Pip went first, holding her breath as she walked over, eyes stalling on Jason’s broken-open head. She blinked, dragging her gaze away, and pulled the heavy ring of keys out the door. ‘We need to make sure we remember everything we’ve touched – I’ve touched – so we can wipe it down later,’ she said, cradling the keys in her hand. ‘Come on, this way.’

Pip stepped over Jason, avoiding the halo of blood around his head. Ravi followed close behind and Pip saw his eyes lingering, blinking hard as though he might wish it all away.

A small cough as he picked up his pace behind her.

They didn’t say anything. What was there to say?

It took a few attempts for Pip to find the right key for the door at the end of the storeroom, by the workbench. She pushed it open into a dark and cavernous room.

Ravi pulled his sleeve up over his fingers and flicked on the light switch.

The room came into view in flickers, as the overhead lights settled into their buzzy glow. This building must have once been a barn, Pip realized, staring up into its impossibly high ceiling. And laid out before them were rows and rows and rows of machines. Lawnmowers, strimmers, leaf blowers, machines she didn’t even understand, and tables with smaller tools like hedge cutters. Over on the right were large machines Pip assumed must be ride-on mowers, covered over with black tarp. There were shelves with more metal tools, glinting in the light, and red jerry cans, and bags of soil.

Pip turned to Ravi, his eyes taking in the room, feverish and fast. ‘What’s that?’ He pointed to a bright orange machine, tall, with a funnel-shaped top.

‘I think that’s a shredder,’ she said. ‘Or a wood-chipper, whatever it’s called. Branches go in and it shreds them to tiny little pieces.’

Ravi pursed his lips to one side, like he was considering something.

‘No,’ Pip said firmly, knowing exactly what it was.

‘I didn’t say anything,’ he countered. ‘But there are clearly no giant fridges in here, are there?’

‘But,’ Pip’s gaze alighted on the rows and rows of mowers, ‘lawnmowers run on petrol, don’t they?’

Ravi eyes picked up hers, widened in recognition. ‘Ah, for the fire,’ he said.

‘Even better,’ Pip added. ‘Petrol doesn’t just burn. It explodes.’

‘Good, that’s good,’ Ravi nodded. ‘But that’s the very last step, and we have a long night ahead of us before then. All of it’s pointless if we can’t work out how to cool him down.’

‘And warm him up,’ Pip said, and she felt it catching from the look in Ravi’s eyes. Despair. The plan might be over before it began. Her life in the balance, and the scales were tipping away from them. Come on, think. What could they use? There had to be something.

‘Let’s check the office building,’ Ravi said, taking charge, leading Pip away from the regimented lines of mowers, back through the chemical storeroom, picking their way through the spilled weedkiller and the spilled blood. Around the dead body, more dead each time, treading around him on feather-light steps, like this was just a childhood game.

Pip glanced back at the storeroom, at the coils of duct tape with tufts of her hair and spots of her blood. ‘My DNA is all over this room,’ she said. ‘I’ll take the duct tape with me, dispose of it with my clothes. But we’re going to have to clean those shelves too. Clean it all before we burn it.’

‘Yes,’ Ravi said, taking the ring of keys from her. ‘And these.’ He jangled them. ‘There should be cleaning supplies in the office, I’d say.’

Pip caught sight of herself again, reflected in the window of Jason’s car as they passed. Her eyes too dark, the pupils overgrown, eating away at the thinning border of hazel green. She shouldn’t stare too long, in case her reflection stayed in Jason’s window, forever leaving a mark of her there. That’s when she remembered.

‘Fuck,’ she said, and Ravi’s footsteps crunched to a halt.

‘What?’ he said, joining her reflection in the window, his eyes too big and too dark as well.

‘My DNA. It’s all over the boot of his car.’

‘That’s OK, we can deal with that as well,’ Ravi’s reflection said, and Pip saw the mirror version of him reach for her hand, before he remembered and pulled back.

‘No, I mean it’s all over the boot,’ she said, panic rising again. ‘Hair, skin. My fingerprints, which the police already have on file. I left as much as I could. I thought I was going to die and I was trying to help. Leave a trail of evidence so you could find him, catch him.’

A new look in Ravi’s eyes, desolate and quiet, and a quiver in his lip like he was trying not to cry. ‘You must have been so scared,’ he said quietly.

‘I was,’ she said. And as scary as this was, the plan, and what would happen if they failed, nothing came close to the terror she’d felt in that boot or in that storeroom, taped up in her death mask. Its traces still there, all over her skin, in the craters of her eyes.

‘We will sort it, OK?’ he said loudly, speaking over the tremor in his voice. ‘We will deal with the car later, when we’re back. First we need to find something to –’

‘Cool him down,’ Pip sounded out the words, staring beyond herself, into the inside of Jason’s car. ‘Cool him down and then heat him up,’ she said, her eyes circling the control panel beside the steering wheel. The idea started small, as a simple what if, growing and growing, gorging itself on Pip’s attention until it was all she could think. ‘Oh my god,’ she hissed, and again, louder, ‘Oh my god!’

‘What?’ Ravi asked, instinctively checking over his shoulders.

‘The car!’ Pip turned to him. ‘The car is our fridge. This is a new-ish car, fancy SUV, how cold do you think the air-con gets?’

The idea pulled in Ravi too, she could see it in his eyes, something close to excitement. ‘Pretty cold,’ he said. ‘On the coldest setting, full blast from all the vents, enclosed space. Yeah, pretty fucking cold,’ he said with a near-smile.

‘A standard fridge is about four degrees Celsius; you think we can get it to that?’

‘How do you know what a standard fridge temperature is?’ he asked.

‘Ravi, I know things. How do you not know by now that I know things?’

‘Well,’ Ravi glanced up at the sky, ‘it’s kinda chilly out tonight. Can’t be more than fifteen degrees outside. So, if we just need the car to cool ten degrees or so... yeah, yeah, I’d say that’s feasible.’

A shift in Pip’s ribcage, a feeling like relief that opened out her chest, gave her a little more space to breathe. They could do this. They might actually do this. Play god. Bring a man back to life for a few hours, so another could kill him.

‘And,’ she said, ‘when we get back here later –’

‘Turn on the heaters to the hottest setting, full blast,’ Ravi took over the sentence for her, speaking fast.

‘Bring his body temperature back up,’ Pip finished it.

Ravi nodded, eyes darting left to right as he ran it through his head again. ‘Yes. This is going to work, Pip. You’re going to be OK.’