‘Don’t look,’ Karen said. ‘It won’t do any good.’

Tony laughed, half pleading with her to understand, to share his curiosity. ‘I have to know,’ he said. He moved around the rear of the car and, pulling down his sleeve over his hand, opened the rear door. The space lay empty. He pulled up the carpeted interior of the boot to where the spare wheel was kept and there saw something wrapped in a plastic bag, beneath the jack.

For the first time since they’d seen the police lights on the motorway, he began to question the wisdom of what they had done. He wondered whether Duggan had lied, whether indeed they had been bringing drugs for Martin Kelly and his like to sell to school kids in the pubs around Glasgow.

He looked across to where Karen stood, a distance apart, her hands wedged in her jacket pockets. She watched him, but showed no interest in what was inside the car boot.

Carefully, keeping his hands covered, he lifted the jack away. Beneath it, the blue-black body visible through the clear plastic wrapping, lay a pistol. He’d seen them in Derry, when the police were patrolling, but had never been so close to one before. He wanted to touch it, wanted to feel its hardness, its coldness. He felt once more that elation he had felt on the motorway, but something else beneath that, too.

He carefully laid the jack back into place, fixed the carpeting back and shut the door, then walked across to where Karen stood.

‘It’s a–’ he whispered, but she silenced him with a raised hand.

‘Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘I don’t need to know.’

Tony felt a little deflated that she would not share with him his excitement, not allow him to reconcile that with the other, more insidious feeling he’d had all evening, that underlying sense of dread.

‘Aren’t you a little curious?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘No.’

They travelled back to her flat on the bus and again he walked her to the door. This time, briefly, they kissed. Her lips were dry, the skin chapped from the night air. He moved to kiss her a second time, but she responded with a quick peck on the side of his mouth.

‘We’ll do this another time,’ she said. ‘I enjoyed the night.’

‘Can I get your number?’ Tony asked, hurt at her preventing a second kiss.

She nodded, and wrote it on the back of his hand with her eyeliner pencil. ‘You’ll need to remember that,’ she said. ‘It’ll smudge and come off in no time.’

‘Can I come up?’ he asked, his body seemingly electrified by the evening’s events.

‘Next time,’ she said. ‘I’m tired. Thanks.’

She leaned up and kissed him again, quickly on the cheek, her hand on his chest, as if to promise that there would be a next time.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

She smiled, without humour. ‘Fine,’ she said.

‘Are you angry at me looking in the boot?’