‘If you’da done that, the pigs would’ve thought that he’d committed that hairy kirry, do you know what I mean?’

‘No, Milo, I didn’t want to chance it. They have the DNA now, don’t they, and the infrared? These days, Jesus, I saw it on the telly. They can practically tell if you’ve let off a breezer in the same street.’

They went back up to the booth where Thomas and Doran O’Flynn were waiting for them.

‘Well, did you sling him out?’ asked Thomas.

‘Not exactly, boss. He pulled a knife on me, so I had to sort him out, like.’

‘C’mere to me. What do you mean you had to sort him out?’

‘He shanked him, that’s what he means,’ said Darragh.

‘You fecking what? So where is he now?’

‘Still down in the jacks, I’d say.’

‘You know what you are, Breaslain, you’re a right fecking daw,’ said Doran, in his raspy voice. ‘What do you think’s going to happen now? Somebody’s going to call the shades and the next thing you know they’ll be going round the whole club asking everybody questions and taking fingerprints, including you. Did anybody see you shank him?’

‘No, but there was some beardy fellow in there when we first went in. We threw him out before anything went down, like.’

‘But he’d know you again, this beardy fellow?’

‘Look, Doran, it was self-defence, like. The bowsie came at me with a fecking knife this long. I took it off him, and what else was I supposed to do?’

‘You could have not shanked him, and slung him out the club like you was supposed to. Holy Saint Joseph and All the Carpenters!’

Thomas quickly swallowed the rest of his rum cocktail and stood up, pulling Muireann up by her arm. ‘Come on, we have to get out of here now. If anybody asks, we were gone before the feller got himself shanked.’

John Mary John had only just ordered himself another drink, and so he plucked out all the fruit, dropped it on to the floor, and gulped down the Bacardi and pineapple juice so quickly that it made him gasp for breath.