Joe had even encouraged them to shout their heads off. He’d smoked a cafe creme while Eddie made a brew. Applauded their efforts to summon help. And by the time the tea was made, they were silent. All shouted out, but to no effect. Very much aware that they were very much alone. And in the hands of a man whose reputation was already starting to precede him. Both self-evidently terrified. Expecting serious punishment. One of them bold enough to straight out ask for it.

‘Do what you have to do. Make us an example. Then kick us out, and we’ll spread the word you ain’t to be fucked with. Right?’

Eddie later decided that just a bit more respect might have worked. “Do what you have to do, Mr Castagna, and please accept our apologies” might just have defused Joe’s anger. He’d seen it happen. But in the absence of grovelling respect, all Joe saw was the opposite. And so he had nodded slowly. With that dead expression in his eyes that Eddie had already learned to recognise.

Counter-intuitively, some of the tension had seeped from the situation. The mugs mistaking a lack of immediate violence for the possibility of clemency. There was still a beating in their near future, obviously. But survivable. A story to be told in a late-night lock-in. See that? Joe Castagna done that, back in ’99. Fuck I’ve sailed close to the wind, ain’t I?

And then Joe spoke. ‘Did your granddad ever tell you stories, when you were kids?’

They had stared back at him, confusion evident. But Joe had ignored that uncertainty. Getting into his story-telling groove like he was something out of a Tarantino movie. And Eddie knew, Tarantino being another firm favourite, that Joe liked to imagine himself in that world. Preaching, like Samuel L. Jackson, to the unrighteous.