He looked at the piece of paper she’d given him. ‘And this is the address, which I shall destroy. Up the way, on the right. What colour’s the door? Any distinguishing features?’

He was taking the job so seriously because Mary was going to give him a hundred pounds up front and his coke buzz was waning.

‘The door’s blue, has a letter box thingy, a mat, and a small pot plant out front. If you look through the letterbox you’ll see the dining table, and the silver MacBook open on it. Check that and you’ll know you’re in the right place. You can pick a lock?’

‘Aye, like I said, aye! What drive?’

‘What?’

‘What drive you want me to save it onto?’

‘I don’t know!”

‘I’ll sort it, no worries. I’m a bit of a techy nerd, truth be told. Last week I organised my Facebook photos according to relationship, see—’

Mary didn’t mean to be side-tracked, but how many women wanted to get naked with John Paul O’Donnell? There was Sylvia (2015–16), Julie (2016–17), and Cheris-An (2017–18). Julie was kinda pretty but his standards dropped after her.

He was looking at Cheris-An and it was making him morose.

‘How’s Christopher doing?’ His profile pic was with a pal, Christopher Senior, who also happened to be one of her probationers. In the real world he wasn’t known as Christopher Senior, as he was only eighteen, but that’s who he was to social work. Mary had given him two hundred pounds last week to spend on whatever he wanted. In one of the extremely well-filed Facebook videos, Christopher Senior was breaking into a tennis club. Just two months ago, Christopher Senior had been ‘looked after’, which meant the other end of the office cared about him and it mattered what he thought and felt. The day after his eighteenth birthday (which ended in Christopher Senior being arrested for slicing off Robert McIlhargey Junior’s ear), the child-protection team booted him to Mary’s end of the office with the other baddies, where he’d be punished for the rest of his life. From looked after to locked up.

Christopher Junior, nine months last week, would be looked after for the next seventeen years and three months. Poor baby; what chance did he have with a thug like Christopher Senior as a father?

‘Saint John, we need to focus!’

He snapped to. ‘I get four hundred once it’s done?’

‘Yes, to repay Kevin the Fucker. It’ll be dark by two-ish so go then. And leave the door snubbed.’ His expression prompted Mary to ask. ‘You know what a snub is?’

‘Um, dinghy.’

‘Why would a rubber boat appear in this scenario?’