RAFTON STREET, THE BUSY PEDESTRIAN street in Dublin city, was awash with people doing their last-minute shopping. Hands were fighting to grab the last remaining items on shelves, budgets and all thought gone out the window as rash decisions were made according to availability and time, and not necessarily with the recipient in mind. Presents first; for whom, later.

For once not keeping up with the pace around him, Lou held Ruth’s hand and slowly wandered the streets of Dublin, allowing others to rush by them. Lou had all the time in the world. Ruth had been more than taken aback earlier when he’d arranged to meet up with them out in the city but, as usual, hadn’t asked any questions. She’d welcomed his new change with silent delight but with equal amounts of cynicism. Lou Suffern still had much to prove to her.

They walked down Henry Street, where hawkers cleared the last of their stock in their market stalls: toys and wrapping paper, tinsel and baubles, remote-control cars that ran up and down the street, everything on show for the last few hours of manic Christmas shopping. On the ever-changing Moore Street, displays included a lively ethnic mix of Asian and African stores. They attended early Christmas Eve mass and ate lunch together in the Westin Hotel in College Green, the historic nineteenth-century building, that had been transformed from a bank to a five-star hotel. They ate in the Banking Hall, where Bud spent the entire time with his head tilted to the ceiling, looking in awe at the intricately hand-carved ornate ceiling and the four chandeliers that glistened with eight thousand pieces of Egyptian crystal, and shouting over and over again just to hear the echo of his voice in the high ceiling.

Lou Suffern saw the world differently that day. Instead of viewing it from thirteen floors up, behind tinted reinforced glass in an oversized leather chair, he had chosen to join in. Gabe had been right about the mouse; he’d been right about Cliff teaching him something all along—in fact, it had started six months ago, as soon as the plastic mouse had hit him across the face, causing Lou’s fears and his conscience to slowly resurface after long being buried. In fact, when Lou thought about it, Gabe had been right about a lot of things. The voice that had been grating so much in his ear over the past week had actually been speaking the words he hadn’t wanted to hear. He owed Gabe a lot, he realized. As the evening was closing in, the children having to return home before Santa took to the skies, Lou kissed Ruth and the kids good-bye, saw them safely into the car, and then headed back to the office. He had one more thing to do.

Lou waited in the building lobby for the elevators, and when the doors opened, Lou about to step in, Mr. Patterson stepped out.

“Lou,” he said in surprise, “I can’t believe you’re working today. You really are a piece of work.” He eyed the box in Lou’s hand.

“Oh no, I’m not working. Not on a holiday,” Lou smiled, trying to make a point, subtly attempting to set the ground rules for his new position. “I just have to…” He didn’t want to get Gabe into trouble by revealing his whereabouts. “I just left something behind in the office.”

“Good, good. Well, Lou,” Mr. Patterson said tiredly. “I’m afraid I have to tell you something. I deliberated over whether to or not to, but I think it’s best that I do.” He paused. “I didn’t come in this evening to work, either,” he admitted. “Alfred called me in. Said it was urgent. After what happened to Cliff we’re all on tenterhooks, I’m afraid, and so I came in quickly.”

“I’m all ears,” Lou said, worried. The elevator doors closed again. Escape route gone.

“He wanted to have a few words about…well, about you.”

“Yes,” Lou said slowly.

“He brought me these.” Mr. Patterson reached into his pocket and retrieved the container of pills that Gabe had given Lou. There was only one pill inside. Alfred, the rat, had obviously scuttled to the trash bin to collect the one piece of evidence to destroy him.

Lou looked at the container in shock and tried to decide whether to deny the pills or not. Sweat broke out on his upper lip as he thought quickly for a story. They were his father’s. No. His mother’s. For her hip. No. He had back pain. Then he realized Mr. Patterson was talking.

“He said something about finding them under the trash.” Mr. Patterson frowned. “And that he knew them to be yours…” He studied Lou, searching for recognition.

Lou’s heart beat loudly in his ears.

“I know that you and Alfred are friends,” Mr. Patterson said, his face suddenly showing his sixty-five years. “But his concern for you seemed a little misguided. It seemed to me that the purpose of this was to get you into trouble.”

“Eh,” Lou swallowed, eyeing up the brown container, “that’s not, em, they’re not, em…” He stuttered while trying to formulate a sentence.

“I’m not one to pry into people’s personal lives, Lou—what my colleagues do in their own time is their own business, so long as it’s not going to affect the company in any way. So I didn’t take too kindly to Alfred giving me these,” he said. When Lou didn’t answer, Mr. Patterson added, “But maybe that’s what you wanted him to do?”

“What?” Lou wiped his brow. “Why would I want Alfred to bring these to you?”

Mr. Patterson stared at him, his lips twitching ever so slightly. “I don’t know, Lou, you’re a clever man.”

“What?” Lou responded, totally confused. “I don’t understand.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I assumed,” Mr. Patterson said, his twitching lips eventually growing into a smile, “that you deliberately tried to mislead Alfred with these pills. That you somehow made him believe they were more than they are. Am I right?”

Lou’s mouth fell open, and he looked at his boss in surprise.

“I knew it.” Mr. Patterson chuckled and shook his head. “You are good. But not that good. I recognized the blue mark on the pill.”

“What do you mean? What blue mark?”

“You didn’t manage to scratch the entire symbol off this last one,” he explained, opening the container and emptying it into his palm. “See the blue mark? If you look close enough you can also see the trace of the D where it used to be. I should know. Working here, I swear by these fellas.”

Lou swallowed. “That was the only one with the blue mark?” Lazy till the end, Alfred couldn’t even reach into the trash to save his own skin, he’d had to scrape an initial off a simple headache tablet.

“No, there were two pills. Both with blue marks. I took one, I hope you don’t mind. Trash or no trash, my head was pounding so much I had to have one. This bloody Christmas season is enough to drive me to an early grave.”

“You took one?” Lou gasped.

“I’ll replace it.” He waved his hand dismissively. “You can get them at any pharmacy. Newsagents even, they’re just over-the-counter pills.”

“What happened when you took it?”

“Well, it got rid of my headache, didn’t it?” He frowned. “Though to tell you the truth, if I don’t get home in the next hour, I’ll have to take another one before I know it.” He looked at his watch.

Lou was gobsmacked into silence.

“Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I didn’t like what Alfred was trying to do, and that I don’t think you’re a…well, whatever Alfred was trying to make me believe. There’s no place in the company for people like him. I had to let him go. Christmas Eve, Christ, this job makes a monster of us sometimes,” he said, tiredly now.

Lou was silent, his mind screaming questions at him. Either Alfred had replaced the pills with fake ones, or Lou, too, had taken headache pills on the two occasions he had doubled up. Lou took out the handkerchief from his pocket, unwrapped it, and examined the one remaining pill. His heart froze in his chest. The faint initial of the headache tablet could be seen on its surface. Why hadn’t he noticed it before?

“Ah, I see you have another one there,” Mr. Patterson chuckled. “Caught red-handed, Lou. Well, here you go, you can have the last one. Add it to your collection.” He handed him the container.

Lou looked at him and opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish, no words coming out, as he shifted the box into one hand and took the remaining pill in the other.

“I’d better go now.” Mr. Patterson slowly backed away. “I have a train set to put together and batteries to insert into a Little Miss Something-or-Other with a mouth as dirty as a toilet bowl, which I’ll no doubt be forced to listen to all week. Have a lovely Christmas, Lou.” He held his hand out.

Lou gulped, his mind still in a whirl about the headache tablets. Was he allergic to them? Had the doubling up been some sort of side effect? Had he dreamed it? No. No, it had happened, his family had witnessed his presence on both occasions. So if it wasn’t the pills…

“Lou,” Mr. Patterson said, his hand still in midair.

“Bye,” Lou said croakily, and then cleared his throat. “I mean, Happy Christmas.” He shoved the pills deep into his pocket before he reached out and shook his boss’s hand.

As soon as Mr. Patterson had turned his back, Lou ran to the stairwell and charged down to the basement. It was colder than usual, and the fluorescent tube at the end of the hall had finally been fixed, no longer flashing like an eighties strobe light. Christmas music drifted out from under the door Lou was heading toward, “Driving Home for Christmas” by Chris Rea echoing down the long, cold, sterile hallway.

Lou didn’t knock before entering. He pushed the door with his foot, still carrying the box in his arm. The room was significantly emptier than it had been. Gabe was down the second aisle, rolling up the sleeping bag and blanket.

“Hi, Lou,” he said without turning around.

“Who are you?” Lou asked, his voice shaking as he put the box down on a shelf.

Gabe stood up and stepped out of the aisle. “Okay,” he said slowly, looking Lou up and down. “That’s an interesting way to start a conversation.” His eyes went to the box on the shelf, and he smiled. “A gift for me?” he said softly. “You really shouldn’t have.” He stepped forward to receive it, and Lou took a step backward while eyeing him.

“Hmm,” Gabe said, frowning, then turning to the gift-wrapped box on the shelf. “Can I open it now?”

Lou didn’t answer. Sweat glistened on his face, and his eyes moved sharply to follow Gabe’s every movement.

Taking his time, Gabe carefully opened the perfectly wrapped gift. Approaching it from the ends, he slowly removed the tape, taking care not to rip the paper.

“I love giving people gifts,” he explained, still keeping the same easy tone. “But it’s not often that people give them to me. But you’re different, Lou. I’ve always thought that.” He unwrapped the box and finally revealed the gift inside, a small electric heater for his storeroom. “Well, this is certainly very thoughtful. Thank you. It will definitely warm up my next space, but not here, unfortunately, as I’m moving on.”

Lou had moved up against the wall now, as far away from Gabe as he could get before he spoke with a tremble. “The pills you gave me were headache tablets.”

Gabe kept studying the heater. “Mr. Patterson told you that, I suspect.”

Lou was taken aback, having expected Gabe to deny it. “Yes,” he responded. “Alfred took them from the trash and gave them to him.”

“The little rat.” Gabe shook his head, smiling. “Predictable old Alfred. I thought he might do that. Well, we can give him points for persistence. He really didn’t want you to have that job, though, did he?”

When Lou didn’t answer, Gabe continued, “I bet running to Patterson didn’t do him any favors, did it?”

“Mr. Patterson fired him,” Lou said quietly, still trying to figure the situation out.

Gabe smiled, not seeming at all surprised. Just satisfied—and very much satisfied with himself.

“Tell me about the pills,” Lou found his voice shaking.

“Yeah, they were a packet of headache pills I bought at a newsagent. Took me ages to scrape the little letters off; you know, there aren’t many pills without branding on them these days.”

“WHO ARE YOU?” Lou shouted, his voice drenched in fear.

Gabe jumped, then looked a little bothered. “You’re frightened of me now? Because you found out it wasn’t a bunch of pills that cloned you? What is it with science these days? Everyone is so quick to believe in it, in all these new scientific discoveries, new pills for this, new pills for that. Get thinner, grow hair, yada, yada, yada, but when it requires a little faith in something, you all go crazy.” He shook his head. “If miracles had chemical equations, then everybody would believe. It’s disappointing. I had to pretend they were pills, Lou, because you wouldn’t have trusted me otherwise. And I was right, wasn’t I?”

“What do you mean, trust you? Who the hell are you, and what is this all about?”

“Now,” Gabe said, looking at Lou sadly, “I thought that was pretty clear by now.”

“Clear? As far as I’m concerned, things couldn’t be more messed up.”

“The pills. They were just a science con. A con of science. A conscience.” He smiled.

Lou rubbed his face, confused and afraid.

“It was all to give you your opportunity, Lou. Everybody deserves an opportunity. Even you, despite what you think.”

“Opportunity FOR WHAT?” he yelled.

The following words that Gabe spoke sent shivers down Lou’s spine.

“Come on, Lou, you know this one.”

They were Ruth’s words. They belonged to Ruth.

Lou’s body was trembling now, and Gabe continued.

“An opportunity to spend some time with your family, to really get to know them, before…well, just to spend time with them.”

“To get to know them before what?” Lou asked, quiet now.

Gabe didn’t respond and looked away, knowing he’d said too much.

“BEFORE WHAT?” Lou yelled again, coming close to Gabe’s face.

Gabe’s crystal-blue eyes bore into Lou’s.

“Is something going to happen to them?” Lou’s voice shook as he began to panic. “I knew it. I was afraid of this. What’s going to happen to them?” He ground his teeth together. “If you did something to them, then I will—”

“Nothing has happened to your family, Lou,” Gabe responded.

“I don’t believe you,” he said, reaching into his pocket and retrieving his BlackBerry. He looked at the screen: no missed calls. Dialing the number of his home quickly, he backed out of the stockroom, giving Gabe one last, vicious look, and ran, ran, ran.

“Remember to buckle up, Lou!” Gabe shouted after him, his voice ringing in Lou’s ears as Lou ran to the underground parking lot.

With the BlackBerry on autodial to Lou’s home, and still ringing, Lou drove out of the lot at a fierce speed. Thick, heavy rain plummeted against his windshield. Putting the wipers on the fastest speed, he put his foot down on the accelerator and sped by the empty quays. The beeping of the seat-belt warning got louder and louder, but he couldn’t hear it for all the worrying he was doing. The wheels of the Porsche slipped a little on the wet roads as he raced down the back roads of the quays, then up the Clontarf coast road to Howth. Across the sea, the two red-and-white-striped chimneys of the electricity-generating station stood seven hundred feet tall, like two fingers raised at him. Rain bucketed down, leaving visibility low, but he knew these streets well, had driven up and down them all his life. All he cared about now was driving over the small thread of land that separated him from his family and getting to them as quickly as possible. It was six thirty and pitch-black since the day had closed in. Most people were at mass or in the pubs, getting ready to wrap final presents and leave a glass of milk and a plate of cookies out for Santa, a few carrots for his chauffeur. Lou’s family was at home, having an evening meal—one that he’d promised he’d join—but they weren’t answering the phone. He looked down at his BlackBerry to make sure it was still dialing, taking his eye off the road. He swerved a little as he moved over the middle line. A car coming at him beeped loudly, and he quickly moved back into his lane again. He flew up past the Marine Hotel at Sutton Cross, which was busy with Christmas parties. Seeing a clear road ahead of him, he put his foot down. He raced by Sutton Church and by the school along the coast, passed through streets of friendly houses with Christmas trees and candles in the front windows, Santas dangling from roofs. Across the bay, the dozens of cranes lining Dublin’s skyline were laced in Christmas lights.

Lou eventually said good-bye to the bay and entered the steep road that began to ascend to his home on the summit. Rain continued to bucket down, falling in sheets, blurring his vision. Condensation was appearing on the windshield, and he leaned forward to wipe it with his cashmere coat sleeve. He pressed the buttons on the dashboard, hoping to clear the glass. The ping, ping, ping of the seat-belt warning rang again in his ears, and the condensation rapidly filled the windshield as the car got hotter. Still he sped on, his phone ringing, his desire to be with his family overtaking any other emotion he should have felt then. It had taken him twelve minutes to get to his street on the empty roads.

Finally, his phone beeped to signal a call coming through. He looked down and saw Ruth’s face—her caller ID picture. Her smile; her eyes, brown, soft, and welcoming. Glad she was at least safe enough to call him, he looked down with relief and reached for the BlackBerry.

The Porsche 911 Carrera 4S has a unique four-wheel-drive system that grips the road far better than any rear-wheel-drive sports car. It allots 5 to 40 percent of the power to the front wheels, depending on how much resistance the rear wheels have. So if you accelerate out of a corner hard enough to spin the rear wheels, power is channeled to the front, pulling the car in the right direction. All-wheel drive basically means that the Carrera 4S could negotiate the icy road with far more control than most other sports cars.

Unfortunately, Lou did not have that model. He had it on order. It would be arriving in January, only a week away.

And so when Lou looked down at his BlackBerry, so overwhelmed with relief and emotion to see his wife’s face, he had taken his eye off the road and had dived into the next corner much too fast. He reflexively lifted his foot from the accelerator, which threw the car’s weight forward and lightened the rear wheels; then he got back on the accelerator and turned hard to make the corner. The rear end broke traction, and he spun across to the other side of the road, which was the deep decline down the cliff’s edge.

The moments that followed were ones of sheer horror and confusion. The shock numbed the pain. The car turned over once, twice, and then a third time. Each time, Lou let out a yell as his head, body, legs, and arms thrashed about wildly like a doll inside a washing machine. The emergency air bag thumped him in the face, bloodying his nose, knocking him out momentarily so that the next few moments passed in a still but bloody mess.

Some amount of time later, Lou opened his eyes and tried to survey the situation. He couldn’t. He was surrounded by blackness and found himself unable to move. A thick, oily substance covered one of his eyes, preventing him from seeing, and with the one hand he could move, he found that every part of his body he touched was covered in the same substance. He moved his tongue around his mouth, tasted rusty iron, and realized it was blood. He tried to move his legs but couldn’t. He tried to move his arms and could just about move one. He was silent while he tried to keep calm, to figure out what to do. Then, when for the first time in his life he couldn’t formulate one single thought, when the shock wore off and the realization set in, the pain hit him at full force. He couldn’t get the images of Ruth out of his mind. Of Lucy, of Bud, of his parents. They weren’t far above him, somewhere on the summit; he had almost made it. In the darkness, in a crushed car, in the middle of the gorse and the hebe, somewhere on a mountainside in Howth, Lou Suffern began to whimper.

RAPHIE AND JESSICA WERE DOING their usual rounds and bickering over Raphie’s country-music tape, with which he liked to torment Jessica, as they passed the scene where Lou’s car had gone off the road.

“Hold on, Raphie,” she interrupted Raphie’s singing about his achy-breaky heart.

He sang even louder.

“RAPHIE!” she shouted, punching the music off.

He looked at her in surprise.

“Okay, okay, put your Freezing Monkeys on, or whatever you call them.”

“Raphie, stop the car,” Jessica said in a tone that made him immediately pull over. She leapt out of the car and jogged the few paces back to the scene that had caught her eye, where the trees were broken and twisted. She took her flashlight out and shone it down the mountainside.

“Oh God, Raphie, we need to call emergency services,” she shouted to him. “Ambulance and the fire department!”

He stopped his brief jog toward her and made his way back to the car, where he radioed it in.

“I’m going down!” she yelled, immediately making her way through the broken trees and down the steep incline.

“You will not, Jessica!” she heard Raphie yell back, but she didn’t listen. “Get back here, it’s too dangerous!”

She could hear him, but quickly zoned out from his shouts and could soon hear only her own breath, fast and furious, her heart beating in her ears.

Jessica, new to the squad, should never have seen a sight like this mangled car, upside down and totally unrecognizable, in her life. But she had. For Jessica, it was all too familiar; it was a sight that haunted her dreams and most of her waking moments. Coming face-to-face with her nightmare, and the replaying of a bad memory, dizziness overcame her, and she had to hunker down and put her head between her knees. Jessica had secrets, and one of them had come back to haunt her tonight. She hoped to God nobody was in that car; the car was crushed, unrecognizable, with no license plate, and in the darkness she couldn’t even tell whether it was blue or black.

She climbed around the car, the icy rain pelting down on her, soaking her in an instant. The surface was wet and mucky beneath her, causing her to lose her footing numerous times, but as her heart beat wildly in her chest and as she found herself back in that distant memory, reliving it, she couldn’t feel the pain in her ankle as she went over on it; she couldn’t feel the scrapes of branches and twigs on her face, the hidden rocks among the gorse that bruised her legs.

Around the far side of the car, she saw a person. Or a body, at least, and her heart sank. She shone the light near him. He was bloodied. Covered in it. She discovered that the door had been smashed shut and she couldn’t pull it open, but the windowpane of the driver’s side had shattered, so at least she had access to his upper half. She tried to keep calm as she shone the flashlight inside the car.

“Tony,” she breathed as she saw the figure. “Tony.” Tears welled in her eyes. “Tony.” She clawed at the man, ran her hands across his face, urged him to wake. “Tony, it’s me,” she said. “I’m here.”

The man groaned, but his eyes remained closed.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” she whispered in his ear, kissing him on the forehead. “I’m going to get you home.”

His eyes slowly opened, and she felt a jolt. Blue eyes. Not brown. Tony had brown eyes.

He looked at her. She looked at him. Suddenly she was taken out of her nightmare.

“Sir,” she said, her voice shakier than she wanted. She took a deep breath and started again. “Sir, can you hear me? My name is Jessica; can you hear me? Help is on the way, okay? We’re going to help you.”

He groaned and closed his eyes.

“They’re on their way now,” Raphie called from above her, starting to make his way down.

“Raphie, it’s dangerous down here; it’s too slippery. Stay up there so they can see you.”

“Is anyone alive?” he asked, ignoring her request and continuing to move slowly down, one foot at a time.

“Yes,” she called back. Then to Lou, “Sir, give me your hand.” She shone the flashlight to look at his hand, and her stomach flipped at the sight. She took a moment to adjust her breathing and brought the light up again. “Sir, take my hand. Here I am, can you feel it?” She gripped him tight.

He groaned.

“Stay with me now. We’re going to get you out of here.”

He groaned some more.

“What? I can’t…em…Don’t worry, sir, an ambulance is on its way.”

“Who is it?” Raphie called. “Do you know?”

“No,” she called back simply, not wanting to take her attention away from this man, not wanting to lose him.

“My wife,” she heard him whisper, so quietly it could have been mistaken for an exhale. She moved her ear to his lips, so close she could feel them on her earlobe, the stickiness of the blood.

“You have a wife?” she asked gently. “You’ll see her. I promise, you’ll see her. What’s your name?”

“Lou,” he said. Then he started to cry softly, but even that was such an effort that he had to stop.

“Please hang in there, Lou.” She fought back the tears and then put her ear to his lips again as he breathed some more words.

“A pill? Lou, I don’t have any—”

He let go of her hand suddenly and started pulling at his coat, thumping his chest with a lifeless hand. He grunted with the effort; he whimpered from the pain. Reaching into his breast pocket, which was soaked with blood, Jessica took out a container. It had one white pill left inside.

“Is this your medication, Lou?” she asked, unsure. “Do I—?” She looked up at Raphie, who was trying to figure out how to make it down through the tricky terrain. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to give you—”

Lou took her hand and squeezed it with such sudden strength that she immediately opened the container with a shaking hand and shook the single pill onto her palm. With trembling fingers she lifted his mouth open, placed the pill on his tongue, and closed his mouth. She quickly looked around to see if Raphie had seen her. He was still only halfway down the slope.

When she looked back at Lou, he was staring at her, wide-eyed. He gave her such a look of love, of absolute gratitude for that one simple thing, that it filled her heart with hope. Then he gasped for air and his body shuddered, before he closed his eyes and left the world.