'Oh pish and sticks, Dan, I know this job means a lot to you, but there's no point in turning it into something it isn't. If there was a woman in some mythical silver car, most likely she found him wandering and brought him home, y'know? Nothing happened to him. It's not that kind of a neighbourhood.'

'And the note?'

'Well maybe she wrote it as a warning to be more careful. Or he coulda just as easily found it lying in the street; you know what they're like, pick everything up. Anyway, Dan, I'm sorry, we panicked. It's over.'

'Over?'

'Over.' He patted his left trouser pocket, then his right. He looked momentarily confused before remembering his back pocket. He produced a folded envelope. He unfolded it and handed it over, not a hint of the sheepish about him. 'This is for your trouble.'

So that was it.

I took it. I opened it. Two hundred quid.

'That okay? I presumed you'd want it in cash.'

So, that was how it was. I slipped the envelope into my jacket and drained the rest of the bottle.

'Whatever you think, Jack. I just hope you're right. I should hit the road anyway.'

'Hey don't be like that. Dan. Stay, buddy, we're hardly getting started.'

'Nah, gotta see a man about a horse anyway.'

'Dan, c'mon.' He punched me lightly on the shoulder. 'We go back.'

'I know we do, and it's not a problem. But seriously, I'm late already. No hard feelings, your decision.'

'You're a good man, Dan. I appreciate the help.'

I nodded, turned, and then stopped, and pulled out Love and Rockets.

'Would you do me a favour, though?' I asked.

'Anything,' said Jack.

12.

I had five pints of Harp in the Bob Shaw, and a packet of Tayto cheese and onion crisps, for fresh breath and confidence. Leontia was behind the bar, and every time she served me, I gave her a winning smile.

In the old days and I hate people cracking on about the old days, it's really fucking boring, but I've gotten to the age now where the old days are the most fascinating part of my life publicans were sole traders surviving on luck and circumstance; then, when our war flagged, big business began to squeeze out families and install dead-eyed managers with timesheets, franchises and corporate practice. But there are still a few oddities dotted about the city. The Crown, on Great Victoria Street, is arguably our most famous pub a replica of it was built at Denham Studios in Buckinghamshire so that James Mason could film Odd Man Out without having to get on the ferry and is now operated by the National Trust. You can drink and protect your heritage at the same time, which is just bizarre. The Bob Shaw is another. I'm growing to love it. It has a slightly bohemian feel and boasts good vibes. I have a favourite chair. I even have a mild affection for the books of the man it is named after, and I fucking hate science fiction. Bob Shaw is better known now as a pub than he ever was as a writer, but I'd read his Orbitsville as a kid and loved it, and later kind of related to his 'Light of Other Days', a story that introduced the concept of slow glass, through which the past can be seen. He probably didn't mean pints of Harp, but I'd lost months to them. Thankfully, apart from a few posters of his book covers, the bar is just a bar, and not stuffed with sci-fi memorabilia.

I was quids up on my case, but annoyed and unsatisfied. Jack, on the other hand, was smug and self-satisfied. He'd engaged me on a results-based basis, but had still paid me off. Of course, he could afford it. But the way he did it, half-cut and cash in hand, made it feel less like a reward for hard work and more like a donation to charity. He had been worried enough about his own safety to seek me out in the first place. Now suddenly, with nothing apparently having changed, he had sacked me. I didn't like it. Not one bit. And then I thought that maybe the reason I didn't like it was because I was so pathetically grateful for the cash, and that it just underlined where our respective lives and careers had taken us, him with his big house and cars and local celebrity lifestyle, and me with my mortgaged-to-the-hilt flat and my baldy tyres. About the only thing we now had in common was his wife. He probably wouldn't have employed me at all if he'd known I'd given her one for Ulster, and a couple for the twenty-six counties we hadn't yet seized.

It was a long time ago, of course.

Now I was strictly a one-woman man.

Leontia set me up with another one. 'Happy Hour approaching,' she said, leaning against the bar. 'And did I mention that the hubby has taken the kids up the coast, and won't be back till tomorrow, so I can stay over?'

'No,' I said.

'Well he has,' said Leontia, 'and he won't.'

'Oh goody,' I said.

One woman at a time, I mean.

Previously the time constraints that went with Happy Hour had required our union to be all-consuming and explosive. Now, the removal of the shackles also seemed to drain it of some of the passion; it started furiously enough, gradually became languid, and then ultimately pretty hard work. Perhaps the Malone Mojito, four bottles of Crown and six pints of Harpic didn't help, though it may have been the crisps that did the real damage. Banter over beer pumps and whispered encouragements between sweaty sheets had not revealed very much about Leontia beyond the fact that she could impersonate a child psychologist with aplomb and was in fine shape for a woman with four kids and a Labradoodle, but an entire night together gave us the opportunity to get to explore our inner beings and share our regrets, thwarted ambitions and lingering hopes.

Naturally, it was a disaster.

For a start, she complained about my taste in music. I'd the iPod shuffle on and she either kept telling me to turn it down or complained that she couldn't make out the lyrics. When 'In the Ghetto' came on, she said it was hard to believe that Elvis had been dead for so long, and I said, 'Elvis Costello is dead?' and she didn't get it. She had never heard of 'Less Than Zero', 'Goon Squad' or '(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes'. I could have forgiven her his collaboration with the fricken Brodsky Quartet but still. I knocked off the shuffle and played her the best of him and she lay there making encouraging sounds and forcing a toe beat against the mattress, but her eyes were glazed with boredom and when she said, 'Do you have "Uptown Girl"?' and I said, 'The Billy Joel or Westlife version?' she thought I was being serious. Not only that, she preferred the Westlife version. She was lucky I didn't drag her from the bed by her ankles and hurl her through the window into the piazza below.

You don't have to be compatible musically, but it helps. Trish and I weren't exactly like for like, but she dipped into mine and I dipped into hers, and when we fought she knew exactly where to hurt me. She had melted, scratched and frisbeed dozens of my favourite records over the years, but the point was that she knew which ones to go for. Not the most valuable, but the ones that meant the most.

Leontia, it became clear, liked to talk. I don't mind that when it's two-way or interesting, but it was all in one direction. I didn't particularly want to hear about her husband and how much she loved him. I didn't need to know about everything he did for her, how good he was with the kids and how hard he worked, for with every second of bigging him up she managed to diminish herself; I had had no reservations about our fling, but the more she talked, the worse I felt for him. I had spent most of my life avoiding a conscience, but now I was developing one on behalf of someone else. Besides that, she snored like a fucking elephant.

Either way she conspired to keep me awake most of the night. In the morning, in the cold light of sobriety, we didn't quite know what to say to each other. She had on last night's make-up and revolutionary hair. She wanted to make me eggs and bacon and all we lacked were the eggs, and bacon. There was bread, but she had to pick the blue corners off it. Burning the toast wasn't the worst. She caught me staring at the tub of butter as we sat at the kitchen counter.

She said, 'What?'

I said, 'Nothing. It's nothing.'

'What's nothing?'

'Nothing. Just. I hate people who leave jam in the butter. And crumbs.'

She blinked and said, 'Hate's a bit strong.'

'I don't mean hate,' I said. She smiled. 'Loathe is probably a better word.'

'Does Trish not leave crumbs in the butter?'

Her eyes narrowed. So did mine.

'Does whatever the fuck his name is, your hubby, churn the butter himself? 'Cos it sounds like he does everything else perfectly.'

'Oh I see now.' She put her hands on her generous hips. 'You're jealous!'

'That's right, jealous of Mr Prick Perfect.'

'Jealous.'

'Yeah, that's it. Spot on.'

'He's not perfect, I never said he was perfect.'

'I know he isn't, because otherwise you wouldn't be over here fucking me and leaving crumbs in the butter, would you?'

'As a matter of fact, you were too drunk to fuck.'

She had clearly never heard of the Dead Kennedys. I could have had my hands on it in an instant.

We glared at each other.

Until I said, 'Well I'm not too drunk now.'

'Okay,' she said.

Leontia was in the shower, I was on the balcony drinking a Diet Coke and listening to the radio. I was looking for something good, but all I found was Jack Caramac.

He was explaining to any listeners who were just tuning in that the entire show was being devoted to one subject: last night's tragic event. And for the next eternal minute he said everything but what last night's tragic event was: he ranted about anarchy on the streets of Belfast, he railed against the intimidation of working-class people by paramilitary gangsters, and he harangued the police for being ineffectual, for being cowards, for betraying the very people who were most in need of their help, the vulnerable, the disenfranchised, the poor and the needy, and most of all for deserting Jean Murray in her time of need.

I sat up, straighter.

'Jean Murray,' said Jack, 'a friend of this show, a friend of mine, a tireless campaigner for peace, who stood up for the youth of this city, who dared face down the hooded thugs who ply their drugs on our unprotected streets, Jean Murray who died a most horrific death last night, petrol poured through her door and set alight, screaming as she burned to death, trapped in her own home while her neighbours stood helpless, or too frightened, to do anything to help her. This show is dedicated to our Jean.'

Fuckety fuck, fuck, fuck.

13.

I felt wick. I felt shite. A pot of tea and three German biscuits weren't going to help, but they were a start.

'Fuck,' said Maxi McDowell. 'We're like those fucking women knitting at the guillotine.'

Same cafe, same table, same company. DS Hood looked a little more relaxed. As they sat down, I said, 'What about the boy, Bobby?'

'No sign of him,' said Maxi.

'Do you think they've taken him?'

'Doubt it. The rebs, they take you and disappear you for thirty years; this lot, there's usually a corpse in the middle of the road by daylight.' He lifted the pot. 'Will I be mother?'

He poured without waiting for a response.

I said, 'I was past the house. It's a real mess. There's flowers and wreaths piling up outside.'

'Yeah,' said Maxi, 'saw that. The community are united in their grief. Bit fucking late.'

'I stopped and had a look at the cards,' said Hood. 'Not a name or address on any of them.'

'Of course not,' said Maxi. 'They're sorry, but not so sorry they're going to reveal themselves.' He opened a packet of sugar and poured it in. As he stirred, he said: 'How come you never see sugar lumps any more? It's all wee packets, isn't it? I imagine it's to do with hygiene; you don't want to be putting something in your tea some hobo might have been fingering.' He shook his head and stirred some more. Then he sighed. 'Jean was a pain in the arse, so she was, but no one deserves that.'

'Jack was saying this morning something about her screaming and the neighbours doing nothing,' I said.

'As per usual, Jack is talking shite.'

'The fire brigade say the house would have filled with smoke very quickly,' said Hood. 'That's what got her, probably in her sleep. Nobody heard any screaming. And bearing in mind it was the early hours, and that if Bobby was in bed he would have been overcome, or even if he'd woken up, with his disability it would have taken him too long to get out. We're working on the theory that he wasn't in when the attack took place.'

'So where was he, then?'

'He'd hopped it,' said Maxi, and gave a wiseacre smile.

'I don't blame him,' said Hood. 'He should get out and stay out.'

'We're looking for him,' said Maxi. 'As I'm sure they are too.'

'You don't think they'll have found, like, closure, by killing Jean?'

'Yeah, right. They'll be even more determined to find him. Those boys, they're like Jack Russells. Once they get their teeth into you, they never let go.' Maxi shook his head. 'And talking of terriers, you're going to have to have a word with that wanker Caramac. On this morning giving us this three kinds of crap like it was our fault? He's a whiney little guttersnipe and I don't know how you can work for him.'

'I can't, as it turns out,' I said. 'He fired me.'

'Seriously? How come? Did you fuck up?'

'No. And I don't really know why. Anyway, I'm out.'

Maxi fixed me with a look. 'You're not really out, though, are you, Dan? In fact, knowing you as I do, I'd say you're about to get even deeper into it. It's in your nature.'

'I think not,' I said.

He was right, of course. There was no legitimate reason for me to be shooting the breeze with two cops in a Shankill greasy spoon apart from the fact that it was in my nature to poke and poke and poke at something until I got a satisfactory result irrespective of whether I was being paid for it or not. Also, I could not ignore the possibility that I was at least partially responsible for Jean Murray's death. Yes, she had already been the target of a long-standing intimidation campaign, but the day after I had asked Boogie Wilson, brigadier general of the Ulster Volunteer Force, to intercede on her behalf, Jean was burned to death. That was too much of a coincidence, at least for me.

It didn't need to have anything to do with Jack, but if it was, and was intended as another warning to shut the fuck up, then they'd misjudged it badly. Even as we sat there with our tea and biscuits, he was giving it everything over the airwaves, and I suspected he'd still be at it a month down the line. Judging from the calls he was getting, and the other coverage in the local media, thousands of people across the province were genuinely upset about what had happened to Jean and were clamouring for action to be taken against those responsible.

Equally, it might have had nothing to do with my intervention, or Jack, but everything to do with a power play within the notoriously volatile command structure of the UVF. Killing Jean was the Miller boys' response to being asked by Boogie Wilson to lay off her. This is our turf, they were saying, we'll do what we want.

Whatever the reason, I was pissed off at having jumped to the most obvious conclusion, and then waded in like a bull in a china shop. Now Jean was dead, Bobby was missing and Jack was exploiting it to the hilt, riling up the public and coining it in at the same time. And I was still no closer to finding out who had kidnapped his son. The fact that Jack no longer cared was neither here nor there. I cared.

I looked from Maxi to Hood. 'So what are you doing about Jean?'

'Bugger all,' said Maxi. 'Not my department, and even if it was, I'm forty-eight hours from retirement.'