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great certainties. Cast-iron, porcelain. The men who installed it built bridges, gasworks, canals. They were capable of assessing the qualities of a material, its interior conviction, and measuring it against their own. Brass taps, lead pipes. He heard a voice behind him, almost inaudible over the sound of flushing water. He waited to be pushed against the wall and interrogated, realizing it was a mistake to leave the crowded bar for this place which dealt in functional truths, and it was a minute before he recognized Coppinger’s voice.
    ‘Fuck’s sake, I reckoned you’d be skulking in here scared out of your shite, Ryan, you big girl’s blouse you.’
    *
    They sat in a corner away from the bar. Coppinger pointed to a sheet of fake wood stuck roughly over the bar.
    ‘There’s bullet holes behind that,’ he said. ‘Fuckers opened fire through the window last month.’
    Ryan had noticed people pointing out bullet marks and bomb sites. They added to the attraction of the city. Blood-spots on the pavement were marked by wreaths. Part of a dark and thrilling beauty.
    Coppinger was talking about the knife killing. He had been given a list of possible names for those involved. His informant had insisted that he did not write them down. They had to be committed to memory. Coppinger had sat for an hour in a parked car on the Ormeau embankment chanting names until it seemed that the recitation was an end in itself, a means offathoming the forces at work. As if the knowledge they were looking for was concealed in the names themselves. It seemed possible. It was a clear night. There was mist on the river and the words in his mouth became strange. He could have been naming distant galaxies. He began to detect elemental properties in these words devoid of their associations, the dense tribal histories attached to a name.
    ‘Who was mentioned?’
    ‘Darkie Larche. Onionhead Graham. Mostly Darkie’s crew. Problem is something like this isn’t Darkie’s style.’
    ‘Any idea where they’re operating out of?’
    ‘The usual places were mentioned. The Pot Luck. The Gibraltar. Maxies maybe.’
    ‘Anything else?’
    ‘Not a whisper. People’s jumpy as fuck on this one. You ring the peelers even and you talk to someone who won’t give their name and they pass you on to some other bastard won’t give his name and they put you on to the press office who says that investigations is continuing.’
    ‘Are they pursuing a line of enquiry? Are they looking for anyone in particular? The driver of a blue car seen in the vicinity? A woman walking her dog near the scene? A woman walking her dog’d be a good witness. It’s something to do with kindness to animals and regular habits.’
    ‘Nothing like that. Nobody round here sees nothing no more. Even a woman walking the dog’s looking the other way.’
    ‘Give me some of those names again.’
    ‘Darkie Larche. Onionhead Graham.’
    ‘I don’t know, where do they think they are? Chicago in the twenties? Maybe we should be looking for information from the fucking FBI, the fucking Pinkertons. Maybe it’s just the police know fuck-all, sounds like they know fuck-all.’
    ‘It’s like everybody’s frightened, the peelers and all. Even the hard men’s worried. Word is you mention the subject to them they go buck mad. Like don’t remind them. Hard enoughto find out things as it is but this one’s buried far as everybody’s concerned. I don’t know why you’re so worried. There’s enough going on every day to keep you busy for a month, even if you do find something out you’ve got an editor won’t touch the stuff if it was money and I think he’s right. Like nobody wants to read about it. Like nobody wants to see pictures of starving darkies on the TV. Somebody gets shot they don’t mind so much. It’s like the poor shot fucker could’ve got out of the road if he’d any sense and not stood in front of guns going off. Or maybe it’s like he must of done something to