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of candles for her dead daughter. It became a ritual. He craned his neck up to see a huge painted image of the
Panayia
staring down at him. Goosebumps crawled all over him like ants as he locked eyes on the halo burning around her head.
    She
was guiltless.
He
was guilty.
    He pulled his weatherworn leather jacket to the side and stared down at the handle of the Glock he’d stuffed into his trouser belt. He’d just bought it from the Cornershop, a minimarket in the backstreets of Wood Green where you could get
whatever you wanted
. If he was gonna get that delivery back, he needed to fight fire with fire. He got caught cold once and he wasn’t gonna let it happen again.
They
had tools, now
he
had tools too.
    The bloke at the Cornershop had his sales pitch down to a tee. He took John out back where he kept a bag full of guns and knives for sale to whoever wanted ’em. After handling a few others, he convinced John that the Glock was the best choice for him.
    There’s seventeen bullets in magazine, my friend. It’s semi-automatic weapon. When magazine unload, barrel come back and stay; tell you is empty.
    This is good gun, my friend. You can trust this gun.
    Something about it all made John feel a little sick. Anyone with enough cash could get themselves a serious weapon in this city,
gamota
. Anyone.
    He placed a hand around the handle. It was cold to the touch. While choosing his gun, he realised it was the first time he’d held one since the Cypriot
strato
. But it felt like it had been just the previous day; just like riding a bike, you never forget. Holding it reminded him of his rifle. The one they gave you when you first entered the barracks. The amount of time he spent messing around with that thing meant he could pick up virtually any gun at any time and use it with competence, the same way a trained chef can pick up any frying pan, use it at any hob, and still make perfect eggs.
    He glanced up at the innocent eyes of the
Panayia
again. She stared down at him forever, her halo glowing brightly in the afternoon light, even though the sky outside was military grey. When Aziz said that ‘this is war. This is life,’ back at the hospital, he wasn’t wrong. John never envisaged there’d be a very dark side to his delivery job. Part of the job
was
to protect the delivery against thieves, and he failed that part of it. He got sloppy. If protecting the delivery meant using a gun, then so be it. But he only realised this now, when it was too late. Even though he wasn’t there long, the
strato
trained him to be a merciless killer, to snuff out the lives of other soldiers. Especially Turkish soldiers. John came to the realisation soon after joining that he didn’t believe in these ideologies. It wasn’t his philosophy. He didn’t want to kill. He was a pacifist, believing in giving people the benefit of the doubt. So he came back to London to live with
Yiayia
again, his tail between his legs, a traitor in some Greeks’ eyes. A disloyal traitor. A snake that shouldn’t be trusted.
    And John had to live with that label ever since.
    Even though he didn’t complete his training, he did enough to develop the cold-blooded nature needed to kill. Killing ‘in the name of war,’
gamota
. Which in John’s eyes was still murder, the worst kind of
armatia
. And if he used the gun in his belt on the people who mugged him off the other night, it would be
armatia
on a level he’d never been to. And so he’d have to atone for murder.
    But this is war, this is life…
    He took in a deep, shuddering breath, looking from the
Panayia
’s image down to the gun in his belt. He then looked up to meet her sorrowful eyes again.
    He let out a heavy sigh, feeling torn inside. ‘Please help me,’ he said to the
Panayia
. ‘Give me the strength to do this. And please forgive me.
Please
…’
    A voice to his left then made him start. ‘
Yiannaki?
’
    His head twitched round and he found himself staring at
Papa
Phillipo, who was