‘Just get out,’ said Nicolas, waving the revolver towards her.

‘You don’t understand,’ the man by the freezer cabinet told him. ‘There’s hardly any food left. This is the last place, just about. How are we going to feed our kids? We’ve got kids.’

Nicolas looked from one face to the other. It wasn’t hard to see that they were as frightened as he was. These weren’t the hard, amused faces of shakedown artists, or street hoodlums. These were just ordinary people caught in a desperate and unfamiliar act. He felt sorry for them, almost. But he felt protective towards Dolores, and himself, too; and, after all, the food in this delicatessen was his, not theirs, no matter how many kids they had.

‘Go,’ he admonished them.

There was an uncomfortable pause, but then the Greek-looking man in the army fatigues reached down behind the bread rack and lifted up a shotgun. It wasn’t the kind of shotgun you saw on the streets, sawed off, with hardly any stock. It was a long-barrelled hunting gun, still shiny with oil.

Nicolas veered the revolver across the store. ‘Drop it,’ he said. ‘Put it down, or I’ll shoot you.’

The Greek-looking man said, ‘This food in here – you think that you’re going to keep it all to yourself? All of it? Just because you’re a storekeeper you think you’ve got some God-given right to survive while everybody else starves?’

Nicolas didn’t even want to think about it. He said, ‘I’m giving you three. You understand me? Three, and then I shoot.’

The Greek-looking man, still holding the shotgun, looked across at the man by the freezer. A question passed between them, unspoken but obvious. Nervously, instantly, Nicolas fired.

The first shot missed. The revolver bucked in his hands, and he heard the bang of broken glass at the back of the store, followed by a sudden rush of green olives from three broken jars. He fired again, before he could allow himself to think, and the Greek’s shoulder burst apart in a spray of gory catsup. The girl shrieked, a silly short shriek that made Nicolas frown at her as if he couldn’t believe anything so ridiculous. And then there was a deep, deafening bavvooom! and Nicolas realised with strange slow horror that the Greek had fired back at him with his shotgun, and that he’d been hit, badly hit, in the belly and the thighs. He was shocked, off-balance, hurt. He felt as if someone had splashed blazing kerosene between his legs, as if he was burning and burning and would never stop.