He was polishing the beer glasses when I walked into the Whistle, and he seemed pleased to see me. It was a quiet enough afternoon. There were two drinkers slouched over the bar, but they were too engrossed in the horse racing on television to slide me more than a desultory glance. Murdie had been at Big Jacky’s funeral along with Mrs Murdie. I hadn’t talked to him since.

‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Here’s the man himself.’

He poured me a pint of lager, and then – with a quick look towards the pub door – lit up a cigarette. ‘So, wee Jacky, what are you up to?’

‘You won’t believe it,’ I said. ‘My school burned down.’

Murdie’s face cracked into a broken smile: ‘Who did it?’

‘I did. I decided I was getting too old for detention.’

He laughed, and then waited, smoking. There is an amateur and a professional style of smoking. The amateur style is floatily indulgent, expansive in the movement of the smoking arm, casually squandering the cigarette’s little life. The professional style extracts the maximum value from every puff, the smoking arm moving quickly and in a straight line, in the knowledge that the pleasure of the cigarette might soon be cut short by some external demand. Murdie smoked in the professional style.

‘Aunt Phyllis is living with me now. She’s sort of taken over the running of the newsagent’s.’

‘Is the business going well?’

‘Aye, I think it’s going all right. It seems to have plenty of customers. Most of them come in to talk to Phyllis. She’s certainly got the gift of the gab.’

Enough said. Murdie nodded, and looked at me with the unspoken understanding that there are times when you would like to put the people with the gift of the gab in a large room along with everyone who has kissed the Blarney Stone, lock the door and let them all jaw each other to death.

‘The thing is, though, there’s not really enough for me to do there. Phyllis has it pretty much all under control. I was wondering if you might need a barman here, or know anyone else who does.’

Consideration. He stubbed out the cigarette as punctuation to his thoughts. His mental machinery was doing some speedy calculations: I could almost hear it clicking and revolving.

‘Davy’s leaving next week, to go and work on a cruise liner,’ he said. ‘You could fill in for him for a while. But you’d need to come on a few afternoons, when there’s just me here, to get the hang of the place. Come in on Tuesday.’

I was delighted. I finished up my pint. Murdie walked me to the door, and, as I left, he hit me a stern, playful whack with the rolled-up copy of the Belfast News Letter he had been using earlier on to kill flies.