“Bring him whatever you want. Just don’t be bringing him any excuse to ring me again. I don’t like gobshites annoying me before I’ve had my cup of tea; banjaxes my bowels.”

“I’ll be in Wexford, boss, remember? I won’t have the opportunity to get Little Miss Murder’s frillies in a twist, even if I wanted to. I’ll just tidy up a few things”—I jerked a thumb in the direction of my office—“and I’ll be on my way, out of everyone’s hair.”

George inspected me, under heavy lids. Eventually he flapped a big weary hand and said, “Tidy away. Take your time.”

“Cheers, boss,” I said. This is why we love George. One of the things that makes a great super is knowing when he doesn’t want to know. “I’ll see you in a few weeks.”

I was halfway out the door when he called, “Frank.”

“Boss?”

“Anywhere the squad can make a donation, in your brother’s name? Charity? Sports club?”

And it hit me all over again, like a rabbit punch straight to the gullet. For a second nothing came out of my mouth. I didn’t even know if Kev had been in a sports club, although I doubted it. I thought there should be a charity created specially with fucked-up situations like this one in mind, a fund to send young guys snorkeling round the Great Barrier Reef and paragliding down the Grand Canyon, just in case that day turned out to be their last chance.

“Give it to the Victims of Homicide crowd,” I said. “And thank you, boss. I appreciate it. Tell the lads thanks.”

Deep down in his heart, every Undercover believes that, by and large, Murder are a bunch of big pussy boys. There are exceptions, but the fact is that the Murder lads are our pro boxers: they fight hard, but when you come right down to it they have gloves and gumshields and a referee ringing his little bell when everyone needs to take a breather and wipe off the blood. Undercovers fight bare-knuckle, we fight backstreet and we fight till someone goes down. If Scorch wants into a suspect’s house, he fills in a square mile of paperwork and waits for the rubber stamps and assembles the appropriate entry team so no one gets hurt; me, I bat the baby-blues, spin a good story and waltz right in, and if the suspect should decide he wants to kick the shit out of me, I’m on my own.

This was about to work for me. Scorch was used to fighting by the rules. He took it for granted that, with the odd minor bad-little-boy breach, I fought the same way. It would take a while to occur to him that my rules had sweet fuck-all in common with his.