O’Grady hovered there, fresh sweat swamping the inside of his shirt. He dropped to a crouch, to check the undercarriage, only to realise that he wouldn’t recognise a car-bomb if he saw one. When he stood up again, he still hesitated, key in hand, trying to work things out logically. What would be the point in wiring up such a device?

Because this is the car they intend to kill me in. After forcing me to drive it by smashing up the other one.

But it still seemed unnecessarily elaborate.

Why not just plant the bomb under the Jag?

But no, you couldn’t rationalise the actions of maniacs like these. They always had their reasons, even if the average citizen would find them too twisted for words. And dallying wasn’t helping. O’Grady had to get away from here.

Trapping the breath in his chest, he inserted the key and opened the Golf. Nothing happened. He climbed behind the wheel, dropped his bag of money into the passenger-side footwell, jammed his key into the ignition and turned it. The car came to life. And that was all. He got his foot down; the car rumbled forward – still nothing happened.

‘Okay, okay …’ he gasped.

When he hit the road network, it was slow and smooth, O’Grady doing his level best to behave normally. But all the time now, he felt that people were watching him. A fat man waiting at a bus stop with a tan jacket over his left arm seemed inordinately interested as the Golf rumbled by in the slow-moving traffic. When O’Grady got away from the town centre, and the log-jams of cars and lorries began to break up, he slowly tensed as two men in what appeared to be a fishmonger’s van followed him around several corners, left, right, left again, left again, only to branch off at the next set of lights. Even then, there was no relief. He approached a footbridge spanning Halpin Road, in the middle of which a black guy, leaning on the railing, watched the traffic passing by underneath. On the other side, O’Grady craned his neck around to stare through the back window: the black guy was still there, only now speaking on his mobile phone.

‘Oh, Christ …’

He headed for home nevertheless, because he had no option. He was sodden with sweat, and completely unsure what to expect, but quickly managed to concoct some half-arsed plan about cruising slowly up to the end of his drive on Astley Close in Broadgate Green, and if he saw anything untoward, hitting the gas and speeding away again.

And then what, arsehole?

What the fuck do you do after that?

You stupid fuck! This is what happens when you threaten the Crew.