‘That’s right, that’s right,’ Fannigan said, wiping his mouth with his forearm. ‘You feeling okay?’ he said to Arm.

‘I am,’ Arm said.

Arm hunkered down where Fannigan had spat and dragged the boots over and piled the shirt and jumper on top of them. Fannigan, standing, still had his jocks and socks on. The socks were a particularly sad affair, Arm noted; once white, they were grimed to grey, cheap and nubbled and flecked with holes. Arm looked up at Fannigan.

‘Put the trousers down here with the rest,’ Arm said.

Fannigan was upright and had the upright’s advantage of height. A part of Arm wanted to scream at him to take his chance. To push Arm over, or run, or smash Arm’s skull with whatever conviction he could channel into his fists; just to try. But the acquiescent fucker only did as he was told, crouching down to Arm’s level and placing the folded jeans on top of the other clothes.

‘Douglas,’ he said. It was dark, but Arm could feel Fannigan’s eyes on him. Fannigan had been tuning in and out of this scenario, but he was back now, emphatically here, a lucid and crawlingly beseeching note in Arm’s name as he mouthed it. A plea.

‘Douglas,’ he said it again. ‘Listen. Listen. When I was a boy—’

It was right there, half sunk in the mud. Arm snugged his hand around it, a smooth, weighty oval, and aimed for Fannigan’s temple, where a delta of veinwork tremulously pulsed. The rock crushed into his head with a flat thud. His eyelids fluttered and he flopped bonelessly down onto the grass.

Arm had his arms in under Fannigan’s frame as quick as he could manage, and hefted the man up. Fannigan’s body was warm, and felt as if it might be convulsing a little. Arm waded into the river, moving deeper and deeper until the cold was cutting across the tops of his thighs, through his jeans. Arm puffed out his chest and threw Fannigan out towards the middle. He hit the water, sent up a plume of spray and was promptly spooled away on the current.

Arm clambered back up onto the bank and watched him go. Face down and arse up, Fannigan’s body was periodically sucked under the surface before bobbing into sight again. Soon it was nothing more than a diminishing speck in the narrowing turbulence, and then it was gone, baywards to the open sea.

Arm considered the wilted totem of clothing piled by the water’s edge. He figured these leavings would make it appear all the more premeditated, would tell the story of how Fannigan, in a suicidal funk, had ritualistically shed his shitty gear before throwing himself in the Mule. Arm picked up the rock he’d hit Fannigan with and pocketed it. He told himself that the dent on Fannigan’s head would be explained as him dashing against rocks as he was carried to sea. He was a drunk and a waster, Fannigan, and save for his mother Arm didn’t think anyone, neither the guards nor the coroner nor any other soul, would look to pursue an explanation beyond the apparent when it came to piecing together the why of his end.