‘Benjy? I’ve got to lock the gates now,’ I said. ‘Boss doesn’t like them left open. People come in at night. They leave things lying around. Sometimes they paint things on the headstones or try to start fires. There’s a big chain for the gates. Do you want me to move your car? Benjy?’

His shoulders weren’t moving. He still looked like he was praying. My mum used to pray. She would be on her knees at the side of her bed, hands pressed together. I did the same thing, and sometimes I still do. But I always whisper the prayer so the other people in the house don’t hear me.

‘Benjy?’

I placed my hand on his shoulder and watched as he fell forwards until he was face down on the pathway. I knew what that meant. And when I turned him over, his eyes were closed, his mouth wide open. I pulled up his shirt and saw the hole in his chest. Blood had stopped coming out of it. His skin was cold to the touch.

‘Bad,’ I said. It was the first word that came into my head. ‘Bad, bad, bad, bad.’ Five times for luck. There was a dog barking somewhere. Dogs like the graveyard. So do cats and foxes and rabbits. Birds, too, in the daylight. I’d never seen or heard an owl. Or a bat or a rat or a mouse. One old lady from the estate told me there were badgers nearby, but she couldn’t tell me where. She said she could smell them sometimes. I always wish I’d asked her what they smelled like, then I’d know.

‘Bad badger, badger bad,’ I said, liking the sound of it. Four more times for luck, then I looked inside the blue bag. It was a gun. It looked like a real gun. There was blood on the inside of the bag. The gun smelled of oil or grease. I’d hidden a knife for Benjy in the past, but never a gun. First time for everything, I thought to myself.

Then I noticed the car. There was a light on inside it, and that gave me a shock. But the door was open, and that had to be the reason.