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little child. ‘Nail him! Nail him!’
    * * *
    Kieran Clancy’s car wobbled slightly on the road as he banged the steering wheel. ‘Yes, Sparrow! Throw the punch, throw the punch!’
    * * *
    Menendez looked up into Sparrow’s face; he wished to be eyeball-to-eyeball with his opponent as he went out. He expected to see that look he had seen before, the savage, lustful animal look of the beast as it finishes off the prey. But that’s not what he saw. He saw tears, he saw doubt – thepunch was not coming.
    Sparrow watched as Menendez stumbled away after the upper-cut. It was clumsy. It reminded Sparrow of the way a beautiful bird falls, when it is shot from the skies. As soon as the bullet pierced its downy body it ceased to be a bird. For a bird has grace. Style. It has dynamic in its movement. So this thing that falls, tumbling, ugly, from the air is no longer a bird. Instinctively Sparrow followed his target. Automatically he positioned himself perfectly. Of its own accord his right arm wound up for the final punch. He focused on Menendez’s face. It was battered, bloody and bruised. It was ugly. This is no longer a fighter, Sparrow thought. The man was beaten. Victory was one thing, but humiliation another. For a moment the Spaniard’s face changed to Sparrow’s own face.
    Sparrow sprang back.
    ‘Jesus Christ!! What are you doing? Finish him off!’ came the scream from his corner. Even the referee now looked at Sparrow, puzzled. Concerned that Sparrow had seen something in the Spaniard’s face that he had not, the referee tried to move closer to check.
    Tommy Molloy was slamming the canvas with his hands, screaming. ‘What in God’s name are you doing, Sparrow? Throw the fuckin’ punch!’
    Sparrow turned to Tommy and indicated with a wave of his gloves that everything was all right, he knew he had done enough. This was his second mistake. The referee felt himself being pushed aside as Menendez lunged passed him. Sparrow’s hands were down by his sides and he was mouthing something to his corner. The Spaniard let fly.
    Three hours later Sparrow sat ashen-faced in thewaiting room of St Bernadette’s hospital just a mile from the stadium, the anguish of defeat completely overshadowed by Eileen’s delivery of their stillborn daughter. Rita McCabe was right: boxing is not a sport for mothers.

PART TWO
    (
1996 – fourteen years later
)

CHAPTER SIX
Tuesday, 3 December 1996
    IN THE KILMOON HOUSE HOTEL one hundred and sixty people were gathered, all either members or guests of the Kilmoon Chamber of Commerce. They had come together to be addressed by Bernard McCarthy. A member of the Dáil, the Irish Parliament, for twenty-five years, McCarthy was now a Junior Minister with the dubious portfolio of Industrial Incentive. Nobody in the general public knew exactly what Industrial Incentive meant or indeed what this Junior Minister should be doing, and this seemed to suit Bernard McCarthy fine. At every Chamber of Commerce annual lunch it was customary to have a guest speaker – the status of your speaker usually reflected the status of your Chamber of Commerce. The attendance today of a Junior Minister put the Kilmoon Junior Chamber of Commerce in the top twenty percent, so regardless of what Bernard McCarthy said the members would be happy enough. This was just as well, for Bernard McCarthy, after many years in politics, had perfected a talent for spending thirty-fiveminutes saying absolutely nothing. He would punctuate his speech with remarks like, ‘And I pledge to you’, or one of his favourites, ‘My integrity is well known within this constituency.’
    In the carpark of the hotel just at the back of the function room the Minister’s limousine waited, along with its chauffeur. Just outside the door of the function room itself stood the Minister’s two police bodyguards.
    Kieran Clancy’s eyebrows shot up as he heard Bernard McCarthy use a new phrase: ‘I cannot stress enough how highly I regard the work