JASON CUPPED THE dog’s testicles in the palm of his left hand and rolled them back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. His hand was wet and slippery with soap suds, which made the process a lot easier both for practical reasons and for his own mental comfort: so long as there was something, even a thin film of water and detergent, between his hand and the dog’s shrivelled sac, he could allow himself to deny that he was touching this dog’s testicles; that here he was, hunched over a dog in a hydrobath, sponging it down with one hand and playing with its balls with the other.

It was a trick old Joe Lyon taught him when he first started. It worked particularly well on German shepherds, which was what he had here. As soon as the mongrel snarled at him, he reached for its testes. Once he got the hold right, the snarling stopped. Worked like a charm every single time, or so Joe said, and he hadn’t seen Joe proved wrong yet.