The checkout was at the far end of the shop. He carried his basket over and put it down.

‘All right, mate.’ The man behind the counter was in his fifties and had a Liverpool accent. ‘Got everything you wanted?’

‘Yes, thanks. Just grabbing a few bits.’ He glanced around. ‘Got any wipes?’

‘We’re out. Toilet paper’s all gone too.’ He shook his head. ‘Load of fuss about nothing, if you ask me.’

‘You never know,’ Matt said. ‘There’s quarantine in parts of Italy.’

‘Won’t happen here, mate. But I’ll sell people whatever they want to buy.’

The man punched in the prices, one by one. Easy to fiddle the take. Perhaps this place was a front for a gang, a place to quietly wash clean their ill-gotten gains.

‘Twenty-seven fifty,’ he said.

Matt hesitated and looked at the basket. Seven quid for the wine. A fiver for the coffee. He’d looked at the price of those. Which left fifteen-fifty for the bread, milk, baguette and pasta. How much was bread? Three pounds? Milk and pasta? The same probably. Which meant the baguette was outrageously expensive.

Or they all were.

The man looked at him, his expression questioning. For a moment Matt thought about asking for the prices of the bread, coffee, milk and pasta, but then the man interrupted.

‘Everything OK, mate?’

He nodded, and handed over two twenties. If this was a front for a gang they didn’t need to use it to launder any money. They were robbing people in plain sight.

‘Thanks,’ he said, and picked up his change and his shopping. It was definitely the supermarket next time.

2

As he left, Matt noticed the local newspaper had a story on the front page about a new signing for the rugby league team. It was the photo that caught his eye, a picture of a famous Australian playing for the Australian national team.

That would be quite the coup.

He was about to pick up a copy and go back to the counter – even this shop couldn’t charge more than the cover price for a newspaper – when he glanced out of the window. A quick check on the kids, that was all; make sure they were still safely in the car.

He blinked, then looked left and right.

There must be some mistake.

The car was gone.

That was impossible. He had left it there only a minute ago.

But there was no car there. As if to make the point, a blue Mercedes pulled up and parked right where his car had been.

He must have parked it further up the street. It was strange; he would have sworn he’d left it almost exactly outside the shop. Maybe he had, and it was the angle from which he was looking out of the window that meant he couldn’t see it.