Mick cursed almost all the way home, but mellowed a little when he started to think about Ronald Grafton. Specifically, his eyes. He dumped his bag of Grafton’s goodies in the hallway and turned off the light in his son’s bedroom. Then he called Brad.

‘The police are onto the Volvo,’ he snapped. ‘Tell me you two put that thing back in the garage, please?’

‘Yeah,’ Brad said. ‘Shit. Wait, if you have to ask that, it means they haven’t actually found it.’

‘Tell me you sterilised it?’

‘We sterilised it. Don’t worry. So they haven’t physically found it?’

Mick sighed. Pure relief. ‘Some interfering and helpful good citizen saw us driving near Grafton’s, that’s all. Got the reg. Called it in when he saw flashing blue lights around Grafton’s place. But if it’s sterile, we’re okay. No CCTV near that garage.’

‘Have we got to move it?’

‘We can’t. If it’s seen on the roads, it’s grabbed and whoever’s in it. We’ll just leave it. No one goes there. If it’s sterile, they’ll get nothing from it.’

‘Okay. So that’s not bad news at all, really. What about Ramirez?’

Mick quickly explained.

‘Of all the fucking alibis,’ Brad said. ‘What can you do about it?’

Dave had watched Ramirez and his girlfriend enter the flat and determined that the couple was staying in for the night, so he’d looked good for a weak alibi. Except for the damn video camera. Ramirez’s home video had showed him fucking his girlfriend to a live football match on TV. They began at the opening whistle, and Ramirez tried to finish at the final blow, but got there as the players were swapping shirts. Right around the assumed time of death. And it wasn’t a pre-recorded or plus-one channel because there was a moment when an elbow caught the TV remote and flicked the channel onto a news show.

‘It was to buy time. It bought time.’

‘And maybe the arrest will be proof enough for Grafton’s men to take revenge.’

There was a pause between the men. Mick turned on the TV because the silent house unnerved him. He still hadn’t got used to it.

‘Hey, do you remember how Grafton’s eyes changed when his head came off? Like his brain was still alive and registering? Is that possible?’

More silence from Brad. Mick wondered if he was reliving earlier events. They hadn’t been out of Mick’s mind all night.

He wasn’t: ‘I’m sure you hope so. I don’t remember. It’s all a blur. Fucking hope it stays that way. So Ramirez is no longer in the frame?’

‘Apparently not. But he got a headache.’ An idea popped into his own throbbing head. ‘Call someone to brick Ramirez’s mum’s windows. Write a note to make him think Grafton’s boys are coming for payback. He’ll jump at every sound for the next ten years. Hopefully they’ll really come for him.’

‘Sure. So, if he’s not part of this any more, it doesn’t matter if Liz Grafton saw a white face. It doesn’t matter what she tells the police, right? So, we don’t need to go after her. You should cancel Król.’

That surprised him. Was Brad losing his nerve, or just not thinking straight? ‘Her dick husband is dead, Brad. When she learns that, she realises that there’s no reason not to tell everything. When a bad guy gets cut down, coppers don’t just look at the guy’s enemies, Brad. They look at his own people, too. Past and present. In case someone close to him decided to betray him. She’ll give names. One of those names will be Brad Smithfield. Maybe she even recognised him just from the eyes.’

The pause of a man weighing up dangerous news. Finally, Brad said: ‘That won’t stand up in court.’

‘Court is okay for you? You’re okay with a murder trial? You’re okay with the police suspecting you and snooping into your life? I’m surprised. Not something I’m willing to risk.’

‘Mick, this isn’t about security, it’s about revenge.’

Now Mick fell silent for a time. Something Brad had said flashed in his brain: I’m sure you hope so. Now he understood: Brad assumed that Mick was only concerned with causing more suffering. Clearly, he was underestimating Grafton’s wife’s role in all of this. ‘Grafton was what he was because of her. Behind every great man stands a great woman, you know?’

Brad said: ‘She hasn’t got a bad bone in her body, Mick. You think she turned him into a criminal? He hid ninety per cent of what he did from her. She didn’t like it. She only settled for his lifestyle because she was there way before he stole his first pound. Creeping normality, that’s the term. He was a gangster before she knew it.’

‘Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man. Heard that one? Maybe she made him exactly who he was. Maybe without her he would have been a priest. Maybe she ran the fucking empire from behind the scenes, new-world-order style.’

Brad chuckled again. ‘Okay, Mick. Whatever floats your boat.’

Mick’s voice raised a notch. ‘She was part of him, Brad. They were one together. You’ve seen that fucking tattoo, haven’t you? She’s a piece of him, and I want every piece of him dead.’ There, he had admitted it. He’d said it out loud. ‘I don’t even know why I’m bothering to explain this to you. You need to concentrate on the fact that she could fuck everything up for you. No more bar in Thailand. You can say goodbye to that dream.’

‘Look, we’ll do her, fine, okay. You’re right, she could fuck things up for me. I’m in. Just keep your own weird reasons to yourself, okay? Did you call Król?’

Mick didn’t want to let it go. He felt he was being mocked. But so what? If Brad didn’t understand, it didn’t matter. Results mattered. Satisfaction mattered. He took a breath.

‘He’s on it. Her and the guy who picked her up. Both will cease to be by morning.’

‘And then who’s next?’

‘What?’

Brad sighed. ‘Nothing. So I can go back to sleep, then?’ he said, and hung up without waiting for an answer.

---

Mick found sleep impossible. He loaded Facebook Messenger and sent a message to Alize, a girl in Germany he’d been corresponding with for a few months now. She was always quick to reply, no matter how late, but he was too wired to sit and await her response. He wandered the house. He felt burdened and had a load of pent-up energy to get rid of. He took the rubbish out to the wheelie bin, making the loose change in his jacket jingle. When he tossed the coins into Tim’s money jar, a large container once bearing boiled sweets, he felt the cogs slicken once more.

Alize got back to him.

She crafted and sold bamboo chairs for a living, an art he was planning to have her teach him. He told her he was good, couldn’t wait to see her soon, and then stripped and put on a pair of shorts. A thirty-minute workout, with a photo of Grafton’s face stuck on the punchbag, turned placidity into euphoria. A feeling no drug could match. A feeling he hadn’t experienced since he turned off the chainsaw, seemingly days ago.