‘And that’s all? You won’t be giving nobody a beating or nothing like that?’

‘Nocky – they deserve a million times worse for murdering Michael and Saoirse and their two little wains. But the whole of Cork will get to hear about their birthday party getting wrecked and they’ll be morto.’

‘Well… I won’t say that I couldn’t use the grade.’

Barry counted out another four hundred euros and pushed the notes towards him. Nocky hesitated for a moment, and then picked them up, clutching them in both hands like a child clutches a bag of sweets. His expression was still one of desperate indecision.

Feargal was standing in the far corner of the kitchen, by the fridge. He finished smoking his cigarette right down to the filter and then he flicked the butt into the sink and turned on the tap. ‘You’ll be fine, Nocky. Don’t you worry. It’ll be a piece of piss.’

‘Fetch one of the motors around here at 2.30 Saturday arvo and we’ll be set to go,’ said Barry. ‘But don’t be wearing that stupid fecking orangey cap of yours, otherwise you might as well stick a sign “Here Comes Nocky” in the windie.’

‘Okay, Bazza. I might as well take the Passat, then.’ Nocky picked up the car keys from the table, juggled them once in his hand and left, closing the kitchen door behind him.

Barry took out a cigarette himself, and Gavin leaned over to light it for him. Barry breathed two long streams of smoke out of his nostrils, and then said, ‘Right, then, Gavin, let’s see what you have in them bags of yours.’

Gavin lifted up two long black nylon bags and laid them side by side on the table. He unzipped one of them and opened it. Packed inside in three separate pieces was a Ruger SR-556, a semi-automatic rifle that could be taken apart and reassembled in a matter of seconds. The bags in which they were stowed looked completely innocuous, like shopping bags, and they had padded interiors so that the two receiver assemblies and the barrel system didn’t clank together when they were carried.

‘Johnny had only the two of these, like. But he gave me three handguns, too – two Glock ten-millimetres and a Sig-Sauer – and he swore that none of them was traceable.’

‘Holy Jesus!’ Barry choked on his cigarette smoke and he coughed and coughed, flapping his hand until he could get his breath back. ‘We won’t be needing more than them two Rugers. But I tell you, boy, this birthday party’s going to be one to remember. For us it is, any road. Not for those fecking O’Flynns. The whole lot of them will be lying in St Michael’s Cemetery with more holes in them than a kitchen colander.’

*