All the same, you never knew when the past was going to come up behind you and bite you on the backside. The circumstances of his last visit here were branded deep in his memory, and the brand-mark smarted even yet. It was Hackett who had summoned him. Hackett had the goods on him, after that misfortunate incident in the gents’ on Burgh Quay, and intended never to let him forget it. The crafty bastard had let him off that time, but there was a catch. The detective had called on him on a number of occasions when he was after this or that bit of inside information, or when he needed something done on the  quiet. Nothing serious, nothing heavy – not anywhere near as heavy or as serious, certainly, as the business Ned Gallagher was about this evening.

It made him break out in a sweat to think of the trouble he could be letting himself in for, just by being here. But when Bill Latimer asked you to do a thing, you didn’t say no. He was one of the very few members of the House who had made it his business to familiarise himself with the inner workings of the civil service, and there was nobody more expertly placed to drop a banana skin square in your path. Besides, it could be that he knew about the Burgh Quay thing. He had never mentioned it, had never dropped the slightest hint, but all the same, there was something in the way the man looked at him sometimes, with what seemed a glint of mockery and sly contempt, that froze Gallagher’s blood.

So here he was, in The Hangman again, waiting for that vicious little bugger Lenny Marks to come strolling in, with his hands in his pockets and a fag in his mouth, grinning all over and cracking jokes and cadging drinks. How was it people fell for his poor-mouthing, considering the money he made in what it amused him to refer to as the ‘hardware trade’? Maybe he had the goods on the lot of them, the way Hackett had the goods on him. Or the bads, more like.

Gallagher was ordering a second whiskey when Lenny arrived, cocky as ever.