I wrote a long bollocking post about the whole thing not so long ago and who the folk Conor might have got on the bad side of. It's more gangsters associated with the Kinahan's; sub contractors.
They're in the business of dealing drugs and killing anyone with the surname Hutch - regardless of whether they're involved in the feud or not. They killed a chap last week who was a run of the mill criminal just because he was associated with one of the Hutch's and his Father was murdered by them last year also.
If Conor felt or was told his life was in threat, he'd be laying low, imo, and he wouldn't be posing for pictures with lads from London as a 'fuck you' to the Kinahan's 'look who I'm hanging around with' I have no idea what happened in the pub, but I'd say something did happen in all likeliness. It was either blown out of proportion, ie; Conor accidentally struck the Father of someone who has supposedly organized hits - and even if he did - I doubt they'd have him sorted out for that, not because of who is and they idolize him, but because it's a regular thing that happens in pubs and not worth doing anything that would draw attention on them.
Anyway, there's being a lot of hitmen picked up by the Guards here, so it's plausible there's an informant in the gang, they're under more surveillance and they need to keep their heads down. Because the name of the gang has a surname, I think everyone assumes they're a tight knit family gang. There's only two of the sons still involved in crime, supposedly, the Father 'retired' a long time ago and his son is supposed to be hiding away. There's stories that he's going to get topped off by his own mob.
That's what I understand the way things are from 1 or 2 of the credible journalists who have contacts with the Guards and informants. But even when they do their stories originally, a lot of it is updated later on.
