‘You’re a big guy, McEvoy,’ says Barrett, shaking something down his sleeve. David Copperfield he ain’t. ‘I bet you knock shitkickers around pretty good.’

I’m having a hard time believing this is actually happening. Barrett is really going to make a move on me just for being here. Wrong place wrong time for one of us. His hand comes up quick and in his fist there is what looks like a shaft of light.

It looks like a shaft of light, but unless he’s Gandalf it probably isn’t.

Good point, and it’s more than enough for my fighter’s instinct to stand up and dance a jig.

I step to one side, dig my heel into the carpet for stability. Adrenalin shoots through my system like nitrous oxide, slowing the whole thing down. The shaft of light flashes past my eye and I put the key through the side of Barrett’s neck, watch him bleed out, then sit down and think about what I’ve done.

CHAPTER 3

When I finally parted ways with the army after my second tour, I quickly realised that there was nothing for me in Dublin. Every minute I spent in the dirty old town sent me further into the whirlwind of my own mind. I couldn’t find a good memory in there that didn’t end in tragedy. And I have a tendency to live in my head. Shit happens, right? So deal with it.

I did. Took advantage of being born in New York City and boarded a transatlantic jet to JFK. Wore the uniform that wasn’t mine any more to check in and even got myself an upgrade. Oldest trick in the manual, after loading a shotgun with tea bags to scare the crap out of looters. Dumped the beret and jacket in the lounge bathroom. Walked out a civilian with a first-class ticket.

My mother may have been from America, but with her family apartment way up high and hanging over Central Park, she wasn’t what you might call a typical New Yorker, and after touchdown it took me a while to credit the local accent. One day it’s bejaysus and begorrah and the next it’s fugeddabout it. They’re putting this on, I thought. Yadda yadda yadda. Badda bing. Bullshit, no one talks like this.

But they did, and worse. I took a couple of beatings in the early days just because I didn’t understand what the hell people were saying to me. Wadda fucku starin’ at? You fuckin’ retahded? Lookit dis fuckin’ guy.