“No, what about yourself?”

“I’m a social security drinker.”

I’d gone to London with a plan. There are few things more lethal than an alcoholic with a plan. Here was mine. Go to London and get a flat in Bayswater. As near to the park as it gets. Preferably with a bay window. Watch those grey squirrels along the Serpentine. In the plan, the woman I’d loved would come to her senses and realise how much she missed me. She’d fly to London and, somehow or other, she’d find me. Just one fine day, it would have to be a fine day, she’d miraculously find me, and happiness would be sealed. All I had to do was wait and she’d show. Or if I stayed away long enough, a letter would arrive from her, telling me how much she missed me and would I please take her back?

What I got was a bedsitter in Ladbroke Grove. Consoled myself with delusion. I’d been weaned on Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks”. Among a richness of great songs, “Astral Weeks” stood out. Told myself I was living it. The reality was as close to nightmare as you get. The grove is now a long stretch of urban decay. The human wreckage vies for space with the garbage. A mix of aromas hits you as soon as you begin to venture along it. From the inevitable curry through urine to that pervasive stench of abandonment.

Leaving Galway, I’d left behind a string of deaths. My case had involved the apparent suicide of a teenage girl. The investigation had led to -

Witness this:

Three murders.

Four, if you count my best friend.

My heart being hammered.

Tons of cash.

Exile.

Imagine if I’d been competent.

Oh yeah, and there’s the possibility that my involvement caused the death of a teenage girl. I had to bite down and swallow hard lest I add my own name to the list of fatalities. I could trot out the sickest defence line of the decade: