He had saved the copper’s number in his mobile under the name “Paddy,” and he had added two digits to each number in case anyone ever snooped through his numbers there. Molloy — no: Tommy Malone. It was Murph told him about Malone, warned him about him. Malone was a Dub, and he was smart. He knew the score in Dublin nowadays, with everyone paranoid and jumpy, and looking for a place to hide, or an escape hatch from this dump of a city. Malone was doing what coppers always did, putting out feelers, trying to get fellas to grass on the higher-ups.

But according to Murph, Malone talked serious money. He hinted that he could even deliver the whole package, even a new identity. According to Murph anyway: as far as that went. He didn’t believe Murph on the last part, but money could sort a lot of issues.

This was the end of the lane ahead. He slowed, his chest pumping in the cold air and his own hot, rank breath coming back over his face. It was definitely the lie-low-and-wait option.

There was a car up ahead, not moving. Green, older Jap car: a Corolla? Someone was standing behind its half-opened driver’s door, a man in a leather jacket. He had noticed Mulhall too. He did not seem in the least bit put-out to be seeing a man in a T-shirt on a cold spring morning, holding something the shape of a gun.

Mulhall stopped, undecided. There was a faint smell of aftershave, or cologne or something expensive. In this laneway, here in this kip, on a lousy damp cold Dublin morning? Hallucinating, that’s what it must be surely.

But it was too quiet here. It’d have to be back the other way, he decided, over the walls and off through the gardens. He picked a cement block wall a half-dozen houses away and headed for it at a jog.