I looked at him and I swear he was calmer than I was. In just a few minutes Denis Tanter was going to come charging into my house for the third time. I pulled a carton of milk out of the fridge and drank from it to quiet my stomach.

My brother reached into his jacket and showed me a vicious-looking knife.

‘They come armed with this. It’s sold in any hardware shop in the country. Not surprisingly, you panic and swing at them with a bit of pipe. You call the police, and before they arrive I come back. We handle their questions together.’

‘You think it will work?’ I asked him.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t think it will even go to court. Two against one? Self-defence will see you clear of it, Davey. No problem at all. You just trust me and we’ll see it through, all right?’

I looked him in the eyes, and for a moment I could feel tears come. I nodded, turning away, knowing he had seen.

‘Now concentrate, Davey. They should be here any minute. You have the easy bit. You just sit down in the kitchen like we planned it. Have a drink, if you have to, just look miserable.’

As I sat down, my brother went to the front door and left it on the latch.

‘Remind me to break the lock in afterwards,’ he said as he came back to the kitchen and stood behind the door. He hefted the metal bar in his hand and I couldn’t look at him.

Outside, we heard a car engine roaring closer, being driven too fast. It screeched to a halt. I took a deep breath.

DENIS TANTER CAME INTO my home at 9.28 in the morning. I looked up at the wall clock, so I know. He hit the front door so hard that I think he would have smashed the lock right off if we’d locked it. It hammered back against the wall and then bounced off his shoulder as he bulled his way in. I’d read him right, I was pleased to see. I’d told my brother he wasn’t the type to send Michael in first, not if his blood was up. It didn’t seem to worry my brother, but I wanted Denis in first. He was the dangerous one, not his man. I’d known that from the beginning.

He hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on. I could see that from the moment he caught sight of me in the kitchen. I was looking pathetic, with tear trails down my face and an expression of stunned fear. It wasn’t hard to fake when you know someone is going to die in the next few minutes and it could very well be you.

‘Where is she?’ he roared at me. He was flushed with high emotion, and for an awful moment I thought he was going to go charging upstairs to search the bedrooms for her. I shook my head and gestured vaguely across the kitchen. He scowled at me and I saw his fists rise as he stepped inside the door. Michael was a shadow in the hall behind him, but I could only watch Denis as my brother struck. God, he was fast. You’ve never seen anything like it.

It wasn’t a crunch. It sounded like a bag of flour bursting, a sort of soft thump. Staring straight at Denis, I swear I saw the end of the bar sink into his head before it came back. The anger, the light, everything that called itself Denis Tanter went out in an instant. My brother hit him again as he began to fall, and then once more. I couldn’t help remembering the way he’d kicked and kicked at the man in Camden and I knew there was at least one other body in his wake. There are moments in our lives when the lies we tell ourselves just fall away. This was one of them, for me.

My brother ignored Michael as the man stood stunned in the doorway, his mouth open in horror. Instead, my older brother looked at me and grinned. He didn’t seem to care that Michael was there. I watched in sick fascination as my brother nudged Denis with his foot. The body twitched and I thought I might lose my breakfast.

‘Dead, or a vegetable, no doubt about it,’ he said, and I swear he chuckled. I’d rarely seen him happier. Perhaps you can see now why I’ve always been frightened of him. It wasn’t so much what he did, but what he was capable of.

Michael began to move and I was pleased I couldn’t see my brother’s expression when he turned back to finish the job. There are sharks in the world and, like Bobby Penrith before him, Michael just wasn’t prepared to meet a bigger one in my kitchen, on that day. I saw him reach into his jacket for some sort of weapon. My brother didn’t trouble to stop him. He just smacked the bar against the side of Michael’s head, breaking something inside. Michael dropped almost as fast as Denis had, as the signals from his brain to his legs were interrupted.

I came to my feet in a sort of trance, feeling only pity for Michael. He was a hired man, after all, but I’d sat and watched him twist my fingers right round and I didn’t call out to save him, even if I could have.

The man Denis had hired to cause a little fear in those he dealt with had always struck me as large, not fast, but strong. It was surprising to see how my brother loomed over him as he hit him again. Fear shrinks you somehow, and courage swells you up larger than you really are. I’ve noticed that before.

I’d found my own bit of pipe in the plumber’s bag my brother had brought with him. I don’t think he heard me coming, but even if he did he didn’t expect me to smash it down on him with all the strength of years of fear and hatred. I’d seen him break a skull just a few moments before and I’m pleased to say that I did it just as neatly as he did. I killed my brother as he hit Michael for a second time, so that the two blows sounded almost together. He fell sideways, sprawling over the broken bodies. He didn’t move and I almost left it at that, but he’d seemed to think two hits were needed to be sure. I held my breath and brought the pipe down again onto his crown, with all the force I could. It was already soft and I felt it give. His eyes were open and I don’t think he could still feel anything. The first one had been pretty hard.

There was some blood dripping, but it wasn’t too bad. Most of it was on them and spattered across the kitchen. It looked just as he’d said it would, like a violent scene of a fight.

I stood looking at them for a while, I can’t say how long. My stomach betrayed me, of course, so I wasted a few minutes vomiting into the sink and wondering if I should get rid of it or leave it as a reasonable reaction to such horror. I left it, in the end. The police would come asking eventually and I knew they could be persistent. My brother was right about one thing, though. The self-defence works even better with him dead. I had an idea that I might even end up as a hero.

When my stomach had stopped going into spasm, I sat down at the kitchen table and poured a last toast to the three of them.

I raised my glass to my brother. ‘Here’s to growing up, old son. You should never have slept with her,’ I told him. ‘That was just a little too much for me. Still, it’s all forgotten now.’

I found myself chuckling, and it was an effort to stop. I wondered if he even knew I’d found out, that Carol had thrown it at me in one of our fights. He wasn’t the sort to feel guilt. I’ve no doubt that it was just a thrill for him to find a beautiful woman willing to waste an afternoon, no matter who she was married to. It was strange to see the way they acted around each other after I knew. Whatever memory they’d made had gone a bit sour, I could see that. Perhaps she’d refused a second round, or he’d refused her. It didn’t matter to me much, not any more.

It was strange to see the bodies in my own kitchen. I’d seen it in my imagination enough times, but to have actually reached the point was like time standing still and more than a little bit frightening. Reality is like that, I’ve found.

I’d worked out most of the details while I was standing in the freezing sea waiting for my brother to read the note I’d left for Carol and come and get me. I remember worrying that he might have had an accident or a flat tyre, and all my effort would have been wasted. I knew seeing me there would get him on my side. I was always his blind spot, his little brother. I don’t think he cared about another living soul. I’m not ashamed to say there were tears in my eyes for a while, looking at him. Brothers are close.