He had always thought of killing as work. Just a job to be done, with no care or feeling behind it. He hadn't considered himself a craftsman, more a skilled laborer. Not like those assassins who made it art. It only took a certain hardness of the soul, a casual brutality, a willingness to do what other men wouldn't. He supposed he had a talent for it, just as Caffola had a talent for inflicting pain. And that talent had earned him respect.

But where did the line between respect and fear lie? All those knowing nods he'd received over the years - were they made out of reverence or the worry he might turn on those giving them, break them, like he had so many before? The twelve, now eleven, who had shadowed Fegan for seven years marked the lives he had wiped out. But he had scarred many more.

Although he hadn't meant to, he'd killed three in the butcher's-shop bombing. He knew there were also men and women who had lost arms, legs and eyes because of the same bloody act, damning them to lives of anguish. The struggle to grasp the weight, the shape, the realness of it had kept him from sleep for many years. He didn't need the shadows of the dead for that.

As Fegan moved through the drinkers he tried to keep his mind from the past but it had a way of finding a route there without his help. He thought of the woman at the graveyard, the twelfth follower's mother.

"You're Gerry Fegan," she'd said. She was small and grey. Her anger burned him. "You're Gerry Fegan and you killed my wee boy."

Fegan rose from the miserable bunch of daffodils he had placed on his own mother's grave. He searched for something to say, anything, but could only think of the awful thing that had happened to her son.

"Where did you put him?" she asked. "I come here every Sunday. I walk around the gravestones and I read the names. Sometimes I forget myself, and I look for his name. I know I won't find it, but I look anyway. Sometimes I have to think for a minute because his name won't come to me. It's like he never lived at all."

She took a step towards Fegan, her shaking hand reaching out to him. "Tell me where you put him. Please. That's all. Just tell me where he is."

He remembered the boy's blood as McKenna worked on him.

He remembered how red it was.

"Gerry, how're ya?"

Fegan blinked the memory away and turned to see who had slapped his shoulder.

Patsy Toner grinned up at him from behind his moustache. "McGinty was asking for you today," he said. "At the house. You should have stayed."

"What's he want with me?" Fegan took a sip of Guinness.

"He doesn't like to see a good man go to waste. You do all right out of that Community Development job he set up for you. With his connections he can keep that job funded for years and you don't have to lift a finger for it. Just cash your checks, and nobody cares." Toner sighed and placed a hand on Fegan's shoulder. "You did your time so the party looks after you, but you need to give something back. Nothing much, just a wee job now and then. You'll get paid, like."

"I'm not interested," Fegan said, turning to go.

Toner gripped his elbow. "It's not as simple as that, Gerry. I'm sure you've heard the rumors. Things haven't been so smooth between Paul and the leadership, if you know what I mean. He needs to know who his friends are. Just listen to what he has to say, and do whatever he tells you."

Fegan jerked his elbow away. "What are you, his messenger boy?"

"I'm just saying." Toner held his hands up and smiled. "That's all, Gerry. Just letting you know the situation. Sure, McGinty'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah," Fegan said, leaving Toner standing with his palms up and out, like a man surrendering.

Fegan made his way to the back of the bar, to the darkest corner, behind a computer quiz game no one ever played. It gave him a good view of the room and the drunks moving between its shadows.

Just a wee job now and then, Toner said. Fegan knew what sort of wee job he was talking about. There were many errands a man like McGinty needed doing. Even now the politicians had taken over the movement, even though they were shifting away from the rackets, the extortion, the thieving, people still needed to be kept in line. Competition for the bars and taxi firms needed quashing. Drug dealers needed discouraging from selling in certain areas - unless they paid their dues, of course. Come election time, reluctant voters needed gathering up and escorting to the polling stations where they would be reminded whose name to mark. And then there were the many hundreds of people who only existed on election days.

The last election, just two months ago, had been the watershed. For the first time the country's voters went to the polls knowing they would elect a real government, that at last it was over. Over for who? Fegan thought. The headaches started around then. The shadows darkened, the faces grew clearer. He had tried to turn away, to be quiet, but still they came.

Then the screaming.

By the time Toner shoved a bundle of polling cards into Fegan's hand, he hadn't slept for a week. He only voted once - some nobody campaigning about fuel tax got his mark - and threw the rest of the cards in a bin. The boys ran a sweepstake on who would cast the most votes. Eddie Coyle had won, having voted twenty-eight times between eleven different polling stations. He got nearly five hundred quid which his wife promptly took from him. McGinty gave him an extra five hundred on top, and Coyle wisely kept the reward secret. Five hundred was a small price for McGinty to ensure he kept his seat. The talk on the streets was the leadership wanted to pass McGinty over. He was tainted by the old ways, no matter how hard he tried to play the politician. But if he kept his vote solid, the leadership couldn't discard him like they had so many others on the climb to government.

A familiar spark flared in Fegan's temple. Icy webs crawled towards his center. A commotion at the bar's front door announced Caffola's arrival. Fegan had expected him to be here when he came an hour before, otherwise he would have spared himself the ordeal of being among these people. He decided to remain in his shadowy corner for now. It was early yet. Plenty of time.

As the ache behind his eyes deepened, Fegan watched.

Caffola's cranium and gold earring reflected the dim lighting. His thick neck melded with his broad shoulders to give the impression of power and strength. He was strong, all right, Fegan knew that much, and vicious. It would be hard, but Fegan could take him.

When and where? Tonight, if he could. Somewhere away from here, possibly in Caffola's own home. The thug was already drunk; his staggering gave him away. He might leave early. Fegan could follow him. Or he might be invited to someone's home to drink the night through. If Fegan knew where, then he could go there, enter through some open window, and finish Caffola in his stupor.

Balance and patience, he thought as the shadows gathered. Balance and patience.

Caffola cornered Fegan in the toilets, backing him against the cold tiles. As red-faced drunks blinked at the urinals, pissing down their own legs, Caffola's spittle made cold pinpoints on Fegan's face. The alcohol on Caffola's breath mixed with the reek of urine. Fegan swallowed bile.

"I think the world of you, Gerry," Caffola slurred. His eyelids looked like they weighed a tonne. "Swear to God. You and me. Mates. Right?"

"Right," Fegan said. The pressure behind his eyes pulsed.

"I'm only telling you 'cause I respect you, right?" Caffola placed his left hand on Fegan's chest. His right hand pressed against the tiles above Fegan's shoulder.

Fegan kept his eyes on Caffola's. "Right."

"McGinty's worried about you. You used to be the boy. I mean, everyone knows you were the boy, right?"

"Right." Fegan ignored the chill at his center.

"But now you're staying away, you're drinking, acting all mad and stuff. It's no good, Gerry." Caffola rested his palm on Fegan's cheek. "I'll tell you that for nothing. I'll tell you that for sweet fuck all. McGinty wants to talk to you. Get things straight, like. He's worried, but I told him. I says, Paul, don't you worry about Gerry Fegan 'cause Gerry Fegan's fucking sound, right?"

"Right."

"He's the boy, right?"

"Right."

"Then McGinty says to me about Michael, that you was the last one seen him." Caffola's eyes darkened. "And that Lithuanian cunt. I gave him a proper going-over, like. And all the time he says he knows nothing. Even when I was showing him his own teeth, he says he knows nothing."

Fegan tried to step away from the wall, to slip by Caffola. The big man pushed him back against the tiles.

"You see my problem, Gerry?"

Fegan looked over Caffola's shoulder. The bathroom was empty now, except for the eleven shadows taking form around them. Two separated from the others, hands raised. Could he do it here? No, there'd be no way out.

"You say you'd nothing to do with it, I believe you. That's what I told McGinty. I stood up for you, Gerry, so don't make a cunt of me. Right? You talk to McGinty tomorrow." Caffola's finger stabbed at Fegan's chest. "You talk to him and do what he wants, right?"

"Right," Fegan said, remembering a time when Caffola was afraid of him. Yes, he could do it here, do it now. He could get out before anyone knew what had happened. Get out and run. Leave everything and run. Caffola's throat looked so tender, his Adam's apple bobbing over the collar of his shirt.

The door burst open, tearing Fegan's attention away from the other man's neck. "There's trouble brewing," Patsy Toner said, his little face shining with glee. "There's peelers all over the place and kids making a barricade. There's going to be a row. A proper kicking match."

Caffola looked from Toner to Fegan, beaming. "Fucking class," he said.

"How the fuck did this start?" Caffola asked, incredulous. He indicated a burning mound of mattresses, wooden pallets and rubbish in the middle of the Springfield Road, just a few feet from the corner where McKenna's bar stood. A mob of thirty or so youths, children mostly, surrounded it, chanting.

Half a dozen PSNI Land Rovers idled thirty yards down the street. They looked less intimidating these days, painted white with colorful stripes instead of the battleship grey of the past. The peelers milling about weren't in riot gear yet, but it was only a matter of time before suitably dressed reinforcements would arrive.

Fegan felt a strange stirring inside, a quickening of the spirit, as he watched them. The followers had left him; their shadows receded. He stayed on the footpath, close to the wall, as Caffola and Toner paced.

"Kids," Toner said. "There's more patrols about because of the funeral tomorrow. Some of the kids took exception to it and started chucking stuff. The peelers lifted a couple of them, so some more started throwing stuff, then a couple more got lifted and so on and so on."

A grin cracked Caffola's face. "Jesus, we haven't had a proper ruck in ages. I wonder if we can get some petrol bombs rustled up quick."

"There's hardly time," Toner said. "We might get a few, like, but not a proper stock. Nobody's prepared for it these days."

Caffola sighed. "Aye, I suppose that's a good thing, really."

"Aye," Toner said. "We can still get the bigger kids to fill some wheelie bins with bricks and stuff. Tom's got a big bin full of bottles in the alley behind the bar. Some of the kids could steal that, maybe."

"Sounds like a plan," Caffola said. The adrenalin seemed to have sobered him. "Somebody better let McGinty know. Do you want to ring him?"

"All right," Toner said, fishing a mobile from his jacket pocket.

Caffola turned to Fegan, rubbing his hands together, a smile lighting up his face in the growing darkness. "What about it, Gerry?" he asked. "You up for it?"

"I'll hang about," Fegan said. "See what happens."

"Good man." Caffola patted his shoulder.

Young men and older boys swelled the mob. Fegan knew the cops would hold back, hoping the drama would fizzle out. Most times it would, leaving nothing more than a blackened mess for the road sweepers to clean up in the morning. Not tonight, though. Fegan could feel it like thunder in the air. The atmosphere crackled with it.

He looked up at the sky. Things had developed too quickly to get a helicopter in the air. In the old days, the Brits would have scrambled two or three of them from their bases in Holywood or Lisburn, and would've had the area covered in minutes. They'd be out for the funeral tomorrow, hovering high above the crowds, but the sky stayed clear this evening.

A boy, red-haired and wiry, twelve at most, pulled a lump of burning wood from the mound. He half ran, half hopped six paces and hurled the blackened timber with every bit of his strength. It clattered to the ground, throwing up red sparks, midway between the smoldering mound and the waiting policemen. The other boys gave a triumphant cheer.

"For fuck's sake," Caffola said. "Hey!"

He waited a moment then shouted again. "Hey! You!"

The red-haired boy turned.

"Yeah, you," Caffola called. "C'mere!"

The boy approached slowly.

"What are you at?" Caffola asked. "Are you stupid?"

"No," the boy said.

"Well, for fuck's sake quit acting like it. Cover your face with something so the cameras don't get you."

"Okay," the boy said. He pulled a wrinkled handkerchief from his pocket and returned to his comrades at the burning mound, tying the square of soiled material into a mask over his nose and mouth.

"Kids know nothing these days." Caffola shook his head. "When we were kids we'd have had this place wrecked by now. Petrol bombs, concrete slabs, catapults with ball-bearings." He grinned and pointed down the street to the Land Rovers. "And them cunts, they'd have been firing plastic bullets at us. Changed times, Gerry."

"Yeah," Fegan said. "Changed times."

These streets had seen more riots than just about anywhere in the world. From the civil rights protests of the late Sixties, when Fegan was too small to know what it meant, to the groundswell of anger at internment in the early Seventies, when young men were imprisoned without trial. Journalists gave kids five-pound notes to throw stones and bottles at the Brits, hoping to set off another battle for the cameras. Then the anguish of the hunger strikes in the early Eighties when ten men starved themselves to death in the Maze, fanning the embers on the streets. No payment was needed then; rage seethed in the city, and anything could ignite the flames. Mob violence, children as weapons: those were the tactics of the time. A photograph of a bleeding child, no matter how they got injured, packed more power than a dozen bombs. Political animals like Paul McGinty learned that early on and acted accordingly. Fegan had seen it so many times before, this wasteful anger bubbling over into violence. It tired and excited him all at once.

More men wandered out of the bar and onto the street. Some remained inside, preferring to drink in peace rather than get involved.

Patsy Toner snapped his phone closed.

"Well?" Caffola asked.

"He says go ahead," Toner said. "Just don't let it get out of hand. Don't touch any property. Don't fight anyone but the peelers. There's lots of press about for the funeral so they'll all come over here once it gets going. McGinty's going to turn up in an hour or so. Make sure everyone knows to settle down then so the press sees he calmed the situation."

"He always was the smart one," Caffola said. He slapped his palms together and smiled. "Right, let's go."

10.

A riot is like a fire. It has a life of its own, and does as it will. But it can be fanned or quelled. Fegan knew that as well as anybody. The police and the kids were the kindling, paper and dry wood. Men like Caffola were the naked flame, ready to set them alight. Others, like Father Coulter, were water to douse the burning. But Father Coulter wasn't here this evening, so Caffola sparked and blazed unabated. Morbidly fascinated, Fegan watched him work.

Caffola moved between groups of boys and young men, slapping backs and issuing commands. They obeyed without question.

Within minutes older boys were off fetching ammunition. They returned quickly, wheeling it in plastic bins. Their missiles were gathered from the nearby derelict houses and patches of waste ground. Bricks, bottles, concrete fragments, scrap metal. Everything they needed. Two boys in their mid-teens appeared at the corner pushing the bar's bottle bin, its innards clanging and clattering as the wheels juddered across the tarmac. They stopped out of view of the cops.

The peelers huddled and passed orders back and forth. Their stance changed. They knew this one wasn't blowing over. Some strapped body armor across their torsos and donned helmets.

Within ten minutes Caffola got a phone call telling him there were six containers of petrol in a back alley two streets away. He instructed the boys to wheel the bottle bin over there. "And grab whatever you can off washing lines for rags," he said. He pulled a ten-pound note from his pocket and pressed it into one of the boys' hands. "And here, get some sugar. Remember to mix it in the petrol so it'll stick, right? And get some crates off Tom for carrying the bottles back."

"Right," the boy said. He and his friend wheeled the jangling bin back around the corner.

Soon masonry began to fly. Sporadically at first, but the bombardment gathered pace. The peelers stayed behind their Land Rovers for now, content to let things simmer until they had enough officers to deal with the situation.

The first news crew pulled up in a van behind the police line. Word had started to spread. The mob around the growing pile of burning debris swelled. Caffola stood with his hands on his hips, watching it all unfold, his nose tilted up as if he were sniffing violence on the air.

Fegan's nostrils flared too, the old scent waking memories in him. "How bad?" he asked.

"Not too bad," Caffola said. "Just a bit of a scrap. Nobody'll get killed."

Fegan looked to Caffola's throat. "You sure?"

"Aye. It's not the Eighties any more. Fuck, it's not even the Nineties. A few stitches, that'll be the height of it." Caffola's belly jerked with a sudden laugh. He pointed towards the row of Land Rovers. "You see her?"

Fegan followed the line of Caffola's finger. He saw a young policewoman hunkered down, her back to them, as she talked to her colleagues. Blonde hair crept out from under her cap, and the image of Marie McKenna flashed in Fegan's mind. He shook it away.

Caffola nudged him. "At the back of the Land Rover. You see her?"