All day, he listened to news reports, bought the local papers, watched seven different TV news programmes, all the time waiting to hear something about events in Foxbar.

But nothing was reported.

By late evening, when there was still no news, no one had called, and apparently Duggan had not been arrested, Tony began to convince himself that perhaps Duggan had assumed the cop had got lucky, had gone somewhere coincidentally the night before the planned attack. It couldn’t be the first time that such a thing had happened. In fact, perhaps Duggan was waiting for his return, not yet realising that the man, and (more importantly for Tony) his daughter, had managed to avoid their fate.

That being the case, he decided, his only option was to brazen it out. No one could prove that he’d had anything to do with the cop’s disappearance. He would deny everything. Yes, he’d had qualms in the days before the planned attack, but surely some of the others must have had, too.

He couldn’t believe that Karen hadn’t once considered the morality of what they were doing, hadn’t once had second thoughts, expressed doubts. Even on the drive from Paisley, that night they’d brought the car back with the gun in the boot, she’d wondered whether they were wrong in what they were doing. Surely her scruples could only have deepened when they targeted a real person. And Kelly knew the man, had a shared history with him. Perhaps he’d harboured some secret doubts himself. Only Duggan, Tony was convinced, would not have thought twice about the ethical consequences of what they were doing.

By the following day, he’d convinced himself that his best approach was to say nothing, admit nothing. To act as if nothing had happened. Feign both ignorance and innocence.

That confidence was shaken a little when, the day after, he got a phone call to school, supposedly from a parent. A voice he did not recognise, though with an accent he could place as close to home, informed him that he was required to present himself at Betty’s at 10.30am to discuss recent events. That was all. The caller hung up.

Tony felt his legs weaken, felt his bowels loosen as he replaced the receiver. It wasn’t Duggan, of that he was sure. Did that mean they’d brought someone in to investigate? Did that mean they suspected Duggan himself as well? If that was the case, there was no doubt Duggan would implicate him, tell them all about his change of heart when he learned about the cop’s child.