‘If someone’s looking for the money, I’ve got to draw them away from you. I don’t know if anyone is, I’m just saying. In case. I’m not risking you two for any amount of money in the world. Don’t look at me like that.’

‘Where would you stay?’

‘In here.’

‘In the van?’

‘Yeah.’

He looked at her deadpan. ‘You’re going to stay in the van?’

She shrugged. ‘So what?’

‘Yeah, that’s not happening. If anyone’s going to be staying in the van and drawing anyone away, it’ll be me.’

She was about to protest when instead she took out the money she’d withdrawn and counted half and passed it to him.

‘What’s this for?’26

‘We spend our own money for now, not a penny of what’s in the case, not until we’re sure it’s ours.’

‘Why?’

‘If it has to go back, which it won’t, I don’t want to owe anyone anything, not a penny. Okay?’

‘Orla, I’m not—’

‘Which exit did Fran say to come off at?’

62

The dead-end street of terraced houses was quiet and still but for a tabby vanishing behind a bin. It watched the Defender pull up and when the engine cut it leapt up a vandalized wall and slunk among shards of bottle glass. The Banskins stepped out hooded in dark green ponchos and accompanied by the Dobermann. Dolan tapped on the McCabes’ front door. Joseph stepped back and studied the windows. Nothing. They turned and looked at the facing houses. A sweating postwoman on her toiling rounds. An invisible plane booming through clouds. Wheelie bins everywhere.

They circled the houses and went down a cobblestone alley. Joseph scaled the rear wall into a paved backyard and opened the gate, allowing Dolan and the dog entry. He shut the gate while Dolan tried the kitchen door. Locked. Joseph stepped back and then put his boot into the door below the handle, and Dolan seized the door to stop it swinging inward. They stood there in the ringing silence, listening, waiting. Then they entered.27

They moved through the kitchen, looking in cupboards and on top of them, on the fridge, under the sink. Dolan poured the dog a bowl of water and tipped a packet of sliced ham from the fridge on to the kitchen floor. Joseph opened a door to a space under the stairs used for shoes and coats and an ironing board and he upended the lot and found nothing. He picked out one of Orla’s T-shirts from a laundry basket beside the fridge and rubbed it into the dog’s muzzle.