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contacted Caroline to tell her Peter was missing. She had contacted everyone she knew in the area to assemble a search party. And then she had called me.
    An hour later I stood with around a dozen other volunteers on the headland overlooking Rossnowlagh beach, where Peter’s tent was pitched, my coat buttoned against a bracing Atlantic wind. The edge of the headland was fenced by paired steel poles running horizontally, supported by concrete bollards every twenty yards or so. It was a basic affair, but enough to prevent someone falling over the edge accidentally.
    Caroline came over to me when she saw me, her arms stiffly by her sides, her coat sleeves pulled down over her hands. Her face was flushed, her eyes raw with tears. Her hair, now curly, hung in straggles around her face. She hugged me fiercely, then stepped back.
    ‘Thanks for coming, sir,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know who else to call.’
    ‘I’m sure everything will be all right,’ I said, trying as best I could to sound sincere. ‘Anything I can do?’
    Caroline nodded over her shoulder at an elderly man speaking to a group carrying torches. I recognized him as Caroline’s father; he had come to collect her and Peter when they had moved from Lifford. ‘Dad’s taking care of everything,’ she said. ‘He’s been great.’
    Looking down towards the beach, where the tide rushed the sand, I could see an inflatable approaching the shore, its spotlight raking the beach. Within the hour, I knew the coastguard helicopter would likewise be sweeping the shoreline.
    ‘What about Peter’s friend?’ I asked.
    Caroline groaned lightly. ‘Cahir Murphy. Peter told me that a group of them would be here. If I’d known it was just Murphy I’d . . .’ The sentence faded into the wind.
    ‘He’s over here,’ she added instead, leading me over to where the tent had been pitched. Circular pools of torchlight projected the silhouettes of its two occupants against the canvas.
    At the entrance to the tent stood a middle-aged Garda officer. He watched us approach, rubbing one eye with his middle finger as he did so. His breath carried the smell of coffee and cigarettes, and breath mints.
    ‘DI Devlin,’ I said by way of introduction.
    ‘Dillon,’ he replied. He pointed into the tent where his partner squatted, talking intently to a teenager I took to be Cahir Murphy. ‘He’s McCready.’
    ‘I’m here as a friend of Ms Williams,’ I said.
    He looked at me levelly for a moment, then turned his attention to Caroline. His gaze settled on her chest and did not waver.
    Cahir Murphy sat cross-legged on the ground inside the tent, his unzipped sleeping bag wrapped shawl-like around his shoulders. In one hand he held a cigarette, in the other an empty beer can, which he was using as an ashtray. The whites of his eyes were laced with blood vessels, though he appeared in control both of himself and the situation in which he found himself. He looked up at me as I peered in through the tent entrance.
    ‘Who’s he?’ he asked.
    The young Guard in the tent with him twisted to face me. He looked to be in his late twenties. He wore his uniform neatly, his tie knot tight to his throat. He was thin, his face newly shaven despite the hour.
    ‘Benedict Devlin,’ I said, deliberately omitting my title in case the presence of a third Garda overwhelmed the boy. I needn’t have bothered.
    ‘You’re the Guard?’ Murphy said.
    ‘That’s right,’ I replied.
    ‘Peter said his mum talks about you all the time,’ he said.
    I glanced around the interior of the tent. It was big enough for four at least. ‘Sorry for interrupting,’ I said.
    The young Guard turned towards Murphy again. ‘Anyone drinking this evening, Cahir?’
    ‘Nah, no drink,’ he said. ‘Coke and Fanta and stuff, just.’
    ‘Apart from that beer can you’re using as an ashtray,’ I pointed out.
    Murphy looked at the can in his hands, then dropped his own butt into it where it extinguished with a