Milne rolled over onto his front and levered himself up onto his knees. Trembling all the time. Knowing that without something to drink soon, he was going to die. The world tangoed round his head as he stood upright, the night sky swirling and pulsing. He took a deep breath and lurched towards the darkened row of cottages.

A security light blared into life, catching him halfway down the path, but he staggered on to the front door. Locked. Milne dragged out the keys he’d taken from the bastard who’d killed Josie and tried them in the lock, one by one. None of them worked.

He lurched across the garden and nearly fell over the waist-high fence, clambering into next door. The keys still didn’t fit. Another dose of the tremors grabbed him, shaking him to his knees. Leaving him gasping and wracked with cramp on the top step. The third house was the same, only this time he had to crawl through the garden to get to the front door. The keys were useless.

Give up. Just curl up on the path and die: get it over with.

But there was one more house left – the one on the end. Where McRitchie lived. McRichie would still be banged up in Craiginches, Milne could break in without having to worry about an irate householder coming after him with a shotgun.

It was pitch dark round the back of the cottages. Milne felt his way along the wall, stumbling over a pile of something that rattled and clattered, before finding McRitchie’s back door. It was one of the part-glazed kind beloved of housebreakers everywhere. Smiling, Milne tried to smash one of the panes with his elbow. It bounced, sending shooting pains racing round his body, making his whole arm feel like it was on fire. Biting his tongue he sank to his knees and nearly passed out.

Deep breaths. Deeeeeeep breaths … Oh God, he was going to be sick. But there was nothing to be sick with, just a thin string of bile, spiralling bitterly down the front of his soaking, stained clothes. He grabbed a rock from the garden and did the window properly, sending shards of glass shattering into the kitchen. Fumble with the lock and doorknob. And he was in. Oh thank God.

He slumped against the worktop and tried not to pass out. And tried—

It’s his birthday and he’ll cry if he wants to. Nineteen years old and his present is getting the crap beaten out of him by Colin McLeod over a small matter of an unpaid debt. Fifteen pounds. That’s all it takes for Colin McLeod to give him two weeks in hospital. Happy birthday.