Jimmy McNulty starts wading into this mass of guys jamming up the doorway and he’s pulling people back and cuffing them round the head with his chatsby. Mad Frank Marby pulls out a fucking blade the size of his forearm and starts sticking one guy after the other in this pile-up. There’s this fucking smell, this fucking rancid smell of gutters and of excrement, you would know it if you smelt it, and everybody is falling to one side and the other and it’s like a passage being cleared, this passage opens up with blood and guts and torn flesh, and Pat Allardyce looks at me and I just fucking go for it, I put my head down and I push forward, parting this mass () of mangled flesh, of bleeding bodies, pushing my way through this terrible (  ) gap, this gaping human wound (    ), to get into the back room, to get behind the fucking scenes (      ), I’m using my arms to squeeze me (          ) through, I’m pulling bodies to one side of me and the other and then I get my head through (      ) and then my shoulders (   ) and then bam (  ), I’m in the back room and it’s completely silent in there ().

I can hear the shouts and the screaming from the other room but it’s like in a school playground, in a dream, miles away. There are two people stood in front of me. One has a chatsby in his hand, a wee Luger. He lets off a couple of shots and I swear I can see the bullets coming toward me in slow motion --------------------- they’re letting off little vapour trails like a jet plane in the sky ---------------- and I start dodging in and out of the bullets as I let off a few shots of my own ------ pop McPheat right between the legs ----------- see his sacs come loose and his bollocks plop onto the floor in front of me. He’s trying to hold himself in with his hands. But then as I go to dive to the right a slug gets me in the side of the kneecap.

You ever been shot in the knee, son? Course you fucking haven’t, it’s fucking no pain like it, it’s agony. I go down but I loose another shot and get this other cunt Benny bang in the centre of the chest and he goes over. I lie there on the ground for a second, and I can just see this leg wearing dress trousers and snakeskin shoes. And I can smell him. This smell comes to me. Old Spice. Danny Whitaker is wearing the Old Spice. I pull myself up with the edge of the table and I swing round to get a good look at him. The passage is blocked up with bodies and nobody else has made it through. I turn to take a look and I’m like that: ah fuck.