Even with a mashed face Zeb manages a guilty expression. ‘It was an opportunity. I couldn’t pass it up.’

From outside, ‘Two minutes, McEvoy. You better pull the rabbit out of the hat, laddie.’

Zeb chuckles. ‘Laddie. Always with the laddie. You Irish, all retards.’

‘What opportunity? Zeb, these people are going to kill us.’

‘Not you, Dan. Not you, my big pet Schwarzenegger. I bet you’ve fucked up a few of them already.’

He has a point. ‘Maybe. But why are they after me, Zeb?’

Zeb studies the blood on his fingers; no clue where it came from. ‘I told Mike I filmed the procedure. Said I’d put it on YouTube. The Irish in New York would piss themselves. You should have seen him during the operation: big baby cried like a . . . baby. Wouldn’t let me smoke or anything.’

‘That is unbelievable.’

‘I know,’ said Zeb thickly. ‘I’m always careful with the ash.’

‘Not the cigarette. You tried to blackmail a crime lord?’

‘Hardly a lord. What has he got, like a dozen men? Only twenty grand, that’s all I asked for. Twenty grand to destroy the disk. ’S a bargain.’

‘But there was no disk.’

Zeb hiccups and blood rims his gums. ‘Course fucking not. Do you see any cameras? It only occurred to me later.’

I grit my teeth. ‘And when did you tell Mike that I had the disk?’

Zeb wheels himself backwards. ‘Two days, Dan. For two days I swore that it was all a lie. Two fucking days with the teeth-punching and the head-banging against the wall. Some fucking warehouse in Ackroyd. There’s pieces of me all over that shithole.’

‘Then you told Mike that I had it.’

‘Yeah, I said that.’ Zeb’s chin drops to his sternum. ‘What else could I do? You’re a tough Irish motherfucker, Dan. I knew these whiskey gangsters couldn’t drop you. No way. You’d kill them all and save me. It was my only hope.’

This is a lot of talking for a man with broken bones and missing teeth, and Zeb collapses into a spasm of wet coughs.

‘Idiot,’ I shout at his shuddering frame. ‘For eight hundred years all we Irish have had is our pride, and you try to strip it away from a dangerous man.’

Zeb spits blood and a tooth. It sits like an iceberg in the sunset sea.

‘A mistake, Dan, I see that now. But don’t let me die here. Work something out. Play the Celtic card.’ Zeb is crying, wringing his hands.

The Celtic card. I do have one up my sleeve. Maybe.

The front door booms as a forearm is repeatedly bashed against it. Lights flicker with the force. I’m guessing that the five minutes are up.

‘To hell with both of you,’ calls Irish Mike Madden. ‘To hell in flames.’