What the actual fuck; Kathy was on the game. Who the fuck else was she sleeping with? Was Tommy paying her? How did he get involved? And what about all the fucking press and politicians that used the hotel? Was she sleeping with both sides?

I thought about the vision I had in Clare. Kathy gagged, and her man directing. He was pimping her out. But for what? For information, maybe. But who was he working for? I decided to sit down with Barney and tell him everything.

I tell him about sleeping with Kathy at the Europa. About seeing Tommy in there once. About finding out she was a prozzer. Then I tell him that Miracle Baby sent me a message, a vision, to my mind, showing her man Davy, or was it Tommy, and your man Del Brogan, fucking her, I think. Visions, you can’t trust fucking visions, that could mean anything, Barney says to me, that could mean that he’s just a pervert what gets off on people fucking his wife. Do you know what they call that? Barney says to me. That’s what they call a plamf. What are you talking about? I says to him. A plamf is somebody that sniffs dirty knickers, what you’re trying to mean is a cuckoo. The fuck’s a cuckoo? Barney says. That’s nonsense. Naw, I says to him. A cuckoo is what steals eggs from other birds.

That’s a fucking magpie, he says to me. Okay, so he’s a fucking magpie, I says, so fucking what, the point is that I think it all ties in, I think Tommy’s boasting about hitting this fucking screw and she’s reported it back to Davy who is a fucking plant and who told his handlers in Special Branch, who then told their people in the UDA or the UVF or the UFF or whatever the fuck ever that Tommy was their man and where to find him. It was a planned execution, we know that. Either that, or your man Del Brogan told her. Either way, he’s a disreputable cunt.

Well, in that case, that leaves us with only one option, Barney says to me. I’m waiting for this masterplan. For this incisive analysis of my theory. Then he says to me, we just need to fucking kill every one of them. Thank fuck there is some cunt you can rely on in amongst all this.

*

We do it ourselves, I says to him. No point involving Mack or the high command. Mack’s too in with your man Del Brogan. We start to staking out the house, this new house that I had followed Kathy to, out Ballygomartin way. A few afternoons here and there. The blinds are always down. The only person we ever see coming and going is a wee old woman with a crooked back pulling one of them shopping baskets with the wheels. She must live in complete fucking darkness, Barney says.