He poured me a large whiskey, and one for himself, and then looked at me with shrewd, troubled eyes.

‘Why did you do that, Jacky?’

‘He gave my friend Titch a beating, along with three of his mates. You remember Titch, you met him at our house one night. He’s a bit simple. He hasn’t been out of the house again since.’

‘But how did you know it was that fella?’

‘I didn’t have a clue until I heard him boasting about it at the bar.’

Murdie took a cigarette out of his crumpled pack, tapped it and lit it contemplatively.

‘He’s a guy called Ronald McGee,’ he said, ‘Nickname “Rocky”. To be honest, Jacky, of all the people you could have had a dig at tonight, he wasn’t the best one to choose.’

‘I know,’ I said.

‘He’s well in with the Loyalist paramilitaries.’

‘You don’t say,’ I said.

Murdie poured us both another whiskey.

‘If you keep working here, Jacky, they’ll come in and get you here.’

‘I know.’

‘And if you go home, they’ll find you there.’

‘Home Sweet Home,’ I said. I was almost getting the hysteria again.

‘You can stay at my house until you get yourself sorted out. I don’t think anyone would think to look for you there. I’ve a sofa bed in the front room, and I’ll lend you a bit of cash to tide you over.’

He was a good man, Murdie.

When we got back to Murdie’s house that night, Gavin the cousin had gone to bed. ‘That’s a first,’ said Murdie. Then he picked up his whiskey bottle: there was only a miserly tea-coloured dribble in the base of it. ‘That’s not,’ he said.

Mrs Murdie had gone to bed too, leaving a note that said simply, ‘Stew on the cooker’. The premeditated brevity of the stew note, said Murdie, was a sign that she was still livid. It was actually worse than no note at all, because by continuing to consider his dietary requirements, even while furious, Mrs Murdie was taking care to retain occupation of the moral high ground. That could only mean she was gearing herself up for a long and painful campaign: ‘The Deep Freeze,’ he muttered, ‘Mrs Murdie’s Stalingrad.’

Murdie clattered about, pulling out the bed in the front room and getting me clean sheets. The place was very tidy. He handed me a clean towel and a glass of water. Then he dug around some more and added a toothbrush he said he kept for spare and a disposable razor for the morning.

He said: ‘I’ll warn Mrs Murdie you’re about the place, so she doesn’t get up in the night and beat you over the head with the frying pan in mistake for me.’