“It’s a new toy, this. Borrowed rather than stolen; paid for, if you want to be petty about it, by his grandfather’s coin. It’s like the cigarettes, he has been told, but also different. He has yet to try it out. It is, he understands, a simple chemical reaction. You fill up a tin-like container, then screw it onto the front of the respirator. And then, when you are ready, you inject it with a syringe. The science behind it, well now, that’s a well-guarded secret. The basis for his family’s wealth. But none of this matters to our friend. He lies, naked, a rubber mask over his head. Gooseflesh on his back and buttocks; sweat beading on the inside of the mask.

“He waits until they come into sight. A team of four, dragging a four-wheeled coach: slow on the muddy road. Two horses, they agreed, he and his man; when the coach stops. An easy target, with a gun of this precision. The telescope sits awkward against the goggles of the mask. As for our friend: he’s scared, the coward. Liquid bubbling through his bowels like he’s eaten rotten meat. It’s all he can do to press down on the syringe.

“Now all he has to do is breathe, and drown.

“In the first moment, all he feels is panic. It should be like cigarettes, the best and the strongest, dark as tar; just the same, only more so, a new kind of kick.

“But what he inhales is not like cigarettes at all, is overwhelming in its purity, wilful and alive. Dying men’s sins: handpicked and distilled. His own rise feebly to their summons, childhood pranks called to muster before Satan. The sweets in his mouth have long turned into lumps of coal.

“Their plan is simple. It’s a bad plan, really; hastily drawn up and lacking in logic, but a plan all the same. He is to aim for the front two horses. His man on the box will cut them loose; turn the coach with the remaining two; flog them half to death as he races them home while more shots are fired at the fleeing coach. An investigation will follow, a curfew, a national hunt. All this, just to convince two schoolboys to stay put. You have heard of unwelcome guests. Well, these guests are very welcome indeed. One will not hear of their going home.

“The first bullet passes clean through the horse. It is so simple. Our young man pulls the trigger here, and over there a ribbon of red flies through the air. The shot is bad, a full yard low, shatters the shin and sends a shudder through the horse’s torso, so present in the crosshairs, he could reach out his hand and feel the dance of muscles underneath the fur.