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‘You good?’ I asked somewhat cautiously, with an expectant smile. He stared blankly at me and shrugged his shoulders.

‘Guess so,’ he replied. ‘You want to come in?’

‘Nah,’ I said.

He just groaned in response to my sarcasm, and turned to walk back into his flat as I followed him in.

At least he had done some organising since I had last been here.

The newspapers in the hallway, which formed a small tunnel, had all been nicely folded and organised with little multi-coloured markers placed to indicate the date.

The other tens of thousands looked a little more erratic in terms of their organisation.

‘How long did it take you to arrange this?’ I asked, examining the thousands of thin spines of paper that were all placed perfectly on top of each other, no edge even slightly out of place.

‘A week or so. There were re-runs of some old Hammer films on one of the channels, so I watched them whilst I did it. Time flew by.’

‘So, what am I looking at here?’ I asked, motioning to one of the many eight-foot-tall pillars of newspapers, curious if I could call him out on his knowledge.

‘You’re looking at…2009,’ Angus said, hands on hips, like he was inspecting a modern art piece. ‘Please don’t touch it, though.’

‘Pfft, you think I’m that brave,’ I replied as he led me into his kitchen – also full of papers, as well as plenty of empty food-stained pots from microwaveable ready meals and takeaways.

‘Jesus Christ, it’s gross in here, Angus,’ I said to him, trying to take in the sheer mess he had crafted: pans had been left permanently soaking in their own fat and grease, a wide selection of plastic pop bottles had been tossed on the floor, and a small ecosystem of flies were hovering around a room that served as their all-you-can-eat buffet.

‘I’m sorry you feel that way,’ he muttered under his breath.

God, Angus really was insufferable sometimes.

‘I won’t take up too much of your time, okay?

’ I said, trying to find someplace to sit that wasn’t covered with food or newspapers.

It was equal parts strange and offensive that he actually looked relieved when I said that.

I don’t think he had seen anyone since I’d last checked in on him some two weeks ago, and there he was, counting down the minutes until I left him alone again.

‘I just want to know more about Clark. I want the paper,’ I said, realising it was easier to stand than find somewhere safe to sit.

Angus nodded, spinning himself around to one of the smaller stacks that I guessed he was still building. He filed through the stack for a second, carefully and tenderly dancing his fingertips across the thin spines of the papers, and then yanked one out and passed it to me.

‘He’s around the midway mark,’ he said. ‘Please, please don’t rip it.’

I scanned through the horrible texture of newspaper, hating the dry, velvety feel of it on my fingertips as I passed through the mundane local journalism.

School fair, school play, new community hall, school presents gender-flipped nativity, school faces dozens of complaints, and then I found him.

There were some six or so other people in the photo, all pensioners.

But there he was on the left, unmistakable.

Either the years had been kind to him, or the photo had been put through Photoshop: he was rocking a full, thick head of hair like some kind of wannabe silver fox.

It was funny: even in the monochrome paper, I could still make out that bronze ring on his little finger.

I bet part of them all felt a little bit pleased that they had managed to get away with it.

I must have let my feelings make their way to my face, as Angus’s face shifted into a scowl in response.

‘Don’t you do it. Don’t do it. If you do it, you’ll be the stupidest person in the history of the whole planet. So just don’t.’

‘I’m not going to do it,’ I said calmly and serenely back to him. ‘Do you really think I’d be that idiotic?’

He waved his hands up in exasperation before slapping them against his face.

‘Well, come on, Fran, it’s not like you went and killed O’Neill now, is it? With no planning or prep. I could have at least helped.’

‘How could you have helped?’ I asked, feeling the repressed pangs of infuriation begin to ascend.

I had been here two minutes, and I was already fed up with Angus always pretending he was this wise old sage when he barely knew how to work the microwave.

‘You could have brought a stack of papers to mop up the blood, right? That would have been your contribution to the whole thing, I bet.’

‘Oh, piss off,’ Angus said, storming out of the small kitchenette and towards his bedroom, where he slammed the door shut behind him.

Of course we had argued. Every time I’d come over recently, we’d seemed to argue. Maybe we were more like brother and sister than we thought, or maybe if we hadn’t gone through so much shared trauma, we would have killed each other ages ago.

‘Don’t walk away, come on,’ I yelled pleadingly. ‘I’m only joking.’

I closed the paper and placed it back on the pile as neatly as I could, careful not to add any flame to the fire as I began to walk to his bedroom, ready to execute the whole ‘apology’ act that I knew he needed.

But just as I did that, he marched back in, grabbed the paper, and inserted it into its proper place in the middle of the pile, which I, of course, had failed to do in my foolish ignorance.

‘Are you going to get your job back?’ I asked after him as he angrily sauntered off again, trying to organise something that clearly bothered him in one of the other stacks.

‘No,’ he grunted.

‘Why not?’

‘I’m not going back to cleaning supermarket floors. It’s degrading.’

‘Oh, come on, you cannot take some kind of high ground here,’ I groaned at him. ‘There is absolutely nothing wrong with supermarket work.’

He wasn’t having it. I knew he didn’t actually find the work degrading; it was just another excuse so he could stay inside and not do anything other than get papers delivered, watch TV, eat food, and then go to sleep.

Sure, he had trauma to process, but I’d gone through everything he had, and I was a functioning member of society.

Angus was still silent. He just kept on fiddling around with his newspapers, using his index finger and thumb to gently manoeuvre each sheet into its right place, ultra-careful not to crease or rip.

I knew what would get him talking to me, so I slipped my hand into my jeans pocket, closed my fingers around the small plastic bag, and yanked it out.

Angus watched me in his peripheral vision, clearly aware of what it was before his eyes had even properly focused on it.

He stopped his ameliorating and walked – still with more than a hint of sulk – over to me to inspect.

I passed him the bag that still had a few smudges of blood inside and he felt around the plastic-encased ring. His eyes were transfixed on it, mesmerised.

‘You want me to hold this one with Macleod’s?’

‘Surprisingly, living next door to the murder I committed means it’s probably best that I don’t have any evidence on me,’ I remarked. ‘So I would consider it a big personal favour if you could hang onto it for the time being.’

He gave a grunt as he continued to inspect every tiny scratch of the ring through the plastic bag.

‘Would you have done it?’ I asked him. That stopped his trance. He placed his hands in his pocket with the ring, performed his signature sigh, and pursed his lips together.

‘No.’

‘What would you have done?’

‘I don’t know, reported him to the police or something. I wouldn’t have killed him in broad daylight like you, you lunatic.’

‘I mean, I gave him a choice?’ I said, trying to ignore the irritation I felt at being called a lunatic.

‘You only did that to make yourself feel better. You really think you wouldn’t have still killed him if he said he’d go public with what they did to us?’

‘Look, I get it. You’re right,’ I said to Angus, surrendering to him. I didn’t actually mean what I was saying, but I couldn’t be arsed to argue with him any more. ‘But I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. As long as they’re walking around out there, they’re a threat. We need justice.’

‘Bullshit. Justice and vengeance are two different things.’

‘Justice and vengeance are like…Flakes and Ripples, basically the same thing!’ I justified.

‘Oh my…Fran, you’re doing it because you’re a sadist. You think I couldn’t tell how euphoric you were when you told me you’d killed O’Neill on the phone? I mean, you’ve kept his ring as a memento, despite it being obvious evidence that you slaughtered him. Who does that?!’ Angus growled.

Gosh, that hurt even more. Maybe it was because he wasn’t too far away from the truth. Euphoric did seem a stretch, though. Ecstatic, maybe, but not euphoric.

‘They deserve to die, though, right? What, you think they deserve to have their happy little lives? Their happy little endings with their little glasses of homemade lemonade and playing tiddlywinks every other Tuesday. Is that what you want, Angus?’ I hissed.

This was a different argument to yesterday with Gareth.

This felt raw. I wanted my words to hurt Angus.

I wanted him to get that kind of inner, surging jolt of pain like he had just given me.

‘And you’re telling me that every time you think about… ’

I paused, bracing myself to say her name aloud.

‘…about Edith, you don’t think about killing them?’

‘I want you not to go to jail, Fran. All of these guys have – what – ten years left, if that, before they pop off? Then that’s it, they’re dead.

You, on the other hand, have a whole life left to lead, and killing Clark – if that’s what you’re going to do – may just end with you rotting in some prison in Dartmoor or somewhere. It’s going to ruin you…and Gareth.’

‘Oh, my God!’ I shrieked, my anger finally reaching the surface, destroying any composure I had left. ‘I am not going to kill him!’

Angus looked at me like I was suddenly being the unreasonable one, his eyebrows launching up his forehead.

‘Okay, relax,’ he murmured. ‘I was just saying. I mean, don’t you ever just want to be honest with Gareth? Just tell him everything.’

‘No, I don’t,’ I said without missing a beat.

I wished I could, desperately, but I knew, Gareth being Gareth, that if I did, our marriage would crumble in a matter of moments.

I knew I could be obstinate at times, but it had become a running joke between me and my uni friends when Gareth and I had first started dating just how law-abiding he was.

I once asked him who would care if he watched some bootleg copy of a film online.

‘It just wouldn’t be right,’ was all he said.

Angus and I both sat there in silence for a moment.

At first, I thought it was a moment of mutual unspoken understanding; even though we argued and bickered, we would always be there for one another.

That was something that didn’t need to be verbalised.

But then, after a few moments of Angus shifting awkwardly, as if he was getting ready to speak, I knew he was going to say something stupid.

‘Have you ever thought about coming forward? Just telling the police everything?’

He was nothing if not consistent.

‘With what evidence, Angus? Do you not remember Clive tried going to the police about the fraud they were committing after the fire, and Macleod shut it down so fast? What makes you think it would be different now? We’ve got no evidence.

The police, the system are always going to want to cover up what they did to us. ’

He didn’t know how to answer that.

‘Any chance of justice is screwed because of Clark and his pals,’ I murmured. ‘He would never get what he deserves.’

‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,’ Angus mused.

Wait a minute, was he quoting MLK?

‘It only bends if we pull, Angus,’ I clarified.

I offered to make a start on cleaning, but he began to not-so-gently shoo me out of his apartment before I could do so. I tried to argue – the mould festering on his dishes was giving me a tangible level of anxiety – but he kept corralling me to the door.

‘Don’t do anything stupid, like kill Clark,’ Angus grumbled before he slammed the door shut, and I heard the secure clunk of the lock.

Oh, I was definitely going to kill Clark.