The blonde girl screamed, and as soon as her friends saw why she was screaming, they started screaming, too. Her boyfriend and another boy elbowed their way up to the DJ’s stage together and shouted at him to shut off the music and switch on all the house lights.

For a few moments after the lights went up there was pandemonium. With a noise like a pebbly tide going out, the dancers shuffled as far back from the young drug-dealer’s body as they could, leaving a wide circle around him. The girls were weeping and the boys were swearing in shock and knocking over chairs and the DJ was on the phone with one finger in his ear, trying to make himself heard as he called for an ambulance.

By now, Thomas O’Flynn and his companions were walking quickly along Oliver Plunkett Street, which was still crowded with drunks and young revellers from other clubs like Gorby’s and Havana Brown’s. A soft rain was falling, which made the night sparkle. Thomas’s Audi was parked in a disabled bay in Pembroke Street, around the corner from the GPO. Thomas and Doran climbed into the front seats while Muireann and John Mary John and Breaslain squeezed into the back. Darragh and Milo went further up to Smith Street, where they had parked in front of somebody’s garage. The garage owner knew who they were, which is why he never complained.

Before he started the engine, Thomas looked into his rear-view mirror. ‘Right. We left at twenty past eleven, got it? We were the seven wise monkeys. We saw nothing, we heard nothing, and no matter what you ask us, we’re not going to say nothing.’

‘I didn’t do nothing, neither,’ put in Breaslain. ‘If the pigs ask me about that bowsie being shanked, I’ll tell them it wasn’t me, no way. And I have no notion at all what might have happened to the knife, afterwards.’

Thomas closed his eyes for a moment, crossed himself, and said, ‘Jesus. Please help me.’

17

Katie had just switched off her bedside lamp when her phone played Mo Ghille Mear. She was so tired that she was tempted to ignore it, but it kept on and on until her answering service took the message. She switched the lamp on again and when she saw who had been trying to ring her she pressed callback.

Muireann answered almost instantly, as if she didn’t want anybody else to hear that her phone was ringing. She spoke so quietly that Katie could hardly hear her, so she guessed that Thomas O’Flynn might be close by.

‘Muireann, it’s Kathleen.’

‘I’ll have to be quick, like. But if you haven’t heard already, there was a young fellow stabbed to death in the Zombie Lounge tonight.’