'If you call ChildLine, I'll break your fucking head,' I said.

'And I'll help him,' said Trish.

What a team.

When Bobby refused to get up off the floor, Patricia asked me to leave the room. I did so, eventually, and under protest. I left them together for ten minutes. I stood in the garden, fuming. It was neater than I remembered. There was new furniture. I saw Trish through the French doors, on her knees beside him. I was disappointed with him, and myself. I'd known he was trouble, I had all the evidence for it, yet I'd still brought him into our lives. I had made the cardinal error of trusting him because he was disabled, as if that somehow made him incapable of being evil.

Trish waved me in and we took our places at the kitchen table. Between us we had the gun, the cash and the drugs, two cans of Diet Coke and a cappuccino made with a cappuccino machine for which I'd been denied visitation rights. We had one Twix. I took one leg of it, Patricia the other. Apply your own metaphor.

She said, 'No shouting, no storming off, no fighting, agreed?'

I stared at Bobby, he stared at the table. Trish gave me a look, and then a second, and then, 'Dan?'

'Yes. Okay. If you insist.'

'Bobby?'

He nodded.

'He needs to say it,' I said.

'Dan, for fuck . . .' She trailed off. 'Bobby, do you agree?'

'Yes.'

'And have you anything to say about what we found in your Xbox?'

'Apart from some half-arsed excuse,' I said. 'Own it.'

'Dan?'

'Okay!'

'Bobby what do you want to say?'

His eyes flitted up to Trish. She gave him an encouraging nod.

'Sorry,' he said.

'It doesn't mean anything if you don't mean it,' I said.

Patricia rolled her eyes. 'Jesus, Dan, give him-'

'Okay. All right. Apology accepted. Now you need to tell us about . . . this.' I indicated the gun. Bobby reached out for it. 'Without touching it,' I added.

'It's a nine-millimetre short-barrel Luger.'

'O . . . kay.'

'It's semi-automatic with an eight-round detachable box magazine and-'

'Okay,' I said. 'Bobby, I'm not really concerned about the mechanics of it; I want to know how you came to have it and why. And the same applies to the money, and the drugs. My mum used to say, if you're going to do something, do it well. You appear to be dealing on quite a remarkable scale for a fourteen-year-old.'

Bobby shook his head. 'No,' he said, 'I'm not . . . I wasn't . . . only a bit . . . just some draw and pills for me mates.'

'This isn't a little . . . there's enough here to start a bloody-'

'Let him talk,' said Trish.

I showed her my Twix finger.

'Okay,' I said. 'Sorry, Bobby. Continue.'

He kept his eyes on the gun.

'It's not mine,' he said.

'Oh, you're just holding on to it for someone? Right.'

'Dan, cut the sarcasm . . . Bobby, please, everything's going to be okay . . . Just tell us . . .'

'I am telling youse if youse would just bloody listen. It's not mine, okay, all right? The Millers, they don't keep anything themselves, don't want to get caught with it, so they spread it out across the boys. I was okay just selling some dope, but they made me take all this other stuff. They just kept sending people to the house. I'd more customers than the bloody Mace on the corner, and I didn't want any of them. But I'd no choice.'

'There's always a choice,' I said.

'Jesus fuck!' Flecks of spit sprayed from the corners of his mouth. He brought his fist down hard on the table. The gun, the drugs, the cash, Trish and I all jumped. He jabbed a finger across at me. 'This is why I hate fucking do-gooding wankers like you, oh there's always a choice, well it's easy for you to say that in your fucking show-house or here on fucking Cypriot Avenue. In case you didn't notice, they shot my leg off . . . you . . . you know nothing . . . nothing.'

'It's Cypress Avenue,' I said. 'Like the song.'

'FUCK!' He held his hands to the sides of his skull and pressed.

'Nobody is fucking listening to me!'

He cracked his forehead down on the tabletop, hard.

'Don't,' said Trish. 'Please.'

'It's her favourite table,' I said.

Trish looked daggers at me, but, most unexpectedly, Bobby laughed. He banged his head again, but not as hard. And then he laughed some more.

'This is so fucking fucked up,' he said.

He rested his head on the surface. I looked at Trish and raised my eyebrows. She raised her own and nodded at me to say or do something.

I said, 'Bobby. There's sixty grand here. I counted it. God knows how much the coke is worth.'

'Yes.'

'It's why they're after you.'

'Yes.'

'So why don't you just give it back to them?'

Bobby finally sat back. There was a spot of blood right in the middle of his forehead. He was looking across the table, but not at me, somewhere way beyond. When he spoke, his voice was tired, almost a monotone: 'I can't give it back, because my mum found the coke. And before I could stop her, she flushed half of it down the bog. Maybe forty grand's worth. What was I supposed to do? I couldn't just go to them and say, sorry, I've lost half your stash. So I tried to raise the money myself, but y'know . . . Christ . . . I was cutting it weaker and weaker and the Millers heard about it and thought I was ripping them off, so they did my leg and said get us the money, get us our gear, or you're fuckin' dead. One of me mates got the gun, we was going to do a post office or fucking Marks and Spencer's even though I could hardly walk and they're fucking useless anyway. But we would have done it, except me mum started all that shite on the radio, and it made it ten times worse. I couldn't even leave the house. She kept at it and kept at it, like she was daring them, so they came for me, and that would have been okay, but they didn't get me, they got my ma instead. They killed her.' He shook his head violently. He looked to Trish, and then to me, his eyes big and red. 'I don't want the Xbox back for the money or the drugs. I want it for the gun. I want it for the Millers. They killed my mum. And I'm going to fucking kill them.'

He was fourteen, for fucksake, and Patricia was in tears.

29.

Never underestimate the ego of a self-published poet. Boogie Wilson, brigadier general of the Ulster Volunteer Force, safe in his east Belfast stronghold, couldn't resist the temptation to travel outside his comfort zone to read at a poetry slam event held upstairs in the Errigle Inn on the Ormeau Road with not a bodyguard in sight.

Boogie was one of dozens of poets who stepped up to the mike. Success at a slam has more to do with performance, projection and personality than actual content, and at this at least, Boogie Wilson was an old hand. He was well used to addressing large groups of people, although they generally wore balaclavas. By all accounts, he went down extremely well, although to be fair, who was going to heckle a man with such easy access to death and destruction? Afterwards, he stood his round and talked iambic pentameter with the other poets. When he was leaving at the end of the night, slightly tipsy but elated, someone stepped up to him and blew his head off. Those critics, they're lethal.

Maxi McDowell was still laughing about it when he ambled into the Singing Kettle. He sat down and poured himself a cup of tea from the waiting pot. We didn't have to regurgitate the facts. It was sufficient for me to say, 'Any wild guesses?'

'The Millers were at the movies,' said Maxi. 'They have stubs.'

'Seriously?'

'Something like that. The stupid, stupid bastard should have known better.'

'So is this a coup?'

'Could be. What'd you call that . . . y'know . . . when Hitler took out all his enemies?'

'The Night of the Long Knives.'

'That's it. They might want to be taking out every rival while they're at it, or they might be working the phones, see where people are going to stand. Either way, you're not going to be their major concern.'

'Well that must be good.'

Maxi raised his cup and sipped. He made a face and added more sugar. 'Thing is, I've known them since they were wee lads; shit, I was kicking their dad up the arse when he was a wee lad'n all. So I don't doubt I can get you in to see them, get you in safe and out safe, but with everything on their plate, they're not going to give you much time.'

Maxi was a big guy, with a corrugated forehead. He had that older-man thing of appearing to struggle for breath.

I said, 'I appreciate you coming alone.'

'You don't like him much, do you?'

'It's not him so much as his boss, Springer.'

'Springer? How do you know him?'

'They came to see me at my office.'

'About what?'

'Bobby Murray.'

Maxi nodded to himself. 'He didn't tell me that. Not that he has to. What'd you make of Springer?'

'He was doing the bad-cop thing.'

'Yeah, that would be him. Don't know him well, don't want to. Bit of a cold fish. What'd you tell him?'

'As much as I've told you.'

'That much?' Maxi smiled. 'So he tried to turn the screws.'

'Sticks and stones.'

'Yeah, I think you'll find he's only getting started.' Maxi set the cup down, and slowly turned the saucer. 'They're very keen to get your boy.'

'They were trying to say he might have set the fire himself. That's shite, right?'

'It's not impossible, Dan. Do you know where he is?' I stirred my Coke. The ice clinked. 'Okay, fair enough.'

'I'm just trying to sort it out.'

'His family paying you?'

'Nope.'

'What do they call that in America, when you do something for nothing, like a public service? Bleeding heart, is it?'

'I think you mean pro bono.'

'Really?' He smiled. 'Dan. What are you really up to?'

'What I say. Just trying to help the wee lad out.'

'It's your call, but if you really want to help him, help him out of the country, because this place is all fucked up.' He pushed his cup into the centre of the table. He raised his hand and rubbed two fingers together for the waitress to bring the bill. 'God knows, I'll be glad to be out of it.'

'How long now?'

'Hours rather than days.'

'You'll miss this place.'