When I was finished I folded the sheet, slipped it into an envelope and scrawled 'Denise Gorman' on the front. I pinned the envelope to the doorframe and took one last look around. All things considered, I approved.

I ghosted back across the street, ducked into the alleyway. The snow had finally stopped falling, the frosty air causing the snow to harden, crunch underfoot. It was nearly as cold as the marble slab in my chest, the one someone was chiselling my name into, or maybe that was just my heart thumping. The ache in my side was a blunt knife grinding on stone. My stomach was churning eggs, and the ulcer was emitting the kind of high-pitched scream only musically inclined dogs can hear.

I dug the Maalox out of my pocket, poured the contents down a drain, threw the empty bottle into the river. I was going to need all the pain I could get, just to keep me sane. The bottle bobbed away towards the bend and the bridge, heading for the open sea. I bade it bon voyage and told it to watch out for icebergs.

I was sweating despite the cold. The first thing I did when I lurched into the car was turn the heating up full blast. The second thing I did was freeze rigid, because that's pretty much protocol when someone grinds something cold and hard, something that feels suspiciously like the barrel of a gun, into the soft flesh just below your left ear.

"I'm halfway to shooting you already. Sit still."

I sat still, unloading the words like they were cut gla.s.s.

"Where's the pederast?"

Wondering how he had managed to squeeze himself into the back seat without the help of a blowtorch. There isn't much room in the back seat of a Fiat Bravo and Brady needed more room than most.

"Where's what?"

"Your b.u.m chum. Galway, the f.a.g."

"You tell me." The gun ground into my neck. "Start with Conway. Stutter once and I'll blow your head off."

I took a gamble on how much Brady knew, started with Conway.

"Conway came to me about his wife. He reckoned she was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around. I got the impression he was after something else but I did what I was paid to do."

"Nice job."

"Pays the bills. I don't get to stick guns in strangers' ears but then you can't have everything."

"Stick to the facts."

"Shut the f.u.c.k up and give me a chance."

There was a long silence, the kind that doesn't like itself. He said: "Go on."

"Next thing, I'm getting a hammering from some blokes who like their job. They tell me to stay away from her, they don't say who but I presume they mean Helen Conway. Next morning, you and the f.a.g turn up. By now I know Conway's trafficking E so I presume that's what you're after. Any idea of who had him offed, by the way?"

"I'll ask the questions."

"Say again? I get deaf when someone sticks a gun in my ear."

There was a moment, a very tense moment, when I thought I'd pushed it too far. Then something detonated beside my ear, a safety-catch being clicked on, and he took the gun away. I rubbed at my neck. There was a circular indentation maybe a quarter of an inch deep just below my ear.

"Go on."

"So I find out Helen Conway might be doing the dirt. Photos to prove it, too. I reckon it's a job well done in quick-smart time and that Frank Conway's in for a nasty shock that can wait until after Christmas. I'm sentimental that way. Mind if I smoke?"

"Don't try anything funny."

I left the balloon animals in the glove compartment, rolled a twist. Sparked the smoke, watched two middle-aged men, both wearing Santa Claus hats, stagger across the footbridge, holding one another up. The man on the left detached himself, stopped and steadied, unzipped.

"I went for a few pints. It's Christmas, the job's Oxo, and my brother's home for the holidays. That's Gonzo, by the way. And Eddie. Robbie too, apparently."

"I can cross the T's myself."

"Gonzo ODs. On the way home a car pulls up, and some bloke with a cannon puts me in the river. I'm presuming you know that better than I do."

"You think it was me?"

"Come on, Brady. You and the f.a.g come around giving me grief about Conway. Then you haul me into the station because you think I'm hooked up with Conway, because Gonzo is. Next thing I know, someone's trying to blow me away and the only f.u.c.kers using those things are the Provies and Branch. And the Provies haven't been in touch lately."

Brady laughed, although he didn't much like the taste of it.

"For one, Rigby, Provies and Branch aren't the only ones with popguns, every half-wit with an ounce of dope has an Uzi tucked under his oxter. For two, I wasn't there. If I had been, you'd be panned out beside your brother. What next?"

"This morning I run around to my mate, Herbie. He's the bloke developed the shots of Helen Conway carrying on, and if I'd left it another hour he'd be on the slab with Gonzo. So I go to see Conway. You were looking for him and you did the shooting. I put two and two together."

"And came up with three. Nice work, Shamus."

I let it slide, seeing as how he was one hundred per cent right.

"So Conway gets excited and bolts from cover. Next thing I know he's chumming down with the bloke that's s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his wife. She's there too. I figure there's more to it than wife swapping, but I don't think too well on my feet. So I tell them to leave me alone. If they don't, the negatives wind up on the front desk of every redtop in the country. Then I walk away. I haven't seen Galway since last night, and that's one of the very few things I'm happy about at this moment in time."

I stubbed the cigarette, left out the phone-call from the pros and started to roll another twist. Brady mulled things over.

"You're lying."

"You have a gun, Brady. You're mad as a rat. What would you do in my position?"

"I wouldn't roll over for the first f.u.c.ker who put the rush on."

"Don't flatter yourself. Conway gave up his right to confidentiality when he tried to st.i.tch me up."

Brady remembered something.

"You think Conway was looking for something other than proof his wife was having it away. What was he looking for?"

"I don't know. He was doing pretty well around town, developments coming up like mushrooms. Maybe he was looking to go legit, to get away from the pills, and that he was greedy."

"Aren't we all?"

"No. Anyway, when I found out who Conway's wife was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, I reckoned Conway was trying to squeeze him on a re-zoning scam. The building trade will never do so well that the land can't come cheaper."

"You said Conway didn't think she was playing away."

"He didn't. When I asked him who was lifting her skirt he said he didn't know, which is bulls.h.i.t. People think the worst even when they've no reason to think it, and the worst usually has a monogram on its pee-jays. So I reckoned Conway was setting me up with the basics, just to get me warmed up, and then he was going to come back with a name. The name would be the politico he wanted to squeeze. I'd start digging and if I turned up anything tasty Conway would use it to put the bounce on."

"That's a bit of a long shot."

"Maybe, but he was right. I turned up something Conway could use to bounce himself to the moon. Thing is, it was the last thing Big Frank suspected."

"Silly b.a.s.t.a.r.d." Then: "Let me guess the politico."

"You know?"

"Tony Sheridan."

"Tony Sheridan, yeah."

There was another silence. It went on so long that I thought Brady had absconded. I looked around but he was still there, the gun lying in his lap. He grinned, slow and evil.

"You're one dangerous f.u.c.ker, Rigby. Know that?"

"Oh yeah, sure. People tell me that all the time. When they're sticking guns in my ear, mostly."

"You know what we have here?"

"What I have is circ.u.mstantial evidence that Tony Sheridan is having an affair with the wife of a drug-trafficking auctioneer, who is now dead. It's going to hit the headlines, no two ways about it, his wife was murdered too, but that'll last until some Fianna Fail back-bencher gets caught mounting the prize ram in the farmyard. Tony'll never sit in the Dail again but all the blokes'll take one look at Helen Conway and clap him around his lap of honour, hope they're still up to no good at his age. They'll be queuing up to offer him directorships."

"You're forgetting Conway."

"Trying to, anyway." Then, coming on dumb schmuck: "What's Conway got to do with Sheridan?"

"Try this. Say Conway wasn't putting the bounce on Sheridan to re-zone some poxy site in a s.h.i.t-hole town. Say maybe you're right about Conway getting greedy and wanting more. Wanting to vertically integrate his operation with Sheridan's, say."

"Conway wanted into politics?"

"Not that bad." He paused, relishing the moment, and said: "c.o.ke."

"c.o.ke?"

"Charlie. Snow. White. Call it what you want, Conway got a sniff that Sheridan was into it, maybe through his good wife, who knows. Either way, he wanted his cut."

My mind had never boggled before. It was an interesting sensation.

"Sheridan's into c.o.ke? Next you'll be telling me he's into little boys."

"If he is, we don't know about it. What we do know is that Sheridan's about to do wonders for the sale of Kleenex in the northwest. At the moment the market is in the region of nine million a year. That's expected to treble in the next two years, and that's a conservative estimate. If it sounds like a lot of money, think about the potential clientele. Doctors, solicitors, dentists, accountants all those f.u.c.kers can pay top dollar and keep on paying it."

"Christ. Tony Sheridan though?"

"Man's looking to the future. A Dail seat isn't worth its varnish since they started poking into offsh.o.r.e accounts and Legal Aid isn't going to pay for the villa in Marbella."

I digested that, thinking about Gonzo dying on a toilet floor. Herbie with his face mashed in. Remembering the glutinous mud at the bottom of the river. Thinking about the grainy, slow-mo images of a pro's sub-machine gun ripping Ben apart.

"If you know all this, how come you haven't put him away already?"

"We need proof." The last word came coated in salt. "We need to connect Sheridan with his supply."

"And you don't know who his suppliers are."

"We know who his supplier is. It's a small-time operation, relatively speaking."

"Relative to what? Microsoft?"

"But he's going big. He's waiting on the delivery to come down, we thought maybe yesterday. Nothing doing. So we thought maybe today. There was always the possibility you were off on a wee errand this afternoon, bringing a taster in."

I twisted around, so I was looking straight at him. His gaze didn't waver.

"You're kidding. Me, with a kid to look after, moving c.o.ke around the countryside?"

"There's good money in it."

"f.u.c.k you and your money. f.u.c.k all you sick b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and your money."

"That's pretty high-minded for a man with a kid to look after."

"Look, Brady, all I was doing was my job. I did it, did it well and then someone poisoned my brother and now they're trying to kill me. Alright? I'm not involved in c.o.ke or smack or dope. No one I know is involved either."

"Relax. I searched the car while you were playing s...o...b..a.l.l.s with the kid. Nothing. I searched it again while you were yakking in the pub. Still nothing. You didn't have time to take a p.i.s.s in between, never mind salt away a stash of c.o.ke."

I forgot about the gun. I jabbed a forefinger in his face.

"Stay the f.u.c.k away from the kid. Don't drag him into this."

"He's already in it, Rigby. You're in it, your wife's in it, the kid's in it." I didn't quibble over my marital status. "Eddie dragged you all into it."

"Gonzo? What the f.u.c.k has he to do with it?"

The question was out before I remembered that I didn't want to know. Brady laughed, enjoying himself.

"Eddie had everything to do with it."

"The c.o.ke? Gonz was into pills, a couple of tokes. Where would he get that much c.o.ke?"

He grinned.

"Galway."

"There's that much c.o.ke in Galway?"

"There's that much c.o.ke in any two-horse burg you want to mention. But I'm not talking about the town. I'm talking about..." He grinned again, that slow and evil grin. "What did you call him?"

The penny dropped like the first lemming.