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He had the barrel of the pistol pressed against the glass.
    “Open the door,” said Len.
    Shug aimed the sawn-off at the wife. Looked up at the bloke behind the counter, thickened his accent when he said, “Dinnae be fuckin’ daft and open that fuckin’ door else I’ll fuckin’ dae the cunt.”
    The bloke opened the door.
    Len moved quickly, shoved him up against the wall. “Knuckle the fuckin’ wall, son, and don’t you fuckin’ move, alright?”
    The man put his hands up, Len pushed his back and knuckles to the wall. He looked pinned in place. Len shook out a bin bag and went for the drawers. Cleared them of cash, took some stamps, postal orders, whatever he could lay fingers on.
    There should have been alarms. There were alarms in Shug’s head, but the only real noise was the rustle of the bin bags and his own rasping breath.
    He blinked.
    And there was Len, out from behind the post office counter, one black bag full to bursting, the pistol still pointed at the bloke. Shug stepped over the woman on the floor and emptied the till. Then he and Len clattered out the front door.
    It was drizzling. Hard to see. Shug tore the mask from his head, stuffed it into his jacket pocket. Len launched himself into the back of the Punto, rolled the bag across the floor. Shug hit the passenger seat just as Golly floored it and the car doors shut themselves. That was the thing about Golly – he was too gangly, too recognisable, the albino bastard, his hair out like blonde springs – but he was quick enough behind the wheel, and he was good at gutting the motors when they were finished.
    He was good at getting them out of there, too.
    Five seconds, then ten, and they were on the A road.
    “Ya fucker,” said Shug. He wiped his nose.
    “Ya fucker’s right.” Len grinned through his mask, pawing the money out of the bin bag.
    “Take your mask off, man. Have the fuckin’ polis on us.”
    Len tugged at the mask, chucked it onto the seat next to him, but didn’t take his eyes off the cash. “How much did you say was going to be there, Shugs?”
    “Ten, fifteen on giro day. Bit more in the till.” Len laughed. Shug turned a little in his seat. “Why, what you got?”
    “I don’t know, but it’s more than fifteen.”
    Golly looked in the rear view. Shug nudged him, told him to keep his eyes on the road.
    Turned out Len was right. It was more than fifteen. Twenty-three grand in total, split three ways with the surplus tossed for, which left each with about eight grand, give or take. Len wanted to get the bottles in, Shug told him to hang fire for at least a week. No sense in drawing attention to themselves. Didn’t want to extend an open invitation to the law, did they?
    Of course they didn’t. So Shug stashed his cut with his Granda’s watch and a couple of passports in a shoebox, put that shoebox under the floorboards in the bedroom and went on with his life. Told Fiona where it was just in case something happened to him. In hindsight, he reckoned he must’ve known something was going to happen.
    In hindsight, mind, everything looked preordained. That was the killer.
    The police were round Fiona’s house the next day. Two bull uniforms and two CID, asking him all sorts of questions about where he’d been, what he’d been doing, did he know Leonard Mullan and Derek McDonald. Shug gave them vague answers and tried his best to figure out what the fuck had tipped them, or who. Because even when it got to court, Shug didn’t see the moment that had tipped the police to him in particular. There were eye witnesses, right enough – turned out the woman had remembered a lot more than the sawn-off – and the Punto hadn’t been burned as well as Golly normally did, but that didn’t explain why he was the only one pulled, and why he was the only one sent down.
    And the only thing that could explain that were the two men on either side of him now. Golly taking long strides, chattering away to himself and nobody else, Len