Mick might not be raging around like a psychopath, but he was acting without thinking and that made his actions just as dangerous. The idea to send him to kidnap Seabury’s wife, for example. A fucking joke. No way would he have obeyed that order. He would have pretended the girl was out.

Dave’s street was lined with semi-detached houses at the end of sloping gardens. A peaceful place, much coveted. Full of old people and respectable couples. He was glad to be home.

He wandered into the living room, and Lucinda sat up sharply. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

Fuck. He had to work on his poker face. He said: ‘Nothing,’ but knew it was useless. He could feel his clenched jaw, and the sweat on his hands. Sure enough, she got up and asked him what the hell had him worried. He knew there was no point in lying. So he said it. Mick had gone off the rails and he’d quit, got out of there.

‘You abandoned him? Did you just run away?’

Sure did, he told her. ‘We’re done with that. Is there any of that chicken left?’

Earlier, while she was counting the cash again, he’d seen that lovely smile, the one that had drawn him in and made him eventually slip a ring on her finger. Now, as she lifted two handfuls of notes from the bag by her chair and shook them before his face, the expression he saw beyond money was all anger.

‘You fucked him over? He’ll come for you, you dickhead. I’m not losing this because of your stupidity.’

‘He’s gone wild. The cops will be after him. No way he can stay out of custody with how mindless he’s become. Relax.’

He regretted that final word even as it left his lips.

Lucinda stamped a foot, like a child. ‘Relax, you moron? You think he can’t fuck us up from jail?’

‘He’s a bent cop. Cops hate that more than they hate criminals. Even if he gets solitary confinement, they’ll pretend to forget to lock his door and let some animals at him. I give him a week in jail, and then he’ll be in a grave like his—’

‘Go pack a bag,’ she cut in. ‘We’re out of here until this mess is cleaned up.’ And she was off, past him, with a barge of her shoulder into his chest.

He rushed up the stairs in pursuit, pleading: calm down, let’s think, where would we go, we can’t hide away. She grabbed a double handful of his clothing from the wardrobe, tugged it out hard enough to snap the plastic coat hangers. Tossed them at him. ‘That’ll do you for being stupid.’

He tried to argue, but it did no good. A punch on his arm got him going. He crammed the clothing into a gym bag and took it outside where all was peaceful. This was daft. Mick wouldn’t try anything in such a nice area. Hell, he probably wouldn’t try anything at all. He had bigger fish to fry.

He threw the bag into their car. Back in the house, he saw Lucinda scooping up the money. She ordered him to grab her clothing and to use the two suitcases in the spare room. All this urgency, and she wanted to pack as if for a month’s holiday? He grabbed a double handful of gear from the wardrobe. ‘That’ll do you for being a bitch.’ And he didn’t bother with a bag.

He dumped the clothing in the back of the car in a big old mess. Then he heard an engine approaching and scanned the street. A white car with some emblem on the side was cruising down the road. Some tradesman probably. He relaxed. And remembered his bike – parked on the road, where some fool would vandalise it.

As he was wheeling the bike onto the pavement, ready to guide it up the driveway, the van, just thirty feet away, leaped forward with a screech of tyres. Dave turned his head. The vehicle was on the pavement, and you’d need to be pretty stupid to not realise what the plan was here. And to think it didn’t involve Mick.

The car hit the bike, forcing it into Dave, sending man and machine bouncing along the road. Dave rolled and stopped and immediately tried to rise, but he was wobbly and his left leg gave way beneath him.

A guy rushed out of the car’s passenger side. He wore a balaclava with strands of curly hair poking out from the bottom. Dave didn’t recognise him. But just in case there had still been doubt, the knife in the guy’s hands cleared away any confusion in Dave’s mind. He was done. End of the line. Good night.

The masked man stopped, stabbed and sprinted: two seconds, job done. The car leaped away again like a horse out of the gate, wheels splashing through the blood migrating from Dave’s body.

The driver stuck his head out the window as the vehicle roared past him. ‘That’s for Andy Jones!’ he bellowed, louder than the car’s engine, and louder than whoever was screaming – Dave’s wife, he now knew, because there she was at the door, clutching wads of cash – loud enough for any face that had been drawn to a window.

The realisation set in. Andy Jones. A guy Dave had put in hospital back in the day. Retaliation, the cops would say. What goes around comes around. Just another bad apple getting what he was due. And nothing to do with Mick McDevitt. Little did they know.

His final image before he slipped into another world, or just black oblivion if all that afterlife stuff was bullshit, was of Lucinda pelting towards him, and a swirl of giant snowflakes raining around him. No, not snowflakes, not at all. Money. All that money, blowing down the street because the silly girl had dropped it. A hell to collect.

His last thought: Good job we didn’t change it all into fives.