Later, as he was leaving the hospital, Jax crossed paths with the little Samoan he had king-hit, who was in a wheelchair with his leg still in a full cast. He smiled when he saw Jax.

‘He fucked you up good, hey, bro,’ the Samoan said, and then laughed.

At least Jax now knew who had put him in the hospital. That was one less mystery to solve.

It’s sweet as, bro, I’ve got nothing against you, bro.

Yeah, right.

ONE day and counting . . .

With the sun setting on 24 December, Jax desperately needed to do something. He would never forgive himself if he didn’t at least try to help and another church was blown to bits.

So he got down on his knees and put his hands on the floor.

‘Arg—’ He choked back an exclamation of agony. Hit by a lightning bolt to the heart, his chest suddenly ablaze, he wanted to scream. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Not without being busted. Or sent back to the hospital.

He gritted his teeth and ignored the pain as he dropped his belly to the floor and slid towards the shelf unit. He pulled the false front off quickly and removed and extracted his pill container. He put the blue capsules – his steroids – and the red and yellow capsules – an assortment of uppers and poisons – to one side then sifted through the remainder, all green and white imitations of Panadol, and separated the painkillers from the sleepers. He put one of the pills stamped PK in his mouth and the rest with same marking into his pocket. Everything else went back into the container and back under the shelf. Then he took out the phone and laptop.

Back on his bed, sheet over his head, he connected his laptop to the internet and opened Google. He had no idea where to start. As if mesmerised by the flashing cursor in the empty search box, he just sat staring at the screen for ten minutes.

Realising he had swallowed a full dose of the heroin-like drug called oxycodone, Jax shook himself out of his opioid-induced stupor. But he still didn’t know where to start. What could he possibly do on his computer to stop a mass killing?

Think. Think. Think.

There had to be something.

Use common sense. Simplify the complex. Point A to point B.

It no longer made sense to try to find the mastermind. The man behind the bomb would soon be in custody. He would be zip-tied, hooded and dragged out of the prison by a posse of balaclava-wearing, assault-rifle-carrying former SOC soldiers. Jax didn’t have to find the mastermind because he already had. Jax had found him when he found the phone numbers in the betting accounts.

Point A to B. You need to get to B.

B. What was B?

Think. Think. Think.

The bomb. The target. The location.

Still he no idea where to start.

Think. Think. Think.