Bram saw the envelope in the mirror. The passenger folded it once and pushed it beneath the seat while telling someone on the phone that he had collected everything. He sounded tired rather than furtive. Bram decided the difference did not matter.
The finance company had given Bram until noon. After that, the car would be collected. He had spent the night driving people home to rooms where they could lie down, then returning to the service station to sleep upright until the next request arrived.
The passenger asked to stop for coffee.
"This door sticks," Bram said as he pulled in. "I'll get yours."
The left rear handle did stick. He had put off repairing it because most passengers used the other side. He parked close to a concrete pillar so the other side would be awkward too, then asked whether the man wanted milk.
While the passenger looked for coins, Bram leaned through the open front door to straighten the mat. His hand went beneath the rear seat. The envelope was where he had watched it go.
He took it into the shop inside his coat.
There was enough to pay the outstanding balance and the fee for delaying collection. There was more than enough. He counted by lifting the corners while standing beside the freezer, the same motion he used to count the small notes passengers left him when they were too drunk to use the app.
The attendant knew him. Her name was Elsie. She asked whether he wanted his usual coffee and he said yes, making the answer sound ordinary while he put the envelope away.
Outside, the passenger had got out through the other rear door by turning sideways against the pillar. He was standing beside the car, searching his pockets. When Bram approached, he looked directly at the bulge in his coat.
"Give it back."
"What?"
"I watched you take it."
That was a lie, Bram thought. He would have stopped him if he had seen. The certainty gave Bram a brief sense that they were equally dishonest, which he used to get past the next few seconds.
"I bought your coffee."
The passenger caught his coat. One cup fell. The lid came off and hot coffee ran over Bram's shoe. He struck the man's arm away. The envelope slipped from his pocket and burst open against the ground.
Notes moved across the forecourt in the wind from a passing delivery van.
The passenger went after them. Bram grabbed the largest bundle before it reached a drain. The man slipped on the spilled coffee, catching Bram's sleeve as he fell toward the vehicle lane. Bram had his wrist. For a moment the two of them were connected firmly enough that he could have pulled him back against the pillar.
Then another note lifted from the bundle in Bram's free hand.
He tightened that hand and let go with the other.
The reversing van made a dull sound when it struck the man. Its alarm continued through the driver's hesitation, three bright notes repeated while everybody in the forecourt turned to look. The man dragged himself as far as Bram's open rear door and put a bloodied hand on the seat before his arm gave way.
Bram put the money inside his coat.
Elsie came running. The van driver had stopped and was climbing down, asking where the man had come from. Bram pointed toward the passenger and said he had tried to take the money.
"My money," he added.
Elsie put a hand on his shoulder. She had seen him counting beside the freezer; it seemed to confirm the sequence he gave her. He heard her tell someone he was here every night, that he worked all the hours there were. Nobody asked yet how that established ownership of the envelope.
The passenger was still breathing. They moved him only after the ambulance crew arrived. One of them asked Bram to fetch the man's bag from the car. Bram found a folded list of names beside it, with sums written in a careful column. He left the list under the seat and put a few notes beside it before returning with the bag.
He told the police there had been a struggle. That was true. He described the sticky handle and the dropped coffee. He did not describe the moment when he had held the man's wrist, because nobody else seemed to have seen it clearly enough to ask.
The man died at the hospital that morning. Bram learned this during a call asking him to attend another interview. By then he had paid the finance company. He was sitting in a car that belonged to him for the first time in four years.
There was blood on the edge of the rear seat where the man had put his hand after falling, before anyone reached him. Bram paid a cleaner to remove it. The cleaner said the stain might show again when the fabric dried, and gave him a receipt in case he needed another treatment.
That evening a woman got into the back and complained about the chemical smell. Bram apologized. He said the previous passenger had been sick. She asked him to lower the window a little, and he lowered it until she told him that was enough.
