This is when we get the caravan. This is what they do in Israel, Mack says to me. We’re waiting for Tommy at this farmhouse out Newtownabbey way. They have the top brass meetings in the caravans, Mack says to me, and then they scoot the caravans around the place, just so as they can never be found. Tommy says he knew a guy that was getting rid of one, quick style. Top-of-the-range one, he says, thirty quid, he says, and he’s gone to pick it up with Patricia so as it looked like they were buying it for going away on their holidays but really it was going to be a mobile Ra HQ. Fuck Mossad, Mack says, and he spits in his hands. Anything they can do, we can do better. Mack makes me the offer of a sly bifter. Do you ever urinate on your hands? he says to me. I’m not putting that fag in my mouth if you’re pishing on your hands, I says to him. Pish, it’s completely sterile, he says to me, and besides, he says, it’s not like I don’t wash them as well. Don’t touch me with your pishy hands, I says to him, and I take a step backward. Gimme your hands, he says, let me see them, and he grabs them and he spreads out my palms, like that. Look at this, he says to me, and he shakes his head. These are the hands of a stillborn baby.

What?!

You want to toughen yourself up, he says to me, and the best way to harden your skin and to firm it up is to urinate on yourself. My da taught me that, he says to me, and he had a pair of hands like cured buffalo hide, he says. We stand there, smoking our pishy fags in silence. Did you ever hear about Barney? I says to him. Fuck is Barney? he says to me. Our pal, Barney Donnen, I says to him. The one what looks like the Italian pit bull? he says to me. Aye, he says, I know the very fella. You know he gets the disabilities on the bru? I says to him. What for? he says to me. I mean, I know he’s mental, but still. He told the doctor he was a simpleton, I says to him. Got his wife to go along with it. Went in there and says to him he couldn’t even mind his own name and that he thought his house was made of cheese, all this stuff. So as they send someone out to see if he’s really yon disturbed way and if he qualifies for the bru. Twenty minutes before the fella arrives, Barney drinks four bottles of water. His wife shows the guy into the living room and Barney’s sitting there on a chair acting doolally, just completely fucking out of it. The guy from the bru asks him his first question and Barney just pishes himself right in front of him. Just sits there in his chair and lets go with this river of pish running down his legs and pooling round his feet. The guy can’t get out there quick enough. He’s on the disabilities for life after that. Christ Almighty, Mack says, and he shakes his head, but that is fucking disgusting. It is that, I says to him, but think of the quality of the skin on those legs. Must be like a fucking rhino.