‘No, but I met a mate outside the dogs, he’s a regular, owns half a back leg of one or summat, and he said he’d had a lot of luck the last few weeks, won a pot, and it was through someone he’d met on the track, who’d given him a couple of tips and then said if they came good he’d come back and ask my mate to do him a favour. As luck would have it, they both did the business, long odds and all, Derry was well up – getting on for a grand, he said, so when the other bloke found him he was happy to do the favour.’

‘As who wouldn’t. He must have had plenty to put on.’

‘Yeah, well, Derry always seems to have money tucked up somewhere, God knows where he gets it, I don’t ask.’

‘What did he have to do then?’

‘Take a wallet of cash and put it all on a dog in the last race.’

‘How much?’

‘He didn’t know. Wasn’t to open the wallet, just go to the one bookie, hand it over, name the runner and get his slip, but he reckoned it had to be a good wodge, the wallet was thick as a bog roll with it.’

‘That it?’

‘That was it. He waited till the last and the bugger won, only he hadn’t put anything on, thought he’d quit while he was ahead.’

Vince finished his coffee, and then opened his mouth to ask what the dog story had to do with anything, when Odd was up on his feet, hand on the alarm button beside him. On the screen a space had cleared in which three or four youths were fighting, girls were pushing back and screaming, the music went dead and as Vince followed Odd at a run, out, down the iron staircase and through a back way onto the floor, the other bouncer was in from the street, and onto the pile-up as Vince yelled at him to get away, get back, as the knife appeared from somewhere in the heap of bodies, flashing in the turning light of the glitter balls.

The fire doors were opened, girls went tottering outside clutching one another, their faces turning neon blue, as two, then three police cars came wailing down the street.