He could not dismiss the mental image of the explosion, ripping through the car, tearing Alice asunder. He imagined her sitting in the car, her sleeves balled in her fists, her eyes bright and wild with terror as the first wave rippled the metal work, shredded the plastic moulding of the dash, tore her clothes, her skin, ripped the muscle from bone, splintered and shattered her. The thought made him sick. He thought he would pass out, found his pace doubling as he padded around his flat, his face slick with a cold sheen of sweat.

He drove back out to Foxbar and parked up a distance from the shops, away from the glare of the street lights, in a spot that allowed him a view of the parking area while he remained in shadows. He could make out the house in the distance, in the space between two of the row, which backed on to the main road. The lights were already on in one of the upstairs rooms, even though it was only beginning to turn dark, the sky thickening in the east.

He’d a bottle of water and a Mars bar in the car, which he tried to eat now. He forced himself to swallow each cloying bite of the chocolate, aware he’d not eaten since lunch time and already feeling a little light-headed, as if his blood sugar was dipping. The thought instantly brought to mind Alice, standing in his classroom, her shirt pulled up as she injected herself with insulin. How would she manage without her father? Would her self-sufficiency thrive? Or would she be lost completely, the final thread of stability in her life torn from her?

Duggan had told him that this man’s death was a response to Danny’s in some way, to justify his involvement. But it wasn’t, and he knew that now. Danny had died. That was separate from this. There was no reciprocity of violence that would change any aspect of what had happened to him.

He stayed in the car and waited. He knew that the changeover in watches was at 8pm. Sure enough, at 8.03pm, he saw Martin Kelly drive out from the parking area at the shops and make his way home.

He waited for another twenty minutes, just in case someone else arrived to replace Kelly, but he suspected no one would. If the attack was happening tonight as he had implied, Duggan would probably wait until it was late, until people had gone to bed, before arriving to attach whatever device he had built. They had agreed that, in the hours before, they would stay away from the area. Even so, Tony got out of the car and pulling up his hood, and zipping up his coat to cover the lower part of his chin, he cut across the road through a break in traffic and up along the backs of the rows of houses facing the shops.