‘The fee?’ Gallagher said, giving him a large, incredulous look. ‘What do you think you are, a consultant, or something?’ He put his mouth close to Lenny’s ear. ‘A name, Lenny. A phone number. Your fee will be the joy of knowing you’ve added a drop of oil to the machinery of state.’

Lenny shrugged. His grin had become strained. The state machine was one in the works of which he couldn’t afford to become entangled. Gallagher produced a clipped bus  ticket from his coat pocket, and Lenny wrote down Terry Tice’s name on the back of it, and the name of the place where he was staying on Gardiner Street. Gallagher scanned the information, and stowed the ticket in his wallet. He picked up Lenny’s empty glass.

‘I’ll get you another one,’ he said. ‘But you can drink it by yourself.’

Chapter 35

Terry Tice lay on the lumpy mattress in his room at the Gardiner Arms, reading the book he had bought. The knob on the radiator was broken and the room was too hot – he had complained to the geezer at the front desk but of course nothing was done – and he had stripped down to his vest and drawers. He was wearing his shoes and socks, though, since he didn’t fancy walking barefoot on the carpet. He had always been particular about where he put his feet. Very clean and neat, he was always that, even in his orphanage days. He was known for it.

The book wasn’t bad, though he hadn’t read many books so he couldn’t really judge. The people in it were the sort he knew, though they were described in an exaggerated way. They were loud and brightly painted, like the characters in a pantomime. Cubitt and the rest of the gang he recognised, but he couldn’t believe they’d let themselves be led by a seventeen- year-old kid, even if he had proved himself as a fearless killer. The writer referred to him only as ‘the Boy’, though everyone else called him Pinkie, which couldn’t have been his real name in the first place, surely. Pinkie had a chip on his shoulder the size of a telegraph pole. And he kept going on about God, and Hell and damnation, and all that stuff. Terry knew after a few pages what Pinkie’s real problem was – queer, without admitting it, not only to others but to himself as well. Funny, but the writer who had invented him didn’t seem to spot it either. Too busy brooding about death and the hereafter. The Brothers in the orphanage were always banging on about that kind of thing, when they weren’t busy banging Terry and half the other lads in their care.