Stories began to circulate like oil spills on the filthy floodwater. People disappearing. Not coming home. Old people. Pensioners. Grand parents. Long-loved relatives. Anyone now officially ‘excluded.’

At first these disappearances were happening elsewhere but when the wife of his old friend (and fellow Fellow) Professor Giollaiosa Ó Ruairc phoned to tell him that Gilly, as he was known, had been missing for three days Mac really began to worry.