When the phone rang, I was sitting at the kitchen table. My brothers were upstairs.

Yeah, I said ‘brothers’. We’ll get to that.

The TV was still on, but Mum had switched the sound off a while ago, saying she just couldn’t listen to the reporter anymore. There was a helicopter shining a searchlight on a petrol station – it looked like a police car had run into the big white ice freezer, with split bags of ice scattered across the crumpled bonnet – but I still didn’t know anything was wrong. Mum must have had an inkling because even though she was pretending to be uninterested, I noticed too many sideways glances to the TV. And she kept tactically invading my view of the screen by deciding she definitely did need to rummage in that particular cupboard or it was the perfect time to rub this particular spot of the bench raw with Jiff. Then that ring. The phone was wall mounted, next to the door. She picked it up. I remember the thunk of my mother’s head on the doorframe. Her whispering: ‘Goddamn it, Robert.’ I knew she wasn’t talking to him.

I don’t know exactly how it actually happened. If I’m honest, it’s something I’ve never really wanted to dig too deep into, but I’ve managed to piece it together over the years from news reports, asides from my mother, and memories of the funeral, so I’ll tell you that. In my version of events there are necessarily a few assumptions, mixed with some parts I’m pretty confident about, as well as the things I know for sure.

Let’s start with the assumptions. I assume the petrol station had one of those silent alarm buttons. I assume the attendant had a pistol in his face, but managed to scrape his quivering fingertips along the underside of the counter until he found that button. I assume that button sent a message to the police station, who wired it to the nearest patrol car.

Now for the stuff I’m pretty confident in. I’m pretty confident the shooting started before the patrol car came to a stop. I’m pretty confident getting shot in the neck is a slow and painful way to die; I’ve heard it’s like drowning. I’m pretty confident the driver was the first one hit. And I’m pretty confident the bullet in his neck was why he crashed into the ice freezer.

Here’s what I know for sure. That the passenger-side policeman got out of the car, walked into the service station and shot my dad three times.