Dunruan

The boy appeared on a Thursday, which was collection day. Danny Toal had taken over the corner of the big shed from Micky Breen two years before, and he still thought of the week in terms of who needed reminding, who needed visiting, and who needed something else entirely. Thursdays brought the quieter ones—men who'd been doing business long enough to treat it like any other invoice. They knocked, waited, spoke in pleasantries that weren't quite pleasant. The boy didn't knock. He was simply there when Danny came back from the kettle, standing just inside the roller door with the thin March light behind him, fourteen or fifteen, hands in a trackie top that had been washed past its colour. He said his name was Eoin Rafferty and he wanted work. "I don't hire," Danny said. "You don't have to hire me. Just let me stay." Danny looked at him properly then. The boy's face was clean but there was something used about it, a quality Danny recognised from his own reflection twenty-five years ago.…