‘He was worried they’d be witnesses, Thomas, and he was pure sorry about it afterwards. He even went to confession.’

‘Well, I suppose that might have done some good, because it’s a miracle that the razzers never connected him to me. And any road it’s too late now. They can’t be unkilled, and I’ve done as much as I can to make the judges go easy on him. We’ll just have to wait and see now what kind of a sentence they come up with.’

‘Hey, Tommy – I’ll tell you what you can give me,’ put in Thomas O’Flynn’s girlfriend, in a throaty voice.

‘Not in here, Muireann. Not in front of the lads, like. You’ll be giving them all heart attacks.’

‘Oh, get out of here, Tommy. I didn’t mean that. I’d like another Bertha’s Revenge, that’s all, but with a rake more ice this time.’

Muireann was at least fifteen years younger than him, with a jet-black fringe and crimson plumped-up collagen lips and false eyelashes like two straggly blackbirds, although one of her eyelashes was starting to flap loose. She was wearing a tight red woollen dress, short and low-cut, and a Celtic moon pendant was abseiling deep into her cleavage. Thomas had bumped into her about two months ago in the Zombie Lounge and taken her back to his house that night for several hours of strenuous but silent sex, punctuated only by grunts. Since then she had stayed with him and followed him almost everywhere. He didn’t even know where she lived, and he didn’t actually care.

‘Haven’t you had enough?’ Thomas asked her. ‘What’s that, your fourth? Next thing I know you’ll be decorating my keks again.’

‘Come on, Tommy. Don’t be so tight. I’ve such a throat on me today, I don’t know why.’

Thomas looked across at Billy Hagerty. ‘Are you having one, boy?’

‘A Vitamin G will do me, thanks.’

Thomas nodded to one of his three henchmen, who had been sitting close together and arguing among themselves about which horses to back in the bumper races at Leopardstown this weekend. They could have been mistaken for triplets, these three, because they were all wearing black leather jackets and they all had floppy long-top hair shaved up at the sides, and beards, and snake tattoos wriggling out from under their collars.

‘Same all round, Darragh,’ said Thomas. ‘And a pint of plain for Billy.’

The young man was on his way to the bar when his phone rang. He answered it while he indicated to Lenny the barman by pointing his finger that he wanted refills all round and a pint of Guinness.

Suddenly, in a stage whisper, he said, ‘You wha’? Stop the lights, boy! Serious? Holy feckin’ Mary!’