I lifted the door a couple of inches. First observation: it didn’t explode. (I know that sounds crazy, but a lot of scenarios had run through my head, and the whole thing being rigged to blow was, I’m ashamed to admit, one of the least outlandish ones.) I didn’t open it so slowly for suspense: the door was iced in its joints. It took a great heave to open it enough to see even a small slit of the darkness behind it. My gloveless hands felt seared by the icy metal. I went to give it another heave, when a hand on my arm stopped me.

‘Maybe this is just for you,’ Erin said. ‘At first.’

Erin clearly knew something about what was in there. She’d helped Michael dig it up, after all. She thought it was money, or valuables at least, which, based on it needing to be transported by truck, meant there was a lot of it. Michael told me to only trust you. Michael had said the same thing to me directly, that I was the only one he trusted by virtue of me testifying against him. He’d allowed himself to be sequestered in a putrid sock drawer just to give me the keys in private. Sofia and Crawford weren’t supposed to tag along. Erin was right.

‘I need a minute to see for myself.’ I raised my voice above the wind. ‘Um . . . it might not be safe.’

I knew this was thin. Sofia rolled her eyes. I wondered whether she was more annoyed at being excluded or because each time I took Erin or Michael’s side she imagined she was getting further away from a chunk of the money. It occurred to me that it might have been why she’d interrupted us in the maintenance shed when she did: it was conveniently just after Erin and I had found our common ground and started to talk like a team. I expected more resistance from Crawford, for any number of reasons (chain of evidence, witnesses, any semblance of competent police work), but it seemed he’d given up trying to be a cop entirely. Erin shepherded them both around the side of the truck and, with two more frost-cracking heaves, I had the door open.

The air was still so thick with ice and the sky so grey that even open, the inside of the truck wasn’t well lit enough to see all the way into. The walls were lined with the usual ropes and straps for moving furniture. But I could see a very specific shape further back. It looked like a . . .

I couldn’t be sure; I needed a closer look. I clambered into the cabin. The truck squeaked and rocked on its wheels as I walked over to the object. The air was stale and smelled of, of all things, fresh dirt. We dug something up.