'But first, just put it away, will you? I've never seen anyone look more ridiculous with a gun. The glass is altogether more your style.'

He was trying to be nice, I think, but it was cutting in several different ways at the same time.

I kept the revolver in my hand. It was heavier than in the movies, lighter than my conscience. I absolutely could shoot someone. It would just have to be the right person, someone who could change the fate of a nation, or who looked at Trish in the wrong way.

I said, 'I need to know why you sacked me.'

'Christ,' said Tracey. 'Change the record.'

'It's important,' I said. 'Jack?'

He blew air out of his cheeks. 'Dan, I think you'll find I've been pretty consistent here. I'm not shitting you. A good business deal went through. Bit of a killing.'

'Did it have to do with Jimmy being snatched?'

'No. We know what happened there.'

'The nanny.'

'So you know that much. Okay, fair enough. Well done. She made what you might call a tearful confession. Which I suppose is down to you. Maybe I owe you something a little extra.'

'You've sacked her, then?'

'No,' said Tracey. 'She's good with Jimmy. He'd be distraught.'

'She kidnapped him!'

'No. Her partner did. She's a bad egg. They've split up.'

'When did this all happen?'

'Last night,' said Jack. 'She's genuinely sorry. We've forgiven her. She won't do it again.'

I looked at Tracey and shook my head. 'She kidnapped your son.'

'She didn't,' said Tracey, 'and good staff are hard to get.'

I laughed involuntarily. 'Right, okay. Whatever you say, Tracey. Always a good judge of character.' Before she could respond, I turned to Jack. 'Did anyone from Malone ever offer you coke?'

'Absolutely not. Even if it's true, they would know better. I'm always ripping into dealers.'

'He doth protest too much.'

'I'm serious.'

'And you're a celeb in the media; it's rife with drugs.'

'Aye, Dan, that's right, Calpol and Imodium. This is Ulster, not the fucking West End.'

'Jack, give me some credit.'

He gave a little shrug. 'Okay. So there's some around. It's not that bad. But if the public even got a sniff of me being involved, that would be me finished. I mean, the hypocrisy of it.'

'Nobody's tried to tempt you in . . .?'

'We made it clear,' said Tracey, 'we won't have it in the house.'

'So they did try?'

'We have parties all the time,' said Jack. 'And back in the day, maybe we dabbled a bit, but not since Jimmy. And nothing to do with Malone.'

'What about your neighbours behind, the Pikes; you have much to do with them?'

'Jesus, no,' said Jack. 'We used to get on okay, maybe a year ago, but then we had a . . . you know, falling-out.'

'Over . . .?'

'That monstrosity next door,' Tracey spat.

'It's not that bad,' said Jack.

'It's a disaster,' said Tracey, 'and as soon as the market picks up a bit, we're out of here.'

'We'll see.'

They glared at each other. I liked it. Friction makes for revelation.

'Tell me more about the falling-out,' I said.

'Talking about hypocrites,' said Tracey, shaking her head.

'Dan, if they'd just been straightforward with us, I'm sure we could have worked something out,' said Jack. 'What pissed us off was that the builders just turned up one day and started tearing their back garden up. At first we dismissed it, just some gardening work or they're putting up a garage or something, but once we saw the foundations going in we pulled them on it and they said they already had planning permission, and if we had a problem with it we should have complained at the time they applied for it.'

'And why didn't you?'

'What do you think?' snapped Tracey. 'They're supposed to inform the neighbours . . .'

'It's the law . . .' said Jack.

'And they're supposed to advertise it where we've a reasonable chance of seeing it . . .'

'But somehow our notification didn't arrive, and sure they advertised it, but in some community newspaper goes straight in the bin as soon as it arrives.'

'They covered themselves, though,' I ventured.

'They thought they had,' said Jack. 'I have to admit, for a while we ignored it, kind of gave up. They're in the government, who's going to turn them down? And we thought, it's a big garden, how bad can it be? But it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and taller and . . .'

'Squeezed in like a fucking cork in a wine barrel,' said Tracey.

'It just really pissed us off,' said Jack, 'not to mention that it devalued this place. So that's when we really started looking into it. I got into the Land Registry website and there was something there that started me thinking. I went downtown and had a look at the plans and took one of my mates along who's an architect, and lo and behold, the cheeky fuckers were building on a tiny part of our land.'

'Our land,' Tracey repeated.

'Seems whoever planted the hedge between our properties did it without consulting the plans properly, so all these years a corner of our land has been on their side of it. And the great thing is, the corner they'd nicked was absolutely vital to their drainage system, and without the rights to it they'd have to knock down what they'd already built, redesign and reapply for planning. So we had them.'

'Couldn't they just use their power and influence . . .?'

'Absolutely, and would have, but in between times there was a reshuffle up on the hill, and whereas they'd a friend running the planning office when they started, by the time I started kicking up a storm he'd been moved on and a not-so-friendly face had his feet under the table. They tried of course, and we ended up going to court.'

'We won,' said Tracey. 'They were forced to stop building.'

'Which they didn't like,' I said.

'Of course not,' said Tracey. 'But they'd one last trick up their sleeve. One day yer woman comes knocking, all sweetness and light.'

'Abagail?'

'Exactly, and I didn't like that one bit, because she waited until I was out, and Jack was in by himself, and she comes to the door with those tits of hers hanging out.'

'Didn't know where to look,' said Jack, 'or I knew exactly where to look. Either way, it was embarrassing.'

'What did she . . .?'

'She wanted to buy the corner. Actually, not the corner, just a tiny piece of it, that was all they needed. She made an offer, and I said sorry, no. It's not the size of the land, I said, it's the principle. And she was all apologetic, she said she didn't mean to try and railroad it through, it wasn't her, it was her people, she's so busy working to get the country back on its feet, she wasn't aware of what they were doing, it's all just a ghastly misunderstanding, didn't mean for us all to fall out with each other, how much she loves the show, asked me all about it and we talked about my guests, and she was suggesting things she could do to help the show, access to ministers . . .'

'Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit,' said Tracey.

'And I nodded and smiled, and she got closer and closer and her . . .' He raised an eyebrow.

Tracey laughed. 'Jack's a boob man, always has been, and they are impressive. I'd say they're the best money can buy.'

'And I was in absolutely no doubt that they were on the table,' said Jack.

'Size of them, I bet they nearly fucking were too,' Tracey cackled.

'But I've been down that road and I'm not going back.' He smiled benevolently at Tracey. 'She took me back, and she's my girl, and now she knows it.'

'Now I know it,' said Tracey, with a smile back for him, and one for me.

Sweet.

'So?'

'So I stepped away, and said the land wasn't for sale, not at any price, and maybe she's not used to someone saying no to her, but she flew off the handle, called me all the names of the day and stormed out cursing and blinding. And from that day till this it's all been through her solicitors.'

'All what's been through her solicitors?'

'Selling the land, Dan.'

'I thought . . .'

'Yeah, bollocks,' laughed Jack. 'Of course I was going to sell; I knew it and she knew it. It was just a question of agreeing the price. Ask anyone at the station, Dan, I drive a hard bargain. I was always a crap reporter, you know that. When I joined the station I was freelance, I'd no benefits, no expenses, but I found something there that I could really do well, and they knew it soon enough too, so when it came to getting money out of them, I held out, and I held out, and now I own half the fucking place. Well, the same principle applies here. I held out until I thought I'd pretty much gotten it as high as I could. So we settled. That's what I was so happy about the other night: the money had just hit the bank, and the builders were back the next morning. Best bit of business I ever did. One hundred and twenty thousand quid.'

'And exactly how much of this green and pleasant land did they get for that?' I asked.

Jack grinned wider than the wide-mouthed frog.

'Exactly nine inches,' he said.

42.

When I was a journalist, there was a terrific buzz that came with getting a good story, nailing it down, seeing it in print. This was definitely up there. Everything was falling into place. Jack and Tracey were not bad people, they were just slightly up themselves. I couldn't blame Jack for making a fast buck in straitened times, even if the straitened times weren't directly affecting him. It has always been the business of moneyed people to make more money. He had known exactly when to cash in. All he had lost was a little privacy in his back garden. Abagail Pike, on the other hand, was a gambler on the verge of losing everything. The only way to settle her debt to the Millers was to sell the new house and then siphon off part of the profits while hopefully keeping her husband in the dark. Where had she found the cash to pay Jack for his nine inches in the first place? Such an extravagant amount revealed how desperate her situation was. I think a large part of me knew she'd struck a deal with the Millers, and the collateral was as intangible as fear: access to power. That there was corruption and greed in government did not surprise or concern me. It had always been like that, everywhere, and always would be.

The only reason I was still involved at all was to sort out my one-legged charge. I needed to make a deal that would allow him to return to what passed for a normal life on the Shankill. With what I now had on Abagail Pike, with the cash and drugs in my car, and the info on who else the Millers were supplying across south Belfast on Derek Beattie's phone, I would never be in a better bargaining position.

And then I thought, Jesus Christ, what the fucking fuck am I thinking?

I'd robbed the most ruthless gangsters in the country of two million plus. I was endangering the life of my wife by harbouring a one-legged dealer who was being pursued by those very same gangsters. And I was carrying around evidence that linked virtually every well-off middle-class family in Belfast to a drug-dealing security company that made more deliveries than Domino's, and slightly cheaper. Who the hell would want to negotiate anything with me when it would be so much simpler just to wipe me off the face of the planet?

Patricia said, 'I've been worried sick.'

She was sitting at the kitchen table, empty coffee cup before her, in the Eraserhead glow of a flickering fluorescent light. Like many old houses, the electrics had a mind of their own.

'I'm fine,' I said, sitting down. 'Where's the boy wonder?'

'Bed. He's okay. What happened with you?'

'Nothing much.'

'Dan.'

'Swear to God.'

'Dan. You demanded my car, you took off like a devil, tell me.'

'It's nothing, really. Anyway, it's better you don't know.'

'I don't know what?'

'What I'm not going to tell you.'