Another thing to keep me going: the promise of a service station. The signs have been pointing to one for the past six miles, and I'm desperate enough to believe in them. Anything to get out of the cold for a while, get myself cleaned up and rested before I work out my next move.

When I finally get to the service station, it's in the arse end

of nowhere and somewhere in my battered head I wonder if it's the same one I passed when I drove up here. I hobble into the carpark, lean against the side of an articulated lorry and catch my breath. I've resisted smoking until now, but after the walk, I think I've deserved it. I light up an Embassy and break into a nasty, painful cough.

I ditch the cigarette. I haven't healed enough to enjoy it, but it kills me to see it wasted, so I move on.

Into the rest area, past the blaring arcade machines and into the Granary Restaurant. The woman behind the counter looks like she just caught a nostril full of something rancid. It's probably me. I make the mistake of talking to her, and her top lip pushes further into her nose.

'I'm sorry, sir. But the toilets are for customers only.'

'I just want to clean myself up, love.'

'And I'm sorry, but the facilities are for customers.'

'I'm a customer.' I look around, grab a muffin wrapped in plastic and slam it onto the counter. 'There you go.'

She looks down at the muffin. When I follow her gaze, I notice the muffin's all mashed up. And when I look up again, she's staring at me like I'm a psycho.

'How much?' I say.

'Three pounds.'

'For a fuckin' muffin?'

Her face crinkles. One step from calling the police or hammering a panic strip. I root around in my jacket, pull out my wallet. Stokes and his mates are a bunch of amateurs: from the looks of the wad in my wallet, they didn't even have the sense to rob me. I hand the woman a tenner. When she takes it, there's dirt on the note.

'Have you anything smaller?' she says.

'Is testing my fuckin' patience part of your job descrip- tion?'

'I just asked — '

'Keep the change. Call it a tip. Customer service like yours, you deserve one.'

She points to a sign for the toilets and I drag myself across the restaurant. I manage to stun a couple of kids in the process. They were happy enough throwing their breakfast around, but one sniff of me seems to have killed their appetites stone dead. As I push open the door to the toilets, I hear the mother say, 'Don't stare.'

Listen to your mother, kids.

It's too bright in the gents. I think about knocking one Of the lights out with my shoe, but I'm too knackered to do it. I move to the basin, feel a wave of nausea rise and crash in my gut. Run the cold water and splash some on my face. I watch the dried blood streak and feel my cheeks go numb. It looks like my face is melting. My fingers brush stubble as I wipe the excess water away and the bruise on my jaw aches.

What a fucking state.

I grab a fistful of paper towels, run the hot water and start dabbing at the cuts around my eye. It's no good, though. I can't focus properly.

Count them off: a battered nose, swollen; major damage to the cheek and my right eye; the left eye swelling in sympathy; a nasty purple bruise where I got kicked in the throat.

Oh, there's plenty to pay back here. And I haven't even checked below the collar.

Back in the restaurant, I don't get as many stares. I grab my muffin from the counter, give a cracked smile to the woman and make my way out to the phones. I have a plan. But it requires equipment, and it requires that I get some rest first. But I can't phone Mo without his number. And there's nobody else I can trust up here.

Well, there's one.

I feed a handful of change into the payphone and listen to it ring.

'Donna, it's me.'

'Cal. How are you? How's Manchester?’

‘I'm not in Manchester.'

'What's up with your voice? Sounds like you had the shit kicked out of you.'

'That'll be because I had the shit kicked out of me.’

‘Are you okay?'

'I'll live. I think. Look, Donna, I really need some help. Can you come and pick me up?’

‘Where are you?'

'I'm at the services south of Sunderland, I think. I'm near Sunderland. I saw a sign for Darlington, too. I don't know. I'm near somewhere, but I can't see it.'

'Calm down.'

'I'm calm. It's been a rough night, that's all.' I close my eyes for a second and feel my legs start to buckle. Snap awake. 'Please, Donna. I swear. This'll be the last time.'

'Give me an hour,' she says.

I wander out into the lobby of the station and watch the carpark. Another hour and I'll be out of here. And then what?

Knocking me down and beating the shit out of me stank of desperation, like Stokes didn't know what to do with me. He's just another scared amateur trying to make things better but fucking them up worse.

Rob Stokes, playing the hard arse, the proper gangster. What he's seen in hip-hop videos and Al Pacino movies. All posture with none of the balls to back him up. I'm working for the real thing here, and whatever movie Stokes has been watching, it just bubbles and flares on the screen. He's not living in the real world.

Uncle Morris Tiernan has been linked to the deaths of over

thirty-seven men in his career. Some of them used to be mates. And Tiernan hasn't done a day behind bars for any of them.

Rob Stokes has no idea who he's fucking with. He's about to find out, though.

I bite into the toffee muffin and feel like throwing up. Drop the muffin onto the ground, put my head between my legs and spend all my time trying not to pass out. The sound of an engine makes me look up. Donna gets out of her car and looks at me with a mixture of disgust and pity on her face. When I get into her Fiesta, she tells me to open the window.

'You're minging,' she says.

I know,' I say. 'And thanks for this.'

'No problem,' she says.

And for a moment, I actually believe her.

I couldn't fuckin' stomach talking to them cunts. I sat in the corner of Dobsons by meself, had a large double brandy. Them bastards was useless, fuckin' useless. Bottlers.

I said we did summat to Innes, they looked at us like I was going mental.

'Enough with the speed, Mo,' said Rossie.

'Aye, c'mon, Mo. You're off your tits,' said Baz. 'We did his car. That could be enough, right?'

'His car? His fuckin' car? What's the matter with youse cunts? Where's your balls?' And I were raging in that van, felt like knocking both their skulls off the bonnet until they went limp. And maybe it were the speed what made us itchy, but it weren't just that, couldn't have been. I looked in their faces and I knew that them bastards weren't up for the real deal. Aye, it were alright if you needed someone cut or knocked about, but you talked about killing a fucker, then they shit it. Didn't mind blood on their hands, unless it were the last drop spilled. Leave that to some other poor bastard like me.

I weren't given up. Nah, I just had to factor in their cowardice. Just like everything, man. You want summat done, you got to do it yourself.

Always been the same. Back when we was kids, I were always the one with the ideas. Rossie and Baz, they was followers. Fuckin' sheep. But now I were drinking, slowing, I realised summat: they wasn't sheep no more, they was pawns.

They did like I said, else they'd end up the same way as Stokes were gonna be. I had me plans already drawn up for that cunt. And Innes. And Alison.

Alison most of all. Who the fuck did she think she were, eh? Little bitch, little fuckin' slag bitch, all playing the grown- up one minute and spreading for any fuck and then sucking on a wowwy-pop the next. I didn't mind when she up and said she wanted nowt to do with us. Nah, I didn't mind. Bitch were fuckin' pregnant, anyways. So I just gave her a fuckin' kick in the gut and left it at that.