It’s our grand first day of trading and Barney is only sitting there behind the counter with a fucking bowler hat on. You look like a fucking Orangeman, I says to him, what the fuck. Have you never clocked The New Avengers on the telly? he says to me. This is Steed, he says, pointing to the hat on his head. This will appeal to the geeks, he says. They’ll lap it right up. Steed is a fucking Orangeman, I says to him. That’s fucking heresy, he says to me. Besides, he says, it’s this or it’s fucking Bagpuss, and he raises his hat to reveal the state of my botched knitting job on his noggin. Either way, I says to him, you look like a villain. A supervillain, he says to me, and he takes his hat off and spins it at me like a Frisbee. Wait a minute, I says to him. Now I know who you remind me of. It’s not Steed. It’s fucking Oddjob out the James Bond movies. Oddjob’s a chinky, Barney says to me, what are you trying to say? And without a word of a lie, Tommy comes in right then and soon as he sees Barney sitting there in that hat, he says to him, alright Oddjob? After that it was all over: Barney was Oddjob, even if in real life he was a chinky.

*

It’s frightening what fear can do when you think about it. Think about it. We helped ourselves to these people’s worldly possessions, we took over their shop, we tied this poor woman up and made her wear a pillowcase for a mask and kept her in a boarded-up house with no floors, just because the Ra says they needed the money and not a sinner raised a finger against us. It was good times, if you were on the right side, or at least one of them. But if you fell through the cracks: forget it.

And not a sinner questioned us about running this comic shop neither. Sometimes weans would come in and ask about where’s Davy what runs it but we just says to them he was gone and that’s that and they shrugged and bought their comics as usual and left, or even weirder, some of them would catch sight of Tommy and think that he was Davy and some of them even called him Davy, see you later, Davy, they would shout to him as they left. I says to Barney, do you think our Tommy looks like your man Davy? Sure, he looks nothing like him, Barney says to me.