Lorraine would say afterwards that she was smitten straight off with Paddy Farrell. You could tell that he was occupying the room in a different way, he found the spaces that fitted him. She was the kind of girl the papers called vivacious, always a bit of dazzle to her.
You know it's not going to end well.
Paddy worked the border, a place of road closures, hijacked cars, everything bootleg and tawdry, nobody is saying that the customs are paid off, but they are. This is strange terrain, unsolid, ghosted through by phantoms of the drop zone. Lorraine imagines she'll die by her lover's side in some bullet- riddled leave taking.
Paddy's dirty money needs to be cleaned and that's where Brendan's Bureau comes in. Money Changed. Fake wood with a teller's window in the middle, bullet proof glass through which you could see the cross-border traffic going from Belfast into the border hinterlands and beyond to Dublin.
Brendan's business is all about money, the getting of it, the love of it and the spending of it. But where there's money there's trouble and Brendan's trouble is that he can't stop saying yes. Cash-flow crises, dishonoured cheques, angry armed customers, violent consequences. This is a time when people disappeared without warning, a time of unexplained shootings, clandestine alliances, betrayal.
Lorraine knows in her heart that Paddy will leave her, that his dangerous business is an excuse, but she'll take her own decisions. Subterfuge and deceit weren't currencies restricted to the Bureau.
