Lana Callahan sighed. ‘Well, he was a fucker, Josephine. I hate to say it because his mum’s lovely. But, be honest, he was a lairy little fucker.’

Josephine didn’t answer; she was still shocked by the brutality of the murder. The local news had reported that he had received over twenty blows from a machete, and that the police were encouraging anyone who had been in the vicinity between nine and eleven p.m. the previous evening to contact them with any information.

Josephine’s father had remarked at the end of the news bulletin, ‘Well, that says it all, girls. The plod have more chance of arresting Bill and Ben for smoking Little Weed than catching the fucker responsible.’

‘His poor mum, though.’

Lana lit a cigarette and, pulling on it gently, she inhaled the smoke. As she blew it out, she said honestly, ‘It’s a tragedy, all right. But he upset a lot of people with his bad attitude. Look at how he treated your Michael. He’s a saint, that boy. Let’s face it, Michael can have a row if needs be – and how he kept his hands off that little fucker God only knows. But that’s the point, really, isn’t it? Unlike Michael, Jimmy didn’t have a sense of place, didn’t have the savvy to know when to back off, he didn’t have the brain capacity to realise that the only thing he had in his favour was his uncle. Michael swallowed his knob because he had enough sense to know that, until he earned his own creds, he had to take whatever Jimmy dished out.’

Josephine was staring at her mum now; the turn that the conversation had taken was scaring her. She didn’t like Michael’s name being used like that. She was frightened that Michael might be a suspect.

‘Michael was with us, Mum, you know that as well as I do.’

Lana shook her head slowly in disbelief; sometimes her Josephine really was as thick as shit.

‘No one’s saying that, love. If you listened to me, you’d know that all I was trying to say is that your Michael has self-control. That is very important in his line of work. I think that his ability to keep his emotions in check is why Patrick Costello took him on. The Jimmy Moores of this world never really prosper, Josephine, whereas the people like your Michael are a rarity. They are reliable, dependable, see?’

Josephine smiled then, her relief almost tangible. ‘I see what you mean now. For a minute there I actually thought you were going to say that Michael might have been in the frame.’