‘You took her,’ said Kevin. He turned to the small crowd of neighbours that had gathered on the street. ‘This pedo bastard was fooling around with my daughter.’ Kevin pulled a small plastic bag of marijuana from his jacket pocket, a THE CAPTAIN sticker on the front. ‘I found this in her room. Your weed, Murphy.’ He pointed at Murphy. ‘You’ve always been too friendly with my girls!’

Murphy saw there were also three wrapped condoms inside the bag. ‘We don’t sell weed to minors,’ he growled.

‘Shut up, lad,’ said Butch.

The man filming on his phone nodded to Mason. ‘I got it: “We don’t sell weed to minors.”’

Murphy glanced at the journalists. Shit. They would have recorded it, too.

A BMW pulled into the street, lights flashing up in the corners of the windshield. Murphy bent to grab the packet of weed from Kevin Mason, but he snatched it away.

The BMW pulled over outside their house, and out stepped Detective Badenhorst, his shirt untucked and sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

Someone had called the cops. Murphy guessed it was someone in the crowd.

‘What’s that?’ Badenhorst pointed to Kevin’s hand. Kevin immediately made to hand the bag over, but the detective first fished some latex gloves out of his pocket.

‘I found it in Cierra’s room. I’m her father – remember when we met up at the trail?’ said Kevin. He pointed at Murphy. ‘This weed is his. You can tell by the sticker.’

‘You fucking liar —’ began Murphy. Butch pulled him back.

Con pulled an evidence bag out of another pocket and dropped the weed packet inside. ‘And you came here to confront him rather than coming to us, Mr Mason?’

‘No, I was just out for a stroll, detective,’ said Kevin. ‘This is all just a coincidence.’

Before Badenhorst could say anything more, a police Stinger sped around the corner, lights flashing and siren blaring. It screeched to a halt and out leapt Constable Cavanagh and Sergeant Doble.

Murphy saw Badenhorst grimace.

‘Well, look at what we have here, Murphy,’ said Doble, seeing the bag in Badenhorst’s hand. ‘THE CAPTAIN . . . a bit of your product, hey?’

‘Sergeant Doble,’ said Con, ‘can you and Constable Cavanagh see to these men while myself and Mr Murphy have a chat inside? The rest of you – perhaps there’s somewhere else you can be?’ he added wryly to the gathered audience.

‘No. I think I’ll come with you,’ said Doble.

‘I promise you, you can arrest him soon. I just need to chat with him first,’ said Con evenly. ‘Inside, Mr Murphy.’

Murphy had a mind to disagree, but Butch pushed him towards the front door. ‘Go. This looks bad for both of us,’ he muttered.