Back when I’d been trying to find who killed Stewart’s sister, I spent a lot of hours with the Down syndrome child of my close friends Jeff and Cathie. The little girl filled me with wonder and yearning; I felt my life had some meaning. Her gurgle of delight when I read to her did what gallons of Jameson failed to do: it gave me ease. Her terrible death, literally in my presence, was a lament of such horrendous proportions that I had a complete breakdown and was in a mental hospital for months. Some things you never reconcile and Serena-May was my daily burden of love and care, crushed beyond all recognition.

I prayed for Cody, my surrogate son, dead because of me. Back in the time of the Tinkers, I’d taken on a young impressionable kid, one of those wannabe American young Irish who saw the world through a cinema lens. In the beginning, I’d given him literally errands to run but, over time, we’d developed a bond, so that I came to regard him as the son I’d never have. It was a time of richness, of joy, of fulfillment in my shattered life. And, what the Gods give….they sure as fuck take away.

Mercilessly.

He was cut down by a crazed sniper with a hard-on for me.

His loss was a cross I’d never climb down from.

Finally, I asked that I might find a modicum of peace.

It’s not what you read, or even study, it’s how you bend the material to shape and endorse your own dark designs.

– Caz, Romanian domiciled in Galway

The basement was lit by thirteen black candles. A flat slab of granite in the rough design of a headstone was supported by beer crates and acted as a table. Three ordinary kitchen chairs were placed thus:

Two on the right side.

One, almost forlorn, on the left.

Top of the table was an ornate throne, rescued from a theatrical shop-like most businesses, gone bust, and the throne had been dumped in the skip. It had been cleaned up and now was alight with velvet cushions and a decorative banner, proclaiming “The New Order.”