We get to our feet and run back the way we came, clinging to each other. The front door of Dana’s house hangs open. Dana sprints through it. I stop next to the still form of Alan, lying face down on the pavement outside, against the fence. He groans, trying to raise himself. There’s blood coming from one side of his head and a smear of it on the concrete fencepost he’s reaching for to pull himself up. Carl must have dragged him out of the car and thrown him pretty hard.

Groggily, he notices me. He’s not going to put up much of a fight, but when his hand emerges from his pocket with his phone, I pluck it from him without difficulty. I put it in my pocket.

I’m about to follow Dana inside when I hear the sirens. Faint, some way off, but growing louder. But even closer, the sound of Carl’s engine, growing louder again. I crouch by Alan’s ear.

‘Are you OK?’

He nods, feebly.

‘And Dana’s mum?’

‘Inside. She’s fine,’ he croaks.

Dana is running back outside now, shouting. ‘She’s OK. Fuck’s sake, Josh, Come on!’

As the note from Carl’s engine rises and falls again, getting steadily louder, we run for the path that leads to the main road. I can’t stay with Alan – poor, clueless Alan, whose first crime was loving his brother and seeing him as a god. Carl must be only seconds away as we emerge from the footpath onto the main road. Crossing it, in the growing light of the morning, the building site stands silhouetted against the sky. We run towards it.

Above the sirens – and much, much closer – we hear the furious engine of Carl’s car at our backs. We run. He must have worked out what we’d do. As Carl rounds the road’s sweeping curve, the noise is almost deafening. He revs even harder as he mounts the pavement behind us.

We throw ourselves through a gap in the building site’s metal fencing a second before Carl’s car would have hit us. Getting to our feet as quickly as possible, we set off across the churned ground. Carl is outside the car now, which has slid to a halt about fifty yards past the gap we came through, and he’s shouting at us. The sirens are almost on top of him, and as I look over my shoulder I see two police cars stop either side of him as he starts to climb the fence. He’s over before they get to him, and I give my full attention back to following Dana around the deep tracks and deeper puddles.

The sirens continue. And there’s a new sound; the low thud of rotor blades. A flash of the helicopter’s searchlight reflects in the dirty water at my feet.