“Benny was amazing at athletics,” my father told me. This was a problem, as I was not as tall and slim-built as my oldest brother had been shaping up to be. I was still able to represent my school though. There was a bout of food poisoning the day before the try-outs for the team and many of my more talented peers found themselves unable to take part. No one suspected a thing.

Lawrence would have been selected for the exclusive exchange program with the sister school to mine in Vermont. Every year, one particularly gifted student went to the U.S. school and one of the Montpelier students came to Winslow. Competition was fierce. It was considered the highest honor and every student selected had gone on to Oxbridge and carved out a lucrative career for themselves. The initial selection was by exam, one sat by every student in my year group, forty boys crammed into the prep hall for the four-hour marathon with no breaks allowed, not even to go to the bathroom. It was meant to test stamina and to ensure there was no possible way to cheat. As if you could only cheat once you were sat inside the room! I left after an hour and a half, my fingers cramped into some kind of ugly claw from gripping my pencil so tightly. I was awarded the highest score ever known for the test. Ninety-four percent. The headmaster called me to his office, and here I learned a particularly valuable lesson. Crying makes a lot of people uncomfortable. I was fourteen and I blubbered for over an hour, sitting on the small chair in front of his enormous desk.

“I need to get that exchange, for Lawrence,” I told him through my tears. It’s amazing what the sob story of my poor dead brothers would do. I was selected for the program. Who could deny a weeping boy trying desperately to make his parents proud in the shadow of his dead brothers? Crumptons are winners. At any price. Because nothing is worse than losing. Nothing.

* * *

“You will have to promise me something,” I tell my new client. “You must be honest with me, every step of the way.” I lower my voice, channeling the old headmaster of my school who used to give the other boys, the ones who didn’t understand the value of a well-paced tear, the absolute willies. I see Chris make an involuntary shudder; he had a similar headmaster, I presume. “If, at any point, I find out you have lied to me, or omitted something—which amounts to the same thing—then I will drop you like a fucking stone. You got that?” He nods.

“Jeremy Crumpton does not lose,” I say.

Chris looks at me. “I don’t lose either.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

It’s seven o’clock in the morning. On a Saturday. And my fucking doorbell is ringing.

I pull myself up from my bed, bleary-eyed, and throw my bathrobe on. I’m not used to being awake at this time. As I trudge downstairs, I can see the outline of a man through the window. I know who this is going to be.