‘Be fast.’

I watched Klara tackle the fence with rapid determination. Though it was about twelve feet high she scaled it in under a minute. I was anxious when she had to lift one leg over and carefully manage her way to the other side – as a twelve-foot fall can do some serious damage. But she handled crossing over to the other side with great skill. Once on the ground she walked over to where a line of cars seemed to be waiting for the giant metal compactor that took up a major part of the yard. She approached an ancient, rusted Oldsmobile. I saw her reach inside and slip the gun under its front seat. Then she returned to the fence and was back over to me in two minutes.

‘Neatly done,’ I said.

‘Decided not to put it in the glove compartment or the trunk as someone might do one final check in there before the thing gets turned into a cube. Hid it in the springs under the passenger seat. And I removed the magazine and put it nearby so the gun doesn’t go “boom” when crushed. Hopefully that’s the end of my Glock. Now I want to check the trunk of our car.’

‘What might be in the trunk?’

‘A way out of this.’

I got out of the car. As soon as my feet touched the ground I was hit with a full-scale attack of the shakes. I had never known anything so severe as this before – my entire body overcome with a tremble that caught me by the throat, sent waves of pain up my left arm, and had me clutching the door handle of the car, holding on to it as if it was the only thing that was going to keep me upright. Klara didn’t see any of this – as she was at the back of the car, digging into the trunk, suddenly holding up a green vinyl object.

‘She kept a windbreaker in the trunk.’

An hour later, as the clock was closing in on 2.30 a.m. and I was truly beginning to fight exhaustion, we found ourselves on the outskirts of a small town. There was a Motel 6 up ahead.

‘We’ve got to stop,’ I said.

‘Okay, let me handle it all,’ Klara said. ‘Pull over first.’

We were still around five hundred yards from the hotel. It was pitch-dark outside and hot. Eighty-five degrees according to the indicator on the dashboard. I braked for a moment. Klara stepped out and put on the windbreaker, cursing the heat outside. When she got back in moments later I asked her if the clerk at the front desk might wonder why she was wearing a jacket in the middle of a night when it was nearly ninety degrees outside.