Artair is looking at the liver spots on his hands. They seem to have launched a takeover bid for the available skin surface. They’re moving fast. He thinks of those maps his father showed him of the progress of the panzer divisions across France. They were living in Dublin then. Little Artair was worried that 10th Panzers would arrive in England, but his father was looking forward to the defeat of the English. He was an advocate of a free Ireland. In fact almost anywhere the English had turned up in the world would be better off if they went home. It was as though the only purpose of the English was to patronise and annoy the subject people, from India to Scotland. He sees that the liver spots are moving to occupy his brow as well. He’ll soon look like a Dalmatian. When he was a boy he and his friends would say to the kids with freckles – there were plenty, as you would expect in Rathmines – When they join up you will have a nice suntan. It’s happening to him. He’s steadily going brown.

He’s still waiting for Daniel Day-Lewis’s agent to get back to him, which means that he has to go each day into town to use the library’s computers. He has no hope of making his own computer work because he can’t afford to get in a boffin until he’s paid. He is also waiting for his lawyer to receive a reply from Tubal’s. ‘Lawyer’ is a generous description of Gerald Barnecutt, who shares his two-room office with his assistant and mistress, Lowenna Biddick, creating a dense, concupiscent atmosphere under the low ceilings. They are rumoured to have a rich sex life. Gerald prefers the papers he is working on to be spread on the floor and Lowenna does a delicate lobster quadrille among them, applying her long acquaintance with Gerald’s mind to guessing where the papers have ended up. They have generous lunch hours and close early on Wednesdays to recover from the rigours of Monday and Tuesday. Lowenna is a handsome woman, with broad hips and barely-under-control blonde/grey hair which suggests to Artair that she is sexually avid.

Artair rings Gerald to see if he’s heard anything from Tubal’s.

‘No reply yet, Artair. You know how it is with these grand banking families and their lawyers.’

‘I do,’ he says, but he’s pretty sure Gerald has no idea.

‘We’ll give it another week or so, and then I will unleash –’

‘Would it be the hounds of hell or the dogs of war?’

‘That’s the sort of thing. Probably both at once. Or maybe just a stiff letter.’

‘In the meanwhile I am living on free pasties from Binster’s.’