‘And you were?’ Fallan challenged. ‘That’s how you were able to still shoot gangsters and ex-cops nearly thirty years later?’

‘We were chastened. We didn’t walk away from it all right away – your dad and Tony McGill were still baw-deep in each other’s business, and your dad was a hard man to say no to.’

‘Plus you wouldn’t have wanted him thinking you might turn on him.’

‘No, he knew we were all way too scared of him to do that.’

‘Jolly lucky break for you chaps that somebody murdered him, then.’

‘I know nothing about that,’ McDade said, with a vehemence Jasmine instantly believed. ‘Nothing. But after he died, things changed. It was a fresh start. I did the job: straight. We all did. No more Wild West stuff, no more backhanders.’

They were well into the countryside now, at least a mile from any source of light pollution. Jasmine could see insects dancing across the beams of the headlights, on full because there were no vehicles coming the other way. McDade turned off down a single-track road, its entrance concealed by trees, somewhere you’d need to know really well not to miss in the dark.

‘We did a difficult job and we gave it our all, because we owed that. Put in the hours, put ourselves between the scum and the psychos and the ordinary folk just trying to get on with it. And we watched guys like Stevie Fullerton and Frankie Callahan and the Cassidys and Christ knows how many others grow more and more rich and more and more untouchable; more and more respectable, while we cleared up the bodies and waded through the misery that kept them all there.’

She felt the gradient immediately. They were heading down, the road bumpy and winding. McDade took it slow, as though worried he’d snap the axle on a hole or a rut. He’d driven this road before, all right, knew its turns, knew its traps. The full-beam lights picked out walls of scrub and scree either side, crushed rubble and hard-packed earth beneath the wheels.

‘Meanwhile we’re struggling to pay mortgages and tuition fees and respite care, ending up with most of our pensions and savings spoken for before we even retire. Bill Raeside gave thirty years, lost his wife to cancer, what does he get? Spent my whole career fighting this supposed war on drugs, and where are we? More people doing them than ever, more people selling them than ever, and our seizures are estimated to be about one per cent of what’s actually making it through. Was it worth it? Worth all our efforts, worth so many folk dying, killing each other? Fuck no. So yeah, we decided we were having something back. A few more dead lowlifes were barely gaunny tip the scales.’