– Fuck off, Rab!

– I’m telling ye, they piss, shit, blink.

– Get laid?

– Look, it’s just what the human body does! It’s only gross if you make it like that, corpses do weird things, it’s normal, Bee says.

– The stages of decomposition are just not happening in order, maybe?

Audrey agrees as she starts eating her crisps again; she appears not only unflustered by the events of the last half hour, but actively amused. Ali checks his watch.

– I think by the time you’ve staked the cunt he should not be breathing like – this prick sounds like he’s making a dirty phone call.

– It isnae right, Davey says.

– You stake him, he stops breathing; you drown him, when he’s already dead – then what? Three seconds later he’s breathing again? Ali asks.

– It’s this place – this building’s cursed. Every cunt knows it, Davey says.

– It is, Bai agrees.

– We hear things every night. The building has bad energy, Audrey says.

– This isn’t fucking Mastermind, you’re not going to be quizzed on the spunk habits of corpses or the spirit realm of Luckenbooth Close – I’ve had two men’s dead bodies under me in a whirlpool, people – I think I’d know if they weren’t dead. Strip the rest of their clothes off, they’ll need to be wrapped in the rug to get them out of here.

Ali and Davey undress the men and lay them down as respectfully as they can. Raymond’s eyes are closed but just as Ali goes to close Peter’s, the corpse blinks very slowly and then ejaculates – just slightly.

Ali crosses himself.

– Fucks sake!

– Can you get pregnant from a Jacuzzi? Audrey asks with wide eyes.

– He’s dead, it’s just some fucking random dead-person jizz, seriously will you lot grow the fuck up, we’ve still got a lot to get rid of before Santa can fucking get here the morn!

Ali is shaking and Davey is even jumpier now.

– Fuck you, Bee.

– So – stake him again!

– I’m going to shoot him, just to be sure, Ali says.

– I heard of a woman who gave birth once after she died. She died of a heroin overdose and then a little while later – out pops the baby! The people with her were so high, they thought it was a hallucination.

They all turn to look at Bai.

– You two don’t seem that freaked out by any of this. Audrey, Bai?

Bee stares hard at the two women.

– What do you do?

– Nothing.

– Why don’t I fucking believe you?

– Perhaps you are a cynical woman, Mrs Fox?

Ali and Davey have pulled the corpses, by their feet, down the hall to roll them in the rug. Rab walks into the living room ahead of his wife. Bai walks barefoot behind them, taking out two gilded daggers in complete silence.