‘Repeat: this is a waste of time,’ Dave said. Unable to pace in the car, his legs were jumping up and down, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. He looked like a guy missing the buzz of heroin. ‘We’re sitting here doing nothing but risking arrest.’

Brad didn’t look up from his phone. ‘Repeat: stop bloody moaning. You’ll run out of synovial fluid and then you’ll really moan.’

‘Whatever.’ He looked at Brad’s phone, saw that his colleague was scrolling through Varsity jackets for sale and said: ‘You could have just bleached the blood out instead of lopping the arms off.’

‘And walk round until then looking like I just killed someone?’

‘Look at your forehead. People would know the blood was from that. How are you going to find one with a B?’

Remembering, Brad looked down at the emblem on the jacket’s breast. ‘Shit.’

Dave laughed, then slapped the steering wheel impatiently. ‘Why isn’t Mick here?’

Brad sighed. ‘We’re here because he can’t be, aren’t we?’

‘Maybe he ran away to Germany already,’ Dave said. ‘Maybe for once his brain stopped to think, and he’s realised he’s made this situation a lot worse by trying to set-up Seabury and the woman. But that’s Mick. Shoot first, sod the questions. And he literally did shoot first, didn’t he? He’s going off the rails a bit, don’t you think? I mean more so than normal. Even the Germany thing proves that. Why not a country with no extradition, like Chile?’

That much was true: the man was getting more erratic, and less thorough. Brad put it down to ego. Akin to some undefeated boxer getting sloppy in the ring, Mick was taking more and more risks because he believed he was invincible. Of course, there was a pinch of lunacy, too. But he didn’t want to talk about that any longer.

‘Maybe he’s got a woman over there,’ he said. ‘I caught him checking out jewellery on his phone one time. He sometimes sends texts with that goofy grin you guys only get when wooing a lady.’

Dave laughed. ‘And I thought he’d turned celibate after his ex-wife died.’ He abruptly stopped laughing and sighed. ‘I shouldn’t be here. The plan was to nut Grafton and take his money, and we did that. I got ninety grand. That’s the house paid for, so what else do I need? Eh?’

‘I don’t know,’ Brad replied impatiently. He didn’t care.

‘Nothing, that’s what else. So why am I here? What can Grafton’s wife tell the cops now that Ramirez is out of the picture? Nothing that comes back on me. All we’re doing is risking everything with this foolishness.’

Brad had been waiting for the right moment to drop the bombshell. This wasn’t it, but Dave was pissing him off, so he said: ‘Ramirez is helping the cops, and he said they should look at the guys who hit The Savannah.’

He felt all nervous movement from Dave cease, turned his head and saw him glaring. ‘That’s a fucking joke, right?’

Brad needed a piss. He looked on the messy floor for a bottle. ‘Funny, eh?’

Dave slapped the dashboard. ‘So the cops have our names, that’s what you’re saying? Well, that’s a fucking escalation, isn’t it? Jesus Christ.’

‘I thought you didn’t care? You were worried like an old woman last night, but this morning you said everything was fine. That’s what you said.’

‘I didn’t care. We got away from the scene. No cops kicked in the door at three in the morning. New day, new outlook. But it’s fucking different when they’ve got our names, isn’t it? Jesus. My wife will kill me if we lose that house.’

‘Don’t forget she’ll also be a bit down in the dumps if you go in the slammer for thirty years,’ Brad said, sarcastically. ‘You’re not the only one with something to lose here, you know. I’ve got plans that I don’t want to see go down the toilet. I’ve got a life that I like enough to want to keep.’

Dave rubbed his face and cursed.

Brad said: ‘Anyway, the cops don’t have your name. But don’t worry either way. Mick will find a way to deflect the police away from us. Bear in mind they would have looked at people like us anyway, without Ramirez shooting his mouth off. I heard Grafton’s lot hit a rival’s place earlier, looking for leads. All his enemies will be targets. We’re grains of sand in a desert.’

‘Mick’s head’s a mess; so, how’s he going to sort it out? He can’t think straight. Everything that happened has clearly fucked him up. It explains why he overreacted with Grafton. Then that silliness killing Król just so he could get near Seabury’s wife. Now I hear he’s talking about watching Gold, Grafton’s solicitor. Is he going to kill him, too? And who’s gonna be in the cross hairs after that? Ever see that film, Six Degrees of Separation?’

‘Look, he’s just covering all eventualities. It makes sense, if you think about it. They’re on the run. Król was going to burn us. Seabury’s wife might know where her bloke would hide. And Grafton never took a shit without consulting his lawyer, so maybe his wife thinks that’s the guy to go to. She’s gotta know by now that her man’s dead and the world thinks she’s been kidnapped. Some papers even said she’s the killer. The cops were always trying to nail Grafton, and she probably believed his bullshit that it was bullying, so a station full of cops is the last place she’s going to walk into.’

‘What, you agree with all this shit? What’s Mick going to resort to if Grafton’s wife ends up telling the cops all about us? Bomb London to shift attention? Think you’ll kiss the ground he walks on when that happens?’

‘That’s a bit far-fetched.’ Bomb London. Brad remembered when Mick had uttered something along those lines. Unless I burned the whole world, I might miss him and never know it. A couple of years ago now, and Brad had forgotten all about it. Somewhere along the way Mick had well and truly gone off the rails. With it in mind, he added: ‘Anyway, I don’t think this is about keeping her silent any lon—’

‘“Far-fetched”? What, you mean like overkill? Let me explain overkill, Brad. Overkill is when you shoot a guy dead, and then have a little sit down to get your energy, and then grab a fucking chainsaw to dice him up. Tell me that’s the sign of a guy in full control of his grey matter? And we stood by and watched. A quick kill might have got us to the Pearly Gates, but there’s a special level of Hell waiting for us now.’

‘Hey, as Nietzsche said, all the interesting people are missing from Heaven.’ He grabbed an empty plastic Pepsi bottle off the floor. ‘I expected as much, to be honest.’ He unscrewed the lid, and then unzipped his jeans. ‘Maybe the chainsaw was OTT. And he asked me a scary question about life after death. Sort of thing your God-fearing ass would say. But we’re not in his position, are we? Who are we to judge? We don’t know what it’s like after everything he’s been through. Maybe I’d have done exactly the same to Grafton if he’d done that to m—’

‘Hey, don’t piss in that, man. It’ll go everywhere. There’s a petrol can in the boot.’

Brad tossed the bottle down and grabbed the door release lever.

Dave said: ‘I want out. I just wanted the money, and I’ve got it. I don’t owe him anything, so I’ve got no reason—’

‘What are you saying? That I owe him? He got me off a murder charge. He needed us to get to Grafton. It was a business deal. You think I’m doing this as a favour? I’m trying to save my own skin, that’s all. Got that? I don’t owe anyone anything, okay?’

‘Whatever, man. I’m just saying there’s no reason for us to be involved. Grafton’s dead, so we all got our payback. Payback and a paycheque. We should be happy.’

Brad didn’t know what to say to that. He knew Dave was right, and he wasn’t even sure exactly why he was going along with Mick’s plan any longer. Probably because he trusted the guy to keep them safe. He opened the door slowly and got out.

As he stood up he flicked a glance across the road at the Seabury house.