*

Did you hear about how that war hero Simon Weston won the pools?

Only he couldn’t claim because he burnt his coupon.

Ha ha.

Fuck him.

*

The whole time me and Tommy are on tour, Barney’s looking after the shop on his lonesome. By this time we had taken to selling basically anything you could fit on a shelf. There were dead men’s shoes in there – and that is not the name of an underground comic – old clothes, video cassettes, paintings in there, cups, jugs, cutlery, plates in there, denim jackets in there, roller skates in there, radios, TVs, all this stuff that had been liberated from the dead and the disappeared in there. In fact we began to get deliveries. The Boys would drop in their pickings, after skinning it themselves (obviously), but it was all in a good cause and it made them look like they were giving something back to the Ra, which they were, of course, only after we had skinned off yet more of the profits ourselves, because everybody was on the make, wake up to it, come on. I know there was a war going on but even the Nazis found time to drink wine, loot gold and fuck smoking-hot blondes in lingerie.

We watched ourselves on the evening news, the news of the country that we supposedly lived in ourselves, and we saw ourselves portrayed as the worst kind of Fenian bastards. Most people were torn between escaping and standing up to fight. There was no clear outcome, so as people stockpiled. Money, valuables, bolt-holes, provisions. Then you went about your day. With eyes in the back of your fucking head, mind you, still you went about as normal as you could under the circumstances.

But there was always the chance that you could change the game forever. Fight the right fight. Bring down the right target. Hit the right stress points and it was all over. I mean, there had to be an end in sight, right? It was all about the best way to try to bring it down.

I didn’t tell them nothing about Kathy when I volunteered us for the Europa job. When Hitler says in the history books that he went about his appointed task with the certainty of a sleepwalker, I understood exactly what he meant. I had privileged access to the Europa. Nobody else knew about it but it was true. I says to Mack, I can do it, I know the Europa well. I told him I had fucked a few whores in there, even though I winced when I says it. I felt for Kathy and I didn’t think our relationship was anything like that. Who takes whores to the Europa except for journalists, politicians and fucking Unionist sympathisers? Mack says to me. Exactly, I says to him: meet The Invisible Man.