Chapter One


My mother surprised me when she announced that my uncle was staying with her. It was the first of many surprises that were shortly to come my way. But of all of them it was probably the biggest. Because I’d only ever had one uncle. And I’d always been told he’d died in the Blitz.

I’d phoned her from Heathrow, to give her an idea of when I’d be arriving. I didn’t have the change for a long call. “We’ll have to make this quick,” I said. Maybe that was what prompted her to spring it on me. We’d spoken a couple of times over the previous week, while I was still in Houston. She’d said nothing about Uncle Eldritch then. Maybe her nerve had failed her. Maybe she’d doubted if I really was abandoning what she regarded as my glamorous existence in Texas. If not, I could be spared the revelation, at least for a while, that the old man wasn’t dead after all. But I’d gone ahead and left. So now I had to be told. And the lack of immediate opportunity for cross-questioning was a bonus.

“I ought to have mentioned it sooner, dear. Your uncle’s come to stay.”

“My uncle?”

“Eldritch. Your father’s elder brother.”

“But . . . he’s dead.”

“No, dear. That’s what your father always insisted we should pretend. But Eldritch is very much alive.”

“How can he be? Where the hell’s he been all my life?”

“In prison. In Ireland.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain when you get here.”

“Hold on.” But already I was talking over the pi...