‘Then you’ll shoot me.’

They stared at each other, the two of them, and Brendan tried to guess what was passing between them, and then Judah fired his gun. He raised it to the man’s skull and squeezed the trigger. The bullet entered Kelly’s nose and shattered his face. He bucked down and slapped against the carpet. The lifeblood of this man now splattered over the carpet, over the wall. His eyes were still open and one of them was cocked sideways. A giant gaping hole where a nose had been.

Brendan couldn’t stop staring and soon found Judah’s hand on his shoulder, pushing him away. The minister still draped in his religious cloth. This man with his impotent flyers soaking up the ever-spreading pool of red. This man of the cloth killed in his own church. This man who’d been protecting his own, had done nothing wrong. A minister, a friend.

Brendan finally dragged his eyes away from the sight of the old man and beheld Martin, who now lay completely still, his head near the shrubbery beside the steps, one arm flung out. Judah knelt down beside him and scooped his legs up in his arms. He motioned to Martin’s face. ‘Get his head.’

Brendan found words. ‘What are we doing?’

‘Get him to the car.’

Wordless, Brendan did as he had been instructed. Blood was still leaking from Martin’s neck––it coated Brendan’s hands and the steps, making the going tricky. He walked backwards down the grassy slope, the night sky darker than he’d remembered. When a car passed by the lights so startled him he tripped. Martin’s head slapped down against the grass, the sound of a boot striking a football.

‘You dickhead,’ Judah said, still holding Martin’s feet under his arms. ‘Pick him up.’

They managed to get Martin to the car. Judah put him down reverently, and opened the back door.

‘Get in,’ he said. ‘I’ll hand him up.’

Brendan climbed in on the other side of the car and took Martin’s tilting head, held at the door up by Judah’s trembling hands. He hauled him inside until the dead weight was almost atop him and then Judah was in the driver’s seat before Brendan could move.

‘Keys,’ he said.

Brendan handed them over and Judah started the car. He drove carefully out of the church parking lot and onto the main street of Newbury. The pub was still in operation, Brendan saw. He was sitting up and doing his best to treat this dead man on top of him with respect. He could feel his own shirt growing sodden with Martin’s blood, like he’d jumped into Boolarra Falls. Hard to imagine the human body holding so much.

As he cradled Martin’s body he put his hand over the man’s heart and was surprised to feel a beat. He would have shouted out to Judah but knew it was too late and so just let his hand rest there as the heart thudded irregularly. He wanted to open the man’s eyes and give him one last chance to say something. Brendan tried to remember the last words he’d heard him utter. What words would he himself say in the end, to define him? What part of him would stay, and how quickly would he fade from all memory? As he held his hand gently on Martin’s chest, Brendan felt the heart thump its last, and in that thump the weight of everything.