Give me his details, he says, I’ll have some of our men in the field pay him a visit. Perhaps we can sort something out, he says. After all, he says, it’s not often that you come across a man with principles in Northern Ireland. It’s not often that somebody takes a stand. I do think he should be rewarded, he says, or at least, you know, backed up.

One night Davy comes home and tells Kathy that he was visited at the shop by Special Branch. How do you know it was Special Branch? she says to him. Because that is exactly what they didn’t say, he says. They never announced themselves as Special Branch, which is exactly what Special Branch would do, instead they simply says that they had come to see me about my problem. That they had heard that I was a man of virtue and of good standing. That that was a rare thing in Belfast, a rare thing in Northern Ireland. Then one of them made a strange remark, her man says to her. He points toward me, he says, and he says to his companion, doesn’t he remind you of someone? Yes, his companion says. Yes, I was only just thinking the exact same thing. It’s uncanny, he says. It’s a million to one, he says. If I wasn’t so sure of his whereabouts right now, the first man says, if I wasn’t, in fact, so convinced of your integ rity, sir, and, well, your honesty, let’s just go ahead and say that, he says, if I wasn’t so, how do you put it, sold, on your story, my friend, I would be almost convinced that this was some form of elaborate set-up. Some form of psychological double bluff, his colleague says, the conversation snaking back and forth between them. You see, they says that Davy was the spitting image of a sleeping fox. A ‘sleeping fox’ is a code for a double agent, they says. A sleeping fox that might be willing, they says, to trade places with him.