Oh fuck, my head was going to detonate. And Klara was crazy crying next to me. I wanted to pull over and fall apart too. But I knew that the cops and the ambulances would be here in moments and I had to get us off this fucking dirt track. Even if we were innocent … once Kelleher found out that we were witnesses to all that went down we might just have a price on our heads. And a cheap price at that.

It was a relief to leave the gravel and hit the two-lane blacktop. I turned right, heading toward the highway. As soon as I made that turn I heard the roar of sirens in the oncoming distance. Two cop cars, two ambulances, racing down the road. Zooming right past us. Immediately Klara popped open the glove compartment and shut away the gun in her hand.

‘They should be there in a couple of minutes,’ I said.

‘If she dies …’

‘She won’t die.’

‘The baby is dead,’ Klara said.

‘And Teresa was the murderer.’

‘We could have stopped it.’

‘How? We had nothing to do with –’

‘We could have fucking stopped it!’

I said nothing. Except:

‘We are going to run out of gas in about thirty miles.’

I glanced at the clock on the dash. 1.12 a.m.

‘We can find a station that’s closed,’ I said, ‘where they have one of those cash-machine pumps. No one can see us with all this blood.’

‘That fucking priest … he’s the one with blood on his hands. He’s the one who killed Elise, who killed Amber’s baby … and maybe Amber herself.’

‘She’s going to live.’

‘How the fuck do you know that?’

‘She’s going to live. And so are we.’

Ten miles down the road, right before the turn onto the highway, there was a small Sunoco station closed for the night. I fed a twenty into the slot that allowed you to buy gas after hours. As I filled the tank I asked Klara to pop the trunk and bring out the black duffel bag that Ricky had brought with him. When she opened it she let out a sharp ‘Holy shit’. When I got back into the car Klara announced to me that the bag was filled with cash. A large amount of cash.

‘That must have been Kelleher’s advance to Todor,’ I said, ‘as he told me that Ricky brought it along for him. Or maybe it was going to Teresa as a payoff for helping out. Todor also told me I was going to get paid for being dragged into this – not that I’d take their fucking money.’

‘That cash has blood all over it. And I now need to get out of the country for a while … but not with that money.’