So long as he could only feel it and not see it, I was probably all right. If you’re a drunk hardman and a cylindrical metal object is pressing into a vulnerable spot, you tend to make the most obvious assumptions.

‘What the fuck did you do to my dog?’

‘He’s all right.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘No he isn’t. He’s still breathing.’

‘He looks dead. What did you do to him?’

I didn’t like to see the dog there in the rain getting cold. I wanted to put a blanket over him but I couldn’t let go of McGee. It would be a fatal signal of soft-heartedness. The whole thing was losing momentum anyway. There was too much chat. The action was starting to sag. Any minute now we’d be sitting around in a circle crying and discussing what went wrong in our childhoods. I had to up the ante. I shoved the gun hard into his neck again, so hard it must have really hurt. I could feel a bead of sweat running down my back, a fingertip’s trace of liquid panic.

‘I’m going to put your coat on you with the hood up, and walk out the door with you next to me. Don’t say anything,’ I said. Then I had a brainwave.

‘There’s someone wants a word with you,’ I said. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you. He just wants a word.’

That eased it. A ‘word’ was something he could handle. The waiting presence of a shadowy third party made sense. It felt like business. The scenario fell into some kind of imaginary order. I was no longer his weird nemesis, just a brusque escort to a deal. This had happened to him before, in one form or another. Through the fog of his drunkenness, he could start to weave links back to that protection racket, this drugs supply, create phantom strategies, foresee a future. People always want to imagine the best.

‘Calm down,’ I said.

He was chewing it over.

‘Is it over that deal on the building sites? I made sure everyone got their cut.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘He just said to get you over. He’s got some new racket. The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be back home. He just wants a word. Got your keys in your jacket?’

Nice touch, I thought, the implication that he would need them again in the near future.

‘Aye. Why the handcuffs?’

‘Don’t know,’ I said. ‘That’s what he said. But don’t make a big song and dance or someone will call the peelers, and that won’t be good for you or me. If you start that carry-on I’ll have to shoot you and run.’