It was a messy start, mind. We had to clean him up. I bunged his ma some readies, I don’t know why.

You’re a wee angel, she says to me, which only made it worse. Then we drive off, in the dark, to this garage Jimmy Smalls had, down a lane behind a petrol station, in the dark, this garage lit up by this broken sign, this broken sign flashing on and off and making this buzzing noise, this buzzing noise that went gar-age gar-age gar-age, in the dark.

*

So there was this one poem Tommy knew off by heart, no one knew how he had learnt it or why. But he must have put the effort in, because he couldn’t read it on his own, so as someone must have taught him. When he was nervous he would turn it on and go into it, ‘The One Eye of the Little Yellow God’, and on the way to the garage in the dark he starts it off, this whole fucking thing about a one-eyed yellow god in the sky, raining down on all the poor bastards below. The one-eyed yellow god was the guy he turned to in a corner. Him and Perry Como, what a team. So Tommy goes on with this poem, and it’s a sit-on-your-hoop epic, and Barney’s up front with Jimmy Smalls, who stank of my own pish, which was rank, I admit, with Jimmy staring into space like he’s already dead. We get to the flashing garage sign, which is buzzing, in the dark, and that’s when Jimmy goes and drops the bomb.

I need to get the keys from your man McCaffrey what runs the garage, he says to us, on account of it belonging to the fella. How many people know about this fucking garage? Tommy says to him. Just me and your da and your man McCaffrey, Jimmy says. Does your man McCaffrey know what’s hidden in there? Tommy says to him. Sure he knows nothing, Jimmy Smalls says.

Okay, we can’t be seen by this ignoramus, Tommy says. I’m going to trust you, Jimmy, to go around there on your own, and to get the keys and come back without a word. You’ve got two minutes, he says to him, before we blow the place to kingdom come. I looked at Tommy and I could see that he was serious. We get out the caravan and Tommy pulls out a chatsby, puts it up to Jimmy Smalls’s head. You were going to shoot me, you wee bastard, he says, and now I’m hotter than I feel inclined to tell. Two minutes, Tommy says to him, then the whole shabazz goes up. I think he meant to say shebang, The Shabazz was an Indian restaurant in Belfast, but I wasn’t going to be the one to correct him.