‘Calm down, bro. You’re proper shit at that game, man. For real. What is the point of you throwing your toys around?’ Jason admonished from his seat in the corner, where he was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and contemplating his future. He shook his head. He’d lost all respect for his brother. It had been a long time coming, but now he saw him merely as baggage. He had to cut loose, and he needed quiet to get his thoughts straight. Adam was fucking up his head space.

‘Shut up, brah!’ Adam spread his hands and confronted him; they were all growing jumpy. Being holed up together, not able to go out, had given them a serious case of cabin fever.

Jason laughed at him. Adam looked around and noticed that others were smirking along. He lunged at one boy, but he was too slow and the boy moved in time, escaping towards the door.

‘Where do you think you’re off to?’ Adam shouted.

‘Fuck you, brah. I’m going out.’

Adam went to follow him.

‘Leave it!’ Jason barked the order and Adam stopped, turning back. Anger burned into his dark skin, though it was difficult to tell where the bruises ended and the high colour started. The brothers stared at one another and the others in the room thought there might be another fight, a more even one. Last time, Adam had been proper stoned and didn’t stand a chance. He seemed more with it now, and he was fuelled by humiliation.

‘Fuck him, brah, you can’t go out, you know that. It only takes one sighting and we’re all fucked.’

Jason had given Adam a reason not to bite, and it was a sensible and respectable one. It restored some of his pride. The dynamic inside the warehouse had shifted and Jason saw that now: those not identified by the police had no reason to stay there, and the Cotton brothers had become too reliant upon them. Leaving the building was a defiant act, and it wouldn’t take long for others to follow, either from sheer boredom, or, more sinisterly, because they recognised their new power.

Either way, the brothers had to get out.

Adam used to be alert, funny and strong. Now, when Jason looked at him, all he could see was a withered body and a wasted mind. Chemicals of all kinds, snorted, smoked, injected, rubbed, inhaled and consumed, had conspired to ravage a young body to a state where he was beyond salvage. And he’d done it to himself. That was why the posh woman was dead: because Adam had been snorting ketamine. The two stabbings were supposed to take place around the same time – one to cover the other – but Adam, bolstered by chemicals, had got ahead of himself.