‘I got some stuff upstairs, I stopped over to pick it up,’ he said.

‘Does that matter? When all this shit is going on?’ demanded Aysha.

‘Look, I gotta . . .’ He hiked a thumb at the open doorway and then left the room.

Aysha followed him as he went up the stairs and turned left. He opened a door and went into a poky grey room with a disordered bed and a thick layer of assorted crap all over the floor. He picked up a black bin bag and started throwing open drawers, emptying T-shirts and underpants into it.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Aysha. ‘I thought you brought all your stuff over to the house.’

He shrugged. ‘Some of it got left in the rush,’ he said.

‘Joey, for God’s sake! Why are you doing this now? Haven’t we got enough trouble, without you faffing about rearranging your fucking underwear?’

‘Look.’ He turned to her and his dark eyes were full of anger. ‘Listen, all right? I gotta take off for a while.’

‘You what?’ She couldn’t believe what he was saying to her. ‘But Connor stumped up bail for you, you can’t just . . .’

‘Christ, you don’t know a fucking thing, do you?’ he yelled suddenly.

Aysha flinched. He’d never shouted at her before. Not once. ‘Then tell me,’ she said. ‘Is it true about you and the old woman? That you set it all up?’

‘No! I was just shooting the breeze with my mates, telling them what I saw, that’s all. It was fucking stupid of me, I admit that, but that’s all I did.’

‘Well, that’s OK then. You made a mistake, but you weren’t involved in any nasty business . . .’

‘Aysha. For fuck’s sake, get real! I shopped them to the Bill. The coppers pulled me in for it, some neighbour told them I was doing the garden for the old bint, and . . . I made a deal with them. It was all my fault, I admit that. But beat up the old bird that way? I wouldn’t do that. So . . .’ He paused, zipped up the bag.

‘So what, Joey?’ Aysha felt numb. She was heavily pregnant with his child, and here he was, getting involved in sick-making stuff like this.

‘I dobbed in my mates,’ said Joey. ‘I had to, or I’d have done time too. I still might. Some. I don’t know. But I told the Bill all about them, what they had planned, and that I’d had nothing to do with it.’

Jesus. He wasn’t just a low-life juvenile, he was a grass too.

‘OK. So . . . we can make this all right, can’t we?’

‘You must be bloody joking!’ He laughed, a mirthless horrible sound.

‘Well, they’re inside, aren’t they, and—’