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deserve it. There’s something official about getting shot with a gun. It’s like the gas chamber, fucking guillotine. It’s kind of legitimate. Like once you got a gun you got to have somebody to shoot at. Load the magazine, pull the trigger and whatever you’re having yourself. But people don’t want to read about maniacs cutting people up with knives.’
    ‘You’re wrong there. I know you’re wrong. People love to read things like that. Innocent victim of sex fiend. Lapping it up. Sexual organs mutilated. Policemen with thirty years’ experience controlling their emotions.’
    ‘You’re right. There’s nothing like a set of mutilated sexual organs.’
    ‘Or a partially undressed corpse. Signs of recent intercourse .’
    ‘Like the slut must of done something to deserve it.’
    ‘We’re getting away from the point.’
    ‘Are you looking for a conspiracy theory here.’
    ‘Nothing like a good conspiracy theory when you’re drinking in a bar, you don’t know if you’re going to get yourself shot for walking in the door just.’
    ‘A cover-up at the highest level’d be better.’
    ‘Fuck you.’
    ‘Seriously.’
    ‘Seriously fuck you.’
    *
    Ryan left Coppinger at the bar and emerged cautiously on to the Ormeau Road. To be seen coming out of the Gasworks could formally identify you as a target. You looked for cover. You watched the headlights of oncoming cars, staring into the filament. Engine notes were important. Military vehicles had a high-pitched diesel whine which made you think of curfew breaches, peremptory orders to halt, unexplained gunfire in the night. Even the sound of his own feet seemed illicit. He thought about the file of blurred photographs at the paper of those who disappeared without explanation. Photographs taken at birthday parties, family gatherings. A sense of the inevitable about the self-effacing smile. Something is being masked, the bitter knowledge that they will soon find themselves lost in the untenanted houses of the dead.

five
    Dorcas said it was true she did conceal worries about Victor in her heart as anyone would. There was so much going on in the way of shootings and killings being committed on a regular basis and much of it covered up by government order as well. Though James once said not to worry, you had more chance of getting yourself hurt in a road crash or accident at work as you would have of getting shot – and he could prove it by statistics which surprised her. He could surprise you like that, she said, in the way he usually said nothing you thought he didn’t know what was going on. She knew for instance he concealed a passionate nature once, though you wouldn’t think it to look. It was a case of still waters.
    But Victor had this gift to make you laugh. Even when he was young he could have you in stitches by mocking the neighbours or acting the big gangster he saw in the pictures. But there were times you would see an anger and a darkness there so that he would fight often with other children. He had as many sides to his nature you couldn’t keep up. But he never raised his hand to her in all his born days nor would any son that loved his mother, though on occasions she put a strap to his backside taking no pleasure from it but being driven by a grim necessity of duty. When he was a child sometimes he would cry for no reason, which she understood as it was a frequent occurrence of her own nature, just starting for no reason when she was at the washing line or salt tears pricking her eyelids suddenly when she was out shopping so that attimes she was driven to refuge in a public toilet in the city centre to stay there with the tears tripping her.
    He had an eye for the women too. That was his father in him she thought. She had the opinion that women were an undue influence in his life. He was forever watching after them the way they walked and all. She reckoned that woman Heather had a hand in his destruction. To look at her you’d have thought that