"I hope so," I said.

"You're, what--twenty-seven?"

"Twenty-six."

The light through the window was on my face and he gave me a long, considering look. "You can do twenty-one, no problem. Says here you've three years of college. Where?"

"Trinity. Psychology."

His eyebrows shot up, mock-impressed. "Ah, a professional. Why didn't you finish?"

"I developed an unknown-to-science allergy to Anglo-Irish accents," I told him.

He liked that. "UCD going to bring you out in a rash?"

"I'll take my antihistamines."

Frank hopped off his desk and went to the window, motioning me to follow. "OK," he said. "See that couple down there?"

A guy and a girl, walking up the street, talking. She found keys and let them into a depressing apartment block. "Tell me about them," Frank said. He leaned back against the window and hooked his thumbs in his belt, watching me.

"They're students," I said. "Book bags. They'd been food shopping--the carrier bags from Dunne's. She's better off than he is; her jacket was expensive, but he had a patch on his jeans, and not in a trendy way."

"They a couple? Friends? Flatmates?"

"A couple. They walked closer than friends, tilted their heads closer."

"They going out long?"

I liked this, the new way my mind was working. "A while, yeah," I said. Frank cocked an eyebrow like a question, and for a moment I wasn't sure how I knew; then it clicked. "They didn't look at each other when they were talking. New couples look at each other all the time; established ones don't need to check in as often."

"Living together?"

"No, or he'd have automatically gone for his keys as well. That's her place. She has at least one flatmate, though. They both looked up at a window: checking to see if the curtains were open."

"How's their relationship?"

"Good. She made him laugh--guys mostly don't laugh at a girl's jokes unless they're still at the chat-up stage. He was carrying both the Dunne's bags, and she held the door open for him before she went in: they look after each other."

Frank gave me a nod. "Nicely done. Undercover's half intuition--and I don't mean psychic shite. I mean noticing things and analyzing them, before you even know you're doing it. The rest is speed and balls. If you're going to say something or do something, you do it fast and you do it with total conviction. If you stop to second-guess yourself, you're fucked, possibly dead. You'll be out of touch a lot, the next year or two. Got family?"

"An aunt and uncle," I said.

"Boyfriend?"

"Yes."

"You'll be able to contact them, but they won't be able to contact you. They going to be OK with that?"

"They'll have to be," I said.

He was still slouching easily against the window frame, but I caught the sharp glint of blue: he was watching me hard. "This isn't some Colombian cartel we're talking about, and you'll be dealing mostly with the lowest ranks--at first, anyway--but you've got to know this job isn't safe. Half these people are binned out of their heads most of the time, and the other half are very serious about what they do, which means none of them would have any problem with the idea of killing you. That make you nervous?"