“I made it,” he’d reply.

“The best of luck,” she’d say.

The group sat round uneasily in a circle trying to invent someone who would meet their criterion. Their first job was to find a suitable name for the prisoner. At last, after a bewildering argument, Shamey Coyle entered the world of community drama. A street and a suitable family life was found. He had been born in Hatfield Street off the Ormeau Road in 1949. In 1970 he had moved to Gransha Gardens in the Turf Lodge area with his new wife, who was from Thompson Street, off the Mountpolinger Road in the North Strand.

“Would he have married a Protestant?” asked Jack.

“Don’t be daft,” he was told, “this is a play based on reality.”

What does that make me? wondered Jack. The rant began in his head. Oi! Hip! Ya fucker ya! Up the road ya bollacks! Grieving is it? Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Through my grievous. Sacramentum. Conas mara tá? The fox, the stoat and the bonnie shoals. There is a narrowing constriction at the end of the space. Float through it. It’s only whadyacall it . . .

“Do you think so, Jack?”

The question directed at him separated itself from the myriad of other voices.

“Oh definitely,” he agreed.

Now the group set off to do their research. Late in the afternoon of his second day Jack drove to the Falls Road. He was directed to wait in Islandbawn Street. He sat in the Lada smoking and planning the order of the interview. Very close to him a British Army convoy passed by. Soldiers on the footpath moved one behind the other. The last soldier ducked down by the wing of the Lada. Various shouts rang up and down the street. The soldier crouched by the window. Playing loudly over his personal stereo came a snatch from Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony.

He grunted and ran on down to the next street corner. After the soldiers were gone a knock came to the window. “You the lad that wants to see someone about a play?”

“So, he shoots a policeman,” the man said.

“Yes,” said Jack, “but I’m beginning to worry about this whole project.”

“Why?”

They were sitting in a small, bare living room off Springmartin Road.

“Because I don’t know whether it’s possible to write about these things.”

“I mean why did he shoot the policeman?”

“Because he claims he is part of the occupying forces, I suppose.”

“Do you think so?” He lit a cigar.

“It’s what I presume.”

“I would expect he shot him because he was ordered to do so.”

“Well, yes, in the final analysis, yes.”

“He’s a soldier, isn’t he? That’s what Shamey Coyle is.”

“Yes.”

“And if he shot him in Castle Street, what I’d like to know is – did he walk up the street and shoot him at the check-point?”

“That wasn’t mentioned.”