‘It’s hard to feel sleepy when the guy driving has a gun on the seat next to him,’ I said.

I could see Todor smiling a tight smile. Then he asked:

‘When you were younger did you ever think about becoming a priest?’

‘What a question.’

‘You strike me as ideal material. All that principle and virtue.’

‘But no belief.’

‘Really?’

‘I knew when I was around thirteen – as an altar boy being touched up by the local parish priest – that all the doctrine and dogma you all preach, along with that very comforting, dumb idea of eternal life, just didn’t add up for me. Call it my engineer’s brain. But I couldn’t make the leap into faith. Unlike you.’

‘Faith is something that has to overwhelm you. A bit, I guess, like falling in love.’

‘You ever fall in love, Father?’

‘Don’t ask me that, Brendan.’

‘Why not?’

‘Once.’

‘Did you ever act on it?’

‘That’s between me and my confessor.’

‘So that vow of chastity …?’

‘We’re not going there, my friend.’

‘To repeat what I told you earlier: I am no longer your friend.’

‘That’s a shame, Brendan. I still remain yours. Though you might hate me now for tricking you into all this you will thank me later … when you will have the latitude and new life you’ve been craving for years.’

‘But how can you have latitude, a new life, when it’s bought by dirty money?’

Nothing further was spoken until we passed by the motel where I slept the night before.

‘Fifteen minutes,’ I said.

‘I’ll text Teresa,’ Todor said.

‘Tell her in no way to approach the door when she gets there. As agreed I’m going in first.’

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘but we’ll be right after you.’

He now told Ricky to kill his music, as they had business to discuss. The silence after all those hours of heavy metal was a relief. Todor explained to him ‘the game plan’ once we arrived at the address. Ricky didn’t like it.

‘Say they try to sneak out the back?’ he asked.

‘It’s a trailer,’ I said. ‘There’s no back door. And it’s in the absolute middle of the desert. There’s nowhere to run to.’

‘I still don’t like the idea of him going in first,’ Ricky told Todor.

‘I trust him.’

Bing. A text on Todor’s phone. From Teresa.

‘She’s all cool with the plan,’ he told me.

‘She’s holding a gun on my daughter. She’s not cool.’