In the middle of all this we start hearing rumours of a new bombing campaign. Tommy calls in the one and only Miracle Baby. Aye aye, he says, it’s true. I’ve heard that, he says. The plan is to take out multiple targets over the space of a month, all high-profile tourist attractions. And the Europa is on the list.

A million different scenarios flash through my mind.

Barney’s sitting with his feet up on the desk when I walk into the shop and he’s singing ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’. I’m guessing somebody’s heard the news? I says to him. We’re upping the game, Barney says. Now’s the time, Xamuel McMahon, he says to me, now is the time to do something great. Something significant.

By the way, did you hear about our Kathleen’s man? he says to me. No, what happened? I says to him. His brother got lifted by the UFF, he says. They took him to a fucking romper room. Is he dead? I says to him. He’d be better off dead, Barney says. They fractured his skull seven time. The fuck is that even possible? I says to him. Then they fucking hacked his legs with a machete, Barney says. Then they fucking left the body in the waste ground at Sandy Row but everybody was too scared to go and rescue him in case it was a trap or they got incriminated, so as he was left to crawl on his hands and knees up till the Donegall Road before somebody called an ambulance.

These people are fucking animals, I says to Barney. Killing is too good for them. Maiming, Barney says, maiming and maiming again, it’s the only way. We need to get in on this, I says to him. I’m about ready to explode, I says. It’s time for something spectacular. It had to be the Europa. And it had to be me.

1977. It was about to be the bloodiest summer of our lives. And I decided to kick it off in style.

*

Through my own covert operations I had discovered that Arlene had a new man. And that he was from the other side. Bitch was in bed with these animals. That’s what had cost Patrick his life. For all I know this was the same guy she had told about the Donny McLaughlin shooting. I had found my best man.

I saw him come pick her up in a car and drive her to a place off the Crumlin Road, a seedy wee place with a boarded-up window on the top floor, typical UDA rathole. Now it was no longer a civilian killing. Now it was all about eradicating vermin.

I start casing the joint. I would drive by at different times of the day but there was never that much going on. Sometimes boys would come and go but I was confident that he lived there on his own. Plus and now I had a silencer. I lifted it from Tommy’s da’s legendary gun stash. This was going to be a cakewalk, I says to myself. I start to getting ballsy.