Spag took a breath but decided not to answer.

Good move.

The muddy bag was back on his lap.

We drove in silence for another quarter of an hour before turning down a farm track. A collection of barns stood off to the right, rough old things knocked up out of concrete blocks and corrugated iron. One or two bits of rusted machinery had been abandoned to the elements.

The contact followed the track round to the back, stopped and killed the lights. Tenny pulled up beside us.

Red Ken went over to him as the rest of us clambered out. ‘Hold these fuckers here. We do the deal and we leave. They’ll find their own way out of the boot.’

Tenny shook his head. ‘Better let them breathe. The exhaust is cracked and the fumes are getting everywhere. It’ll kill them.’

‘OK, give ’em air until we’re finished. Then we’ll close them in again.’

He lifted the lid. The two crushed and suffering bodies were coughing up their lungs. They tried getting out, but Tenny punched them back in.

The contact led the rest of us towards the nearest barn.

8

I kept a few paces behind the other three, as cover. My boots sank up to their laces in stinking ooze.

Spag tried to recover from looking like a dickhead. ‘It was right to hand over the cash. They could have killed us.’

Red Ken checked stride and rounded on him. Their faces were inches apart. ‘Listen in, twat – they were going to kill us because they’d got the money. Now wind your fucking neck in, let’s get the deal done and leave.’

We worked our way past a dark, mud-covered Trabant, up to its hubs in shit. I saw the prolonged glow of a cigarette tip through a gap in the barn wall. Whoever was on the other end of it was sucking hard.