They listened to songs about war and leather and blood-encrusted animal pelts. Tee-J had a face on him like a kebab whatever shite he’d been eating at the unit. Patrick had read up about nutrition for adolescents in a leaflet he found in the waiting room of the clinic when he was in about the chest pains. The doctor said the chest pains were caused by stress and petrol-station coffee and signed him up to a yoga class in Rooskey. He only went the once but it was good now all the same. The woman instructor gave them all rubber yoga mats and said when things were getting bad, you found a quiet space, you closed your eyes, and you said, I’m on my mat now and that’s that.

‘Do we have to go to Doggie’s, Patch?’

‘We have to fuckin’ ate, Teedge. But I know, like. I know.’

Doggie ‘The Dog’ Mannion lived in a holiday home scheme over the far side of the lake. A wee duplex he had bought for himself there. He was out on its patio when the boys arrived in the Hitachi. In a yellow dressing gown and a pair of swimming togs.

‘Easy as we go, Patch,’ said Tee-J.

There wasn’t much fazed the Mullaney brothers, all told, but a visit to Doggie did. The Dog was a large, half-bald, buttery kind of man with terrible nerves. He had the eyeliner on in thick black smudges over a deep-tan foundation like a hoor would wear. He was drinking from a child’s beaker; he raised this now to salute the brothers as they crossed the communal lawn of the scheme. He put a hand inside his togs and tugged at himself briefly and the exertion caused his broad face to colour. He leaned over the patio’s rail to address his visitors.

‘When you get a bit of heat at all like the heat we’re after getting today,’ he said, ‘the man below do be swimmin’ in his own melt.’

A laugh was let off that sounded like a chainsaw revving. The Dog had been receiving from the Mullaneys for two years and he paid an insulting tax but he was the only operator in the vicinity who was reliable in terms of cash-flow. He led them through to the living room. Bottles of Rachmaninov vodka from Aldi were everywhere and apple-juice cartons from the same place – Apfelsaft, they called it there. Patrick lay down the box of DVDs and found that his heart was beating much too fast.

‘We can’t stay long, Dog,’ he said.

‘D’ya know I’d smoke a hunderd fags for you in a night if I was drinkin’?’ said The Dog.

‘DVDs for you, Dog?’

‘DVDs comin’ out me bollix, Mull. I no more want DVDs than the fuckin’ wall.’

He eyed Tee-J.

‘You’re gettin’ big,’ he said.