*

Saturday afternoon. Kathy doesn’t work weekends, so as I know she’s safe. We leave Barney in the shop and me and Tommy go about setting up a false trail. We visit Tommy’s da and talk to the foul curtain for a bit. Everywhere we go we’re cat-rough and deliberately announcing our presence, setting up a sneaky alibi just in case it’s needed, drawing attention to ourselves as much as possible.

We dropped into The Tim’s Harbour and drank a pint of porter and got into a mock brawl so as the landlord had to separate us and chuck us out. Now we’re on Great Victoria Street and there isn’t a cloud in the sky. The colours of the trees against it, like blue blood. What a feeling. And now the trees are shaking. There’s no breeze but the trees are shaking. I start to getting the shakes myself. The fucking shivers, more like. The shadow of the Europa, running toward us. That’s where it will fall, I tell myself. It’s all mapped out. It’s all written in the stars, Xamuel, down to the silhouette of its dead body lying there on the street. No one dies, I hear Miracle Baby say. The Europa is a mighty fortress. It’s the biggest day of my life. One man can make all the difference in the world.

We walk past the entrance. I peel off from Tommy without a word. I turn on my powers of invisibility. I start to whistle to myself. I push open the door and walk through the screening area. Nothing happens. No alarms go off. Nobody even looks at me. I catch a pair of peelers out the corner of my eye, talking to each other, on the other side of the glass. They don’t even turn around. I’ve got the briefcase clasped, tight, beneath my arm. Then I float across reception like the Holy Ghost. This is how the IRA got bombs into buildings. With the blessings of the Holy Ghost Himself.

I see this wee bird on reception, this wee bird that knows me. Now she’s looking over at me. I can feel my invisibility fleeing. I can feel it running down and out through the soles of Pat’s snakeskin shoes. It’s harder to be invisible with women. The Virgin Mary is higher up the pecking order than the Holy Ghost. Fact.

She cries out my name. Xamuel. I can’t believe it. Xamuel. We’ve barely spoken before and here she is, fucking shouting for me across the reception area. Xamuel! People are looking round. Tourists in fur coats and with expensive luggage stood around in groups are looking at me. The pair of peelers manning the door turn to face me and now they’re looking at me all shady, like. A valet dragging a pair of cases comes to a dead stop in front of me. There’s a split second where I think the game is up.