him to look back in her face as she spat “you sold them down the river, sold them to the cops, your own friend and that was the least of it! Parading round town like you owned the place! And that foul thing you told his mother! You fuck him? You always did have an inflated opinion of yerself! And you know as well as I do…” but she had not finished the sentence before he swiped his hand across her face to knock her sideways. The crash of the television off the stand was deadened by the carpet and she staggered to stand up again looking straight at him while a swell of blood caught in her nose “like I said… Coward! What? You don’t want to hear it Aaron? Think you were hard done by?”

He was hard against her body now the wood of the door and his hands around her neck not letting her move from the stale beer of his mouth “You don’t understand a thing. He took it all, left me for dead in the fucking dust, well not this time lassie, this time it is my turn.” The rip of nylon at her shoulder mixed up with her shout as her arm came up to crack against his chin, a slight shake of his head told of the contact but he just smiled again “you didn’t change much Brenna, I remember you now, still the wild cat, as I recall that’s why he liked you” and heavy hands pressed her neck up against the door so that his mouth could contact hers. The sound of her name from his lips threw her back to then and she brought her knee up hard, only just into thin air as he moved “nice try, you think I am stupid huh?” and he lashed with his elbow to send her to the floor. His large frame darkened what small light was coming in through the window of the shack, and she kicked out with her legs to try to keep him a way.

“He turned his back on me, the fabulous Joe Byrne- famous outlaw! I was out on me own, even me family falling over themselves to push me aside, be the ones to get the reward. Might as well have had a queue of Sherrits of a morning outside the police station. He even started to meet up with me Brother Jack, turned me over as soon as he didn’t need me. Ned Kelly this and Ned Kelly that!”

“He didn’t leave you! He wanted you to come with them, to join the gang, begged yer even when the rest of them was saying what you really are” Scrabbling backwards she wiped her hand over her mouth and spat, his logic incensing her  even more “you are a piece of shit Aaron, a coward- always were- you do what you like- just know that it was never given willingly” her wild eyes stabbed a knife into his gut as a flash of memory made him stop quite still. A shack in the bush and her on the floor, an equal sense of horror and righteousness at the blood on her face as he turned to take back something that wasn’t his, then as now striking to make  Joe hurt. Only now he didn’t have time, now the door was being knocked and Jamie’s voice barely discernable through the wood, but insistent in it’s repetition

“Emmy, are yer there? Let me in!”

Outside the door on the landing here was sudden panic in Jamie’s eyes as he heard her shout as loud as she could “Joe!” and his foot hit the door with a crack of substandard plywood. “Joe it’s Aaron!” she screamed at the splintering wood that nevertheless still held firm. Danny stood transfixed by the physical memory of her on the floor as he looked at his fist, unsure whether to use it to stop her shouting or to stand in readiness for when the door opened.

Three bottles of Guinness fell to the floor as another kick finally splintered enough wood at the hinge and the door twisted unnaturally. He was inside in a second, the remaining bottle between his fingers and now ragged from the shatter against the wooden frame “get away from her right now you bastard.”

“I came looking for you!”

Jamie held the bottle up as he worked his way over to the corner and held out his hand for Emmy to grab hold of, to stand up “Well you found me, what the fuck are you doing hitting women Aaron? Have you learned nothing?”

“She called me a coward”

Jamie raised his eyebrows, and shook his head “you might want to think on that. Seems to me we have been here before eh? Only last time you had already gone by the time I got here. Last time I found her at the creek washing away the blood”

Emmy let out a small cry and put her hand on his shoulder, moving behind Jamie’s body while it flooded through her again, the rush of terror and loss and wrench in her guts mixed with the singeing hatred she had for this man standing opposite them, who’s face was now beginning to crumple while his brain whirled with a century of desire for vengeance

Danny stepped up closer now the edge of the glass almost at his chest “yes I called on her; I wanted to get to you. After all you had everything! You were the hero and me the frigging traitor”

“Christ! Aaron…I had everything! Did yer forget what happened?  They were hunting us like dogs, I couldn’t get away from them, and you know that- you understood as well as I did that they would have us in the end. All that talk of Republic and all, it wasn’t going to happen, not in our life time anyways. That’s why yer wouldn’t join, why you married and got that selection and why you let them coppers stay in yer house”

“I never told them Joe, I never did…the Quinn’s and the Kelly’s they just wanted me dead” He was swaying now against the sharp edge, letting it push at the place where his scar burned under the skin

“I know that. I knew that…I knew that. But you ripped it apart, you did it. I needed you with me, fuck I was falling apart and all I heard from you was denial and you taking the pennies they threw to you. Forget the Quinn’s and the Kelly’s, Christ I kept them off yer back for years, it wasn’t Ned’s decision Aaron, I came to your house with Dan Kelly because I decided”

The incomprehension in Danny’s face was only matched by the hardness in Jamie’s

“Joe, so why? If yer knew I didn’t rag on yer why did you shoot me? I shouldn’t have said that to yer mother but I was angry with yer. I hated yer then. I hated yer because it was all wrong and because she threw me to the dogs Joe, after all I had done, all that arse licking and toadying to the coppers, all those nights I spent in the hills with them watching your back and then whole lot of them turned against me. But yer mother had worse things said to her, sure she did…and I never messed around with your sister, not really. No more than you did mine anyways.”

Jamie could feel Emmy behind him, shaking and holding onto his jacket, she knew already what he was about to say and the realisation of it had pulled away the anger into desperate sorrow as her legs did their best to hold her in what felt like the cold river’s edge. Lowering the bottle he dropped it to the floor and looked up at his mate “She lost a baby Aaron”

Wild eyes just stared back, flickering to where Emmy stood behind the man in front of him. Shaking his ahead before looking up again with speechless horror “Yours?”

Jamie looked like he might pick the bottle up again “yes mine. Though in truth it wasn’t part of the plan to have one, if you remember I was on the run from the coppers…” She was weeping now behind him, sinking down to the floor as memories welled through.

Danny still stared, his face sinking into abject shock “Because of me?”

Jamie gritted his teeth and just nodded turning around to crouch beside Emmy, lifting her up to her feet. “You remember now the last time you hit her like this then?” he could feel his blood rising up his body “Well that time it wasn’t just her”

“Oh my God…oh Jesus” Danny was starting to fold in the middle sinking down to the bed looking up at Jamie and then Emmy, holding his head and cursing one after the other “I am…oh Jesus..”

“She lost her baby, And then I had to go Aaron, back into the ranges into the cold and the hunger and all the while I could hear you- reports of you and what you were saying and it was enough…enough. You had destroyed what we had.” It was pouring out now, in thick Australian Irish the colour of his eyes almost different in the light

“Joe...I wouldn’t have…!”

“What you wouldn’t have beaten a woman up if you’d known she was pregnant. Fuck Aaron that is noble of yer- well she was alright? And she was mine- she loved me and you did that” And a hard slam hit the side of his hand as he punched the wall “so yes I shot yer…and I could do it again now…right now if I had a gun” The silence was all around the thick air until he spoke again “So will you do me the one favour of telling me what in hells name you were doing there in the first place will yer? Why did yer fight?”

Danny just looked up for a second at Joe standing over him fists clenched and his body hard with the exertion of not cracking heads. Emmy pulled herself up off the bed and put her hand on his arm “Don’t Joe...it doesn’t matter anyway now, it’s done. It’s all done.” She tried to catch him, pull him back to Jamie, make him sit down but there was nothing strong enough in her hands and she started to stare at Danny, fear in her eyes that he not speak.

“I asked you a question Aaron! Now what were you fighting about?”

Danny let his shoulders down and blew out a puff of air at last lifting up watery eyes “Well we may aswell have this out then, then you can kill me again and we start the whole fucking thing over again right?! I was there ...calling on her...I asked her first. I wanted something of yours Joe, make you hurt like I was, show you that I wasn’t to be messed with…”

Joe stopped quite still “You wanted to take something of mine…” His head swivelled round to look at Emmy, and she didn’t need to answer her screwed up face enough “Jesus…”

“She said ‘No’ she said she would rather rot in hell for eternity than have me, the stool pigeon, the traitor. She spat in my face and she said No…I just lost my temper Joe, I wanted it to be like before, and us and the women and how we were”

“So you took her anyway?” Emmy was pleading with him to stop now, weeping  ‘no’ and that it never got that far and please Joe, enough, while he stepped closer to where Aaron stood before him, his open face full now of tears too “Please God say you didn’t…I will kill you now with my bare hands”

“No”

Emmy wiped her hands over her face and stepped into the small space between them. “No, he didn’t, he hit me and he kicked me and all that I told you before, but no he didn’t…and Joe we need to stop, you need to stop. Look at him!” And once he had closed his eyes to see and opened them once more he could, a stifled cry in his throat as she grabbed for his hand. “Jamie, this is now”