Archie’s head was still down, the muscles in his arms tightening as he pressed his hands together. “They were to torch the place,” he said. “I knew there might be something inside that needed to be got rid of, and because I hadn’t been able to find it when I broke in . . . I . . . I was told to make the place go up in smoke as a kind of insurance.”

“And how did you feel when you were smashing the windows and pouring petrol through them?” Dan asked, matter-of-factly enough to make Marcy flinch.

Archie’s eyes were still on his hands as he said, “I felt scared of being caught, and of setting fire to myself. I’d been warned about how that might happen. I was also scared of screwing up because of what might happen to me and my ma if I did.”

Dan said, “Had anyone actually told you what that would be?”

Archie shook his head. “Those things don’t get put into words, you just know they’re bad.”

Accepting that, Dan prompted him to continue with how he’d felt while committing the crime.

“I suppose,” Archie said, “apart from scared and everything, I felt kind of weird about it all, because it wasn’t something I wanted to do. I just thought I had to . . .” He took a breath and wiped a shaky hand over his mouth. “Looking back, I reckon I wasn’t allowing myself to think much at all. I just went through the motions . . . Obviously I wish now that I’d had the courage to tell them what to do with their money and their orders and their threats. I wish they didn’t always target my ma the way they do. I used to try to make out she don’t mean anything to me so they’d leave her alone, stop using her to force me into stuff, but they did it anyway.” He took a moment, making his knuckles turn white as he bunched his hands together on the table, a kind of power-up, Marcy thought, to make himself continue.