*

Your man Del Brogan and his daughter Eden are at the front of the stage. He’s serenading her, and calling her his heart. He’s down on one knee, as if he’s proposing to her. She’s sat on a chair in front of him wearing a frilly white dress and with her legs dangling down, her little high-heel shoes, her red hair’s on fire and wrapped up in her, and it’s like he is asking her for her hand in marriage when how could she ever be true to her father forever, and he falls over, her father, he topples onto his side, her poor da, and he clutches at his chest like his heart has been taken from him, like his daughter has climbed out his chest right there and left him for dead on the floor, like he has given up his heart so as she can live.

Then a hand, a great deathly white hand like a ghost in a play, comes out from behind this great black curtain and drags him back to the other side. The women are on their feet and they’re firing the silk hankies onto the stage, silk hankies all misty-wet with women’s tears are raining down, and the house is in uproar; cunt gets a standing ovation. It’s only later we find out he had died. He had taken himself a heart attack and died there on the spot. What a performance. Nobody will ever forget it.

Part Six: The Hood of The Snake, what is Miracle

I told you Mad Frank Marby was in town, right? Marby’s this guy from Athlone with a reputation for pointless torture. I told you he looked like that bad bastard Fred West; big kick-your-cunt-in face. We had never heard of Fred West back then even though he must have been at it at the time, fucking scum, torturing young girls. That would never have happened under the Ra’s remit. Things were safer, on the whole. If you stole a car you got kneecapped. Never mind raping some poor young bird and burying her under your patio. But Marby’s in town because an informer has been uncovered in the ranks of the FSV and a bunch of the boys had let the top rank of the Ra know. They hadn’t blown the whistle yet but they had transferred over to the Ra and had let them know what was going on. It was starting to look like the FSV was a front organisation set up by Special Branch. The whole fucking edifice was riddled with spies and informers. That’s the word Mack used when we had a briefing about the situation.