“Really,” said Breen.

“Broad daylight, I swear. People I’m seeing are not just thieves, or B and E go-boys. These are serious people. You can feel the voltage off them. It’s nothing for them to go to Amsterdam and do deals, or Bangkok — anywhere.”

“I heard that.”

“The cops don’t want people to know the situation. Oh sure, they make statements and they talk about the new seizure laws and all the rest of it. What they don’t say, is that they’re not on top of this at all.”

“Scary.”

“You’re telling me. The hair stands up on the back of my neck. It’s life or death stuff. There are no laws for these people, no rules. Psychopaths.”

“Russians, I heard? Eastern Europe stuff?”

“You’re reading my mind! That’s in the story too. When the old guard, the Dubs let’s call them, decide to settle with all these fellas coming into the country and starting their own gigs.”

Breen leaned in over the table.

“Is that what’s going on at the moment, these shootings the past while?”

“‘Spring cleaning,’ Murph calls it.”

“Murph.”

“My contact, takes me around and about. My tour guide. Told me that the guy killed the other night was a friend of his. The name of Mulhall, I think.”

“Really,” said Breen. “Isn’t that kind of, well, too close for comfort? Pardon the cliche and all that.”

“Well Murph doesn’t seem to think so. ‘It’s only messers and two-timers need to worry,’ says he.”

“And this character was a friend of his,” said Breen. “What does he say about his enemies, I wonder.”

Fanning couldn’t be sure if Breen was ahead of him here in the irony stakes. He thought again of their early days together as students, when Breen was an awkward gobshite that he had taken under his wing in the Film Society.

“Murph’s not the fastest bunny in the forest, I have to say,” he said.