Look: it’s all out in the open now, now that it’s all over, but I’ll tell you this, I never once felt like I was lying. I never once felt like I was doing anything other than honestly playing the role that was given to me. I says to myself, what’s true? What does that even mean, being true? Could you even fucking handle the truth? Are you really sure that’s what you want? Because what if the truth is a stinking pit filled with bodies? What if the truth is the blind pain at the centre of the world? What if the truth is the doubled crucifixion of a snake? Maybe it would be better for us all if we just played the game. I mean, Mad Frank Marby might be a fucking serial killer in private but he knew how to play the game. We all did. I don’t know who knew what back in that meeting or who was playing who, but the point was it was all about the playing itself, and we all knew it, was what.

*

Look: see, when you’re up onstage and the fucking audience have filed in and you’re all given your roles and already the story has gone this way and that, do you just fucking stand up and says, wait a minute, I’m not your man Hamlet anymore? I was never a Pope of Denmark, I can wash the blood out my hands no problem, in fact my name’s John the fucking Baptist and I live in Jamaica Street in the Ardoyne? Of course you fucking don’t. It’s you fucking do-gooders, you fucking investigative journalist types, that are always trying to get to the bottom of things. And the thing is, you have no fucking idea what’s down there. Take it from me, son. You might end up disinterring a body. One that you might even recognise. So as when you walk onstage, you’re Como, and you live the legend, end of. It’s better that way for everybody, believe me.

*

McNulty apologises, he does. This cunt McNulty apologises for the murdering of my own ma, even though it was me what blew her up with that fucking bomb under my bed, which is something I’ll take to the grave with me, but okay, at least now we know where we stand, we’re on solid ground at last, although, of course, we’re on no ground at all, we’re not on solid fucking ground, not ever, in Ireland, we’re on totally fucking phantom ground because the very ground beneath our feet does not belong to us, and we’re walking in the air, basically, but there’s enough belief there to support us, can’t you feel it, there’s a consensus that we can fly, is there not, son, and so if we can fly, we fly.

*