Leaning against the damp wall, Jaden watched the steady rain fall under the streetlamp at the mouth of the alleyway. His eyelids were heavy and his head drooped with the threat of sleep. Stay awake, he urged himself, thinking of the money. Stay the fuck awake. Somewhere in the distance a siren waa-waaed and brakes screeched on the wet road.

As he took his phone from his jacket pocket, he realised that he was shaking; the speed from last night was taking its toll now: his mind was skittish, his nerves were shot. He checked the time: five past twelve. Raj said he’d call at midnight. Did that mean there was a change of plan? Jaden ran his tongue over crooked teeth. There’d better not have been; he couldn’t afford to lose this job.

Any doubt in his mind dispersed as his phone vibrated in his hand. He looked down at the glow of the screen and saw it was Raj.

‘It’s happening,’ he said. Jaden heard music and voices in the background and immediately pictured Raj’s plush flat: bare floorboards, high ceilings. He’d been there only once, but knew he’d remember it forever. Didn't everyone have their own aspirations? ‘Stay where you are.’

Hanging up, Jaden slipped a cigarette between his thin, dry lips. He didn't trust Raj and would be glad when tonight was over, the money in the bank. That he’d not been paid at least half of the two grand up-front had been his first source of suspicion, but pressing the issue had seen a knife held to his throat.

‘He’s a nutter,’ Tania told him only last night. ‘Bee saw him cut some bloke’s lip off just for looking at him the wrong way. You don’t wanna get in with someone like that, Jay. Trust me. Doing this job, you get to know a psycho when you see one.’

It was the early hours of the morning and they were lying spent in her single bed, the picture of her son turned down on the bedside cabinet beside them. Jaden sat up and ran a hand over his shaved head. On the TV at the foot of the bed a children’s cartoon played out in mute action. A mouse carrying a lump of cheese twice the size of its body fell over and a circle of stars quickly appeared above his head.

Naked beside him, Tania laughed with an innocence he never imagined she possessed. Every night in the two months he’d been seeing her, he’d learnt something new.

‘He’s paying good money,’ he said. ‘Can’t turn that down.’

Tania frowned, her pencilled-on eyebrows creasing her ashen brow. ‘What’s he want you to do?’

Jaden kissed his teeth. ‘What d’you think he wants me to do?’

The rain had stopped by the time he heard footsteps approaching and his heart raced against his chest as he slipped the knife from his jacket. He held it against his thigh and took a deep breath. Think of the money, he willed himself again. Think of the money, think of the money, think of the money.

The next moment happened so suddenly, so frantically, that it wasn’t until he’d drawn blood that he recognised the wide eyes staring back at him; Tania. The recognition took a split second to process. What the hell was she doing here?

She squirmed against his hand, tears running freely down her cheeks.

When their eyes met, he saw fear where he’d only ever before seen lust; there was a moment in which he was frozen, slowly thawing to see blood on the collar of her white blouse.

Dazed, he watched as she took his hand gently in hers and lowered the knife.

‘We need to talk, Jay,’ she said, her voice shaky.

She walked away and he followed her back to the estate, each footstep a reminder that he was a dead man walking.

Raj wanted Tania dead. And there had to be a reason.