DECAY INEVITABLE

CONRAD A. WILLIAMS

To die will be an awfully big adventure.

– James Matthew Barrie,

Peter Pan

SOLARIS

For Rhonda, Southwold 2000

First published 2009 by Solaris, an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

www.solarisbooks.com

ISBN (ePUB): 978-1-84997-309-0

ISBN (MOBI): 978-1-84997-310-6

Copyright © 2011 Conrad Williams.

Cover image by Dave McKean.

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

ALSO BY CONRAD WILLIAMS

One

The Unblemished

London Revenant

The Scalding Rooms

Rain

Head Injuries

Nearly People

Game

Use Once Then Destroy

1992

THE BOY HAD been asleep for a long time and woke up feeling sick. A wedge of midday sunlight contained him; it splintered in his eyes and, along with a gruel of rheum, made it difficult for him to see. Beyond the almost granular curtain of light, objects moved slowly, as though shifting through fluid. He couldn’t make out what they were. He was in great pain, but it was a pain that seemed detached, enveloping him rather than embedded within. It was a strangely comforting pain.

The dream retained its clarity, even as he swam up further from the dead pool of sleep. It crystallised and reached deep into his unconscious, revealing new nodes and structures that initially had been lost upon waking. Soon the dream had a root, the origin of his mind’s play. The more recent tendrils of the dream wavered, like new leaves on a plant cauterised by fierce sunlight, unable to go on, frustrated by a lack of completion. Still, the thick, coppery taste of fear in his throat suggested he’d been lucky to have been pulled out of the dream, before it had a chance to scar him with anything too vile.

He had been walking a midnight field; up ahead were a number of figures, a gathering of grey smocks meandering on a hill above the ocean. At the bottom of the hill lay a tower of drab, grey buildings with narrow windows and flat roofs piled on top of each other like a ziggurat.

Although it had been dark, details could be gathered from his companions: the bluish tinge to their skin, the thin worms of veins sprawled across the shorn planes of their skulls. As he approached, some of them turned to look at him. Some of them didn’t have eyes, or rather, they contained black, protruding orbs in their faces, like moist olives plugged into chunks of focaccia. The sky and sea were cut from the same fabric, a slightly darker pleat offering only the vaguest nod to separation. Directly above them, the heavens seemed feverish and uncertain, fussing and disintegrating like a nimbus of midges.

The mass of tunics fell away from him as he breached their community. They faded, swift as hot breath on glass, to leave a stain in the air that smelled of cinnamon. Another face drifted by his own, the eyes soft, wet and totally black. It was a face that had followed him into his dream, but he couldn’t place it. The frustration of failed recognition piled up against him until he started crying. The face drew away, despite his attempt to get nearer, and before it vanished into the sweep of pine trees down by the water he saw it open in a smile; the glutinous, amber light of his dream snagged on a gold tooth.

Out of the dream, his surroundings continued to burn into him. For some reason, his eyes were failing to become accustomed to the glare. Even the sunlight, fixing him to the floor through the frame of the window, was not losing ground to the spin of the Earth. Its heat was constant, and a finger of cloud reaching for the sun never eclipsed it.

Awake, he moved away from the cage of sunlight and was able to gauge his position. A black suggestion remained where he’d been sitting, as of a shadow severed from its generator. He had the impression of a single, thin arch through which he could see a tower with lights burning in a window. The sound of wind chimes. Then that was fading too and:

His father was frozen into his armchair, hands gripping the sides. Half a digestive biscuit had been caught in the process of falling, a foot shy of the carpet, surrounded by a cloud of crumbs. His father’s head was on its way backwards, larynx proud, mouth agape in the act of laughing. Spit formed a hinge for his lips. The boy’s mother was a dim figure approaching the doorway, carrying a tray and looking down at a cat trapped in the act of rubbing itself against her ankles. On the television, shoppers were still as dummies, undecided over which margarine they liked best in a taste test.

Before the explosion of sound, colour and light brought him crashing into real time again, he heard a voice, brittle with concern, bark: Do we have him? Okay, okay, pull out.

Now his father’s laughter was yo-yoing around the room, his mother pleading for Benny to go and catch some mice. Everything seemed normal, yet there were things that seemed out of kilter with what had gone on before he slept. Benny, for example, had changed. The cat approached him, affable as ever, yet one of his white “socks” had swapped feet. When he went to his room he found that his bookshelves had been altered and were now arranged alphabetically by author, rather than by title, which was how he preferred it. Outside his window, in next door’s garden, Mrs Pleat’s pond fountain chuckled happily; only last week the pond had been filled in because it attracted frogs, creatures Mrs Pleat couldn’t abide.

He saw many other inconsistencies that day, but when he woke the following morning, they had all resolved themselves. All was as it had been and nothing else was amiss.

He spent a long time worrying about the dream and trying to remember what had happened before he fell asleep. Had he spent all afternoon there, on the floor? He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t recall an alternative.

He went to the bathroom and checked his eyes in the mirror. They appeared normal, their usual brown colour. He gritted his teeth against a strong compulsion to cry and backed away from the mirror to sit on the edge of the bathtub. He was not usually given to emotional blips such as this, but then he could never understand why people always offered comfort to those who had suffered a nightmare by saying it was just a dream. This was why he had not confided in his parents.

He began to dream about the hill regularly and found that he could control his actions while he was there. He visited the wood and walked the edge of the ocean. The building, if he pressed his ear up against it, made soft, clanking noises, like machinery heard at a distance. He discovered these places were comforting to him, no longer associated with the pain or shock of his first journey. As his real-time experiences developed, so the surroundings in the dream followed suit. The trees grew. Flowers bloomed and died, corresponding with the seasons. There was an abundance of plantlife that he could never find replicated in any garden or botanical encyclopaedia during his hours of wakefulness. There were animals too, although they were timid and he never saw more than a glimpse of them in the wood. He discovered that he could not travel beyond the limit of his vision. He tried often to escape the confines of his surroundings, but at the moment he felt he had broken free, he would find, by some strange trick of perspective, that he was running back in the direction from which he had come. It didn’t bother him; he felt it was something he would achieve one day. It was something to be learned.

It was always night on the hill, and always the summit would be crowded with shaven-headed people dressed in plain, grey tunics. He grew to recognise some of the inhabitants and looked out for them on subsequent journeys to help convince him that his dreaming was lucid, although the gold-toothed character did not resurface in all this time. On occasion, he attempted to communicate with them but invariably the object of his attention would back off, eyes averted deferentially.

On the morning after one of these failed contacts, a week after his thirteenth birthday, he woke to the sound of voices. Pulling on a pair of track suit bottoms, he opened his bedroom door and peeked out onto the landing. The voices were coming from the bottom of the stairs; both were male, one calm and measured, the other breathless, threatening to become desperate. He could not hear his mother. He checked his watch. Only six a.m.; she would be in bed for at least another hour.

He crept to the top of the stairs and sat down. From here he could see the shadows of the men. He recognised his father’s voice patterns even before he’d understood what was being discussed. When it became clear it was him at the centre of their debate, he found it difficult to follow the conversation over the clamour of his heart. They were discussing money, a final payment. He forced himself to concentrate.

His father was begging the visitor now but the other was apparently unmoved.

“We have the facility ready, Mr. Nevin, and a car waiting outside. It’s really out of your hands now. We’d appreciate it if you went and woke the boy.”

“But my wife... she’ll be devastated.”

A sigh from the visitor. “Mr. Nevin, Joe, we had an agreement. Monies have been paid into your account for the past year. You don’t seriously believe that we are simply going to turn around and leave without the boy? That isn’t going to happen.”

“It is,” said the boy’s father. “I’ve changed my mind.”

There was a silence and then, very clearly, his father said: “Fuck.”

It was the profanity rather than the explosion that followed it that startled the boy onto his backside. He heard a burst of static and then the voice say: “Round the back. Quick. Watch out for the boy.” Once the radio had been switched off, he heard the voice say: “Godspeed, Joe, you stupid, stupid bastard.”

Now feet on the stairs.

The boy scampered back to his room just as his mother emerged from her bedroom, her hair in curlers, a white dressing gown wrapped around her.

“Joe?” she called, querulously. Another explosion: the top of her head came off. The boy watched, open-mouthed as his mother elegantly lifted her hand from the door as though about to primp her curls. She fell like something without bones, the remaining half of her head spread across the balustrade.

The boy ran to his window and shoved it open. He swung his body out and, clinging to the lintel, waited until he’d stopped swinging before dropping to the ground. He landed awkwardly and twisted his ankle. He didn’t feel a thing. Glancing at his window – the light just coming on – he ran across the garden and began leapfrogging the neighbouring fences until he’d lost count and the sounds of his pursuers’ cries were lost to a cacophony of disturbed dogs and the labour of his own lungs. By the time he stopped running, thin light was breaking above the roofs and he was standing bare-foot, bare-chested, at a traffic island, shivering with cold. The early-morning churn of the M56 lay below him. He realised he didn’t have anybody to turn to.

He hurried to the southbound sliproad and huddled by the verge. Tired, dirty and half-naked, he guessed it would be a while before he flagged a lift, if at all, but the first vehicle that swung by – an Escort van driven by a builder on his way back to Birmingham – stopped for him. The driver’s name was Jerry. He provided the boy with a jumper and a pair of boots three sizes too big from the back of the van. By the time they arrived in Birmingham, the boy had been offered a job as a builder’s mate on a site just outside Walsall.

Wolfing breakfast in a lorry drivers’ café at the end of his journey, the boy watched TV over Jerry’s shoulder and was surprised to see his parents’ house appear on the screen. It seemed alien to him, pinned beneath the harsh lights of the TV crews, barricaded by yellow police tape, despite the many years he’d spent there. A hunt was on for the killer of his mother and father. A photograph of their missing son appeared, shocking him. His own face seemed unfamiliar to him. He glanced around at his fellow diners, but they were deep in their tabloids, or their bacon and eggs.

He couldn’t risk anybody recognising him. He knew it could only lead to his being presented to the people who had destroyed his parents. When they’d finished, Jerry led him to the van and took him home, which turned out to be a small terraced house in Acocks Green. Jerry showed him the spare room and told him he could stay until he’d earned a bit of cash and found some digs. When Jerry disappeared into the bathroom for a shower, the boy walked through the kitchen into the utility room at the back of the house, plugged in the Bosch drill and drove the hammering bit deep into his right eye.

PART ONE

UNREAL CITY

Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.

– Emily Dickinson

CHAPTER ONE: SUDDENLY, AT HOME

IF THIS JOB was a dog, I’d have it put down.

Sean watched Sally let the steering wheel spin back through her hands as the squad car righted itself; a fluid movement. It was early, no need to use the sirens, a good hour and a half before the traffic began to breed. Sally was a good driver and she drove best when she was telling a story. She was deep into one now.

“Next time I took a wander along Loampit Vale, Hunter had shrunk. He was about two foot six. He was kneeling down on the floor counting the coins he’d made from that morning’s begging.”

Sean watched the dawn parade of buildings stream past the liquid windows. Limp Christmas decorations hung from telegraph poles like ropes of phlegm. Neon lights sizzled: Happy 2K9. Static barked from his PR; his first coffee of the day was a greased, tepid knot in the centre of his chest. He was glad of Sally’s persistent murmur. He hated getting the Devil’s Hour calls; they were always the worst. This morning looked like being a total bastard. On the shift ten minutes and already there was someone intent on ruining his good mood. He thought of his bed, probably still warm but getting colder by the minute.

“I actually says to him, ‘Come on there, Hunter. Up and at ’em. Bow down for royalty if you like but I’m a far cry from that.’ I didn’t realise, did I – the bastards at the nick never told me – poor Hunter there’s had both his legs off. Thrombosis. Been injecting Temazepam. I gave him a quid – he saw the funny side.”

Slowing now, switching off the police lights, coasting into George Lane, the disused Hither Green hospital on their left a series of black shapes against the failing dark. Sally parked on Lullingstone Lane and they waited for a moment, the engine’s tick a strange comfort as it cooled.

Sean assessed the buildings. “Which one does the girl live in?” he asked.

“That one there. Number fifty-six. Bottom flat. The call came in from a neighbour who lives across the way. He said he saw someone creeping about outside her window.”

“Really? What’s he doing up so late? Wristing himself off watching her curtains?”

“He works nights. Security guard at the hospital.”

“We’re going to get piss-wet through,” Sean said.

Sally opened her door; late December wind knifed them. “It’s good for the skin. Come on.”

They searched the gardens and gulleys surrounding the flat, Sally with markedly greater conviction than her partner. Sean knocked on the door of fifty-six and was about to suggest to Sally that they visit the man who had made the emergency call when he saw movement: a face peering from the window of the woman’s home.

“Sally, there’s someone watching us,” he said, and, to the face, stridently: “Would you mind opening the front door, please, sir?”

It was a pasty-faced thirty-something in a towelling robe that greeted them. Nuggets of sleep in the corners of his eyes. Bed hair.

“Sorry to bother you, sir,” droned Sean, going through the motions. He felt like a glove puppet in an act that hadn’t changed for decades. “We’ve had word of a prowler in the area. Have you seen anything? Heard anything?”

The guy shook his head. “I was asleep. Your torches woke me up.”

“Is there anyone else in the flat that might have heard anything?”

The guy looked back over his shoulder. When he returned his gaze to Sean he was wearing a sleepy grin. “Luce, my girlfriend, she’s asleep too. You’d have had to drive your car through the wall to wake her up.”

“Very sorry... If you should happen... don’t hesitate... Goodnight, then.” All of that jargon made him ill. The constabulary vocabulary; nobody believed the politeness had any depth. He was even starting to speak like a policeman at home. It wouldn’t be long before he flipped his notebook out to give Rachel a report on how the weekly shop had gone.

Flapping through the rain, Sean and Sally hurried back to the car. While Sally negotiated the quiet roads back to the main street, Sean called in to let control know the score.

I hate this job.

It was a different job to the one that had been sold to him. A memory, unbidden, expanded in his mind like a drop of oil in water. Coming home one evening on the train with a friend who had recently enlisted, Christmas bags forming a barrier between them, Sean had been asked what he wanted to make of his life, the odd jobs and dole cheques having left him without any sense of progression.

“You could do worse than join up,” his friend had told him. His cheeks were florid from a spirited chill wind and the beer they had consumed with their dinner. “You could have a fantastic time, a young single lad on the money they pay you these days. It’s a doddle of a job.”

It was tempting enough for Sean to make a few enquiries. Within a week he had allowed himself to be persuaded to fill in an application form. Before he was fully aware of what was happening to him, Sean was six weeks deep into training and already hating everything about it. Showing aptitude for the work helped mask the mismatch. The first week on the beat, one of his new friends on a patrol in Hendon was set upon by six men wearing masks. While five of them held him down on the floor, the sixth carved up the probationer’s legs with a sixteen-inch machete.

Hard months followed when Sean had to battle with the realisation that he was not cut from the kind of cloth that formed a modern police officer; worse, he didn’t even possess a patch of it. Late-night telephone calls to his friends didn’t help. Sean was told to show some steel, to butch it out. Watching the traffic bristling along Amhurst Park where he rented a top-floor flat, he asked questions of himself that could only ever be answered in the negative. Empty vodka bottles piled up in the kitchen, a crass testament to the masculinity to which he felt unable to lay claim.

Somehow, thanks to discreet sessions with the division psychologist and the jockeying of his new partner, Sally, he was able to find cause for hope. Much of the job was dull but safe. Night shifts, however, would always scour the saliva from his mouth and have him on edge whenever the radio on the dash spat its codes of desperation at him.

“Can we stop?” he asked Sally. “Let’s get some coffee.”

Sally brought the squad car to a halt outside a twenty-four-hour bagel shop. Sean slammed the car door, relishing the cold air as it clouted the smell of the job from him. The windows of the bakery bore diminishing spheres of clarity; mist seeped across the panes like a drawn curtain. He could see vague, pinkish shapes behind a counter, loading bread onto glass shelves, their faces snagging on the smears of mist, pulling them out of true as though their owners had no shape, no substance. It was a mesmerising trick. Sean breathed ghosts through the rain, wondering why it nagged at him so.

Sally’s nails on the windscreen: he turned to see her pulling a face, her tongue wedged between her teeth and lower lip. Come on, she mouthed.

Sean pushed through the door; hot smells – bread, cinnamon and coffee – settled into him. He was thinking about the man at the window, back at the flat. He couldn’t remember his features, what he had looked like. Every time his mind tried to focus on his eyes, or his mouth, they slid away, like a greasy egg introduced too quickly to the plate.

Would you mind opening the front door, please sir?

“Two coffees please, mate. And a couple of those raisin bagels.”

That look. Everyone he talked to or walked past gave him the same look when he was in uniform. What was it? Hatred? Pity? Mistrust?

He took the polystyrene containers and tried to give his best off-duty smile when the shop assistant told him there would be no charge. Outside he stared up at the closed windows of the sleeping street.

Hot coffee raged across his hands where he had crushed the cartons.

Sally, climbing out of the car, concern creasing her face: “Sean?”

“It was him,” he said.

Hours later, at the centre of the clamour, the blue lights and static volleying around the radios in her living room, those three words were all he could say.

CHAPTER TWO: FAIT ACCOMPLI

IT SEEMED PRE-ORDAINED that he should know the victim. Sean sat – the still point at a core of bustle – as forensics sorted through the gimcrackery of her flat. Occasionally they would shoot him an askance look when he picked up some jujube from a table or the floor. One of them, flat-mouthed, pressed a pair of rubber gloves into his hands without a word.

Naomi Clew, twenty-nine; Caucasian; sandy blonde hair; brown eyes. She had been stabbed eighteen times with a Phillips screwdriver; the fatal blow, a neat little puncture to her throat. Her mouth and eyelids had been mutilated. The body hadn’t been moved yet and was cooling on the bed to which she had been tied. The crisp sizzle of Metz flashes exploded there now; Sean watched the occasional flares coat the hallway as the forensics team took their snapshots. She wore a pair of cream Marks and Spencer silk pyjama bottoms, nothing on top but a glaze of blood. Her toenails were painted with chipped purple enamel and a ring encircled the little toe of her right foot. She wore other pieces of jewellery: a plain silver stud through her tongue, a plain silver bracelet, and a leather thong that threaded a small grey pebble around her neck. He found it hard to concentrate on that.

There was also a burn around her throat, a rope burn, inflicted post-mortem.

“What’s the fucking point of that?” Sean asked nobody in particular. “She was fucking dead already. Why strangle a fucking dead girl?”

“Come on, Sean,” said Sally, picking her way through the scrum of uniforms. “Fresh air.”

He let his partner hoist him to his feet and lead him outside. Watery sunlight dribbled across slates glossed by the previous night’s rain. Neighbouring windows were filled with folded arms, nighties and hair in rollers. Vans from BBC, ITN, and Sky were clustered on the allotted parking spaces; sodium light bathed pancake faces with unreal colour as on-the-spot reports were filed. A phalanx of reporters turned Sean’s way. He heard the words: “–officer who made the gaffe...” and then Sally was telling them to piss off while she bundled Sean into the squad car. He covered his face as the photographers blazed away at him and Sally took off through the estate.

“How did they find out so quick?” Sean asked, looking back at the scramble. “How did they find out at all?”

“Find out about what?”

“That I fucked up,” he replied.

“We both fucked up. Don’t worry, we’ll blag it.” Sally drove south through Catford, winding through dead, monotone streets for twenty minutes before parking opposite a pub – The Gnarled Fiddler – on the Bromley Road.

“A snifter is in order,” Sally said. “I’m buying.”

Udney, the landlord of the Fiddler, tossed them some keys from the upstairs window. “Help yourself, Sally, Sean,” he said. “I’m busy stuffing an old bird.”

They entered the pub to the sounds of muffled laughter. It might have been from the ghosts of the previous night’s excesses. Sally moved around to the serving side of the bar, her feet catching in the tacky layers of spilled booze. She poured a pint of Guinness for Sean, loosing too a hefty glug from the Jack Daniel’s optic. She slid the drinks across to her partner.

“What are you drinking?”

“I’m driving, soft lad. It would look great, the two of us suspended on the same day, wouldn’t it?” She poured herself a glass of cola.

“It’s twenty past seven in the morning, Sally. This isn’t healthy.” Sean nevertheless sank a double gulp from his pint and picked up the short, which he swirled between his fingers.

“Healthier than sitting in bed looking like a human colander. Arses skywards, mate.” When she had taken a swig, she saw he was still staring into his glass.

“What?” she said.

Sean downed the spirit and closed his eyes against its heat. “I knew her,” he murmured. “I used to go out with her.”

Sally misread the situation. “The lass upstairs?” she asked. “The one Udney’s up to his nuts in right now?”

Sean held her gaze.

“Oh shit,” Sally said. “I’m sorry.”

“Not half as much as I am.”

They contemplated their glasses until they were empty, and Sean watched as Sally refilled them.

“What will you do? Will you tell Rachel?”

“I don’t know what I’ll tell Rachel. I don’t even know how I should look at Rachel these days.” He sighed and took another long drink of his pint. It was making him feel better and he felt sick for that. “I’m finished.”

“No you’re not,” Sally urged, reaching out to grasp his arm. “I told you, we can work this out.”

“I don’t want it worked out. Sally, this is just the first of a long line of cock-ups if I don’t get lost now. I’m not happy with the job–”

“But you’re a good copper.”

“No, I’m not. I’m not happy. And if you’re not happy, if your heart isn’t in the work then your head isn’t in it either. That’s when mistakes happen. I should have done more. I should have asked that bastard who he was and then got him to prove who he was. I should have asked to see the woman who lived in the flat.”

Sally shook her head. “Hey, I didn’t ask either. That puts me in the same shit-sack as you.”

Sean aped her movements. “All that proves is I’m a bad influence. You need a new partner.”

“Like I need a third eye,” she spat. “We work well together.”

“That’s just it, Sally,” Sean said, so gently that she had to lean in to catch it. “I’m not working.”

HE GOT BACK to his flat at noon, already suffering from a hangover. Looking out of his bedroom window at north London’s sprawl, hangdog and feverish beneath a caul of drizzle, he drank a mug of tea and listened to his telephone messages. Rachel had left two, despite knowing which shift he was working and the number of the station where he could be contacted. She wanted to know what he was going to do. The first message was stiff and demanding, the second weepily imploring. It summed her up, these Janus calls. He had never known anybody with such a volatile personality; it was as if in her thirty years she had been unable to nail down the person she believed she was, as if – even now – she were still riffling her own character deck in an attempt to pick out the right Rachel card.

The substance of her entreaties to him, no matter the emotions in which they were couched, remained the same. An ultimatum: move in with her or it was over. He replayed, through the steam of his tea, some of the countless arguments and discussions they had conducted, trying to thrash out what was, it now seemed, an insoluble problem. In none of them had the suggestion been made that they were fundamentally ill-matched. On virtually every front – bar sex – their needs clashed. And because everything else refused to gel, so their physical compatibility had been the unifying element to go first. Now it was transparent that there was nothing holding them together and they were both confused, still making attempts to solidify something that had no base upon which to build.

“I want children.” Her voice, reedy and distant on the tape, as though coming at him from another world, another time. “I want us to work.”

Naomi sitting on the crossbar of a bike he’s trying to steer, dropping a sticky strawberry kiss on his mouth. She’s squinting into the sun. Her voice belongs to someone much older. Does it matter if I’m ten if I love you? Does it mean anything less?

CHAPTER THREE: BLUE ZONES

WHAT A DAY. Sean knew things were likely to happen that would change his life, but prior knowledge had not served him with the tools to deal with them. He had woken before six and for a lunatic moment he thought he was back home in Warrington, his mum pottering around in the kitchen preparing sandwiches for his dad before he went out to work. But the potterer – too loud, obviously designed to wake him – was Rachel. He had given up on his original plan of writing to her and caught a cab over. The weather had worsened during the night as they talked and by two a.m. gales were battering the house. Inside too, Sean had thought, as he watched Rachel fighting inner storms. He wondered which of her numerous personae might reveal itself to him and had prepared for the most vicious. But when she spoke, it was clear that any fury she might have been cultivating had grounded itself on the rocks of his logic. They finished the night promising to rebuild the friendship that had existed before they became lovers. Her invitation to stay had clearly run its course however, and Sean had dressed hurriedly, hoping the previous night’s reason hadn’t festered, become a final, sour rebuke to spoil things. But they had swapped civil goodbyes, had even managed a hug and a brief kiss.

Now, three hours later, he was sitting on a Lewisham wall, her perfume lingering on his jumper, the memory of her breasts pressing against him for the final time a painful ache in too many places across his body.

Dealing with the inspector overseeing his shift – a gruff but affable old bobby called Rostron with a dreary penchant for the old ways of the Force – had been a relative pleasure.

He had expected a carpeting but Rostron had been accommodating, although he was clearly of the misplaced opinion that Sean was an ambitious constable worried about his future. When Sean’s intentions were made clear, Rostron seemed to shrink, sadly accusing Sean of failure before any real effort had been made to improve his career prospects.

“You’re giving in at the first hurdle,” Rostron had said, pacing his office. “You’re wasting real potential.”

“This is not for me,” Sean had replied. “I’m a coward. You know, even if I had gone to that flat knowing there was a killer inside, I still would have wimped out of it.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” Rostron had countered, anger hatching in his voice. “That’s not the voice of a policeman talking.”

“That’s right,” Sean had said, trying to keep traces of facetiousness out of his voice. Rostron wasn’t a bad man. “I’m not a policeman.”

Tired, emotionally hollowed, he managed a small wave and a smile for Sally as she pulled up in her Ford Focus. She was dressed in a grey baggy sweat shirt and jogging pants; he couldn’t think of an off-duty time when he had seen her in anything but.

“Are you really going to do this?” she asked, as he slid into the passenger seat.

“Yes,” Sean replied, not knowing to which of his decisions she was referring. What pleased him was the knowledge that any of them could be answered in the affirmative. For a change he was doing something positive. Acting for himself.

“What if someone recognises you?”

She was talking about the funeral. The newspapers had given it a discreet mention, in contrast to the screamers that dealt with the murder itself on the front pages.

“I’m not going in,” he emphasised. “I’m just going to wait outside the church in the car for a little while. Pay my respects. You know.”

“But her parents,” Sally persisted. “They’ll remember you.”

Through the grimy window Sean thought of a couple eating breakfast on a patio overlooking a distant beach. A dog running through the dunes disrupting clumsy kisses that tasted of apple-flavoured bubblegum, under blankets that smelled of toast.

“That was years ago,” he muttered. “I doubt they’re still alive. They were old even then.”

They drove in silence until they reached Lewisham train station. Sean could have walked or jumped on a bus but Sally was adamant she would drop him off. They both knew what was happening.

“What will you do?”

It was one of the little things about Sally that he would miss, the ambiguous questions. He wondered briefly if it was a trick she had learned in training, a gimmick that might draw some intelligence from a suspect that might not have otherwise been forthcoming. He hoped that wasn’t the case, that it was a fluke in her make-up, like the way she mixed Sea Breeze cocktails or her habit of singing Sex Pistols songs when chasing a stolen car.

She was staring straight ahead at the buses growling and grinding around the terminus. From the train station beyond, a clipped PA announcement was borne down to them on a gust. Something about a diversion. Something else about Cannon Street.

“Work it out,” he said. “Work Naomi out. It’s been such a long time since I saw her last. I could barely recognise her. She looked so... womanly.”

Sally laughed, despite the gravity pulling Sean’s voice down.

“Sorry,” she said. “But maybe you’re right. You’re much too soft for us lot. Get on and be a poet or something. Grow your hair.”

“I’ll keep in touch,” he said, leaning over and kissing her cheek, a gesture that mildly surprised them both. “Sorry it didn’t work out.”

“If my new partner’s a spanner,” she warned, “I’ll send you a phone call so vicious you’ll need to wear armour to deal with it.”

He waved as she drove away, and she was shouting: “Be a dandy, a folk singer. Be a beautician! You northern ponce, you!”

HE SAT IN the car for five minutes before realising he had to get closer to her.

Wishing he had dressed in something more befitting the occasion than a jumper and jeans, Sean stepped through the kissing gate in the church wall and followed a narrow gravel path around the side of the tiny stone building. Tensing himself against a sight he knew he had seen in countless films and three or four times in the course of his work, Sean peered into the graveyard, feeling the weight of grief coming off the stones like something palpable, like heat. Around two dozen mourners had turned out to see Naomi buried. Already they were positioned around the grave: four of them facing Sean, the rest in various degrees of profile or with their backs to him. He moved off the gravel path and pushed through the willows to a spot where he could hear the occasional comforting phrase from the priest. Severed or faded names emerged from moss as he padded through the stones, together with dates and touching, if clichéd, couplets. He tried to maintain his focus on the group in front of him – and keep himself hidden – but the ancient call of the stones was too great. He gradually became aware of two things: that there were a couple of other attendants to the funeral, as furtive as he; and that he was being watched.

Had he not left the path when he did, the two men would have seen him. They had followed his route along the path and were now standing twenty feet away from Sean, on the spot he had just vacated. An instinct told him to be grateful for this. One of them was fiftyish, with talcum-white hair en brosse. His eyebrows and moustache were dark flat thickets; Sean could not see the eyes they protected. He stood like a suited barrel, hands in front of him, occasionally rubbing his chin against the knot of his tie. His companion was younger and more relaxed. His suit did not fit, and Sean could see the body beneath it labouring to catch breath. His face was scrubbed and scraped pink; his hair was like candyfloss, his eyes owlish and sore-looking.

A gritting sound: the lowering of the coffin. Sean watched as Naomi disappeared by degrees. The slow burn of self-hatred he had felt since the day of his blunder flared. It mattered not one bit that the pathologist’s report indicated she had been dead long before he and Sally arrived on the scene. He felt responsible. As he pickled in these sour juices, he saw someone, not ten feet away on the other side of the fence, watching him from the leading edge of a field of towering grass.

She was a small girl with long brown hair, clutching a perished sponge doll whose supportive wires were exposed in several places. The girl’s dress was a thin affair of plain sky-blue material. He could see her vested body through it. Her dark eyes watched him – not without humour – as he hunched in the protection of the trees. His main concern was that she would expose him, either to the mourners, or to the men standing to his right. But gradually her stare seemed to solidify in the brittle morning air, impaling him with something warm and comforting, so that presently he felt as though he and the girl were the only living creatures in miles.

She didn’t appear shy at all, nor was she intimidated by the location or his posture of stealth. She made no attempt to communicate with him, other than to give him a gap-filled smile. She anticipated his shooing gesture by a second, turning and barging into the shield of grass quickly enough to have him wondering if he had imagined her. But no, the shimmer of grass betrayed the course of her movements. He watched her progress until, unexpectedly, the shiver of grass ceased when she must have been only a third of the way across the field.

His concern for her safety was negated by the eerie certainty of his instinct that, should he plough after her, he would not find her. Irritated by the distraction, he returned his attention to the funeral, but the black suits were drifting away from the graveside like scraps of incinerated paper. A simple goodbye he had sought, but he had failed even in this, looking instead for intrigue in the irrelevances that surrounded him. Plodding back to his car, careful not to give away his position to the two stragglers with whom he had observed the service, Sean presumed that he was subconsciously reluctant to give up the police part of his brain – such as it was. From the sanctity of the driver’s seat he watched the slow dispersal of the mourners, recognising Naomi’s father as he did so. He had changed only marginally in the fifteen years since they had last met. Perhaps he was a little thicker around the middle; there was a deeper smattering of grey in the oiled black hair; there was sadness and fatigue in the eyes. Age and shock were pulling his body south.

Sean caught a glimpse of his own face in the rear-view mirror but shied from its scrutiny. In the wake of Naomi’s death and the acknowledgement of his own failures, he didn’t want the awareness of his own mortality to compound his misery.

He gunned the engine as the two men brought up the rear. They were relaxed, alert, like presidential bodyguards. Sean found first gear and moved sedately away, wondering why his heart beat so violently, why his head pounded with frustrated questions.

ON THE TRAIN north, he tried to read the biography of an actor whose films he admired but he couldn’t give his mind to the words when Naomi kept dancing at its fringes. He pushed his focus beyond the filth on the window into fields wadded with mist. Low sunlight picked out the uncertain shapes of farmhouses; a man with a stick; a wheelbarrow. Hedgerows were blistered with newish berries. A series of narrow lanes striped the land for miles.

He tried to remember the last time he had ventured north but only the memory of his leaving it emerged. London was all he seemed to have known. The images of a bleak, rainy motorway and a series of New Order cassettes; appalling sandwiches (or “sadwiches” as Rachel referred to service station food), and the dead grind of traffic made him grateful for this trip now.

The train slowed noticeably. Presently the driver made an announcement that they were approaching Warrington Bank Quay. Sean collected his things and shuffled down the aisle to the doors. Through the window, the platform shuttled into view. The blur of faces waiting to board bothered him by their lack of features – lost to the train’s speed. Just before the brakes bit harder and he was able to define individuals, the grinning face of the child he had seen in the cemetery sprang out at him: a surprise in a pop-up book. He craned his neck to keep her in his view but she was lost to the passengers as they jostled for position in front of the doors. Once the train was at a standstill and the security locks were released, Sean hopped onto the platform and hurried back towards the lead section of the station. Through the criss-cross of bodies he saw a whip of long brown hair as she ducked down the exit steps. He followed as quickly as the crowds allowed him but knew as he reached the ticket barrier that she had given him the slip.

CHAPTER FOUR: RENTED ACCOMMODATION

EARLY NEXT MORNING, after a night spent in the hotel across the road from the train station, he rented a car, a blue Rover 25, rang a few of the landlords advertising bedsits in the local newspaper, and moved his meagre possessions into a furnished studio flat above a greengrocer on Ripley Street, overlooking the car park of the general hospital on one side and the railway on the other.

He chivvied himself along with thoughts of how much such a chicken coop would fetch in London, and without a view anywhere near as attractive. He spent the afternoon in town, buying groceries and items he felt he would need for the bedsit: a desk which he arranged to have delivered that evening, a table lamp, a couple of litres of white paint, and a paint roller. Once or twice during his shopping trip, he looked up from the languid scrum at the market stalls, certain that there would be someone looking directly at him. He wondered if he would see the little girl again, but although there were plenty of youngsters out shopping with their parents, none of them resembled her.

He lugged his purchases back to the car and locked them in the boot. The thought of returning to the flat and arranging everything, stamping his authority on the place, was attractive, but he felt the compulsion to slow down. If he was going to fit in here, he needed to slough his London skin. Warrington wouldn’t require the same thrust that the capital demanded of him. There was no rush in which to become embroiled.

The decision made, he sauntered across the road to a pub free of misspelled chalked menus and entreaties to attend karaoke night. He took his pint to a window seat and let the lethargy of a Tuesday afternoon seep into him.

Time became some great warm blanket that he was trying to unfold, but that showed no signs of ever being fully spread. Pleased with the beer, he had another half, read the newspaper, and struck up a conversation with an old-timer who had a plaque above his stool at the bar which read David’s Seat. He even flirted mildly with a good-natured barmaid, who possessed none of the contemptuous dismissiveness of some of her southern counterparts.

Readying himself to leave, he heard one glottal moment from the adjoining pool room: Clew.

An arch provided the entrance to the pool room on the far side of the pub. It framed part of the table with its blue baize and cones of dusty yellow light. Two pairs of legs stretched out, one ending in a pair of plaster-spattered trainers, the other in soft, black leather boots.

There was a cigarette machine by the arch; although Sean didn’t smoke he pulled out a handful of change and walked over. Feeding coins into the slot, he chanced a look into the pool room. The men were on their own, leaning back on short stools, shrouded by the shadows. One of them, the man wearing the boots, was more animated than the other, who was a motionless mass of black.

Sean hurriedly returned to his car and parked across the street from the pub. Clew he had heard. He wouldn’t listen to the rational voice that told him he had misheard “clue”, or “cue”, or “I’m having a Strongbow, how about you?”. And what if he hadn’t? What if they were having a conversation about Naomi Clew, the poor woman who had lost her life thanks to the sterling work of the Met? So what? It had been all over the papers.

Sean recognised the shoes as they left the pub. The man with the boots was as animated as before, hastily gabbling to his unruffled friend, hands fluttering around his head like duelling birds. Sean recognised him as the young man with the candyfloss hair from the funeral. The other man was wrapped in expensive black: cargo trousers, a cashmere polo neck and a nubuck leather jacket. He wore a trimmed beard and little round frameless sunglasses. He wasn’t saying much, just nodding occasionally. As they parted, he laid a hand on the shoulder of his agitated colleague. Then he stepped into a night-black Shogun and roared away.

The other man, now getting into a battered white van with the words LORD DEMOLITION on the side, Sean followed. The O in LORD was a wrecking ball swinging into action. As they drove through town and into the countryside, Sean tried to convince himself that he should try to forget what had happened to Naomi. There were other, better men processing evidence and sniffing out her killer. It was half a lifetime away. Big distances. Wasn’t it enough that he was here in their home town?

The van took a succession of turns onto lesser roads until tarmac was replaced by dirt tracks. Five miles away from the town, Sean hung back as far as possible, without losing sight of his quarry, not wanting to give his ambition away. Still, he was considering a return to Warrington, worried that his pursuit would be spotted before long. There was nothing out here to offer an excuse behind which to hide. No post office or pub he could claim a visit to.

The van slowed and turned onto a lane that fed a driveway to a tired old farmhouse. Sean parked quickly and picked a parallel route through a ploughed field, his eyes never leaving the van as it pulled up outside the front door. The engine died; the driver got out. A figure appeared in one of the upstairs windows, emerging out of the net curtains like a face in a bad dream. Hunkering down by a frozen jut of earth, Sean watched as a bunch of keys was tossed to the driver. Once he was alone, Sean scooted up the side of the house, cursing as he tripped and slid over the solid ribs of earth pushing up through the frost.

“You wanted out of this job, dickbrains,” he muttered, as he hit shadow to the south side of the house and clung to the brickwork. “You stupid, stupid tit. Go home. Go on. Go home now.”

White pinned down the land for miles around. A distant line of trees looked like stubble on a corpse’s face. Sean had to stop for a moment to gulp down air and try not to let the space tear him away from his position. Ten years in London had failed to inure him to the vertiginous sprawls that existed beyond the city. For a moment, he was terrified by the lack of motion, the conviction that nothing around him had altered in a thousand years and that, if he didn’t move soon, he would be fixed in the scenery for another thousand. He felt vulnerable, exposed, targeted. Vomit charged his clenched teeth and he let it come, as quietly as possible. Darkness crowded him, the sun blotted. Let it be a cloud, he hoped, rising in expectation of some grim-faced, leather-clad ape ready to beat him senseless. But the eclipse had been imagined. Pale sunshine bleached the sky, turning it into a reflection of his surroundings. Getting a grip of himself, he moved towards the rear of the house, scanning for windows all the while. Of those he saw, only one – high up – was without a curtain blocking the view. He tried the back door. Locked. What was he going to do if it was open?

They were talking about the dreadful murder of a local girl. That’s all.

And yet, and yet...

Sean retreated, wondering why his suspicions were so high. Could it just be guilt that was driving him to such extreme behaviour? Was he so desperate to atone for his mistake in London that he would follow any lead, no matter how tenuous? If that was the case, he reasoned, trudging back to the car, then he would destroy himself within weeks, or find himself up before the magistrates on a charge of harassment. In the driving seat, Sean was able to relax, away from the panicky reaches of land, and relish the fresh snap of cold air that had locked itself inside with him. He watched the house for a little longer, hopeful that he would witness them dragging a body outside, but nothing so theatrical occurred. Wondering how he might quash the compulsion to act on behalf of a dead woman– the first girl he had kissed–and suspecting that this visit to Warrington had been ill-thought-out, he started the engine and trundled the car down to the main road.

Seconds later, accelerating back towards town, an oncoming car passed him. In the mirror, Sean watched as it turned into the driveway he had just vacated. Pulling over to the side of the road, Sean’s eyes found themselves in the mirror. They were wide and worrisome. Whatever doubts he had had were spirited away as his lungs begged for him to release the hold on his breath.

One of the men he had seen at the funeral. Tough, barrel-shaped bruiser with tufty white hair.

CHAPTER FIVE: GIRL

EARLY MORNING, HIS run took him on a rough circle past the school on Lodge Lane, down to Sankey Valley Park, under Seven Arches and on to the dual carriageway that snaked west, beyond the cooling towers of Fiddler’s Ferry power station and onwards to Liverpool via Widnes and Runcorn.

Sean headed east, back towards town, barely registering the growl of traffic or the slap of his feet on the wet pavement. The night before, he had returned to the farmhouse and hung around as night gathered and the temperature plummeted. Towards midnight, Barrel-chest and the driver Sean had followed left in the white van. Sean took after them, certain he was solidifying from the cold, his hands and feet sluggish on the controls of the car, his mouth a blue-grey slit that flashed itself to him in the rear-view mirror as streetlamps swung by.

They had pulled up outside a disused ironmonger’s shop. The shredded awning bore the name BOUGHEY’S. He watched the barrel-chested man get out of the van and wave to the driver. Words followed him through the door: “See you tomorrow, Salty.”

So. He had a name. He had an address. He did not yet have a reason. He had reason for few things. Bitterly, Sean had turned the car back towards Ripley Street, quelling the urge to follow the white van on another journey. White van, he felt, played penny whistle to Salty’s big fat tuba.

Now, Sean pulled the hood of his track suit over his head and jogged backstreets, angling towards that ironmonger’s once more. He was almost distracted by some of the memories that leapt up at him; every corner rounded was another half-turn on an unseen winch hauling him back through time.

Here, in the maze of ginnels that was the Wellfield Road estate, were the paths that he had haunted at fifteen with his best friend Glenn and their girlfriends, Sarah and Julie. A concrete cylinder – a pathetic, token toy for the local kids – partially submerged in a square surrounded by fences and front porches, had been a respite in the winter, when walking the frozen streets was too painful. It was still there, along with the soot stains from candles and the scratched names, overlapping across the years to form a tangle of self-affirmation. Sarah’s old house was boarded up now, its highest windows cracked and starred. They had spent innocent evenings in the kitchen, drinking tea and listening to the radio while her mother made strategic checks on them, designed to spoil any moves he made on her.

Sean pushed himself along the canal bank that backed onto the estate, wondering where she was now. What happened to all those people with whom he had been to school? Were they as detached as him, dislocated, wheeling around for something solid on which to latch? Or, as he suspected, had they sussed it all out? If they were happy, well, good luck to them.

The hunched cluster of buildings that housed the ironmonger’s emerged from the bushes and trees lining the bank to his right. Sean arrowed up the bank and silently vaulted the fencing, dropping into a slush of remarkable litter. Among the drifts of dead food cartons and drinks cans there were bruised tailors’ dummies, shattered television sets and small forests of cat furniture wrapped in corduroy and sisal. Sean picked his way through the mess, counting houses until he hit the ironmonger’s. A high wall and a pair of tough wooden gates blocked off his view to the rear of the building, all of it topped off with coils of razor wire. A peek through the slats awarded him a view of a thick sheaf of tall weeds and a rusting bath leaning against a skip. All of the windows were frosted and blackness piled against them from within.

Sean tried the gates. They shifted under the sawing action of his arm but did not give. He had instead seen how he might climb over without harming himself when he heard a brief, human bark of panic somewhere behind him.

He clung to the gate, head twisted, frozen as he searched the cavernous ruin of what must once have been a car park. Heavy trees with discoloured leaves lurched into one another, creating a knit of confusion he could barely see into. The tarmac they grew out of was as warped as the sway and twist of their branches.

Very clearly, he heard: “Keep fucking still, bitch, or I’ll cut you.”

The words rushed out of the dark. Sean stood quietly for a moment, eyes closed, letting the sounds come into him. His heart was a cold, measured echo, somewhere too deep inside him. He was not afraid.

“Suck it, bitch,” he heard. “Oh no? Okay, then. Mac, cut her tit off.”

Sean moved.

He pelted into the clotted darkness, freeing his sweatshirt from the waistband of his track suit bottoms so that he could get at his knife. A woman was mewling under the thrash of bushes. “Stop it... please... stop it.”

There were two men crouched over her, their black jackets shining dully as they dipped in and out of the protection of a weeping willow. One of them had his trousers around his ankles. Sean veered towards him, his steps disguised by the din of their violence. Lashing out a foot, he caught the first man across the top of his thigh; he went down heavily, a yell cutting off the sobs of the woman pinned beneath them. Before the other could bring himself upright, Sean flashed his arm out and cut him across the bridge of his nose. Blood sprayed from between his fingers as he dropped to his knees.

“Come on,” he said, reaching down to the girl. Her skirt was piled up around her hips and her blouse was torn open. She drew the two halves of it together as she surfaced from the gloom, her eyes like silver bubbles moving through dark water. Wet soil was caked onto half of her head; blood formed a thin lather over the other. She resembled some grim harlequin. She took his hand and he pulled her towards him, and asked if she was badly injured.

“I’m okay,” she told him. “They didn’t stab me.”

She wrenched herself free and knelt down by the man whose face was trying to pour out all over the grass. Her hands jabbed into his pockets; she flashed Sean a smile as she emerged with a wad of cash.

“Twat,” said the other man, struggling to pull his pants up.

“I said come on,” Sean urged. The girl went to him and they backed away. Sean’s knife was raised now, pinning the man called Mac to the darkness. “I will use this, if you follow,” he said, levelly. “And I’m good with it.”

Mac spat at him.

“Yeah, sure,” he said and lunged. Sean stepped inside his outstretched arms and almost delicately carved a broad slice out of his leg. Mac dropped, clutching his thigh. Blood squirted from between his fingers. He looked up at Sean with an expression almost of hope. He seemed too shocked to make any noise at all.

By the time Sean had returned to the main road, the girl was making her way to the opposite path. He followed, stabbing a bloody finger over the keypad of his mobile, relaying his alert to the police switchboard; a nasal voice asked for his name, address and the location of crime. He lied about everything bar the site.

“No, it’s this way,” Sean called out, as the girl made to cut down an alleyway to more estate blocks. The area was crawling with them: drab grey monoliths, punch-drunk and lifeless, their tiny windows either smashed in or boarded over. She stopped and looked back at him, her hip knocked out to one side as she flipped him the Vs.

“What’s this way?” she asked. She was smiling at him. Kind of.

“My place. I’ve got some food. A hot bath. You can stay with me.”

“Oh can I? I’ve just pocketed me the best part of two hundred quid, Tarzan. I could stay in God’s penthouse if I wanted.”

“God doesn’t do rescues.”

“Oh really?” she sang. “What are you, my guardian angel?”

“Stay with me. It’s not safe around here. You might get attacked again.”

Somebody swore in the hive of dwellings behind them. Glass shattered.

“Place has changed since I was a kid,” he said. “Used to be you could leave your front door open and get back to find the place completely fucked over. Now though, they fuck your place over and sit around waiting for you to get back so that they can fuck you over too.”

“Fool with me, Tarzan,” she snarled, falling into step with him, “and I’ll use that knife of yours on your balls.”

CHAPTER SIX: ARRIVAL

ONE MOMENT SHE had been heating a tin of Heinz vegetable soup on the cooker, the next she was a whining heap on the floor.

Will had been thinking of when they first met. How her hair had glowed in the sunshine as she stepped from the library into his path. Following her, and berating himself for his foolishness as he did so, he’d tried to picture her face – of which he’d only caught a glimpse as she brushed by him. The black jacket she wore only served as a backdrop for the red that tumbled down it. When she reached her lift and caught him standing awkwardly, library book clasped to his chest, he asked if he might buy her a drink, fully expecting her to tell him to piss off. She did tell him to piss off. But she had kissed him too. Things had gone well. She had become his new direction. He’d suspected that a wasted life spent shoplifting and fighting and making cameos in any or all of the local courts might be over. Things had gone so well that here he was now, two years later, looking down at his heavily pregnant, heavily sweating wife as a pool of soup spread beneath her.

“Ambulance, Will,” she gasped as he tried to pick her up but she was fish slippery, her body so completely sheened she might have just stepped out of the shower. Her thick red hair had become dark and limp at the ends where it was plastered to her forehead and shoulders.

“Now?” he asked, incredulous. “But the doctor said–”

“Fuck the fucking doctor, Will. Fucking now.”

He lunged for the door, so shocked by her outburst he began to laugh. He tried not to look at her fingers as he spoke to the bland, professional voices – they’d become claws trying to gain purchase on the kitchen floor. Her face had gone horribly white with pain; her hair seemed to be leaking blood into her skin.

The first scream had him down on his knees beside her, pathetically trying to get her to breathe properly. He kept thinking of clean towels and hot water, not having a clue what to do with them. He thought the pounding was their baby trying to barge its way out but then he realised someone was at the door. He went to unlock it, grateful the ambulance crew had taken so little time but wondering why they’d come to the rear of the flat. It was Mrs Garraway, from next door.

“Out of the way, Will,” she squawked, pecking her tiny head in front of his. “You’ve phoned for an ambulance, no doubt. I should wait by the front door.”

Yes, he thought, as she began tending to his wife, loosening her blouse and the drawstring of her leggings, you fucking well should. Catriona was all clenched teeth and eyes – he hoped it wasn’t all due to the trauma of birth; that she was as peeved with Mrs Garraway’s appearance as he.

“How did you–” he began.

“I’m not thick, son,” she admonished, throwing him a withering look with those pale eyes of hers. “I know a birthing cry when I hear one. Now off with you. Call me when the cavalry arrive.”

Once out of the kitchenette and into the dim warmth of their living room, he began to shake, or at least notice he was shaking. Catriona’s copy of TV Quick lay open on the couch where she’d been sitting not ten minutes ago. They’d decided to watch a Daniel Craig film that evening; it would be starting soon.

He squinted into the street, astonished by the lack of warning. Was it always this way? Oughtn’t there be signs – contractions and the like? Those of his friends and family who had children had never described an incident resembling this. So did that mean something was wrong? Pincers tightened inside him. Mrs Garraway didn’t give the impression that anything was amiss but maybe she was hiding her concern so as not to panic him. He willed the sirens to sound and searched the sky for flashes of blue, trying to ignore the hollowing of his guts. Another scream drew blood from his tongue as he bit it; it should be him with her, not Mrs Garraway, yet he held back, afraid he wouldn’t hear the ambulance above his wife’s pain or the clamour of his heart should he return to the kitchen. As if suspecting his dilemma, Mrs Garraway called for him to stay put; she was in control, though her voice suggested otherwise.

He forced himself to resist anxiety and opened the door to the cool air. As much as he strained, he couldn’t hear a siren. Why tonight? he thought, cursing the thrum of traffic. Another cry pierced him. He must have been ready to faint for it appeared that great streamers of the night were sailing past him, destined for Catriona’s lungs as she sucked in the fuel for a scream that he was dreading. It wouldn’t sound of anything, that scream. The dying never scream. He heard Mrs Garraway moan, “Jesus Christ!” He fell against the door and a sheet of pain wrapped around his ribs; it cleared his head. Mrs Garraway’s face floated in front of his, twisted with grief and revulsion.

“Catriona,” he mumbled, searching to give muscle to his voice.

“She’s all right, Will. She’s okay.”

His relief was momentary. A skin of panic stuck his tongue to his palate. “The baby–” But his voice was a whisper. He looked past her to the kitchen door, which was barely open, offering a sliver of a view. The floor was awash with red. “The baby,” he wailed at last. Was that a towel there, that red heap? But it was moving, it was moving very slightly.

Mrs Garraway was shaking her head and crying. “The baby–”

“The baby what? The baby fucking what?” But he was pushing her aside. If it was moving, it must mean the child was alive. She said something else but he thought he must have heard wrong; she couldn’t have said that. At the kitchen door though, he saw she was right. Catriona was unconscious but breathing regularly, a peaceful look on her face. For him to scream now might wake her and he didn’t want to do that, not when it would mean she’d see that the baby had been born inside out.

KERWICK SAID, “I love this job.”

“What’s to love, for Christ’s sake?” Trantam leaned into the bend as he steered the Merc left. “And where, for the love of minge, are we?”

A voice from the back seat said: “Saddle up those sirens, children.” Out of the shadow, a head emerged, along with two huge, gloved hands that grasped the front seats. Black collars jutted into the grooves of a face so thin it seemed it must collapse in on itself.

“And can we have flashing lights too, Gleave?” sang Kerwick, clapping his hands. “Can we? Can we?”

“Nipple,” spat Trantam, but he was smiling. He turned to Gleave. “What’s happened?”

Traffic fell away from them as the Merc wailed and strobed through the north London streets. Gleave said, “We have to make a special pick-up. Same kind of shit we usually do, but we’re using a different hand to wipe the mess up with.” Gleave flexed his fingers; his directions were accompanied by the squeal of leather. “We’re on Pandora now. Hang a left into Narcissus. Top of the road, right into Mill Lane. West End Lane is straight ahead.”

Trantam braked hard outside Cumberland Mansions. The three men got out of the car. Gleave rang the bell. A few seconds later, a frantic voice yammered down at them about ambulances and police.

“That’s right, sir,” said Gleave firmly. “We’re from the hospital. Could you let us in, please?”

As the buzzer released the door, Gleave leaned against Trantam as Kerwick disappeared up the stairwell. “There are five flats in this block. Shoot anything that breathes. Shoot anything that doesn’t.”

WILL GOT SO far as to ask where the stretcher was before a great bright flare went off in his head. It took a while to blink it free and when he could see again, he was sitting in a puddle of his own piss on the floor, looking into the silenced muzzle of a gun.

“Congratulations! It’s a... it’s a... sheesh! What is it? Dog food?” Kerwick was pumped, jittery as a candle’s flame. Will saw, through the gap at the kitchen door, his wife being moved. She moved very easily on her slick of blood. He thought, hoped, he heard her moan.

Mrs Garraway was lolling over an arm of the sofa. Someone had used the philtrum between her nose and mouth for target practice. Splinters from her dentures had become embedded in her cheeks on their way out; it seemed as though she was eating herself from within.

“What did she do?” Will asked, his voice thick and sleepy with fear.

Kerwick snorted. “She died, brainiac. Jesus.”

Gleave appeared behind Kerwick, drifting from the kitchen. He didn’t look up as he passed them and stepped into the bathroom. “The mother’s dying. We have to be quick. Kill him and then we have to go,” he said. He turned to Will and smiled. It was almost compassionate, if you could get beyond the wolfish, densely packed teeth and the lack of animation in the eyes. “Godspeed, you nobody cunt,” he said.

CHEKE SPAT TWICE and waited for her eyes to clear. Mucus filled her nose and throat, and burbled wetly in the creaking cavities of her chest. Beyond the blurred limit of her vision, shapes rocked and nodded like restless trees viewed at dark. There were voices too, although she could not yet decode their patterns. It was a painful time and one best suited to introversion. She was barely conversant with the skill of torpor but tried to retreat into it now, seeking shelter in which she could rejuvenate herself at her own pace. The journey had been a shock, both physically and mentally. She wasn’t sure if she had escaped serious injury. She needed torpor to give her time for reflection as well as the chance to heal any injuries.

But they wouldn’t give her the chance. Again the needle sought her armpit, again the injection flooded her with bitter blue panic, the electric juice they’d pumped her with flirting with heart and brain as though it might violently dissolve them like sodium in water.

She flailed backwards, tipping up over an obstacle, landing heavily on her backside.

“What do you want?” she asked, but it came out all wrong, her lips failing to coalesce around the words as she uttered them. Another glut of sputum loosed itself from her lungs. She did not feel good. Someone must have understood her question however, for:

“We need you to find someone. We need you to end someone’s life for us. It’s a job beyond me or my men.”

The light bleeding into her eyes was less painful now, allowing her to make out a tall figure in a black coat, the lapels of which were raised high to his cheekbones. His eyes were hard and grey but surrounded with creases and crinkles that softened him, gave him an avuncular air. “My name is Gleave, by the way. Daniel Gleave. I was sent by friends to collect you.”

Cheke spat again and shivered. She was covered in thin, greyish slime. It was matted in her hair and she could feel it leaking from between her legs. Her brain had no concept of what had gone before a few minutes ago; her earliest memory, it seemed, was of the trauma-thrill of bright light scouring her head and the subsequent creep of form as she perceived figures through foggy, untrained eyes. The fugue that prevented her from dipping beneath the barrier to her memory was not so solid that it had severed her links with any of her abilities. She was, after all, recalling the benefits of torpor. She felt the instinct of attack swooning through her.

The man, Gleave, approached her, and curled a blanket around her shoulders. “I’m sorry for the haste,” he said, in a voice bound up with smells she could not place but which were of comfort to her. “It must have been a shock to the system, to say the least. But we are in great danger and we need your help. There have been unforeseen developments in spheres we thought were long extinct.”

Another voice, clipped, withering, in the background: “Unforeseen by some of us, Gleave. Not all.”

Gleave held the blanket tightly around her and ignored the interruption. She was able to focus on his nails as his fingers made shallow dents in the fabric. Neatly cut nails, with a milky white cuticle, a dull sheen. She felt his fingers warming her skin, little pads of energy. Her pores opened and gulped his proximity, starved for the nourishment that she required to function.

“I need to feed,” she managed, and the man nodded.

“I know.”

He led her through a door into a corridor flanked with plants bearing heavy, waxy leaves. A man’s voice said: “Who the fuck is she?”

“Where is this?” she asked, her voice growing stronger all the time. Her eyes were pulling in shapes much faster now, although their edges bled colour into the air, making everything seem dreamlike and unreal.

“You don’t need to know that just yet,” he soothed. “We’ll get you somewhere safe and then you can rest. You’ve made quite a journey. We don’t want you spoilt in any way.”

The floor they walked on was flooded with soft, red carpet; she couldn’t see her bare feet land, it was so deep. She could smell something rich and dense that made her stomach churn with desire. The man’s hand was gentle but steady upon her arm, staying her, and she fought with the desire to sap him. It would appear that any allies would be hard to find. She didn’t want to alienate the first person to help her.

Up ahead, a door gave on to a room awash with blood. Her mouth filled with drool.

“She’s fresh,” said Gleave. “She helped bring you to us.”

Cheke moved away from him. Her eyes much more comfortable in the false night of the room, she was able to see the woman immediately, slumped in her own juices, moaning, flapping a hand.

Cheke didn’t make a sound as she surged over the dying woman, wrapping her up in a seamless embrace. Her eyes flickered spastically in closing, a reflex of pleasure as she felt the flesh beneath her succumb to the grateful opening of her mouths.

WILL RAN.

The fire escape held him well enough, but he wasn’t sure that his sanity would follow suit. He had kicked out at the hand holding the gun when Trantam was rubbernecking the freak that had come tottering out of his bathroom. Catriona was dead or as near as damn it. He knew that, and the knowledge helped him run faster. If he was to go back he would be dead too, and how would that have made Cat feel? He tore along streets that now possessed a comic familiarity. Usually he would pad back along this lane with the Sunday papers, or cut down this alleyway on his way back from O’Henery’s pub, kicking a can against the wall. Now he scarred these roads of his with fear. He’d not be able to retrace his route in the future without a bad taste in his mouth.

He chanced a look over his shoulder as he fled down Finchley Road, but nothing was coming his way. Traffic was a still concertina, cars aiming for the motorway or fruitlessly attempting to nose south towards the auto graveyard that the city centre had become. Cursing the fact that he didn’t have his mobile on him, and the lack of a police presence in an area usually teeming with them, he jogged to a phone box whose guts had been ripped out. His eyes followed the broken obliques of rain on the glass, splintering the coming and going of white and red lights. He wondered if this numbness was a part of shock; he had never in his life suffered a traumatic moment. No broken bones. His grandparents dead long before he was even aware of what death meant. No operations, no burns, no car accidents...

He tried the phone even though he knew it couldn’t work. He was sitting on the floor of the kiosk, snot and tears dribbling into his mouth as quickly as he could lick them away. He raised his face to a boy in a school uniform slowly obscuring the glass space between them with a can of spray paint. The boy was looking down at him and shaking his head.

MOTION. CHEKE FELT it rolling through her, under her. Warmth seeping into her. She sat next to Gleave who looked dead and grey, flickering in and out of the light that pulsed at the windows. She felt the anger drift off him in similar waves. One eye was lost to a slice of shadow; the other stared flatly at the back of Trantam’s head. She had flinched before the stinging rebuke Trantam had received.

Cheke shifted in her seat, moving against Gleave, and was glad for the arm that enfolded her. The smell of his coat was almost animal. It reassured and encouraged her. She watched the houses stream by the window as they rushed to a place that Gleave had called home. She was like the colour that might otherwise play along these streets; she knew how to lose herself at night, become anonymous, although she couldn’t put her finger on where the knowledge came from, being unable to remember anything beyond what had happened in the last few hours. The illogicality of it distressed her only mildly. Her belly full, her head cushioned by the sublime beating of a friendly heart deep beneath this musky coat, she slept, and dreamed of her abilities as they quickened within her by the second; of what she would be capable when she woke. Of whom she would be capable.

CHAPTER SEVEN: KITCHEN SYNC

HE PREPARED A percolator of coffee while she bathed.

“Don’t you want to know my name?”

The flat was warm, if a little shabby, but the way her shoulders relaxed as she went in before him told him that if she had been feeling any anxiety it had dissipated at the sight of his sofa with a blanket thrown across it, or of the lamp on the table spilling warm colour across the wooden floor, the tired rug in front of the fire. How could anybody feel threatened when there was a picture on the wall of a view from Waterloo Bridge? Where was the danger in a flat where a bag of dolly mixtures was sitting on top of the fridge?

“I’ll guess it. Give me five guesses.”

He shared out the coffee and thought of the way she had stepped over the threshold of each room, her hand moving out to gently grasp the doorjamb, relaxing against the wood as though returning to a pose she had practised many times. Sean had stood behind her while she inspected the rooms. He liked the way he could see her eyelashes when she was in three-quarter profile; her short, brown hair and the fringe that flopped about her forehead; the blended, slightly plump curves of her cheekbones and mouth. She looked boyish and soft, but a hardness danced in her quick green eyes. He found himself wanting to show her his maps of cities from a hundred and fifty years ago and play her a piece of music that he adored in the hope that it would move her too.

“Hannah?”

“No.”

Light bled from a deep crack between the bathroom door and its frame. Carrying her cup, he was halted by the movement of her naked figure across the gap. She was a blur of pink, the flurry that fills a moment of space, but she passed through his mind in intimate detail.

“Fiona?”

“No.”

At the table in a kitchen with a tap that wouldn’t stop dripping, wrapped up in his towelling bathrobe, her hair slicked back, she sipped coffee and listened to him talk about London. It was nice to be in a room with a man and not have him want to wave his dick in her face. And then she surprised herself by opening up to him, telling him things that she could barely acknowledge to herself.

“Mildred?”

“Ugh. Piss off. No.”

For the last six years, since her grandmother had suffered a stroke and needed to be cared for, she’d walked a rut into the backstreets of the town. If she thought about the reams of men and women that had paid her dirty money to sign off her body for a few hours, she’d go mad. So she never thought of them. Well, hardly. Sometimes they’d dip into her sleep, these none-faces, these black ghosts, bruising the meat that they’d hired for a while, emptying themselves across the map of her body, scattering seed across a barren land that could sustain nothing of any warmth or significance any more.

“Isobel?”

“No. Last chance.”

Most of her friends were dead. She’d beaten the odds, staying alive on the streets for this long; life expectancy for prostitutes in the Northwest was dwindling all the time. Tonight it had seemed her turn had come. A saviour was rare, but she wondered how self-seeking his heroics might prove. She studied his face while he took up the conversational baton. He did not judge her; his face had not fallen when she revealed her true colours. It was a good face: angular and tough but something about his eyes and the shape of his lips hinted at vulnerability. It looked like a face that might cry while its owner was killing you.

Sirens looped across the night. A police helicopter, its belly loaded with cameras, striped the night with an acid-white spotlight that stabbed into the ruined flesh of the town, picking over the remains like a glutton at the bones of a roast.

“What’s in it for you then? What can you expect for saving me?”

“There’s never anything in it for me,” Sean said, at last. “But I feel... I don’t know... some degree of responsibility for you. Perhaps because I feel nothing for myself.”

“You don’t have to use chat-up lines, Sean. But it’s sweet of you to say so. Unfortunately, I don’t share your concern. I can take care of me better than anyone else, and if I get into trouble, that’s my look-out.”

Sean nodded. “I’ll say goodnight then. If you need anything, give me a shout.”

She kissed him on the cheek. He said: “Karen?” But she didn’t reply.

Heading for the sofa, he watched her disappear into his bedroom. He thought: She doesn’t remember me at all...

CHAPTER EIGHT: SURVIVAL INSTINCT

WILL WAITED FOR three hours, lurking in a church graveyard and walking the aisles of an all-night supermarket, before he returned. He paused a little way up the street from Cumberland Mansions. At the front of the house, sitting in an ancient, beige Allegro, was a man he had never seen before. He was wearing a thick, tight-fitting blue jumper, and a floppy cricket cap. He was affecting nonchalance, reading a newspaper but regularly flicking his attention to the entry door. Round the back, on the fire escape, he spied a woman in a greatcoat, smoking a cigarette. She moved to flick the stub into a garden, and the grip of a pistol tucked into her waistband pushed its way into view.

These two watching the front and back entrances might be police, but he found himself hanging back, reluctant to approach them. He wondered if they thought he might have killed his wife.

Will returned to the main street. He didn’t know where he could go. What if the news told of a man on the run, capable of violence? How could his friends take him in? His friends were also Cat’s friends; there could be no chance of some sort of skewed loyalty here. Even his closest companions would shop him; it was what he would do in the same position.

He caught a whiff of reefer, heard heavy, fast bass; a Saab parked up a sidestreet contained two teens watching the road. He knew them; they cruised around in their car late into the night, playing hip hop at full blast, or hung around outside coffee bars. Every time they saw his wife, one of them would smile and say: “Not long now, hey?”

The driver wound down the window without looking at Will as he approached.

“Want some blow?” he asked, softly. Now he did look. “Shit. Are you all right?”

Will said, “No. I want you to burgle my house.”

NOW PARKED ACROSS the way from Cumberland Mansions, Will watched from the car as the two kids – Known and Hot Badge – waited for the others they had phoned when Will had promised them it was no set-up and that they could keep what they could carry. All he wanted was a report on how the flat looked, and his coat and his wallet – untouched. Known had said: “Let’s see what we can’t do for you.”

“One more thing,” Will stipulated. “I want a weapon.”

The man in the cricket cap was clearly bothered by the sudden build-up of youths and had risen to his feet while trying to maintain a disaffected air. Known and Hot Badge and their friends, three or four louche boys in denim jackets and baseball caps, ambled across the road and up the steps to the front door. Cricket cap was on his phone once the lock had been sprung. Will huddled in the car, trying not to think too much about what they might find in his flat. The heater roared, coaxing movement back to his frozen joints. He closed his eyes and realised he was shifting into a dream. How could he sleep? But he saw Cat there now, waving to him through the warp and weft of his thoughts. With a slight tremor of fear, as of someone giving up life because of a lack of anything left within it to care about, he succumbed to the depths and followed her.

CHEKE HAD BEEN left in a stone room with a high window and a solid wooden door. A deep bath made of thick, frosted glass awaited her. The water was cold, but she had begun to understand how to alter herself to accommodate for temperature changes. She moved the blanket slightly and looked down at her body.

Already she was losing her hold on her own identity, such as it could be after such a short time – that which mapped out the set of characteristics was being subtly differed and she could feel invisible fingers plucking at her, though mercifully the change was painless. After a while she’d begun to notice it wasn’t restricted to her interior. Her breasts were swelling, the nipples becoming darker, more pronounced. Her hips were growing rounder, her buttocks firmer. Three moist, puckered punctures buttoned her abdomen. A curious fingernail made the punctures shiver and relax, betraying a moist, pink velvety lining within. The woman who had provided her with her first real sustenance did not have anything remotely resembling this formation on her. Absorbing her, feeling her body pulverise under the juices she ejaculated, Cheke had pored over the woman’s face, her interest quickening when death settled and her features relaxed. The woman had a rind of colour to her eyes; a dip at the apex of her top lip; just one set of canine teeth. Subtle differences, but they were fascinating to Cheke, who was coming to grips with the slow play of limbs still apparently discovering their true shape. Her body seemed to be going through a variety of minute alterations. She had spent an hour transfixed by the undulation of her knuckles, which dissolved and reknitted themselves in a new configuration. She couldn’t understand the motive for this mischief in her flesh, but she welcomed the freshness it inspired; the gradual improvement in her movement and thought.

She bathed, baptising this new body of hers. Faces she didn’t know (but seemed maddeningly familiar) loomed in the patterns of oil in the water, inspiring different levels of emotion. Hatred for this tired, ageing man; grief at the appearance of a woman with cataracts in her eyes; desire for a young man disfigured by scars almost beautiful in their symmetry. She realised with disappointment that these phantoms were somebody else’s memories, faces in the fire, tricking her into thinking they bore significance to her own life. She remained alone.

Her hands made their acquaintance with the fresh geography of skin and muscle, the experience both like self-exploration and the touching of another. Still there existed that vestigial tremor at her core – it transmitted itself no matter where her fingers reached.

“Why me?” she whispered.

A car drew up outside. Even before its doors opened she could hear Gleave barking orders.

She stepped from the bath and wrapped herself in a white towelling robe, the activity in her flesh reaching a new level of intensity. Her mouth filled with drool. A key in the lock. Only when the boy was pushed over the threshold did she realise the nature of its energy.

The boy stared at her. Ice cream was slicked across his jaws. His hair sprang up stubbornly at his crown. The door snicked shut.

The boy said, “Mummy?”

“If it makes you happy,” she whispered.

HE WOKE, FRUSTRATED, his heart pounding and his dick hard as a door handle. He had been unable to still Catriona. She had slipped in and out of focus, her words to him garbled, as though coming from a slightly detuned radio. Her smile was genuine enough, her mouth somehow super-real, Technicolor. He had been reaching to kiss her when she sank from view and he was unable to conjure her again.

But this wasn’t the only reason for his revival. The slap of fast-moving footsteps had him blinking and scooting back in his seat as Known and his gang came pounding across the road. Behind them, Cricket cap had got out of the car and was standing uncertainly in the road, alternating his gaze between the heels of the burglars and the flapping entrance door.

“Got enough stuff there?” Will asked, indicating the television and stereo equipment with which Known’s gang were laden.

“Actually, we were thinking of going back for some more. Would you mind?”

“I don’t care,” Will said. “Was... Cat there?”

“No. Should she of been? This some kind of kinky trick to jazz up your sex life, then?”

“Forget it. Did you get my wallet?”

Hot Badge passed over the wallet, at pains to point out that nothing had been taken from it.

“And there was something else?”

Known pursed his lips. “I’m a bit miffed that you think of me as someone who carries small arms around in his pockets, but here... enjoy it.”

Will took the gun. It seemed woefully small. “What ammo does it take?” he asked. “Caps?”

“Funny.” A box of shells was passed over.

“Is it easy to load?” Will twisted and turned the gun in his hand. It gleamed dully, like a snake’s skin, under the courtesy light.

“Shit, mate,” said Known. “Want me to shoot the bastard for you as well?”

“Never mind. I’ll figure it out.”

“Who are them mongs, anyway?” Hot Badge nodded back at Cricket cap, who had been joined by his colleague. They were both looking in the direction of the car.

“Friends of the family,” Will said.

“Well they’s going to go visit some poor bastard called Slowheaf next. Fort you might like to know.”

“Slowheaf?”

“Well, wiv a T-H at the end. Slowheaf.”

“Slowheath. Right.”

“Yeah. What I said. Some hard-sounding bastard came froo on the walkie-talkies while I was fuckin’ the lock. ‘We ’it Slowheaf next,’ he said.”

Will shrugged. The name meant nothing to him.

“Whatever.” Known lost interest with commendable swiftness. “What now?”

Will pulled the hood of his jogging top over his head and eased out of the car. He watched the gang stuffing the fruits of his marriage to Cat into the back.

“Something extremely foolish, probably,” he said.

“Nice doing business,” Known said. Everyone left.

The sky was bruising rapidly. The gun in his waistband felt impossibly huge now. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to use it. He watched the house and waited for change.

A car pulled up a little over an hour later. It was dark by then, and the cold was drawing the colour from his hands. A full moon, and those streetlamps that had not been shattered, turned the grey pavement into a strange, luminous strip of pale orange. Will watched Cricket cap and his female counterpart walk up the street to meet it. Two men got out; they talked for a few moments; Cricket cap and the woman got into their own car. They all left.

Will strode into West End Lane. He bypassed his home, forcing himself not to look, and wondered how such a course of events could have put him in a position where he was dicking around in the cold, his life in shreds, when he should have been helping his wife to relax while counting the fingers and toes of his little boy. The loss of the baby and Cat’s disappearance, maybe even her death, had reduced the meaning of his life here to nothing more substantial than the dust that skirled around West End Lane’s back alleys. He didn’t know what to do. There was no point going back to the flat. They might have booby-trapped the place or one of the men might return while he was in there. Then what now? He felt frustrated and impotent, as in the common dream he sometimes had where he knew he must get to an appointment on time but the moment he went to open the door to leave, he remembered he had forgotten to brush his teeth or pick up his keys or turn off the electric blanket. Without realising, he was stumping up and down the pavement, his hands clenching into fists, repeating the name “Slowheath, Slowheath, Slowheath...”

Who was this Slowheath? How did you begin to find a person you didn’t know anything about? That question, and the sight of a slow-moving police car nosing into the lane from the Finchley Road end, got him moving.

Maybe there was one person he could rely on after all.

SHE COULD SENSE them, beyond these walls. Somehow they were watching her.

Her body wanted to change. It fluxed and fluttered beneath a skin that seemed too paltry to contain her. The woman and the boy forced themselves to the surface and she had to work hard to quell them. Only when she could exercise control over herself would it be possible to bring her otherness into play.

She felt their eyes scorching her. They were waiting for her to acquiesce to what was inside her; to be comfortable with who she was. She sensed they were testing her. Well, she thought, pressing her hand against the thick wooden door, the test was over.

The cameras were not, as Cheke had supposed, inside the cell, but poised just outside. A guard with a grenade launcher was positioned in full armour at the mouth of the corridor, ready to abort should she render.

“It’s started,” the guard said.

His earpiece crackled. “Stay with it.”

The paint on the door blistered. The smell of charred wood prefaced the sudden shape of two hands emerging through the door. At the same time, in the small viewing window, a face appeared, rippled to nonsense by the cracks and the natural warp of the wire-enforced glass pattern. The face became the glass, cracks and all, oozing squarely through the frame. Coins of blood fell from its skin and the guard noticed how the glass had somehow fused with the flesh. He was so taken by the beauty of its passage that he sat back against the wall to watch, his lips shock-dry, his need to both laugh and bawl cancelling each other into awed silence.

He could see every nuance of her progress through the door; an intimacy between the living and the inert – if living was what she was. Only when her eyes, freshly blinked free of paint, splinters of wood and glass, met his own did he feel the first stitch of panic.

As she plucked the last shreds of her body from the door, the guard realised she was naked, but it had taken him until now to establish that. Her body was of a rudimentary configuration only; much of it ran in loops and strands. Liquid parts of her dribbled to the floor then swiftly collected and rejoined her mass like quicksilver. They wrapped around gaping, bloodless holes in which hints of muscle and bone could be seen. Her body turned brilliant white in an instant, generating a burst of intense heat that did for the cameras and tanned the guard’s face.

“What is it, Exley?” The fussy voice was full of needles. Exley, the guard, had forgotten all about his grenade launcher.

The flux of her face was at the same time both horrific and bizarrely tranquil; he was put in mind of lava lamps. When his voice came back she’d surged across the few feet between them, flowing over his legs, numbing them with her delicious chill.

“I don’t know what it is,” he whispered, as she covered his mouth with what passed for her own.

Although they were on her within fifteen seconds, dragging her away from Exley, the damage had been done. The soft tissue of his face was a pulped mass. Gleave, in the moment before he shot him through the forehead, couldn’t work out whether what dangled from the centre of his face was a tongue or an eyeball.

“Impressive,” came a gravelly voice at his shoulder. “And I don’t mean your sharp-shooting.”

“She’s the fastest we’ve seen. She’s almost ready. And this is, what... eighteen hours after we put the draw on her?”

“Give or take.”

“So what now?”

“Come and have a drink.”

Gleave followed the older man along a corridor carpeted with deep, wine-dark pile. He had been with the Junction for almost fifteen years now, yet was no closer to knowing Leonard Butterby than he was his partner, Thomas Lousher, or the history that they shared. Rumour was a rogue bull in this place: it could gore you if you messed about with it. The only whispers Gleave allowed himself to believe involved the suggestions of violence that had followed the pair around as they grew up in London during the ’60s and ’70s. Neither Butterby nor Lousher had any previous; at least, there was nothing on record. What the linens had printed on the couple over the last quarter of a century you could find in a few paragraphs devoted to their charity work. They were barbed wire without the barbs; nothing snagged.

“Absolut, isn’t it?”

Gleave nodded.

“Absolute disgrace, more like. Arseman’s drink, if you ask me. Here–”

Gleave took his drink and sat opposite Butterby, who had poured himself a large Scotch. A big desk, empty but for a blotter and a Meisterstück fountain pen, separated them.

“I don’t need to tell you how bollock-shrivellingly important the next few weeks are going to be–”

“No,” said Gleave.

“–but I’m fucking well going to. Fuck up once, just once, mind, and your arse is going to look like a choice cuts diagram on a butcher’s shop wall.”

Gleave swallowed hard, wishing there was some ice in his drink, something to chink against the glass and lend a little relief to this ordeal.

“We had word come in this morning. There’s agitation.”

“Where?”

“You know where. Fifteen years of nice and easy, and now the blood’s up. Check out this convergence. I want them wasted. I don’t want any fuck-ups. Now finish your drink and fuck off.”

Gleave put the glass down, even though he had barely wetted his lips with the contents. He knew Butterby well enough not to piss him off; at least he went through the motions of hospitality. Butterby and Lousher were yesterday’s men; they just didn’t realise it yet. Old, old men. Their power was failing. A tingle in his gut, unlike anything he’d felt in a decade and a half, drove him to pick up his pace on the way back to the ops room. A convergence. He wondered which of the Inserts it might be. Chances were, they’d be able to hit them fast before they became aware of their abilities.

Cheke was mopping up the juices on the carpet. Everyone else was watching her, afraid to say anything. Gleave went to her. “Come with me,” he said. And to one of the suits: “Bring me a file on the lost.” He would have to work through the night to train her on the basics of human interaction. She must learn not to draw attention to herself. She must be a ghost, until circumstances demand she reveal her gifts.

Pausing in the chill corridor, before allowing her into his office, he said: “Cheke. How are your eyes now?”

She shifted behind him, in the brown gloom of the passageway. “I can see...” Her voice was that of a child’s opening a Christmas box and finding what its heart had ached for. “I can see the pores on the back of your hand closing. I can see your pulse in the cut of your clothes.”

Gleave moved, all the better to disguise the shiver that ran through him. “That’s good,” he said.

She digested the file within minutes, the photographs and names committed to a mind that was still sharpening yet was already far beyond the swiftness of anything human.

“We’ll start you off on someone easy,” Gleave said. “It’s the man in the flat. The man we should have finished off, but he got away. He could be dangerous. He might expose us. Then there will be others.”

“When I’ve caught them–”

Gleave leaned forwards across the desk. For the first time, he was able to scrutinise properly the face that was gathering itself from the genetic spaghetti of its constituent parts. She was going to become rather lovely. Her eyes were hooded, and cat-sly, a blue so pale it was almost dangerously conspicuous. Her hair was black, piled in thick curls. The cruelty in her mouth made up for the innocence of the arch in her brows.

“Yes?”

“When I’ve caught them...” She smiled, desperation edging her words.

Gleave tried to return the humour, but his lips failed him. “Yes?”

“Can I eat them?”

CHAPTER NINE: CONTACT

IT HAD BEEN a good five years since Will had set foot on Dartmouth Park Road. He hoped Elisabeth still lived here and hadn’t moved on. He pushed through the gate – which still wailed in the same high-low fashion – and rapped on the door. When it opened, there was a hand that flew to a mouth, a dreadful crash as the plate Elisabeth had been drying fell to the floor.

Will said, “Pleased to see me then?”

WHAT HAD BEEN their living room contained the same curtains they had picked together from IKEA. Mango, the cat they had chosen from a litter belonging to a Maine Coon breeder in West Croydon, regarded him from the windowsill with the same mix of disdain and suspicion. Elisabeth was sitting with her slim legs winding around each other, elbow resting on her knee, cigarette burning between well-manicured fingers. Her hair had been cut short; her high cheekbones formed the inverted base of a triangle completed by the thick, ruby bow of her mouth.

“You look fantastic,” he said.

“You look like a stunt, Will,” she said. “You look like shit in a jacket.”

“I aim to please.”

“That’d be a first.”

Will held his hands up. “Look, Elisabeth. I’m not here to fight you.”

“What the fuck are you here for? Money? You still living in that shit pit with vinegar tits? My fucking patient, she was. I should have pulled the fucking plug on her before you got wind of her.” Elisabeth took a huge, violent drag on her cigarette and stubbed it out in an ashtray that might as well have been Will’s face.

“Elisabeth, I–” And then he couldn’t go on. The grief that had been rattling around inside like a loose coin in a machine spat out of him with such force that Elisabeth moved back in her seat, her hand covering her mouth, her eyes large in their sockets. As she blurred before him, Will slid onto the floor and let it happen. By the end, his chin and chest were a thin gravy of snot and tears and saliva. His chest hurt from all the sobbing. He was exhausted.

Elisabeth said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not you,” he said. “Cat. She’s been kidnapped. I think she might be dead.”

Elisabeth closed her eyes and for a while the two of them were silent. Then, very slowly, Elisabeth moved over to him, sat by him, and slipped an arm around his shoulders.

She said, “You’ve lost weight.”

“There was a baby. Our baby... I mean, one that me and Cat were going to have. We lost it.”

Elisabeth tensed but did not remove her arm. Her voice was cold when she spoke again. “I don’t know what you think I can do for you, Will. I mean, it’s not as if we parted in a way that would ever be described in the maturity textbook, is it? I’m very sorry about what’s happened to you, but why have you come here?”

“You’re all I know,” he said. His voice had dwindled to breath and little else. “Men came to our house. They were going to kill me.”

“Will? What are you talking about?”

The urgency in her voice couldn’t rouse him from the exhausted sleep that he suddenly fell into. Elisabeth was able to grab a cushion from the sofa before his head hit the floor. One of his hands retreated to his eyes, covering them as though to prevent him from seeing something awful. It was hours before she could get him up, in any sense of the word.

ELISABETH SAID, “THERE’S nobody called Slowheath on the net.”

“Fuck it,” Will spat. He was sitting at her shoulder, watching as her fingers flew over the keyboard of her laptop. The computer’s hard drive softly chirruped and chuckled as it processed Elisabeth’s request and vomited the results up on screen. The window in the basement study showed a mass of foliage, topped by a portion of pavement. Occasional legs would stride by, casting stop-start patterns of shadow across the room.

Will said, “Are you sure?”

“You can see for yourself. Hang on. What about Sloe Heath?”

“Who he?”

“It’s not a he. It’s an it. It’s a hospital in the Northwest. Just outside Warrington.” She jotted an address on a piece of paper.

“I’m not sure.”

“Well.” Elisabeth swivelled to face him. The whiteness of the screen behind her made it difficult to see the cast of her features. She pressed the scrap into his hand. “There’s nothing else. You’ll have to try. Tell the police. They’ll look into it for you.”

“I can’t get the police involved. I’m already on their shit list.”

“What do you mean?”

“Receiving stolen goods. And there was an affray in the town centre.”

“An affray? What’s that supposed to mean? Don’t talk copspeak with me. What did you do?”

“I was in a fight. A knife was pulled–”

“Oh, Will...”

“Not me. I didn’t have the knife. I headbutted this guy. Broke his nose.”

They were quiet for a while. Then Elisabeth said, “That’s why we aren’t together any more.”

“You don’t have to explain, Eli. That was five years ago. I can work it out for myself. But I can’t go to them. They’ll think I did it.”

“What will you do now?”

“I have to go up there. Catriona might still be alive.”

Elisabeth was becoming, in these moments, much as she used to be when she grew agitated by their arguments. She drew breath as though to say something and then fell silent. It was like watching a shy person struggling to express herself.

“The police,” she blurted finally, persistently. “You must go to them.”

“I can’t,” he said, simply. “There’s no time. They wouldn’t listen to me.”

“I’ll back you up.”

“No. I have to go now. Do you still have the car?”

It was as if, in a second, Elisabeth’s rigidity towards him had returned. She gave him a better view of her chin. “Fuck off, Will. My help desk has just closed.”

“Eli–”

“Don’t Eli me. You’re on your own.”

The burbling computer and a slow foot on broken glass in the street filled the silence. Will was grateful that Elisabeth wasn’t pushing for him to leave, but he knew that it wouldn’t be long in coming.

He said, “Can you smell anything burning?”

Elisabeth regarded him blankly. “Do I look like I’m cooking?”

“Well something’s caught. Are you sure you haven’t got anything on the stove?”

A finger of smoke curled around the door.

Elisabeth said, “Shit.”

She flew upstairs to the kitchen, but there was nothing on the cooker. Will checked her when she hurried back into the hallway. Something in his poise stopped her dead.

He put his finger to his lips; his reddened eyes shifted their focus to a point behind her. She turned to find the back door smouldering, a black handprint gaining definition in the grain of its wood.

“What–” she managed, before Will gripped her hand.

“We have to leave,” he said. “Now.”

She nodded.

“Where’s the car?”

They left by the front door. The sun was a fat, orange, cold thing wrapped in mist, low in the too-blue sky. Frost marbled the roads. A heavy woman in a nurse’s uniform laboured over the handles of an ageing bicycle.

“Show me,” said Will.

They hurried to the corner of Dartmouth Park Road as a series of muffled crashes peppered the stillness they’d vacated.

“I was followed,” Will said.

“Who?” Elisabeth glanced back at him as he propelled her along the pavement. She caught his strangled answer I don’t know, and then her attention was dragged over his shoulder by frenetic movement in their wake. Elisabeth could see, over the top of Mr. Royle’s neatly clipped hedges, a head, jerky with intent. Whoever it was moved fast. Faster than them.

“Where’s this fucking car?”

Elisabeth was about to answer when their pursuer stepped out from behind the hedge, sucking the breath from her.

“How can she run?” she managed at last, before Will pulled her off the road. He had spotted Elisabeth’s car – a cherry-red Volkswagen Golf – parked in a familiarly skewed fashion in a side street. It still bore a scratch from a visit they had made to Abersoch years before.

“Keys,” he demanded. He was wondering how the woman could walk, let alone run. Her legs had been molten, running into each other in shapeless flesh loops before rediscovering normality.

One hand had hovered beneath her chin, like a soup-eater aware of his lack of skill with the spoon, to scoop back great drifts of skin that oozed off the boss of her skull.

Elisabeth was laughing, her eyes as big as eggs. “The keys are on the fridge. Next to a bag of plums.”

They moved on, past Elisabeth’s car, aiming for the top of the road. Will could see there was no way they would make it before the woman caught them. What was wrong with her? Was it leprosy?

“Maybe you should talk to her?” Elisabeth gasped. She was clutching the side of her stomach, fighting a stitch. “Maybe she needs help.”

“Fuck that. She’s not after a cup of sugar, I assure you.”

The woman – if she could be called that – continued to gather pace and form. Now Will saw that she was only able to observe them since coins of flesh had peeled away from her face, allowing vague smears of colour to resolve themselves as eyes. Her targets locked, she arrowed towards them.

God, Will thought. She sniffed us out.

She was almost upon them when Will jinked left, hauling Elisabeth down a narrow alleyway. Up ahead, Hampstead Heath rolled away from them, raked by mist.

Will glanced back; her cornering wasn’t too clever. The effort to right herself meant she lost control of her substance. When she hove into view once more, her extremities were knitting themselves back into true.

In this fashion, he was able to put some distance between them. On the main road, he chanced upon a taxi pulling away from its rank.

“Anywhere. Drive,” he ordered, as they spilled into the back seat. She came for them out of the lane like a greyhound from a trap. Will watched her receding through the back window as she gamely attempted to pursue. As soon as it was evident she could not catch them, she switched off and set a new course instantly, never once reciprocating Will’s interest in her.

“So,” Elisabeth said. “Who’s she?” Her hands were covering her face and he could see her lower lip trembling. Nevertheless, some of the sass was creeping back into her voice now they were safe. “Jealous girlfriend?”

CHAPTER TEN: TORPOR

CHEKE INVADED A house and fed on the woman who lived there. She found a dark room underneath the building and slowed her heart, hoping that wisdom would creep into her and show her how to plan her next move. Sleeping, she allowed the flux of a new code to infuse her, amalgamating, refreshing her with otherness.

She was losing her hold over her own identity, the original that had mapped out her character from the start, although she could no longer remember enough about that being to gauge whether or not that was a good thing. The mirror was showing a woman where there’d been a girl the day before. When her mind wasn’t distracted by the fizzing of synapses as new thoughts – too complex for her to even begin to unravel – started to bloom, she considered the circumstances of her birth. All that diabolical screaming. And, just before the shock of the real, a feeling of being invaded with freshness, of being augmented with substance. The man who had wrapped her in a towel and warmed her – the thought of him made her shiver with love. She would do anything for him. Anything. Although a tiny part of her wondered why, when she regarded him with nothing but affection and respect, she saw all others as nothing more than meat.

She resisted going into the street in case she brought attention upon herself – and also because her transition was incomplete – so she was only tangentially aware of what was happening outside. The murmur of traffic, a skitter of shoes on the pavement. At night, through a grille in the ceiling, she saw the houses lose their shape to the darkness, squares of pale colour dotting their invisibility: people who could not sleep. An hour later, her breathing decreased to one inhalation every four minutes; as she felt the bones of her pelvis dissolve and re-knit into a broader shape, she heard a telephone ringing on one of the floors above her. An answer machine cut in and she heard giggling voices tell the woman she was becoming when they would arrive. Same time tomorrow night. She recognised the voice. The person who owned it was called... Susan... Suzanne... Susannah. Susannah.

What is my name?

It seemed that by the following morning her transition was complete. It took a few hours to emerge from torpor, by which time she felt refreshed and dangerous. The curve of her body was noticeable through her ill-fitting clothes. She felt a scar creep across her hip, watched a constellation of freckles birth themselves on the bridge of her nose. Yet as she studied her new aspect in the bathroom mirror, it became evident the change hadn’t ceased, that it went beyond this new physicality. Something was niggling her; a memory she’d never had before, one that seemed to call at her before the shock of the new. She couldn’t fully understand how this was. There was a compulsion to achieve something, to fulfil a pledge she couldn’t recall making. And other things too: the vague itch in her bones which might or might not be the calming of her marrow after such an upheaval. What did it mean? Only a tiny part of her gawped at the rushing of these events – presumably the area of her mind that groped for clues to who she was – for her name, the stock of memories she treasured were dwindling like tail-lights in mist.

Who am I? What is my name?

Enough of her remained to know she was being possessed or, more accurately, subsumed, but the thrill of the experience erased any fear.

Later, as the dark came again, she rubbed moisturisers into her skin, enjoying the sheen that it created, the softness. She inspected every bit of her body and when she was finished, she started again, until she was intimate with all of it.

She whispered, “Who am I?”

Footsteps on the path outside. She could hear Simon and Susannah and Joe? Joel? Jonathan laughing. Perhaps she should persuade them to go for a drink. Wasn’t that what usually happened when she had visitors? But no. Alcohol, and all its attendant possibilities, held no frisson for her; rather, other appetites had begun to develop, along with her psyche and the ripe shell in which she was contained.

Vacating the bathroom, she wrapped herself in a white towelling robe and went downstairs, the activity in her bones reaching a new level of intensity. Only when they piled through the door carrying suitcases and food parcels did she finally realise the nature of its energy.

They stared at her. The door swung shut.

“Dawn?” gaped Susannah.

Dawn... of course.

“In a manner of speaking,” she replied, untying the robe, watching her body spill to the floor.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: M

THEY JOINED THE motorway at Brent Cross. The traffic was heavy, but fluid, winding into the first curves like the swift channelling of water. They had arrived at Elisabeth’s parents’ house around lunchtime. Katherine, her mother, accepted them both with a curt nod; she had always resented Will for his treatment of her daughter. He was in no mood now to pick up on an argument five years old, especially as he thought he had acted correctly, ending a relationship swiftly because it had seemed to have run its course. That Cat was already sleeping in his bed at the time should not have been an issue, but Katherine had berated him for weeks afterwards, strafing him with phone calls long after Eli had accepted the outcome.

“I need to borrow your car,” Elisabeth had told her as she made them both mugs of tea in the narrow, sunlit kitchen. Katherine had handed over the keys without a peep, but gave them both icy, unblinking stares. Elisabeth was old enough now not to be told where she was going wrong. Still, with her mother unrelenting with this slow-burn look, Elisabeth told her: “I know. I know,” as they left the house.

THEY WERE A mile shy of Rugby, the radio masts clearly visible, when the car in front of them lifted into the sky. The beginning of Eli’s startled cry was eclipsed by an explosion that seemed to rupture the air itself. In the moment before their car was flipped over by the shockwave, Will thought he caught a glimpse of what death meant. It shimmered in the core of bloody colour spraying from the split petrol tank of their doomed neighbour; it engulfed the car with a film of uncertainty, before the flames tucked in and ruined the illusion of insubstantiality with some of their own. And then a pocket of dark to hide in for a while, as all around them pieces of the sky and the earth swapped places.

HE REVIVED FIRST, certain that Elisabeth was dead. A lump the size of a walnut had risen from the side of her head, just above her ear, which was torn and bloody. A tooth had been chipped and her lip was swollen and red. A worrying amount of blood had darkened the area of her T-shirt that covered her breasts.

“Eli.” Will reached over and dug into her throat with his fingers, searching for signs of life. It was there, a pulse stronger than he was expecting. He breathed out, shocked by sudden tears. He must not fold now; they might still be in danger from the fires. Although the windscreen was a riot of cracks, rendering the glass opaque, he could see how the sky was orange and waxy with movement.

Will managed to kick open the corrugated mess of the door. His seatbelt was preventing him from falling on top of Elisabeth; the car had come to a stop on the passenger side. Grabbing hold of the steering wheel, Will released the belt and hauled himself through the gap, gritting his teeth to an agony that never came. Now he could see the road, or what remained of it. Great jags of tarmac had been forced into the air, as if from a tectonic collision. Smoke rose, either in urgent, pumping cones of black or gently wafting veils, depending on the severity of the flame that fuelled it. Will stopped counting when he reached twenty charred vehicles. Another dozen or so had escaped the fires but disintegrated in the ensuing pile-up. Rounding the crimped bonnet of the Golf, he saw a limb on the roadside, neatly encased in a pink cardigan sleeve. The fingers were gripping a half-eaten chunky Kit Kat.

Will rubbed his face as he felt the heat draining away from it. Fainting wasn’t going to be of use to anyone. He pressed his shoulder against the roof of the car. By rocking against it, his movements becoming progressively more violent as the balance shifted, he was able to generate enough momentum for it to right itself. Elisabeth jounced and flopped in the passenger seat, her senseless movements like those of a soft toy, renewing Will’s nausea. For a moment, he believed the car might be all right for all its dents and fractures, but then he saw there was no road to drive upon, even if the engine did turn.

Sirens flew into the hot sky behind him, at a distance too great for him to fathom what was causing them. He couldn’t understand the reason for the panic that flitted through him; Elisabeth might be critically ill, she might need urgent medical attention.

So why am I doing this? he asked himself as he wrenched open the passenger door and eased her out of the seat. Her arms jerked under his touch; she said: “Not in that colour,” before falling silent once more.

He tip-toed with her through the wreckage, hoping to find a gap in the buckled road, but the trauma had been too great. Walking wounded drifted by him, ignoring him, as dazed as lost tourists.

The embankment was littered with broken glass and hot rinds of metal. He staggered to the bottom where a fence pegged back a ditch and a field that fell away to a smudge of woods. Cows chewed like outlaws in a Western. Smoke rolled down the embankment here. Will strode through it, trying to shut out the dreadful cooking odours that enveloped him. He was on the other side of the smoke wall, angling his way back up to the road when he again had the curious epiphanic certainty that he understood death, that its secret was somehow within his grasp. He almost dropped Elisabeth. To his right, limning the edge of the oil-smoke, sunshine picked out what appeared to be solid surfaces, dented and mottled like beaten tin. Yet there was nothing behind it, no caved-in car or jack-knifed juggernaut. Someone was screaming somewhere. His attention diverted for a second, the moment was lost: just oil-smoke rolling into a brilliant winter sky.

The clamour of rescue behind him, Will breasted the embankment to find more confusion. The explosion that had halted him was not the only one. The distant road sported similar eruptions. Will almost hoped that Elisabeth would die; the remainder of his journey would have to be by foot.

He had to get her off the road, at least until the pandemonium was over. A series of blackened farmhouse buildings – stock-sheds, stables, a barn – were collapsed against each other about a quarter of a mile to the east. There was nothing else.

The embankment was less treacherous on the opposite side, the fence not as well tended. Elisabeth sneezed three times as he made his way through the rape fields, knowing that he must be as conspicuous as a fly on a wedding cake, but nobody called to stop him.

About three hundred yards shy of the fire-ravaged stables, Will heard the first deep, blatting rotor beats of helicopters. It was a directionless sound, fading and coming, fading and coming. Will’s neck ached, trying to pinpoint the source. He didn’t like the way his senses were abandoning him; perhaps he had been damaged in the crash, in a way he could not yet understand. Finally, as he moved into the shade of a line of silver birch, he saw them: half a dozen emergency service helicopters, low on the horizon, coming in from the south.

The stables were gutted. None of the four had contained horses for a long time. The fire that had done for the buildings had been a major affair, although the main house had been only partially consumed.

Will left Elisabeth propped up against an ancient engine block that was so large it must have belonged to a tractor. He spread his coat across her. She was still unconscious but her brow was knitted, as though she were deep in concentration. Will whispered to her that he would be back, then padded across to the farmhouse. Fire engines were scattered across the motorway, trying to control the flames. As he watched, a car exploded, half of it spinning into the air like a toy at the hands of a tantrum child. Great arcs of thick foam were directed to this fresh blaze. More helicopters clattered overhead, heavier types carrying water that was discharged in ribbons over the carnage. A rainbow flashed across the sky for a few seconds.

To gain access, Will had to kick in some boards covering a ground-floor window, but they were rotting and gave way easily. Fire had peeled away much of the inner skin of the room; the walls were scorched brick, floorboards had been exposed above and beneath him. The smell of the fire had long since vanished; now the dampness was thick with the sour smell of spoor and rot. There was nothing of use here. Will moved deeper into the house. A staircase reached into the heights but had been cheated of its ambition; the final half-dozen risers were missing, trashed by an infalling of masonry. In the kitchen he found an old, unopened roll of toilet tissue. Cairns of unidentifiable animal shit were scattered in some indecipherable pattern. A cracked, fly-speckled window wrenched the M1 disaster site into something unworldly. Smoke was condensed by the flaws in the glass; the rescuers were more hunched and twisted than the survivors they pulled from the wreckage. Will’s neck tingled. It was not just the shock of the accident or the thrill of having survived. He had witnessed something other just now. An opening, a promise of a different place. The opportunity to gain finer understanding. The unimaginable laid bare, perhaps, and made simple. It was as if God had dropped some of his blueprints into Will’s lap.

He tried to push the sensation away. Thoughts like this weren’t going to help Elisabeth. Will climbed the stairs carefully, vaulting the gap and moving across the landing to the bathroom. Fallen chunks of plaster concealed much of the carpet in here. A faded map of Australia took up the majority of one canary-yellow wall. Cracked, multi-coloured tiles finished the decoration above a badly stained enamel bath. An upside-down bottle of Aveda shampoo and a nailbrush were the only adornments, not counting the desiccated robin in the wash basin.

In the medicine cabinet, Will found a small, ancient tube of lignocaine and a plastic tub filled with Ibuprofen, the seal of which was still intact even if the expiry date had come and gone a year ago.

“It will do,” he muttered, and the closeness of his voice made his neck tingle.

He retraced his steps and was about to leap over the gap in the stairs when he saw something glittering in its darkness. At first he thought they were coins, but when he bent to pick them up, he realised, too late, that they weren’t.

CHAPTER TWELVE: SHIVERY EYES

THE FOREMAN WAS a stocky, catarrhal man who wore a Manchester City pin just below the knot of his tie. “Rapler,” he introduced himself. “Tony Rapler.” It wasn’t much of an interview. Rapler asked him, over superheated cups of weak coffee, what experience he had had on building sites.

“Not much,” admitted Sean. “But when I was younger I did some casual labour on small sites. Building garages and extensions, that type of thing.”

“You look fit. Work out much? Swimmer?”

“I run a bit. And my last job was warehouseman, humping kitchen units and firecheck doors around. It helps.”

“Any form?” Rapler asked.

“No. I’m disappointingly clean.”

Rapler laughed. “You’ll be fine. We need a few more meatheads about the place. All we get are students sniffing around for a few weeks’ work in the summer. They usually cry off after a couple of days. Think they’re going to turn into Lou Ferrigno – ‘Aye, boss, no trouble. I could carry bricks all day’ – and before you know it they’re walking around like they’ve just had a hernia.”

“What was this place?” Sean asked.

“Built in the 1970s. Nobody knows what it was meant to be. Hotel most probably. But it was also an office block, with a private residential quarter and a leisure facility. You could have been born inside and never had a need to go out. Maybe if they built it down south it would have worked, but up here?”

“Interesting.”

“Yeah, up to a point. Guy who designed it, Peter de Fleche, hanged himself. Dutch. After it was abandoned and the demolition orders went through you’d see him in this fucked-up Jag, giving it the slow drive-by. Felt as if he’d failed, they reckon. Did a couple other buildings in a similar vein. Then nothing.”

“He doesn’t need to know any more.”

Sean turned to see the barrel-chested man from the funeral standing in the doorway. He had so much neck it resembled a collar for his head to nestle in.

Rapler said, “This is Ronnie Salt. You’ll answer to him on the softstrip. He runs a good team, does Ronnie.”

Ronnie nodded at him. Up close, his eyes were unpleasant splashes of cement-grey either side of a nose that might have once been used as a blacksmith’s anvil. The two men walked across the sunken, blasted forecourt to the condemned building as another man turned up. He nodded at them and Rapler clapped his hand on the new man’s shoulder. “Marshall?” Rapler asked, “Jamie Marshall?” They disappeared back inside his Portakabin.

“Why is it being knocked down?” Sean asked, as they approached the de Fleche building.

Salt regarded him with what looked like a wince, as if he had expected Sean to be mute and was now resigned to having to converse with him. “Well, it’s completely shagged out. I mean, look at it. Nobody has lived there or worked in it for years. Sick building. Air conditioning system never right. Couple of people died. Airborne disease.”

“Great. Must be a pleasure to spend your days in there.”

Salt sneered at him. “It’s a job.”

The front of the de Fleche building soared away from them like the prow of a ship. The entrance was a fly-blown revolving door ten feet high with so many cracks it looked like a feature. Behind the fogged barrier of glass, a bank of shattered TV screens hung from the ceiling over a horseshoe desk. Sean tried to imagine what the lobby must have looked like.

“Let’s have a closer look,” he said.

The doors gritted and squealed as they pushed through. The air in here was a urinous melange; a deep scar in the far wall showed how vagrants might have gained access. Squatter evidence lay around them: empty tins, shit-streaked toilet tissue in a bin sack, newspapers bearing dates from half a decade previously.

Salt stood by the door, his hands in his pockets, toeing something small and shrivelled that owned claws and a tail.

“Has work started on this place yet?” Sean asked.

“Yeah. We’re going top to bottom. Just a couple of floors done so far. Slow job.”

“Where’s your team?”

A blunt thumb jutted upwards. “Wordy bastard aren’t you? Do you ask so many questions all the time?”

Sean spread his hands. “Just being friendly.”

“Keep friendly for your knitting circle, or whatever it is you do when you leave us. Work is here. Hard fucking work. And I will come down on you like the knives at a knacker’s yard if you step out of line. Hear me? Don’t like it? Hard-hat off, fuck off. Simple as that.”

“I understand,” Sean said.

Salt regarded him for a few seconds longer, then jutted his thumb north again. “Let’s go.”

HE FELT LIKE a zoo animal in a new kind of viewing experience, one in which the attractions are led around a static public. Smoke and the smell of over-brewed tea hung sourly in the room. On one wall, a calendar depicted a topless woman sitting on the bonnet of a Ferrari eating melting ice cream.

Salt said, without any attempt at pointing out the owners of the names: “Robbie Deakin, Tim Enever, Lutz Singkofer, Nicky Preece, Jez Cartledge. This is... tits... forgotten your name. Steve?”

“Sean. Sean Redman.”

“Right then, I’ll let you get on. Show him what’s what. Maybe start him off on the loose wall in the bathroom.” Salt left, grabbing a fish paste sandwich from a wrap of foil on one of the men’s knees. “I’ll be back in an hour,” he called, as his boots began their descent.

An embarrassed silence fell. Sean broke it: “Have you worked together as a team long?”

“’Bout six month,” replied the man with the fish paste sandwiches. He offered one to Sean. Sean accepted. “I’m Robbie. Salty’s a miserable old bastard. Ignore him. We hardly ever see him anyway. He normally fucks off to the pub when Vernon’s not around.”

“Who’s Vernon?” Sean bit into the sandwich. It reminded him of childhood. Salty, cheap paste. Margarine on bland white bread.

Robbie said, “Vernon Lord. He’s the chief. He’s the sub-contractor. Gets us quite a bit of work. We had a guy, what was his name? Anyway, he was shite. Smackhead. So we need another. Six men is more or less right for this job.”

“Five and a half, Rob, if you’re counting Tim.” The guy who had spoken raised a hand to Sean. “All right mate? I’m Nicky. This is Jez and that’s Lutz.”

Sean said, “Lutz? You German?”

“Fuck off,” said Lutz, in a loose, Mancunian whine. “I’m from Chorley, me.”

Nicky nodded at another figure, hunched over a paperback novel. “That’s Tim. AKA Shivery Eyes.”

Tim looked up as Robbie leant over to ask Sean if he wanted some tea.

“Yeah sure,” Sean said, studying the candyfloss hair and the too-big eyes. More quietly, he asked: “What’s up with him?”

Robbie checked Tim and grinned. “What isn’t? He’s all right, Tim. Aren’t you, Timmy? All right?”

Tim said, “Sound.” His voice was low and whispery. He looked like a tuberculosis “after” picture. His eyes slow-blinked gummily, crusted with goo. A pane of spit sealed his open mouth. The breath he drew in through his nose turned to liquid in his lungs. Sean could clearly see his ribs under the fabric of an ancient Duran Duran T-shirt.

“Is he fit to do this kind of work?” Sean murmured.

“What? Making the tea and bringing us stuff from the shop? He manages that all right, mate.”

Lutz said, “Don’t worry your pretty little head about our Tim. We look after him, hey, Tim? Don’t we look after you?”

Tim shrugged. He said, “Do you like dick? More cock?”

Sean screwed up his face. “You what?”

Lutz laughed. “It’s his little joke. He asks everyone that. They’re writers. Science fiction writers. You know. Philip Dick, isn’t it, Tim? Do Androids Dream of Electric Blankets?”

“Sheep.”

“Sheep blankets then. Whatever. And Michael Moorcock. I never read anything by them, but Tim here has always got his face in a book.”

“What you into there?” Sean asked. He was frustrated. He wanted to ram Tim into the wall and ask him what he had been doing at Naomi’s funeral. None of the others had been there, as far as he could tell. Tim shifted, obviously uncomfortable with the sustained interest in his business. Sean saw now how, behind those gritty lids, Tim’s eyes vibrated and jerked like the numbered balls in the National Lottery.

“Harrison. M John, not Harry. The Committed Men.” His voice soughed out of him. He seemed to diminish under the effort.

“Good?”

Tim shrugged. “Yeah.” His bovine scrutiny of Sean over, he went back to his paperback.

“We’ll give you something simple to start you off with,” Robbie said, drawing on a pair of thick gloves. “Grab a pair of these. Over there by the door.”

Robbie took him through to what must once have been the kitchen in this particular flat. Sawn-off drains thrust through the floor like severed limbs. “Lump hammer,” Robbie continued. “Highly technical this bit... take the hammer and twat the Christ out of that dividing wall till there’s nothing left.”

“That’s it?” said Sean, shedding his jacket.

“How hard do you want the job to be, mate?” said Nicky, who had followed them through. “Listen, me and Lutz are going to make a start on the flat across the landing. Robbie’ll give you any advice you need. Want tea? Tabs? A fiver putting on Wet Dream in the three-thirty at Ascot? Tim’s yer man.”

“Right,” said Sean. “Thanks.”

He had never used a lump hammer before; he couldn’t even remember if he had ever held one. Its weight intimidated him. Aware of Robbie observing him, Sean hefted the tool, left hand gripping the end of the handle, right hand circling the neck, just under the dense block of iron. He stood adjacent to the wall, left foot in front of his right, and brought the hammer back over his head, grunting as he swung it up and forwards, at the same time letting his right hand slide down the shaft to meet the left.

“Fuck me,” Robbie said, as a quarter of the wall disintegrated. “Take it easy, mate. You’ll end up in hospital if you carry that on. Pace yourself. It’ll come down whether you give it five blows or fifty. It’s you who’s got to wake up in the morning, come in here and do it all over again.”

“I’m okay. I’m up to it.”

Robbie winked and left him.

Twenty minutes on, stripped to the waist and with sweat stinging his eyes, Sean had to stop. The wall, after that first impact, had proven to be stouter than he expected. Pock marks cratered the plaster; brick peeked through, obstinate. He had to get around the site. Make a connection.

He was about to go back to work when he heard the scratch of a shoe on the linoleum. Tim was standing there, his paperback dangling from his hand, one finger hooked inside it to keep his page. He looked at Sean for a long time, but then Sean saw how he was trying to coax some form from the wet ruin of his mouth.

“I’m going to the offy,” he said. “Peanuts. Want a beer? Salty doesn’t mind if you have the odd beer.”

Sean could think of nothing he wanted more, but he felt it was necessary to hold back a bit. If there was a weak link here, Tim might be it. His way in. And for that to happen, he had to behave differently from all the others Tim schlepped for.

“No, thanks,” he said. He didn’t wait to see how long his answer would take to sink in. He went back to the wall. Thinking about Naomi refuelled him. The bricks didn’t stand a chance.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: DEADSTRETCH

“ELI? ELI? COME on, chicken. Come on, wake up.”

Will watched her surfacing, struggling through any number of levels of sleep, or unconsciousness. Finding shallow areas, close to wakefulness, the pain set in, and he gripped her hand as hard as she gripped his.

“Where does it hurt, Eli?”

He had delicately lifted her jumper in an attempt to locate the source of the blood. A large bruise had wrapped itself around the side of her body, covering an area the size of a twelve-inch record. A small cut below her left breast had stopped bleeding and didn’t look as serious as he had feared. He didn’t know the extent of her internal injuries, if there were any. Will felt himself go weak at the thought of losing another woman, so close to him, in the space of twenty-four hours.

“We have to get you to a hospital, chicken,” he whispered. Elisabeth’s eyelids fluttered and for a moment she pinned him with a lucid, almost amused look. Then she drifted off again. Another shadow fell across her, and then a pair of small hands, probing and pressing.

“She won’t need the hospital. It isn’t all that serious.”

Will turned and smiled at the girl. “How can you know that? We’ll need some kind of stretcher. We need to get her on the road. Maybe we can flag down one of those helicopters.”

The girl came nearer. “There’s really no need. My father was a doctor. He taught me lots about accident victims. I know just about everything you need to know about car crash trauma.”

“Then why won’t she wake up?”

“She’s in shock. The body is just enforcing a period of calm, that’s all. She needs to rest. There’s no breaks. If she suffered any organ damage, we’d know all about it by now. She’d be dead. Just keep her lying down, with her legs raised.”

Will wanted to believe her but her reading of Elisabeth’s apparent distress as perfectly harmless was of no comfort to him. He assessed the girl again. She must have been around sixteen or seventeen years old. Freckles banded her nose. Her hair was long and blonde, but could have done with a wash. It hung limply against her shoulders. She wore a grubby white halter top and well-worn jeans. Converse sneakers. A tattoo, some Chinese symbol, made a black slash across the biceps of her left arm. Her name was Sadie. He had no idea yet as to why she was hiding out in an abandoned farmhouse. Small-talk wasn’t high on his current list of things to do.

“So okay, she’s out of the critical zone. Can we move her?”

“Why would you want to?” Sadie asked. “She can rest here. There’s plenty of food. Shelter’s good, if you find a part of one of the rooms that isn’t leaking.”

Will tried to read more from her face. He needed to know if he could trust her, quickly. But he had never been a great judge of character. “We need to get on,” he said, limply.

Sadie pouted. “Where are you thinking of going?”

“North,” Will replied. “We have to get to Warrington.”

“Nice,” she said, but Will couldn’t detect any sarcasm in her voice. “I’m heading north too.”

“Not with us, you’re not.”

Sadie smirked. “Oh really? Who’s stopping me?”

“Sadie,” Will said, in what he thought was his most authoritative voice. “We’re wanted. We’re being chased.”

At this, Sadie’s eyes widened. “Cool,” she purred. “I could help you.”

“No, really. Thanks but no.”

“You are being a total knob about this.”

Will smiled. “Am I?”

“Uh-huh. We’re both going north. What? You’re going to walk a few steps behind me all the way, are you?”

“I just think we’ll slow you down, that’s all.”

“Slow is good. I don’t mind slow.”

Will sighed. She was going to accompany them whether he liked it or not. “Okay,” he said at last. “What are you doing hiding here anyway?”

Sadie evaded the question. “We need something to carry your woman in.”

“She’s not my wo–”

“We could make a stretcher.”

They ended up lashing together some wooden planks from one of the barns. Will tied two lengths of rope to one end which he criss-crossed around his chest. Now Elisabeth could be transported, albeit roughly, across the terrain. Sadie strapped her in with more rope, wrapped with strips of cloth to prevent it from chafing her skin.

“How far are we from Warrington, do you reckon?” Will scanned the horizon beyond the radio masts. Rain was collecting there in dense blankets of cloud.

“I don’t know. Hundred miles?”

A hundred miles. Will struggled to come to terms with the situation, the ease with which they had been thrown off course. By now they should have arrived in Warrington; they might even have solved the puzzle of Sloe Heath. His gut churned when he thought that he might have been reunited with Cat by now or at least discovered what had happened to her, but instead he was faced with the insidious prospect of tramping across country for what? A week? Two weeks? How long could it take?

“We can take it in turns if you like,” Sadie said, brightly, skipping ahead. “Come on. Race you.”

The air freshened, seemed to crystallise around him as he began his journey. The scattered cars on the M1 sent thin streams of smoke across his path, turning the field and those beyond into an uncertain wilderness. It led away to a horizon that was black and bleak. He thought he might die somewhere up there, if they found neither help nor a road that might transport them more easily.

The ropes squeaked as they bit into his flesh and the stretcher began to make tracks in the soil. Sadie danced and spun in front of him. Despite everything, he had to smile.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: SUPPLE BODIES

CHEKE WAITED UNTIL nightfall to move on, partly because it seemed necessary but partly because she could see and smell and taste more. Often in the past week she had entertained the notion that, just as babies born in water have a natural affinity with it, she would realise an innate kinship with the dark. She wasn’t close enough to herself yet to establish it as fact, though echoes and hints of a previous (or parallel) existence rumoured it was true. Even these thoughts were less than solid. Once more she’d lost her grasp on who she was, despite Susannah’s shocked utterance of her name that morning. The knowledge she was being enveloped, or developed, by another presence was the only clue to reassure her that she was a different individual to the one she glimpsed in mirrors. It was a frightening ordeal, and a dying voice within pleaded for her to resist the alien intruder before, like a germ in the blood, it was digested completely. But the promise of reality was the scent of fresh blood in a pack hound’s nostrils. She lusted after it and beggar the consequences.

Around her, like wax mannequins kissed by flame, lay the people who had once been housemates of hers, though some hours had passed since she’d been able to put names to faces. Now their bodies had grown runny as soup. Simon, Susannah and Jonathan were indistinguishable from each other: a lumpen, greasy mass from which appeared tufts of hair, white knobs of bone, the odd smear of colour as a sightless eye surfaced and sank again. The how and why of her attack paled before a craving that brought her away from the window. As she absorbed this human porridge she became aware that twin appetites were being sated: basic, physical hunger but also a need for information in the genealogy of her victims. An infusion of biological codes set her limbs itching for further re-alignments, but she exercised restraint until all but their clothes had been liquefied and drawn inside her. She was able to sleep then, while she watched the night deepen, and waited for her body to relax.

Her dreams took place in a strange hinterland comprising what she as human and she as intruder recognised as home; an environment which if split into its constituent parts might prove unremarkable, but when mixed became something exciting and novel. People she guessed were related to those she had ingested flitted through her mind.

She wondered idly what the original Cheke must be like, that which was now busily being sucked away, replaced, improved upon. An image, like a mudlocked bubble, shifted from deep within, scattering these dream faces, scorching the well-known and alien streets and buildings until an oily blackness frothed behind her eyes, alive with revelation. Tissue-thin, the blockage suggested her true identity, but before her curiosity was satisfied a pain wound itself about her spine, skating brief as breath upon glass into the parts of her brain she still clung to as her own, gilding them with icy leaves which creased her into oblivion. Her own truth was not for her eyes, it would seem.

Cheke had absorbed Susannah last. She was different from any of the women with whom she had so far been in contact; glossier, more polished. Her hair was long and shiny, not prone to the knots and tangles that Cheke found worming through her own tresses. Susannah’s body was firmer, with round curves that did not dimple or crease when Cheke pressed her fingers into them. Her teeth were white and, to Cheke, almost too small to chew with; her eyes, until death spirited it away, carried an intelligent shine. Even her skin felt vibrant. More real than the stuff that packaged Simon or Jonathan. It was tight and supple in the same moment, maddeningly so.

She enjoyed Susannah, and pushed her body to the fore as quickly as possible after she was ingested. She liked the way her breasts had a solid but pliable feel to them. She jiggled them in front of the mirror and they moved with a languor that made her mouth dry. She had found pictures of men with their mouths attached to these things in magazines under Jonathan’s bed. Eyes closed, lips working the nipple, biting lightly. Sucking. The women on the receiving end liked it, this sucking. This gentle devouring of their bodies. She had studied the way their heads were thrown back, their bodies arched to offer as much flesh as possible. Fingers laced behind a head. Teeth bared. She saw pictures too of women with penises in their mouths.

She had investigated Jonathan’s body within herself, and Simon’s too. Their penises had been thin and pale, like worms, or noodles. The guard she had absorbed at Gleave’s place was better. His penis was so thick she was unable to enclose it within the ring formed by her thumb and forefinger. She could grip it with both hands and smell its gamey flesh as she teased back the prepuce. She liked its wine-dark colouring, and the way the foreskin shifted against the inner meat as she pulled and squeezed it between her fingers. She liked its soft-hard feel, like marble enveloped in padded velvet. She wondered how it might feel in her mouth. She wondered if this was something that made a woman a woman.

She touched herself in the places the men had concentrated on in the pictures but didn’t feel anything that made her want to open her mouth or close her eyes. She felt cheated. She didn’t feel as though she were as close as she might be to finding out what being human felt like. Almost being people wasn’t enough.

What could she do though? If there were any real avenues to explore, tangible opportunities, would she follow them through? Wouldn’t it be too dangerous to expose herself like that? The thing was, for every memory or characteristic of her own that she lost, a new one replaced it, slipping so seamlessly into the mosaic of her being that it was at once incontrovertibly her. It was slowly erasing who she was, all this sublimation. But it had her now, like appetite or addiction. For each reservation about her undoing there was a fillip to be found in her enhancement. It was difficult for her panic to develop muscle: no matter the origin of the She, her mind continued to assimilate information as an I, which rendered invalid the fear of her own diminishment. There’d been a sense of maturation despite the continual upheaval of brain and brawn, the re-configuration of all she was and all she might be. Strands of her that felt attached to some pre-ordained pattern now twisted and coiled with new filaments, creating a brand new weave of destiny. Like a re-programmed computer she was suddenly, if vaguely, aware of a fresh list of ambitions, needs and purposes. These involved people she didn’t yet know, though she couldn’t work out what would happen when she found them. Hopefully, as had already happened, instinct would take over when the need arose.

She felt better than she had for a long time. The rest had done her good, but she also felt brighter, more alert. For the first time, she felt confident that she could do the work that had been asked of her and she shivered with the promise Gleave had made, that she would know what it was to be a woman, a real woman, when the last of those targets had had their throats cut.

Her hands had been busy while she dreamed and plotted. She slipped the bracelet onto her wrist and turned it this way and that in the flickering flames of the candles. They really were such small teeth; too small to chew anything tough, she supposed. But now, in this light, they looked a little like pearls.

PART TWO

SOFTSTRIP

Living is death; dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that citizens; on this side orphans, on that children.

– Henry Ward Beecher

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: GREETINGS FROM A DEAD MAN

FOUR DAYS INTO the job, Sean’s back screaming at him, things changed. Rapler and Ronnie Salt walked in on everyone during a tea break. The laughter that had been reverberating around the shattered remains of this fourth-floor suite of offices dwindled to a few nervous coughs. Rapler was white. Sean could see in the others’ faces that this meant something other than the offer of a pay rise.

Rapler said, “Mr. Lord’s here.”

Salt pointed at Sean. “Come with us, chum,” he said.

Sean wondered if he had been rumbled already. Maybe one of the “mourners” at the funeral had spotted him after all and identified him. Maybe he had been recognised as a policeman by someone he had arrested. That was all right. He could come clean and tell them he was off the Force; it was easily proved. Not that they would appreciate an ex-cop in their ranks.

“We slipped up,” Salt explained. “All new recruits must be doctored by the boss.”

“You mean vetted, surely?” Sean said, but Salt did not return his smile.

“Mr. Lord wants a word with you,” Rapler said, fidgeting with his notes. “That’s all. Just a routine chat. He likes to do that with all new employees. I think it’s a nice touch. Makes you feel welcome.”

Salt snorted. At the foot of the stairs he hung back and allowed Rapler to take Sean through the foyer to the forecourt. A black Shogun was parked rakishly across a number of bays. The man Sean had seen talking in the pub was standing with his arms folded, leaning against the rear doors of the four-by-four. Light collected in the lenses of his sunglasses. Sean wondered if he rued the fact that he was a white man. It spoiled the look he was after, from his scuffed black boots to his black leather trenchcoat.

“Hi,” Sean said.

Mr. Lord stared at him but said nothing. He turned to Rapler. “Why are you still here?”

“Sorry, Vernon,” Rapler said. “I thought you might want me to–”

“–to fuck off?” Vernon suggested.

“Yeah.” Rapler scurried away, leafing through the pages on his clipboard.

“That man,” Vernon said, his eyes on Rapler’s back, “is a first-class nadge sac.”

Sean laughed sycophantically. “How long have you known him?”

Vernon turned his shining lenses on Sean. “That, my friend, is one question too many from you. Shut up and come with me.”

Sean stood his ground. “A: you do not tell me to shut up. B: I am not some arse-kissing loser. Watch what you tell me to do. Like this job is so fucking valuable to me I couldn’t walk away whenever I fucking want to.”

Vernon regarded him for a moment. Then he nodded. “Fair enough. Come on. Let me buy you a pint.”

SMOKE AND SWEAT embraced Sean as Vernon Lord pushed him through the doors of the Fallen Angel. The clientele were a rag-bag of damp coats and spoiled teeth. Bottled stout or barley wine was the drink of preference. No smoking ban here. No copper would dare poke his head round the door to check. There was a hubbub of conversation underpinned by the thud of darts hitting a board at the dim reaches of the wedge-shaped lounge. Through greasy windows, Sean watched women in head scarves struggle against the wind as they carried their bags of shopping up Buttermarket Street.

“What you having?”

Sean said, “A lager.”

“Two Kronenbourg,” Vernon said to the barman, who stopped serving the women at the counter to get his drinks.

“You got a bit of clout round here, then?” Sean asked.

“All of it deserved, mate. Nothing wrong with a good rep.”

“A good rep,” Sean repeated. “What does a man do around here to garner himself a good rep?”

“Garner?” Vernon raised his eyebrows and saluted Sean with his pint. “I like it. Garner. Very educated, aren’t we?” He swigged half of his beer in one movement. “What are you doing humping bricks? Should be humping graduates.”

“I’m not the first bloke with half a brain to wear a hard-hat.”

Vernon ruminated on this for a while. “Still, it’s a rare thing. Most of the blokes on my sites. Jesus. If they didn’t have construction, they’d be about as much use as piss in a trumpet.”

“Look, I’m sorry for the smarts, okay? I just need some work, that’s all. I’ll dumb down.”

Vernon drained his pint and ordered a couple more without consulting Sean. “Well, fine, but I just need a few references, that’s all. I don’t know who the fuck you are or where the fuck you’ve come from, or what the fuck.”

“You’re talking like someone who’s got something to hide.”

“I have got something to hide, mate. I have. I’m quite up front about it. Question is, have you?”

“I already told Tony. I’m so square, I can’t stop turning corners.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

Sean shrugged. “Fuck the job then. Fuck you. But thanks for the drink.”

Vernon said, “It’s not the demolition I’m worried about. I couldn’t give a toss who works on that.”

“What then?”

“I need a sidekick. None of those mashed arses could take care of themselves. You, a different story.”

“Not interested,” said Sean, while his heartbeat sped up and he thought, Oh yes, oh yes I am. “I don’t stooge for anybody.”

“You said you needed the job.”

“I need a job. A job. Doesn’t matter what it is. But one is enough.”

Vernon thought this over, twisting his glass around and around on the filthy bar. Somebody put some music on the jukebox. Somebody belched loudly.

“You’ll be well paid,” Vernon said.

“Look, Vernon. Look, we don’t know each other–”

“Which is perfect.”

“–and I really don’t know if I can get back into dodgy stuff.”

Vernon paused with his glass raised to his mouth. His fingers were surprisingly delicate on such a big man. Pianist’s fingers. No rings. “Get back into it? This gets better. Listen. I’ll make it worth your while.”

Sean drained his pint and looked at his watch.

“I have to get back to the lads.”

“Bollocks to the lads.”

Sean studied his feet. “Make what worth my while?”

Vernon smiled. “I’ve got a little sideline going,” he said.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: SOFTLY, SOFTLY

A CALL TO Sally unearthed no dirt about Vernon. She suggested he might be using an alias. Sean didn’t think so. Something about him convinced Sean that artifice would not stand with this man. The corollary of this, of course, was that Vernon had no convictions. He was clean as the buttons on his coat. Despite this logic, Sean had no problem at all imagining Vernon in Naomi’s bedroom, stabbing her life away with a screwdriver.

Unhappy with the tension growing in his flat, Sean escaped outside. It was late in the evening. The pubs were getting rowdy. Sullen teenagers gathered under railway bridges or outside fish and chip shops, mouths busy with cigarettes or hidden behind zipped-up collars. Realising he was hungry, Sean ducked into one of these fish bars. He ordered his supper and let the vinegary, soporific heat melt through his bones and relax him. A couple of girls with vicious make-up flirted with him while he waited, asking him hairdresser questions: “Been on holiday?”

Back at his flat, he poured a glass of beer and set about his meal. The potatoes inside him, he stretched luxuriously on the sofa and promptly fell asleep. Almost immediately, he heard the telephone ringing. Disorientated by the extreme dark and the silence, he flailed around for the receiver and burbled something approximating a greeting into the mouthpiece. He felt dizzy and sick with the need for sleep.

“Hi,” said a female voice, far too brightly for the hour, whatever hour it was.

“What time is it?”

“It’s, um, hold on a sec... it’s quarter past midnight.”

“And you are?”

“I’m pissed.”

Sean rubbed his face. “Emma, is that you?”

“Yep. Guilty. Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“Just a little. What do you want?”

“To see you.”

Sean flicked on his bedside lamp. The room leapt away from him; shadows lengthened on the walls. “Emma. It’s late. I’m up early for work in the morning.”

“I wanted to apologise.”

“What for?” The taste of yesterday’s beer was thick in the back of his throat, as was the bitterness that had filled him listening to Vernon, pretending to be impressed. Pretending to be drawn to him.

“I remember you from school, okay? I just pretended not to because... well, because of the embarrassment of it all.”

“You don’t have to explain to me, Emma.”

Panicky now. On the verge of tears. “Can I see you? I won’t take up much of your time.”

Thinking of Naomi. How he should have helped. How he could have been there for her. In time.

Sean said, “Where?”

BRIDGE FOOT WAS still busy at this hour. The nearby nightclub was a circus of lurid costumes and loud people emboldened by alcohol. Sean drew the collar of his coat more tightly around him as women in scant dresses and men in shirt sleeves wrestled over cabs or queued at a portable burger bar. It was strange to be on the street at this hour without the compulsion to sort out disputes. They sold ties at the burger bar, for hapless individuals who turned up at the club hoping to be let in but had failed to take note of the dress code. Inscrutable bouncers stood like footballers in a wall defending a free kick. They muttered into headsets that left their hands free to beat the shit out of drunken punters.

Traffic weaved around him. Under the bridge, the Mersey was sacrament-black. He watched it coursing thickly away, wondering idly how many bodies had been cast into it over the years.

“Hi.”

Emma was still a little drunk. Her face was bleached by the flares of sodium and neon, her lips slashes of grey. She was wearing a V-neck sweater and a pair of cargo pants. The tip of her nose was moist.

“Let’s go and find us a coffee,” said Sean.

They walked up Bridge Street to the town centre. People were flooding through it in various stages of inebriation. One of the big chain pizza restaurants was still open and the waitress wasn’t bothered that they didn’t want to order any food. By the time their coffees arrived, the town centre was emptying and Emma’s eyes were having trouble focusing.

Sean said, “You been at anything other than the bottle tonight?”

Emma giggled. “A little draw, that’s all.”

“Sounds like you spoilt a perfect evening to be with me.”

“Icing on the cake, Sean.” She reached out a hand to pat one of his. “You remember Gill Chancellor?”

Sean nodded. He had had an awful feeling that this meeting might deteriorate into some maudlin retrospective, but now that it was happening, he didn’t mind all that much. “She used to be good at athletics, didn’t she? High jump.”

Emma started laughing uncontrollably. “Any kind of jump, more like. She turned into a right old bike.”

“Why do you mention her?”

“She used to fancy you. But you never noticed.”

Sean sipped his coffee. It was surprisingly good. “You should have told me.”

“I might have done, but you were traipsing after some other girl all the time. It was funny. You looked like you were being led around on an invisible leash. We’d see this girl, Naomi, and we’d look at each other and say something like, ‘Three seconds,’ and three seconds later, you’d walk by. You were like one of those Bisto kids.” Emma cracked up again, but the laughter was a little less shrill. The coffee was helping.

Sean finished his cup and sat back. He didn’t feel ready to talk to Emma about Naomi, but it felt as though the shape of the evening was being taken out of his hands. Emma was moulding the substance of their night together. She kept flashing him glimpses of it, and though he couldn’t recognise what she was aiming for, gradually form was emerging, to the extent that, by the time they had paid the bill and returned to the street, the reason for her need to see him had become clear.

“Naomi was killed, not that long ago,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you that. I know you were close to her once.”

Sean put his arms around her and started to laugh.

“Cry all you like, poor thing. You poor, poor thing.”

“I’m not crying,” Sean tried to say, but now he could see that she was right. He was crying. He was crying as though his life depended upon it.

They went back to Emma’s flat. She drew him a hot bath that smelled of vanilla. While he was soaking, she entered the bathroom and handed him a Bloody Mary. Then she sat on the toilet, unashamedly gazing at his body in the water while she rolled a joint on the back of a fashion magazine. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. After a short while, she unshowily began to undress, dropping her clothes in a pile. Then she lit the joint and got into the bath with him.

“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked, when the water had settled.

THEY LAY IN bed together, but they did not make love. Sean sensed a bruise in Emma’s life somewhat like his own. Fresh, painful and discolouring everything that made her who she was. Perhaps her impingement on him was a way in which she could begin to help the bruise heal. Her voice was too tiny, too innocent for the words it contained. “I think,” she said. “I think I’ll go back to work tomorrow.”

“What do you mean, work?”

“You know.”

Moonlight made a slow swerve across the white walls of her bedroom. The deep, resonant tick of a grandmother clock climbed the stairs to him from the hallway. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and in sleep she burrowed closer into the warmth of his body. He felt a breast spread languidly across his ribcage. Her heartbeat was rapid and fluttery. He wondered if she was feigning sleep; it didn’t matter.

Into the dark, he talked about what he had found that day in London. Whether Emma was asleep or not, by the time he had finished talking, his shoulder was wet where her face met it. She never asked him about Naomi again and he never offered any more information about her. But over the coming weeks, they would both learn more about Naomi than they could ever have hoped, or feared, to discover.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: DOOM LOOP

IT MUST HAVE been the dust from the explosions causing the riot of colours as the sun fell towards the Derbyshire hills. Mist layered the fields surrounding the shattered motorway, thickening by the minute. For miles, the ribbon of road sported knots of destruction where bombs had detonated. Carrying Elisabeth had protected him against the cold, but now he saw how Sadie was walking with her arms crossed, her jaw set rigidly. It would be night soon and the temperature would plummet.

They had travelled perhaps three or four miles, that was all. Will was exhausted. Twice he had had to stop to make repairs to the stretcher. It would not hold up to much more of a battering. But maybe it wouldn’t have to. Elisabeth was regaining some of her colour and had woken up a few times, the first in order to be violently sick. Hopefully, if she rallied quickly, they would be able to improve their progress.

“Can we stop?” Sadie asked.

“That’s just what I was thinking,” said Will.

A church spire was visible above a clutch of trees, about a third of a mile to the east of the motorway. Will set off for it. As they moved into the canopy’s shade, a thick burring noise reached to them from above. Three stubby aircraft with squared-off wings scooted low over the motorway, picking at its ruined length, and the areas around it, with powerful searchlights.

Sadie said, “Do you think they’re investigating the explosions?”

Will nodded. “I should think so.”

They watched the aircraft until their fuselages were no longer visible, just the fingers of light prodding at the remains of the road. He was sure that the aircraft were searching for him. If that was so, then the villages they came across might also be patrolled. He didn’t share this suspicion with Sadie, mainly because he didn’t want to alarm her, but also because he hoped his paranoia was misplaced. Sadie didn’t argue when he suggested they stay in the church for the evening; maybe she had reasons of her own to keep a low profile.

It was dark by the time they entered the churchyard. The building was not difficult to break into. The mustiness, and the creaking of the pews, as if they were in constant use, was a relaxing sound. A small electric fire in the apse helped them to stave off the cold as it built up around the stone walls. A little after midnight, a keen wind caroming around the stones outside, Will fell into a deep sleep.

SHE WAS JUST like Catriona, in a way, but the muscles in her buttocks and thighs were more defined, her breasts tighter, almost arrogantly proud. She came to him and slid her tongue between his lips before he had a chance to protest. But if he had, he didn’t really believe that it would be himself protesting. Rather a shade, a projection of himself. The man he ought to be. Christ, the way she moved against him. Her prodigious wetness. Her heat. His cock was embedded inside her before he was fully awake. But he couldn’t rise completely from sleep. It was as if the rhythms of her fucking him contained in them some kind of soporific power, an anaesthetic. He wasn’t even sure this was really happening. Some dream... She rode him for a few minutes, her hands in her hair, her breasts gleaming with sweat. She didn’t take her eyes from his once, even when she came, even when, a few seconds later, he came too, stuffing his knuckles into his mouth so that he wouldn’t wake Elisabeth, if she were yet capable of consciousness. Sadie slid from him, and crawled over to her corner to sleep. Or at least, he believed she did, for as soon as the rioting in his loins had ceased, he was out of it.

WHEN HE WOKE, his legs had stiffened and his arms were sore. He tried to move, but the wrenching pain in his back would not allow it. Sadie’s head was in his lap, her thumb in her mouth. Elisabeth no longer looked as though she was out of reach. She simply seemed to be asleep now.

Early morning sunlight became blades of colour as it hit the stained-glass windows: a civilised light for a brief time, playing lilac and green upon the nave. To go outside would be to reacquaint oneself with its wintry brittleness. There was no heat to be had from such light. The sun would be a dead, cold disc in the sky, mobbed by mist. You could stare at it at such times. It looked as though it should belong to a more savage, a more distant planet.

He regarded Sadie’s face in sleep, ironed of its worries. A child’s face. Guilt lanced him. He felt sick. But last night, had it been real? She had been too knowing, too in control, surely, for it to be real.

“How are you doing?” Will asked, pecking at Sadie’s shoulder with a finger. His voice was cracked with the previous day’s effort.

“Cold and wet,” she replied, rising. “And stiff.” She stretched and her spine crackled. Even when she reached the limit of movement, the sound continued, scuttling around the cavernous interior. She made no comment on the previous night, nor did she give him a look or a smile that would have confirmed his suspicions. Forget it, he thought.

“We should get going,” he said. “This place’ll be crawling with dog-collars before long. Eli?”

She responded to his barking of her name. Her eyes swam, trying to focus. There was even the hint of a smile.

But then something failed. Will found himself looking beyond her, as if somehow she had been rendered insubstantial by what was shifting slowly behind her, in one of the grainy corners of the church, seeping out of the shadows like a tide of thick oil.

“Is there an animal in here with us?” Will muttered.

Eli blinked and tried to move. She slumped to one side and the full breadth of what was coming detached itself from his eye and swelled.

It remained with him for a while, like a pattern of light imprinted on his retina. The muscled bulk of it, great liquid swirls that might have been eyes. Then it faded and became part of the shadows. In a moment, it was as though there had never been anything there at all.

“Did you see that?” he asked Sadie, trying to keep his voice calm.

Sadie was attending to Elisabeth, trying to get her to drink water from a cat’s bowl she had found by the door. Elisabeth was making a sound that might have been “Grue...”

“See what?”

“There was something in the corner... Never mind. Forget it.”

Sadie smiled at him. “You’re just tired, Will. I think Elisabeth will be okay. We should give her a little more time here.”

Will shook his head and started gathering their things. “I don’t think so. If Eli’s getting better, then she’ll have to do it on the move. We have to find some food too.”

“Do you have any money? I could go into the village and buy some sandwiches or something?”

Will fished in his pockets and pulled out a twenty-pound note. It was all he had.

“Here,” he said. “Hurry back. We’ll wait for you in the trees, where we watched the planes yesterday.”

Sadie gone, he strapped Elisabeth into the stretcher and criss-crossed the straps around his chest. He checked the corner of the church again but there was nothing there. Too tired. He hoped that was the case.

Outside, he found a vantage point under the trees from which he could see the motorway and a good portion of the sky. There were no engines thrumming through it. Just the sound of the wind in the leaves.

“You fret too much, Will. You always did. If you were a piece of jewellery, you’d be a set of worry beads.”

Will eased himself out of the straps. Elisabeth was cradling her jaw with a hand and trying to unpick the knots that were keeping her in the stretcher.

“I had a feeling that when you came round your first words would be some sort of crack at me.” He beamed at her regardless. When she tried to return it, her face fell apart.

“I think I broke my jaw.”

Will crouched next to her and gently cupped her head in his hands. “I don’t think so. You wouldn’t be able to talk.”

“I might be able to walk, if you could help me try to put some weight on my feet?”

“Are you sure?”

“If we take it easy. What happened, by the way?”

As they hobbled around the trees, Will explained about the bombs, pointing out some of the visible craters on the road. Thin streams of smoke continued to rise from them.

“I wasn’t aware of any great terrorist activity going on,” said Eli. “Were you?”

Will shook his head. This was beyond anything he had read about in the newspapers. Terrorist activity in the country’s history was sporadic; it might run to one or two bombs prior to a long period of inactivity. The peppering of one of Britain’s arterial carriageways pointed to some other organisation with a lot of money and a lot of personnel. Will wondered if the planes he had seen last night were part of it. If they were, and if they had been hunting him, then, by extension, the bombs had been meant for him too.

Sadie returned with pies from the village bakery and a newspaper. Apparently, there were few people around at this hour. And it helped that it was a Sunday. “Nobody’s going anywhere because they can’t,” she explained. “There were barricades on all the roads in and out of the village. Soldiers with guns. Everyone’s talking about the explosions.”

Elisabeth and Sadie talked while they ate. Will wolfed his pie and then returned to the vantage point in the trees. Not only must they dodge the surveillance aircraft, if that’s what they were, but now they had troops to deal with.

“Will!” Elisabeth, when he returned, looked even paler than she had directly after the accident.

“What is it?”

She was holding the newspaper open. On page three there was a photograph of Will, the one from his passport. He had had a hangover on the day it was taken. He looked startled, and his eyes seemed somehow too juicy for their sockets, as if someone had bathed them before plugging them back into his face. Next to his photograph was a picture of Cat, from the early days of her pregnancy. They had been holidaying in Greece. She was smiling and her forefinger was pointing to her tummy. The headline read:

BODY OF PREGNANT WOMAN HAD BEEN ‘FILLETED’

Will tore the newspaper from Elisabeth’s hands. As he read the story, his eyes kept returning to his wife’s face. She had been so happy on that day. He remembered that shortly after he took the picture they had made love on the balcony of their hotel room while below a boy carrying a basket of fruit called out: “Meloni, meloni... cool meloni for you hot people!” They hadn’t been able to stop laughing.

Filleted. Filleted.

“She’s dead then?” Will said. “What... you can’t survive a filleting, can you? Can you?” He laughed, infected by the blissful memory and the preposterous thought of his wife, sliced and boned like a cut of meat.

“Will, they’re looking for us. You. They’re looking for you. They’re calling it a manhunt.”

“But I–”

Elisabeth reached for him, pain turning her face grey for a second. “I know you didn’t. But they think you did.”

“She’s–”

“She is dead, Will. She is dead.”

He felt the need to run, to take off across the field, screaming until he coughed up blood. He didn’t care who saw him or how quickly he would be caught. He wanted to die. He wanted the people who were responsible for Cat’s death to die. He wanted to kill them. But he wanted to die first.

Elisabeth saw the tension in him and took his hand before he was able to act upon it. Sadie watched them, wide-eyed, her pie half-eaten and growing cold in her fingers.

“What do we do now?” he asked, weakly. Continuing their journey seemed pointless on the heels of this discovery.

“We go on,” Sadie said.

Elisabeth nodded. “How else are you going to clear your name? You have to go to Sloe Heath. Whatever it has in store for you.”

Will slumped by the foot of the tree. He couldn’t understand how he had dragged Elisabeth so far when it felt as if he no longer owned any bones, any muscles.

“We have to get going soon,” Sadie continued. “People are waking up.”

Will stayed where he was. Cat wasn’t waking up. And he doubted that he would ever wake up again. You had to go to sleep first, in order to wake up. He believed his sleeping days were over for good.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: NEW BLOOD

VERNON PICKED HIM up outside the newspaper shop on Lovely Lane. It was a cold morning. Mist saddled the railway bridge. Blocks of ochre light hung in the air where the hospital should have stood. The Shogun was the only traffic he had seen since leaving his room ten minutes earlier; he hadn’t wanted to reveal his address to Vernon.

It was as hot in the four-by-four as it was chilly in the street. A freshener hung from the rear-view mirror, filling the cab with the cloying smell of apricots. On the back seat lay Vernon’s leather coat. Peeking from beneath it was the polished tip of a baseball bat.

Vernon drove expertly through Bewsey and Dallam, flicking through the gears with fluid familiarity, never taking his eyes off the road. In his seat he leapt in and out of view as they passed beneath the orange sodium lights. Dallam recreation park was wadded with ghosts. The railway track that rose behind it was a wet, trembling line scored through the dawn sky.

“You had breakfast?” Vernon grunted.

“Yeah. Muesli.”

“Muesli. Like it. You don’t bow to convention, do you?”

“I wasn’t aware that a conventional breakfast existed.”

Vernon chuckled. He took the Shogun around the traffic island on the Winwick Road at fifty. Long Lane sucked them towards the dark streets of Orford. “Last guy helped me out was an egg and bacon man. All the time, not just for breakfast. Kev, his name was. He only ever ate egg and bacon and your usual trimmings. Thought cabbage was something you pushed around in a wheelchair.”

“Where are we going?”

“Sad case out in Grasmere Avenue. One of those little rabbit hutches with front doors filled with empty egg cartons. Tasteful, you know. Do you like Level 42?”

It was seven o’clock. Lights were going on in kitchens. Vernon swerved the Jeep around an electric milk float that bumbled into the road.

He continued: “Lynne and Gareth Morgan. They’ve got a son, Greg, who is blind. Severe learning disability, apparently. No shit, wouldn’t you?” He looked at Sean and Sean duly laughed. “Got another son, Billy. Billy the breadwinner. Dealer. Small-time. Bit of blow. Pills.

“Eighteen months ago, Lynne and Gareth had jobs. He was a taxi driver and she cleaned. They bought a car, a dishwasher, and a plasma TV on the never-never. Then they both lost their jobs. They owe fifteen grand. Hence me.”

He steered the jeep into Blackwood Crescent, killed the lights, and decelerated to a crawl.

“And the killer. The law centre they depended on for advice lost its funding and closed down. Lynne got another job but she was fired a couple days later. Fell asleep with her mop in her hand. That’s sloppy. That’s just not trying hard enough.”

“What are you going to do to them?” Sean asked, casually.

“I’m going to fuck them over with that bat and scream at them until the skin roasts off their fucking faces. That’s what I’m going to do. Whether they’ve got some money for me or not.”

“What am I here for? Moral support?”

Vernon laughed out loud. “You’re here to look out for the filth. And keep me covered. Not the man I used to be. People run, I can’t always catch them. You can though. You be my legs.”

Vernon braked sharply across the road from a series of flats with tiny windows. His eyes were fast upon them. To Sean, it seemed that Vernon was almost meditating, drinking in the shabby detail of the brickwork, the peeling paint on the window-frames, the gaps in the slates.

“Pass me my jacket please, Sean,” he said. His voice was level and business-like. “And wrap your mitts around that fucking bat.”

They walked across the road. Vernon pulled on a pair of black leather gloves and relieved Sean of the weapon.

Vernon said, “Round the back, son. Give us two whistles when you’re in position, then when you hear me bash the door in, close on the back door. Slippery as shitty eels, these bastards. Don’t let anyone out.”

Sean gave his signal when he had found the corresponding rear gate. The alleyway was filled with sagging sofas and bin bags. He gritted his teeth against the unpleasantness that must be about to ensue. As much as his instinct told him to back off, he knew he must not fail in this task, if he was to get close to Vernon and understand what lay behind the door of the house in the country and what, if any, link to Naomi these men had.

The sound of the door impacting was swiftly followed by the bark of a dog that ended almost as quickly with a shout and a series of pathetic whines. Vernon was quick. But evidently not quick enough. Sean watched a rear window swing open and a leg clamber out. The yelling inside the house diminished until it was Vernon’s voice that was dominant. Sean couldn’t tell what he was saying. The hooded figure hopped down off the kitchen extension and Sean said: “Hey.”

The kid took off without checking to see who had hailed him. Sean kept pace easily, even though this area was more familiar to his quarry. He thought he heard Vernon’s Shogun roar into life, but then they had rounded a corner and there was wind in his ears, and the grey, hooded figure was sprinting across a small square.

At a row of pebble-dashed garages, the kid jinked right and pounded over a narrow field. Progress for the both of them was hampered by hard furrows of soil. Ahead lay a thin wood. Around the wood sprawled building sites in various stages of development: new, cheap housing estates. The houses looked as though they had just been bombed.

Sean knew he must catch the kid before he reached the leading edge of trees or he would be lost, either to the undergrowth or the many hiding places available in the infant estate. He pushed himself to go faster over the awkward terrain, trying to measure his pace so that he could use the ridges to propel himself. He tried to imagine that the fleeing figure was responsible for something more than a missed payment. Maybe he was. He might be guilty of kicking cats or bullying kids on his estate. He might steal money from his grandmother’s purse. It helped.

Sean caught up with him as he attempted to climb through the windowless frame of a partially finished wall, grabbing hold of the loose cloth of his top. The kid was trying to shrug his way out of the garment. Sean hooked his hand underneath his quarry’s arm and drove the limb up his back. In this way the kid was forced to the floor, swearing and screaming that he should be let loose.

Now Sean did hear the Shogun’s engine. He lifted his head and saw the four-by-four jouncing across the rutted field towards them.

“What does he want from you?” Sean asked quickly.

“You fucking what? You fucking know exactly–”

“How much?” Sean cut in, plying the arm with a little pressure. The kid’s face, now free of his hood, turned pale. He sucked in breath. Sean smelled weed on him, and chocolate. He sported a feeble moustache that seemed to be glued above lips that were too wet and pink to belong to a human being, especially as the rest of his skin was so white. His eye sockets were almost round and the lids made no appearance unless he was blinking, which he was doing now. A lot. He screwed his face up with incomprehension.

“You what? It’s not money... Who are you anyway?”

Sean said, “Talk to me. I might be able to help.”

“Seany. Seany-Sean. What have we here then?” Vernon slouched into the unformed room.

Sean straightened.

“Good running, mate.” Vernon swung the bat as though it were a golf club before holding it out and squinting along its length, checking the true. “It’s nice to have a bit of hard around. But not for you though, eh, Billy?”

“Fuck off, you wanker,” Billy said. “What did you do to my old girl?”

“If you mean your mother,” Vernon said, “I told her to put her teeth in if she was going to scream at me like that. Ugly specimen. I can see where you get it from.”

Billy laced his fingers behind his head and crouched low. “Look, just get it over with then, why don’t you? I’ll take my beating and then you can get lost.”

“It’s not quite as easy as that, Billy,” said Vernon. “We are going to do you over, make no mistake–”

Sean loved that we.

“–but where will that leave us? No progress, you see. No improvement in our relationship. The cold, brutal facts are that you owe me and I expect payment.”

Sean said, “I don’t think he’s got any money on him.”

Vernon gave him an indulgent smile. “Sean. Rule A: keep your mouth shut. I talk in these situations. You just stand around looking pretty. Now. It’s cold. I am starving. Let’s get this sorted. Sean. Hurt him. Then you can go. I’ll take things forward from there.”

“You’ve got the bat. You hurt him.”

“Sean...”

Sean pressed his teeth against his tongue. Vernon’s habit of prefacing every sentence with his name was getting up his nose.

“Sean... let’s say that I need you to do this. To prove something to me. It’s a test. Pass it, or fail it. If you fail, you will fail badly. And in more ways than one. So.”

Billy crouched on the ground between them, his face slack with bewilderment, watching them at it.

Is he on to me? Sean thought. And following that: If he is, he won’t be expecting this.

It helped to think of Naomi. It fuelled him. But not so much that he couldn’t rein it in when Billy coughed up a little blood. Vernon was making admiring noises but Sean wasn’t listening. He pushed by Vernon quickly before he became Sean’s target, and strode to the Shogun. He sat in the passenger seat, trying to calm himself, hissing over his raw knuckles. He watched Vernon as he spoke to Billy. It darkened a little, out there, as if a cloud had blocked the sun, but the sky was cloudy anyway.

Getting a headache, Sean thought, and rubbed his temples while punching at the radio buttons for something that might soothe him.

He wanted so much to return and mete out a little to Vernon, just a little, of what Billy had suffered. He wondered if Naomi had been alive when her killer had cut off her lips. Sean rubbed his bruised knuckles and tethered his rage. He thought: not yet... not yet.

He saw Vernon fiddle with his collar and lift something silver to his lips. If it was a whistle, it made no sound that Sean could hear. But when he blinked, there was another man in white standing next to Vernon. He wore a white skull-cap. His eyes were covered with dark glasses, and his mouth and nose were obscured by a green mask. Both men were looking down at the spot where, presumably, Billy lay.

“Christ,” Sean muttered, as Vernon shifted slightly to allow a view of the blood stains that swirled across what must have been a surgeon’s apron. “Christ.”

Nonchalantly, as if he were plucking a pen from his top pocket, the surgeon extracted something slender that glittered.

“Christ.”

He knelt out of sight. Vernon moved back across Sean’s line of vision and he didn’t see anything else until Vernon was striding back across the ploughed field, sliding a neatly wrapped parcel of white, greaseproof paper into his pocket. Neither the surgeon nor the boy were anywhere to be seen.

Vernon came towards the four-by-four bringing the collars of his coat up around his neck. The wind played with his pony tail. He threw the bat and the briefcase onto the back seat as he settled behind the wheel with a contented sigh.

“Is he all right?” Sean asked.

“Depends what you mean by ‘all right’. Actually, come to think of it, it doesn’t depend on anything. He’s not all right. He’s dead, but he hasn’t quite got the grip of it yet.”

“How do you mean?”

“Look at this place, Sean. Look at the people here. Staggering, blasted shells of people they are. This isn’t living. It’s not life. Is it?”

Yes it is, Sean wanted to say. It might not be what they hoped for, but it’s what they’re dealing with.

Vernon fired the engine. He switched on Radio 3. “I like classical music after a job like this. Calms you down.”

Sean persisted. “What did he give you? What was in that white parcel? Who was that fucking freak you were talking to? Where did he come from?”

Vernon selected first gear and took the Shogun on a slow, bumpy arc away from the field. “Ask me no questions,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper, “I’ll dig you no shallow grave.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN: PIRATES

MORNINGS THEY STRUCK out early, trying to force the cold from their bones. Around midday, they rested for an hour or two, wherever they could find shelter. Come nightfall, exhausted and hungry, they would steal food, smashing the windows of bakers’ shops in villages, and sleep in dilapidated houses, huddled together for warmth.

Though he did not say it, Will was happy for Sadie’s presence. He was grateful for the way she unconsciously geed up both himself and Elisabeth. He was glad too that she acted as a check on his emotions. Had it been just Eli and Will, he might have tried to develop their night-time huddles into something more intimate as the memory of her smell seeped into his. Or he might simply have gone to pieces, happy to rot while his mind tried to cling to the broken images of Catriona.

It had been five days since the bombs went off. They were no nearer finding out who or what had been responsible for the blasts. Will had sent Sadie into a village in the Midlands to see if she could find out some news but she had returned at speed. Someone had tried to follow her, she said. It was best that they took no chances.

“How can it be that Sadie’s drawing this kind of heat?” he asked Elisabeth one night, as Sadie slept.

“She might be imagining it, Will,” Eli suggested. “She was hiding when you found her. She’s probably been frightened by what has happened to me and you. There’s tension in the air. The poor child hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep. She might be imagining it.”

“Possibly,” Will said, unconvinced.

Elisabeth was moving better now. She had taken a battering, but there was no lasting damage. She felt better once they had stolen some fresh clothing from a washing line; the blood on her own shirt had stiffened to a dark red crust. She looked good in the new clothes. Her pallor might almost have been of her own design. Her beauty was fragile, non-committal. Brittle as porcelain.

They were covering around eight to ten miles a day now, Will estimated. They shied away from people, choosing to make their way across country. It was slower, but it meant they were guaranteed passage without scrutiny. The only people they had to dodge were farmers in tractors ploughing their fields or heavy-coated figures taking dogs for a walk.

Good luck paid them a visit when Sadie found a gulley partially shielded by trees. At the bottom ran a disused railway line, great tufts of weed sprouting between the sleepers. It was a joy to walk along the gravel, hidden from view; it created a pocket of silence. It gave them direction and purpose. Occasionally, if they did hear someone approaching, they could clear the track in seconds for the shade of the boughs that dogged the line.

“How far will the line take us, do you think?” Sadie asked.

“It would be nice if it took us to the front door of Sloe Heath,” Will said. “But I doubt it will. Let’s take advantage of it though. Try to walk a bit further than usual today.”

They talked little, but the further they went along the tracks, the more Will’s thoughts turned to what he might find at Sloe Heath. He had no contact name and no understanding of what kind of facility it was. Presumably he wouldn’t be allowed to just walk in and start hunting around for clues. He wondered too if he would see any of the men that had broken into his and Cat’s flat. His palms itched. He hoped so.

Sadie was slowing them down with a series of games. First she had been playing hide and seek, which distressed Elisabeth, and now she was walking along the line, arms outstretched, pretending to be a tightrope walker. Irritated, Will barked at her to catch them up and stop fooling. His charity towards her was lessening by the minute.

“I knew it was a bad idea, bringing you along,” he snapped.

“Will,” Elisabeth said, in a voice that he recognised from their past. It was her stop it now or we’ll have an argument voice.

“Well, it was. We’ve got enough to worry about without playing mum and dad too.”

“Pretend I’m not here,” Sadie retorted. “I don’t need a nanny.”

“What were you doing back there, anyway?” Will stared at her. “What were you doing hiding in that old farmhouse? Where are you from?”

“Never mind.”

“No, come on,” Will persisted. “I want to know. You could be a missing person for all we know. The police could be trying to find you. Which wouldn’t be helpful, let me tell you.”

“What difference would it make? The police are after you anyway. They think you killed your wife.”

Elisabeth stepped between them. “We aren’t getting anywhere. Why don’t we talk while we walk?”

“Elisabeth, she could be, I don’t know, she could be helping them out.”

Elisabeth frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“She might be on their side. She might be – oh, I don’t know.” Will stalked away, angry with his inarticulacy and the lunatic thought that Sadie might somehow be plotting against him. If he was going to do something for Cat, it wasn’t going to happen with his head full of wool. Elisabeth caught up with him.

“What is wrong with you, Will? She’s just a girl. What does it matter where she’s from? If she doesn’t want to talk, she shouldn’t have to. She’s with us. Friends. Let her feel secure for a while. At least until we get where we’re going.”

Will’s eyes were fixed on the horizon, where perspective made the tracks vanish. “I’m sorry, Eli. I’m not myself. I can’t stop it. I feel as though I’m being hollowed out, chipped away. I just want to get there and find out what it is I have to find out.”

Elisabeth rubbed his arm. “You’re harder than this,” she said.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Ten days ago I was sitting in an armchair, wearing a pair of sheepskin slippers, while Catriona read out crossword clues. We were drinking tea. We were being a couple, in any of the million dull ways people are couples. Like we were a couple once. Just getting on with things, quietly.”

Eli pressed her forehead against his shoulder. “I wonder if we should have had children,” she said. “I mean, obviously, considering what happened between us, it was better we didn’t. But I wonder if you’d be better with Sadie if you had kids.”

Will couldn’t speak for a while. Cool wind swept down from the top of the gulley, spiced with burnt wood smells. Bonfire smells. It would be darkening within the hour.

“Go and talk to her,” Eli said. “She might offer some information about herself before too long. It could be that she just needs to get to know us first. Feel happy around us.”

Will nodded. He turned to Sadie, trying to smile. But she was gone.

“THIS IS EXACTLY what we don’t need,” Will said again. It was all he had said for the past hour as they hunted though the trees and bushes that sidled up the gulley. Elisabeth had given up shouting out Sadie’s name.

“We should just go,” Will said. “She’s pissing us around. She’s probably watching us now.”

Elisabeth was pale with worry. “We can’t just go, Will. We can’t leave her.”

“Why not?” Will snapped. “She left us. She’ll be fine. She’s not a child.”

He couldn’t explain to Elisabeth, but the need to get to Sloe Heath had changed him. Instilled in him was a fresh impetus, unbidden yet as critical as the life force. He could no more ignore it than the instinct to get out of the way of an oncoming train.

“If we hang around here much longer,” he complained, “this track will be re-opened.”

“She can’t have gone far,” Elisabeth countered.

“I hope she has.”

“Will.”

“Okay,” he said. “Another quarter of an hour. Then it will be dark and we’ll have to go on. But I promise you, she’s sitting in some tree, wetting herself watching us.”

The search proved fruitless. The smells of the bonfire were thickening. Elisabeth said, “Maybe we should...” and though Will didn’t relish the thought of mixing with strangers, he saw how they must at least investigate. As much as he cursed Sadie’s selfishness, it would be better if he knew where she had run to.

FOUR OR FIVE fires had been ignited across a patch of concretised wasteland comprised of a couple of acres that must once have been some kind of service depot for the long-departed trains. Ancient barrels of diesel lay around like fat drunks. Jagged holes in the metal showed how they had been siphoned of fuel. The foundations of a large building – some kind of maintenance shed – had left their outline in the ground. Lengths of scaffolding had turned the concrete it touched orange with rust. Into the grey surface, which was slowly being invaded by dandelions, pictures had been scratched in an infantile hand: cats and alien spaceships and steam engines. A skinny black dog trotted across the wasteland, giving Elisabeth and Will only cursory attention. Up ahead, where the fires were clustered together, came the occasional sound of laughter and swells of music. The tubercular grind of a car’s failing engine would at times drown out any other noise.

“I’m not too happy about this,” Elisabeth said, reaching for his hand.

There was a party in full flight. The fires contained it and illuminated it and encouraged it. Beyond the ring of flames, four or five caravans stood in the gloom like ruminating beasts. Will counted about half a dozen men sitting on blankets on the ground, passing a huge glass jug around that contained what looked like scrumpy from where they stood. The music worked on the three women in the ring like the moon on the tides, pulling and pushing them into fresh configurations. Barefoot, they wore wraps of fabric across their hips, slit to reveal legs tanned by the fire. They wore nothing on top. Four children played with toy cars in the dust at the far edge of the circle. From Will’s viewpoint, they looked misshapen, though that must have been down to the unreliable light. Sadie was not among them.

They moved forwards into the clearing. “Hello?” Will called out, trying to project his voice above the music, but not so powerfully that he startled his intended audience. One of the children looked up, then turned to the men and, waving to get their attention, pointed to Will before going back to his miniature traffic jam.

The music was turned off.

A man in a fleece zipped up to his throat sauntered over to Will and Elisabeth. The women reduced the energy of their dancing by degrees until they were gently swaying from side to side, all eyes turned on the visitors. Their skin seemed incandescent. Perspiration had failed to bead; it coated the flesh of their arms, their breasts, which were silvered by the moon or gilded by the flames, depending on the tilt of their bodies.

“Why are you here?” the man asked. His voice was touched by an accent Will couldn’t place. Something European.

“We’ve lost a little girl,” Will said.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” the man replied. “There are places you can go to for counselling, as I understand it.”

Low laughter from his male companions. One of the children stood up and threw a stone at Will and Elisabeth. It skipped along the floor and pinged off Will’s boot.

Elisabeth said, “What he meant was–”

The man blinked slowly. “She isn’t here.”

“Do you mind if we look around?” Will asked. “She could be hiding. We only lost her a little while ago.”

Now the other males sitting on the blankets rose and moved slowly to be with their friend. One of them hitched up a shirt that was worn loose over his jeans, exposing the curved, polished handle of a knife.

Will said, “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Well then,” said the man in the fleece, “you came to the wrong place.”

The man with the knife stopped in front of Elisabeth. “This your wife?” he asked, taking an age to look her up and down. He leaned over to give her a side-on appraisal too.

“Yes, she’s my wife. We’re lost. My daughter... our daughter was playing. She ran off. We’ve called the police.”

A bowing of the lips, a tiny shake of the head. The slow blink. “I don’t think you called the police. I don’t think you have a phone. I don’t think you know where you are.”

“We’re in the Midlands,” Elisabeth said. She was darting looks around her. Will could feel her bristling beside him. She would take off in a minute, he could tell. He would be right behind her.

“Ah,” intoned the man in the fleece, “the Midlands. ‘Hello, police? Yes, we’ve lost our little daughter. Come and help us find her please. She’s in the Midlands. Somewhere.’”

More laughter from the gang. It was uneasy laughter now though, forced as they considered, like Will and Elisabeth, what would come next. What would be their signal? Will hoped that he and Elisabeth might be away before they found out.

The man with the knife reached out and pushed his fingers through Elisabeth’s hair.

“Don’t touch her,” Will said, in what he hoped was a hard voice. He was no midget and the lack of a shave, he knew, lent his face an aggression that did not exist.

“You’d rather I touched you?” said the man with the knife, failing to take his eyes off Elisabeth. His hand lowered, fastened on her left breast. Elisabeth winced.

“Just leave us alone,” Will insisted. “She’s been in a car accident. She isn’t well.”

“She feels fine to me,” came the lazy, beer-loose voice. His hand palpated and pinched the breast. The cold, rather than his ministrations, was thickening her nipple. But Knifeman didn’t have the wit to understand. Will wanted to smack the curl from his lips, tear those sleazy, half-shut lids wide open. His blood rushed with the thought of violence.

“Do you dance?” asked Knifeman, stepping closer to Elisabeth. He licked his broad lips and they gleamed as though forged from metal. He pressed a denim-clad thigh into the dip where her own met. “You have a dancer’s body. I bet you move like nobody’s business.”

The head on top of the fleece started jerking with laughter. “Want to trade a dance with your wife for your girl?”

Will clenched his hand into a fist. “So she is here?”

“She is for the sake of my offer. Whether she is once your bitch shakes her arse for us might be a different matter.”

Something went wrong in Will’s mind. It was like the slow bend of a green stick deep within: nothing snapped, but he went dizzy for a second, the earth slanting away from him at an alarming angle. He heard himself say You fucking and then there was just a thrum of blood turning his ears hot. When conventional images were tucked into his eyes once more, he saw that his hand was badly gashed and Knifeman was out cold, his blade held loosely between his thumb and forefinger. Elisabeth scrabbled for the knife as the other men closed in. They faced each other uneasily. The women pulled shawls around their nakedness, the children ran into the shadows.

Very clearly, a cry, Sadie’s cry, went up into the freezing sky: “Don’t!”

“So,” Will said, trying to keep the edginess from his voice. “Where is she?”

The fires were burning down. Before long they would be dead, plunging the wasteland into complete darkness. Any advantage that the knife was giving them would be lost. Sadie shrieked again.

“What’s happening to her?” Elisabeth demanded, passing the knife to Will.

“We only wanted you to dance for us,” Fleece said. “Now look at what you’ve done. I think, after we’ve fucked your daughter, we’ll kill you and bury you in the cow shit in that field.”

Will, as if in slow motion, stepped forwards and slid the point of the knife almost nonchalantly into Fleece’s shoulder. He yelled to Elisabeth to run, and they did, Will dropping the weapon in his shock and panic. He followed her towards the caravans while shouts and curses raged behind them. Catching up, he grabbed Elisabeth’s hand.

“We’ll lose them in there somewhere. Try to be quiet and keep your head down. Just for a little while. Till I find Sadie.”

Towards the rear of the cluster of caravans, they found another scattering of spent fuel drums. They huddled among them, shivering. Sometimes the voices came close and then drifted away. Will couldn’t work out whether it was proximity or a trick of the wind. He held Elisabeth close to him, and after what felt like hours, the voices faded until they were rewarded with complete silence.

Will lifted his head above the rim of an oil drum. The caravans were little more than grainy pale blocks against the night. One or two windows pulsed with waxy, orange light. The camp was asleep.

“I should go,” Will whispered. “I should find Sadie. That fucking girl.”

Elisabeth’s eyes broadened under the skimpy moonlight. “I have to come with you,” she urged.

“No. Please stay here. If something goes wrong, you have to get away. Contact the police. Sort it all out.”

“Why don’t we do that now?” Elisabeth said, but the tone of her voice had already answered her own question.

Will said nothing, but gradually worked at Elisabeth’s hands until he was free. “Give me twenty minutes,” he said. “If I’m not back by then, get out quick. Promise me?”

Elisabeth drew him to her and kissed him clumsily, almost desperately. “Hurry. Please,” she whispered, looking away from his face.

“Wait, Eli,” Will said. “Twenty minutes.”

And then he was away. She tried to keep track of him as, crouching, he crept towards the first of the caravans, but it was too dark. Did he stumble? Was that what caused the sudden confusion of noise? And now a shape approaching her. Pale. Was it him? Was it Will, returning already?

CHAPTER TWENTY: THE WALL

SEAN MET THE others for breakfast at 8.30. The sky was teeming. Figures without umbrellas were bent double, their coats and jackets drawn up around their heads. Water sluiced along the street, reflecting the miserable black seam of cloud.

“It’s just sitting there,” observed Robbie, a huge mug of tea obscuring most of his face. “A big, black bladder of piss. Pissing on us.”

Lutz flicked a baked bean at him from his plate. “That... is poetry.”

Trio’s was like any other breakfast hang-out. Populated mainly by the men working on the demolition site, it was also first-stop for a number of ashen-faced office workers poring over briefcases filled with pages and mobile phones that never seemed to cease ringing. The windows were simultaneously drenched with condensation and fogged with heat. The place was run by three Italian guys. During the rush, when plates of chips, sausage, egg, toast, and bacon were being passed around and devoured, their voices ricocheted off the walls as they called out fresh orders or lambasted the help: two women dwarfed by the huge steel tea urns, apparently doomed to a lifetime of scraping a layer of butter onto bread or hunting down the carousel of red and brown sauce.

Sean was sitting with his back against the wall, watching the smears of colour hurry past the window. He felt nauseated by what had happened the day before, but the boys around him were helping to make him feel normal again, part of a crowd, rather than someone picked out for the limelight.

There was one customer he had noticed who visited every day and seemed to end up bickering with the staff about his order. Here he came now. He wore a red, corduroy jacket and blue jeans. Caterpillar boots. Simple black T-shirt. He shed his earphones and dug in his pocket for some change with one hand while the other marked his place in a paperback.

“No,” the chap was saying now. “I said mustard. Who has tomato sauce on a hot beef sandwich? Mustard. Anyway, it doesn’t even sound like tomato sauce. Or ketchup.”

The old Italian guy said sorry maybe a dozen times, his voice thick with accent. Sean liked Luigi. He had a kind face, even though it was heavily lined. He had friendly, sorry eyes magnified by unflattering glasses; his hair was oiled and swept back from his forehead. His brothers were younger, beefier. Sansone had a series of diagonals shaved into his right eyebrow and wore a Fiorentina football shirt; Pepe sweated profusely and rarely lost his expression of bewilderment.

“Reminds me of Salty, that,” Robbie said, gesturing towards the counter. “Every day is the fucking same for Salty in this caff. He asks for marmalade on his toast. Every morning. They stick Marmite on it. He says something about it and some of them, especially the hard-looking one, complain, make a big song and dance. I half-think he does it on purpose. Fucking Italian stereotype game. Scowling like he’s some mob fuck with an itch up his shitter. He goes: ‘Fack, meester, iss like you ask Marmite I give you Marmite but iss no facking good. Iss marmalard you want. Haysoo facking Chrize, man. You thin’ I here for your good health an sanidy?’

“So this morning, right, he gets it spot on, first time. Without Salty having to ask for it. Marmalade. No problem. Salty, mad bastard, tells him he wants Marmite. The fucker barred him. Barred him from a caff, for fuck’s sake.”

“This weekend,” Nicky Preece was saying. “What do you say?”

A friend of the family was getting married. Nicky, as best man, was organising the stag do, which would be an all-day affair. The celebrations were due to begin on the Saturday morning: a game of football at Victoria Park. Nicky was trying to recruit some ringers.

“It’s nothing serious, just a kick-around, really.”

“Will there be nets?” Jez asked.

“Does it matter?”

Jez shrugged. “I find you can’t have a really decent game of footie unless you get some nets. It’s the sound of the ball hitting the back of it. That kind of wet, whipping noise.”

Robbie laughed. “A noise you and your mother know all too well, eh, Jezzer?”

“’K off.”

“Look, we need five more people. That’s all. It’d be great if you lot turned up. We’d have a laugh.”

“This Saturday, you say?” Lutz asked. “Only I can’t make it.”

“Fuck,” Nicky spat.

“Me either,” said Jez.

“But you were just asking about nets.” Nicky looked around him, as though for confirmation that this was so.

“Yeah, but I was just asking for the others. You can’t have a decent game without nets.”

Sean said, “I’ll go. If you want me.”

“That’s great,” Nicky said. “Anyone else? Robbie?”

Robbie nodded, his mouth full of bread.

Nicky gave him an OK sign. “Come on, Tim. You look like a footballer.”

Tim was bent over his poached egg on toast, still bovinely chewing his first mouthful. In this time, Lutz had gobbled his breakfast and was half-way through his second mug of tea. Tim sat up at the mention of his name and swivelled his large, moth eyes until he was staring at Nicky.

“Brittle bones,” he said. “Asthma. Glue ear. Angina...”

“Okay, okay,” Nicky said, wearily. “I asked you if you wanted a game of footy. I didn’t ask you for a list of stuff queuing up to kill you.”

Tim said, “Piles.”

THEY MADE GOOD progress that morning. Nicky and Sean worked as a team on a fresh wall while the others pulled up floorboards in another room. In his T-shirt, sweat hooping the neck and armpits, Sean had mastered the art of talking and working with the hammer.

“We going to need special kit for this game?” he asked, swinging the tool over his head.

“Nah,” Nicky said. He was taking a breather, leaning against the handle of his hammer while he watched Sean work. “We’re hiring kit from the sports centre there. Nothing serious though, we’ll just have a kick-about if not that many turn up. I doubt they will. Freezing cold morning. I must be bloody mad. Should be good though.”

“You lot hang around together quite a bit then?”

“Yeah, pretty much. It’s a tight little unit, you know.”

Sean whipped his head around, trying to get the sweat out of his eyes. “And Vernon. Is he part of it?”

“Vernon’s his own man. We hardly see him. I like it like that. Same with Salty and the Rap. Upstairs men. Not like us. Salty, maybe, but not really.”

Sean let him chew on the silence a while and concentrated on his job, waiting for the question. The wall was coming apart, slowly, but the deeper they got into the building, the sturdier the construction. It was as though in the building of the de Fleche tower they had run out of decent stuff towards the top and substituted inferior materials. It was hard going now and would become harder. But that suited Sean. He was building himself up in the evenings, working hard at his press-ups and sit-ups and squat thrusts. He was running hard in the mornings, up to five miles a day now, and he felt better than ever.

“The other day, when Vernon wanted to see you. How did it go?”

“Fine,” Sean said. “He just wanted to welcome me on board. Took me for a beer.”

“Oh,” said Nicky, non-committally. “Nice one.”

“You don’t sound convinced. Did he not buy you a pint when you joined up?”

“Well, yeah. But me and the boys thought there was something more than that.”

“Really?” Sean said, not giving anything away. He didn’t want to piss Nicky off too much. He desperately wanted to inveigle his way into the gang; a football match and an afternoon in the pub would go a long way towards cementing their relationship.

“Well. Yeah. We knew Kev. The guy who was... well, I suppose he was Vernon’s right-hand man. He was invalided out, couple of weeks ago. We all thought Lutz was going to get picked to work with Vernon but then you came along.”

“Invalided out?”

“Vernon didn’t tell you any of this?”

Sean stopped swinging the hammer. He stepped back and ran his forearm across his face. “No he didn’t. Where’s Tim? I need a drink.”

Nicky Preece was obviously unsure as to whether or not to go on with his story. He picked up his mallet and took over from Sean, bashing the wall at a much quicker pace than his partner, but with less power.

“Kev got shot,” said Nicky. “He and Vernon were visiting the owner of a nightclub. This guy, he owed Vernon some money, I think. But the nightclub owner was savvy to him. Tooled up. Vernon got out by the skin of his teeth. Kev was cornered in an alleyway by a couple of bouncers. Shot through the throat. He works on his allotment now. Digging beetroot and shit.”

“Where?”

Nicky said, “Out Bewsey way. The bouncers got their comeuppance though. One of them was blinded in an acid attack a few weeks later. Nobody’s saying nothing about who did it, but, well...”

Sean looked at him calmly. Nicky returned his gaze. He downed tools and smiled at Sean, breathing hard. “You know,” he said, “it’s the weirdest thing. I can’t help it, talking to you, but it’s like talking to the police.”

Sean laughed. “I’m as much a policeman as you are a circus clown.”

“I don’t mean anything by it, mate,” Nicky said. “I don’t want to get on the wrong side of you or anything, but you don’t half act like a copper sometimes.”

“How do you mean?” Sean asked, trying to appear amused.

“The silences. The one-word questions. The look. You have got the classic look of a copper.”

“Which is?”

“No offence, but bland as fuck. You know. Dead cold stare. No expression.”

“And you’d know all about that, would you?”

Nicky grinned. “Too much. I’ve been a good lad these past five years, but I was a terror, let me tell you, when I was in my teens.”

“So what about Vernon? What’s he up to?”

“You tell me, PC.”

Sean kicked the hammer across the floor. “That isn’t funny. And I’d prefer it if you didn’t bring this up again with any of the others.”

“Why not? It’s just a laugh.”

“I don’t find it funny. And I don’t want people thinking I’ve got anything to do with our boys in blue. Okay? Jesus Christ, I’ve had a hard enough time as it is without being mistaken for a fucking flatfoot as well.”

Nicky patted him on the arm. “I’m sorry, all right? I’m a tit. Speak my mind, that’s all. No harm meant.”

“Okay, then. Let’s forget it. But Vernon... tell me about Vernon.”

Born Vernon Lord, nobody knows where, nobody knows when. Left school without any qualifications. Worked for a series of low-lifes and hoods across the Northwest of England and, for a short period, as bodyguard to a stripper in a Soho bar.

Never married. No form. No known relatives.

Vernon Lord now lives in a very nice house in Appleton. He knows his martial arts and his military history. He knows his weapons best of all.

It is rumoured that he has murdered in the region of seventeen people over the last twenty-five years.

What is it with this fucker? Sean thought. No form? No form? The man is a psychopath. He was standing over the stove, steaming some broccoli to go with his re-heated curry from the previous night.

As if summoning the man, his mobile chirped. It was Vernon.

“Tomorrow night. Runcorn. I need to drop by on a client. And then we’ve got to get some video rolling. Can you come?”

“I don’t know about that, Vernon. I’m supposed to be cooking dinner for a friend.”

“You’re not doing too badly, are you? Only been here five minutes and you’ve got work and mates coming out of your backside. Bird is it?”

“A friend,” Sean reiterated.

“Name?”

“I couldn’t possibly tell you that.”

“Aww, and us best chums and all. You can tell me.”

“Esmerelda, her name is. Esmerelda Arbuckle. The third.”

“Right. I see. So the job. The job. You won’t do it? I strongly advise that you do. Bring your woman with you. Big, is she?”

“Go to hell, Vernon. I’m not your puppet.” Phone down.

Sean poured himself a drink. A large brandy. No longer hungry, he switched off the stove and took his glass to the window. Some view. Not that he was taking it in. The steep embankment choked with nettles and fast-food wrappers was a dark slab in the night, bejewelled with frost. The sleepers gleamed coldly atop it. Something squirmed through the undergrowth: a rat, maybe, or a cat. A bottle smashed in the alleyway and a flurry of giggles followed the sound.

Sean was thinking of Tim Enever.

He had left Nicky when the questions had veered too close to home, using his thirst as an excuse. The rest of the building was consumed with noises generated by the wind. He was convinced that there must be animals living on some of these floors, judging by some of the scratching and scampering sounds that echoed through the walls. The others were working a floor beneath him and Nicky, stripping out architraves and dados and skirting boards. He saw Tim leaving them, scuffing his way towards the lifts that were no longer working and standing in front of them for a few seconds before the penny dropped. Plodding to the stairwell, he descended two floors and moved into a room off the main corridor; this much Sean could see from where he stood.

Sean followed. He watched Tim moving through the rooms of what had once been a suite of offices. A notice board on the wall contained a holiday planner for 1994 and a photograph from an office party: three men and three women adorned with tinsel, wearing funny hats and booze-loosened smiles. Tim observed the traffic through the window as it was chased along the carriageway by sunlight slipping from a bank of hard, black cloud low to the west. Then he went to the opposite wall and placed his hands against the plaster, moving them as a doctor might against the flesh of a worried patient. He was whispering too, words that Sean couldn’t fathom, though he recognised the tenderness in the delivery of them.

“Tim?”

Tim moved as quickly as he could away from the wall: still a languid movement. “What?” He blinked.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Wandering around.” His voice was wet, catarrhal. Listening to him breathe was like listening to a sucking wound in casualty.

“You were touching that wall up like it was your girlfriend.”

Tim reddened. He pushed the babyfine floss of his hair away from his eyes and made to walk past Sean. It was easy to block his path. A cobweb would have impeded him.

“What were you doing, Tim?”

“I. Was. Do-ing. No-thing.” Enunciating every syllable, Tim tried to stare out Sean, summoning as much fury to his puppy face as possible.

“Okay, Tim,” Sean said at last. “I don’t mean anything. I was just curious.”

Tim seemed to slump; relief wiped the pitiful attempt at pique from his features. “Do you want anything from the shop? I’m just off to get Salty a packet of fig biscuits.”

“Bottle of water,” Sean said. “Thanks.”

“Right. Put the money in the tin, won’t you?”

“Always do. See you later. We’re going to the pub, aren’t we?”

Tim nodded. He was waiting for Sean to leave the room with him. Sean didn’t disappoint, heading back up to where Nicky Preece was stationed, but as soon as Tim had pushed through the revolving doors, Sean was back down the stairs. He retraced his steps through the offices to the wall that Tim had been caressing. It was a wall scarred by tiny holes where nails or tacks had fastened charts and plans and diagrams to it. Pale green paint was chipped here and there, revealing a sickly pink undercoat. Feeling somewhat self-conscious, Sean placed his hands against the wall in the same way that Tim had. The plaster was warm to the touch and he could feel a slight vibration: no doubt Jez or Robbie or Lutz working with a power tool down below. Sean moved his hands across the wall, wondering what it was that Tim had been doing. Could he have some kind of demolition fetish?

He pushed himself away, chuckling to himself and feeling embarrassed that he had allowed Tim to get at him like that. At the threshold of the room he heard the wind getting up outside the building, howling through the brick nets and chutes and scaffolding. The traffic had dwindled on the carriageway. The cloud had infected the entire sky. It was as though the sun didn’t exist any more.

EMMA ARRIVED JUST as the evening news was beginning on the television. Sean let her into the flat and then returned to the set, where a man with too-pink skin was standing by a curve of motorway. A crater in the road’s surface was the size of a large roundabout, straddling the central reservation. The crash barriers had ruptured and bent like toffee. Days after the explosions on the M6 and M1, forensic teams were combing the area around the detonated bombs, looking for clues.

“...as yet nobody has claimed responsibility for the explosions and, although it seems unlikely from the sheer scale of the attack, police are not ruling out the possibility that the culprit is a lone terrorist...”

Sean was wiping his hands on a tea towel. Emma plucked it from his fingers and, stepping into the circle of his arms, kissed him deeply.

“Hello to you too,” Sean said, smiling, when she eventually pulled away.

“That was just a message to you, from me,” she said. “Whatever went before... it doesn’t matter to me. I’m here if you want me.”

Sean had made a stew of tomatoes, bacon, and beans. He served it up with hunks of bread and glasses of merlot. They sat eating on the floor, cross-legged, leaning lightly against each other while sleet spattered the windows and the news played out its awful theatre to them.

Later, sitting among the dirty dishes and listening to music, Emma asked Sean what he thought about the motorway bombs.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve seen nothing like it before. I mean, look at the number of cameras they’ve got out on the roads these days. And you’re telling me nobody picked up anything on them?”

“They aren’t all working all the time, are they?”

“No, but you’d think, if what, over fifty bombs had been planted, that something would have been filmed. It’s all too perfect. Nobody has that kind of luck during an operation. Nobody.”

“Well, it looks like they have now,” Emma said, absently stroking the soft fuzz on the nape of Sean’s neck.

Sean thought of the way Tim had moved his hands over the pimpled, scarred surface of the wall. He had treated it almost reverentially.

“I wish I could open you up sometimes,” Emma said, her voice changed. Nervous. Gentle. “You’re so quiet, really. You’ve always been quiet.”

She pressed against his ribcage as though, in the bones that patterned his skin, she might read something about him that she didn’t know. “In here is the real you. The you I want to understand and get to know better. I want to get under your skin, Sean. Does that upset you at all? Does that kind of talk scare you?”

They held each other until it grew too cold to remain on the floor. In bed, they watched the heat of their bodies reach out to the window and slowly draw a grey veil over the freezing railway embankment and the broken sodium lamps. It was a magical time, an immanent time. It felt like Christmas Eve, or a leaden sky at the cusp of emptying itself of snow. Sean felt the hair at the base of his spine lifting with the deliberate grace of a spider’s legs. He wanted to make love to Emma, but something was holding him back. Maybe it was maturity. At the edge of sleep, he thought he understood the secrets of the world and the reason behind too many things that were never considered in life. He stirred, his head woolly, tears in his eyes. Naomi was perched on the edge of the bed, waggling his big toe between her thumb and forefinger. The further out of sleep he came, the more insubstantial she grew, until she was no longer there. She said, as she faded from view, “There doesn’t have to be a door for there to be a doorway.”

Sean crept from bed to the window and palmed away the condensation. Outside, shadows beneath the trees teased themselves into and out of faces he thought he recognised. Some of the people he saw were long dead. Voices from his past tried to re-establish themselves in his memory but they had been gone too long for them to gain purchase. His grandfather was there somewhere, his face as grave as an eagle’s. The hooded eyes, the jut of the jaw, the thick blade of a nose. But the voice would not come.

Dwelling on all of this, he failed to remember what it had been that drew him from sleep in the first place. His toe, when he reached to feel it, was warm where the rest of his foot was cold. He trudged back to bed, arrested in his movements as he saw Emma, the bedclothes shrugged off her, the light streaming through the window hitting her arched body and giving Sean the illusion of transparency; he could see everything in her. Everything.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: DODO

IT WAS A woman. An old woman.

Elisabeth tried to shy away from the approaching figure dressed in a diaphanous nightgown and a pair of waders that sucked and squelched in the mud surrounding the caravans, but the old woman was making a beeline for her.

“Don’t bother hiding, sugarsweetie,” she said, in a voice that suggested she was bored by her quarry before she’d even been exposed to it. “I’ve got eyes like you wouldn’t believe. Like a shitehawk’s eyes, my eyes.” She gargled laughter and reached out a hand, hauling Elisabeth from behind the fuel tanks with astonishing strength.

“Now,” she continued, “if you want to get away from here with the skin on your back in one piece, you’ll close any or all of your holes and come with me. Sharpish.”

Elisabeth wasted no time. She hurried after the woman as she returned to the caravans. She had no choice. If she didn’t acquiesce, the woman would out her and that would be that.

“Where’s your man friend?” the old woman asked, shooing her through the door of a tiny caravan that listed so prominently to one side that Elisabeth had to put out her hands to stop herself from toppling into the wall. Candles in ornate glass holders spilled nervous light across the cluttered cabin and drenched the air with a hot, animal smell.

“He went looking for Sadie. We heard her earlier.”

“Maybe you did. But the silly bastard will get himself killed. We have ourselves sentinels in this little camp of ours. We need to watch ourselves all the time. Not popular our lot. We’ve had attacks before. Caravans burnt down. We have to protect ourselves.”

“I’m sorry,” Elisabeth said. She was at a loss as to what to say but felt she had to fill the gaps fed to her by the old woman. “What’s your name?”

“We’ll put our cosy faces on when I get back. I have to look for your hero, don’t I? Stay here. Don’t open the door.”

The woman wound a scarf around her throat and went outside. Elisabeth closed her eyes and pressed the heels of her hands into them until motes of colour spattered across her inner vision. A ginger cat swerved through the legs of the chair and sat by her feet, lack of interest spreading its features into a yawn. Elisabeth reached for the cat but it batted her hand away and turned its back on her. Around her, the caravan seemed to draw itself in, as though it were expelling breath. The fidgeting shadows started a headache behind her ears. Paintings of sullen men in burnt umber and cobalt absorbed the light. A bookshelf described a faint grin across the wall under the weight of triple-stacked volumes. The furniture was spindly and unwelcoming; it might have been antique for all Elisabeth knew.

She went to the window and teased apart the curtains, wishing she had been strong enough to repulse the old woman at the fuel drums. Ten minutes had passed since Will left her. That all was silent outside ought to have encouraged her, but it did not. The featureless dark sucked at her eyes.

Elisabeth, suspicious that the woman might turn her in, grabbed a stubby knife from the kitchen area and hid it under her jumper. The cat rubbed at her ankles now that she was near food but Elisabeth ignored it. She was geeing herself up to leave when the door flew open and Will ducked into the caravan, holding Sadie by the arm. The old woman brought up the rear. Will was smiling. Sadie looked tired and cold. Blue hoops hung beneath her eyes.

“Sorry,” she said.

The old woman poured water into a kettle. “I’ll make you tea. I’ll give you sandwiches. But then you must leave.”

Elisabeth said: “What happened?”

Sadie had been intent on hiding from them behind the trees until they stopped their bickering, no more, but when she had heard men talking beyond the embankment she had decided to check them out in case they might be looking for Will. One of the strangers had spotted Sadie and was friendly, offering her chocolate. He was around Sadie’s age. The other man was older and was walking a docile-looking dog; he moved away when Sadie approached.

The boy, whose name was Jacob, was good-looking and Sadie had warmed to him. They talked for a while and Jacob asked if she would like to see a bird’s nest. It was then that she realised she might be missed and explained that she needed to go back. But the boy grabbed her arm and begged her to go with him. The man with the dog returned. The dog was no longer placid and scared her into going with them. They gave her something hot and sour to drink from a bottle without a label that made her feel dizzy. She remembered someone trying to pull her top up and she had struggled with him. He’d had a grope of her breasts and seemed to be satisfied with that. Then she had been being pushed into a caravan where she had fallen asleep on a sofa. Blankets that smelled of tar. Then nothing more until Will and the old woman found her.

“They’ll notice she’s gone,” the old woman said. “Won’t be long. You should be on your way soon.”

Elisabeth ignored her. “Are you all right?” she asked Sadie.

“Fine,” Sadie replied.

“No,” Elisabeth intoned, more firmly. “I mean, are you all right?”

The old woman pursed her lips as she handed mugs of tea around. “If you mean, ‘Have they raped you?’, why not say?”

Elisabeth put her mug down. “We should go to the police about this,” she said. “Sadie was kidnapped. We don’t know what’s happened to her. She was drugged.”

“Your daughter was not raped.”

“She isn’t my–”

The old woman paid no attention. “She was not raped. I know my kind.”

“We’ll see about that. She was kidnapped, at any rate. There’ll be prison sentences in this, I promise you.”

The old woman rounded on her. “There’ll be death before there’s prison sentences, I promise you that, if you carry on with this nonsense.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Well what do you think it is? A brace of pheasants?”

Will moved, breaking the tension that was thickening in the cabin.

“Eli,” he said gently, “Nula helped us. She helped us. We should be grateful.”

“And what would have happened to her if we hadn’t come after her, Will? What then?”

Nula offered Elisabeth a thick slice of bread spread with margarine. Despite her hunger, she spurned it.

“She’d have come with us,” Nula said, re-directing the bread towards Will, who took it. “She’d have been safe with us.”

“Safe?” Elisabeth mocked. “Safe?”

Sadie stood up. Groggily, she said: “I’m okay. They didn’t touch me. I promise.”

Elisabeth closed her eyes. She felt close to tears. Regardless of her mistrust of the old woman, she didn’t want to go back out into the cold and dark. The cabin, though cluttered and musty, was at least warm. “Let’s get out,” she said.

THEY WALKED IN silence until they rejoined the railway line. Before dawn, they scattered, hiding in the bushes as three helicopters chattered low overhead, arc lights swooping over the embankment and the tracks.

“Do you think they’ll come after us, those people?” Will asked. “When they find that Sadie is gone?”

Elisabeth shook her head. “Not if they’ve any brains between them,” she said. Will’s reluctance to report the incident had refreshed the frost between them that had until that point been gradually thawing. At lunchtime, exhausted, Will conceded that if they weren’t to alert the authorities about the camp, they should at least treat themselves to a decent lunch for a change. It would be worth the risk. And after last night, he privately considered, he wasn’t bothered any more. What happened now didn’t matter.

Leaving Elisabeth and Sadie on the edge of a car park, Will, conscious of how soiled and grizzled he appeared, tramped along a road to a supermarket where he bought bread and cheese and a bottle of wine without making eye contact with anybody. He wished he had enough money to enable them to take a train or a bus, one of which, cruelly, passed him as he made his way back to the car park, splashing him with some of the road’s surface water. The windows were misty with inner warmth; figures were black, lumpen, huddled into the enervation of their journeys.

Will could now see Elisabeth and Sadie perched on two small concrete bollards, talking, and the sight lanced him to the quick.

In the days leading up to Cat’s death, he had been imagining how the shape of his own baby might fill his hands. How the heat of it would travel through his fingers. He had imagined breathing the air that moved across its hot little head, and of what it might have smelled.

Being with Elisabeth too had re-opened in him a scar he thought long healed. The manner of their separation had always frustrated him. It had been avoidable, he knew, but neither he nor she had lifted a finger to arrest the slide. It was as though they had been fascinated by the speed of their decay, loath to prevent it in favour of observing something spectacular. From aisle to courtroom, their marriage had lasted three months. And for what? An imagined infidelity on her part; a suspicion on his that she had married him because he was the only person in her last-chance saloon at the time.

After the fallout (there had been much, and it had spread wide), Will had failed to come up with a satisfactory reason for their divorce. It was almost as if they had feared the dedication and commitment marriage demanded of them and had wimped out at the first opportunity. By then he had met Cat and was too involved to consider raking through the ashes to see if any embers remained.

“A feast,” he said cheerfully, as he rejoined them. Although he hadn’t said as much, he was mightily pleased to have Sadie back with them. Finding her in Fleece’s caravan, he had hugged her and told her how sorry he was. But then Fleece had entered, his arm and chest sodden with wet blood, and, upon seeing Will, had turned and hurried outside, tripping as he did so and winding himself on the ground.

“Wait here, just a second,” he had told Sadie and ran after Fleece. In the dark, before Fleece had a chance to muster the breath to call for help, Will knelt on his back and caught his chin between his hands. Summoning all of his strength, and thinking of Cat alone with those evil, evil bastards, he wrenched Fleece’s head back, relishing, yes, relishing the tear of muscles, the gullet’s collapse in a sound like that of disintegrating polystyrene, the crack of bone as his throat gave way. At the moment that Fleece went limp in his hands, a strange haze, like some glittering stage curtain, had manifested itself in front of (or was it behind?) his eyes. It threatened to part, but Will recoiled, jamming his hands against his eyes, inexplicably fearful of what he might see. He had dragged the body fully three hundred yards, into a scrim of gorse, and kicked loose dust at the corpse until its shape was sufficiently concealed.

And then the old woman, scurrying through the dark, her Wellington boots scuffing across the ground. Bringing him out of it.

Sadie and Elisabeth wolfed their food and traded secretive glances as they ate. At one point they laughed out loud. Will, his gut full of food, picking crumbs from his jumper and in as good a mood as any since leaving the farmhouse, asked them about the joke they were sharing.

“Don’t look now,” Sadie said, “but look behind you.”

This nonsense set Elisabeth off again. Will, happy that they were happy, glanced over his shoulder and started laughing too.

There was a man in the car park in a crash helmet. Huge coils of rope were slung over his shoulder. He was climbing. He was climbing the car park. Horizontally.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: WETWORK

MAY MOULDER IS 63. Until her husband, Brian, died five years ago, they lived in Toxteth. She recently lost her sight thanks to diabetes. She worked all her life at a factory, punching the asbestos from grids for gas fires. She’s been battling to get her dilapidated flat repaired by the council. The environmental health declared it unfit to live in but the council won’t do anything about it. She also has trouble with the electricity board, paying over the odds to heat her house, and they are charging her for a fridge and cooker she never bought. Payments are being deducted through her electricity token meter.

Fuck her.

Sean put the page back in its folder and tossed it into the box where all the other files sat on the back seat. He’d gone on what? Nine, ten jobs with Vernon now, and there had been no progress. No feeling of getting under his quarry’s skin at all. Vernon was holding back from him. Vernon didn’t want him too close. Sean thumbed through the documents filing cabinet of his memory and tried to find some clue that he might have missed, but always, at the moment of closure, he was sent away.

Oliver and Victoria, both in their late sixties, had been a middle-class couple retired to comfortable life in Stockton Heath, to the south of Warrington. Victoria contracted a virulent form of Parkinson’s disease. Oliver was caring for her full-time. Pitiful man, he was, Sean now remembered. Gone to seed but trying to put on the hard man act. Photographs of him as a young man, Kray-like in his intensity, his polish, were arranged around the rooms. Sepia pictures of him shadow boxing, or in the ring waiting for the bell to release him from his corner. Pictures of him and his mates standing on a street corner, toy gangsters in white shirts with big collars and dark suits.

Victoria needed medication every two hours. They received no relief from social services or the NHS – Victoria was assessed as not needing medical care – so it was left to the pair to make ends meet alone. Their savings were not large and would soon run out if they were to get nursing care or a stay in a home. Oliver, the hard man, was being ground down. No way out. What help did he get from Vernon? What promises?

And the others.

Homeless Cheryl, twenty-five, unable to get any kind of housing other than a night shelter haunted mainly by old men. Wasn’t she HIV+? Sean remembered her whimpering as Vernon stood over her in a dark archway connecting Sankey Street with the delivery road behind Woolworths in Warrington’s town centre. She told Vernon how she applied for hardship payments, but large amounts were docked to pay for the night shelter, leaving her with next to nothing to live on. She was sleeping on friends’ floors. All her friends used drugs and she was rapidly sinking into that lifestyle. The voluntary agencies were powerless to help her. Ah diddums, Vernon had said, striking the wall above her head with the bat and causing her to shriek, recoil, try to make herself invisible before him.

Sean remembered Jess and Daniel, neighbours on a Liverpool housing estate trying to escape from homes that were no better than diseased hovels. The health of their children was compromised. Sean recalled tiny, denuded faces staring up at him, like ghosts. Underfed children that played with him while Vernon raged in the kitchen. One boy playing with half a dozen cockroaches. A girl sitting in nappies that hadn’t been changed for days. Ignored by the council on the basis that their houses were no worse than any others on the estate, Jess attempted to find a house through a private landlord while Daniel withheld rent as a protest and faced eviction. Two of his children were severely asthmatic. That’s not all they’ll be, Vernon warned, if you don’t give me something to put in my pockets. The children waving at him from the window as they left.

“Putting these... dossiers together, what? Does that codify all this for you? Make it acceptable? Does this woman really need a visit with a baseball bat?”

“Codify,” Vernon said. “I like that. I love what comes out of your mouth, Redman. Love it.”

“You going to answer me?”

Vernon pushed a smile onto a face that didn’t welcome it. “I’m not answering anything. But while we’re at it, let’s sort us out a new rule, shall we? That rule is, you stop asking me questions. I’m trying to concentrate and you are making my shit hang sideways with this constant, cocking chat.”

He steered the four-by-four back onto Fiddlers Ferry Road. Across the St Helens Canal, Spike Island, a thick spit of mudland reaching into the Mersey, was tigered with mist, as was the Runcorn bridge, like a brontosaurus’s skeleton spanning the river. Thousands of roosting starlings made cloud formations above the bridge. Once they were across it, Vernon toed the accelerator and they moved on to the Spur Road at ninety.

“What did you tell your lassie, in the end?” Vernon asked, mischief returning to his features. “What was the wordsmith’s excuse tonight?”

“I told her that you rang me up and asked me to go out on a job with you.”

“And she said?”

“And she said, ‘Okay, fine, we’ll go out some other time.’”

Vernon seemed cheated. “Women today. No spunk in them at all.”

“Unless they’re in your films,” Sean said. That set Vernon off on a long, rich passage of laughter that turned into a hacking cough.

“Did you find us a lady? A lady who wants to be in pictures?”

“Maybe.”

Vernon thrashed the Shogun around a series of tight bends as they drove past the concrete mesas and buttes of Runcorn’s Shopping City. Up ahead loomed the urban goldfish bowl that was the Uplands. The porthole windows and token attempts at decoration were swamped by the vast edifice of cement out of which its features glared.

“You’re enjoying it though, the game, this rush?” Vernon asked. “All kinds of life is here. All kinds. Adds to your experience. Makes you more of a man. No?”

“Whatever you say, Vernon. I just wish you’d let me know what you’re doing. I thought you trusted me.”

“Time is on our side, Sean. Impatience is no help to anybody. You’re still on probation.”

Vernon parked the Shogun under a guttering streetlamp that sent shadows into his eyes as he pulled the bat from behind his seat and stuffed it into the deep inside pocket of his leather trenchcoat.

“Surely, Vernon, you don’t need that. She’s sixty-three. She’s blind for God’s sake.”

Vernon made a moue of his lips. “Her circumstances might’ve changed. She might have a big, beefy lodger. She might have bought herself a guard dog.”

They went up the graffiti-strewn stairwell, Vernon verbally ticking off each floor as he met it. On the fourth level, he ducked to his right and marched along a narrow passageway. Down below them, on a patch of grass, three boys were trying to set fire to a dead dog. A white Cosworth was up on blocks and a pair of jean-clad legs were sticking out from beneath it. A radio played Bryan Adams. A radio played Hole. A radio played Roger Whittaker.

At the door of Mrs Moulder’s flat, Vernon smoothed down his hair, adjusted his collars, and rubbed the toe of his left boot against his right calf. Then he yanked the bat out of his pocket and did for the door with one mighty swing.

“You want to be in with us on the softstrip,” Sean said. “An action like that.” An old joke now.

Filth on what remained of the carpet tried to glue Sean’s boots to the floor as they moved deeper into the flat. The kitchen was a laboratory of horrors, bad smells burping from the drains. Slicks of grease covered every surface. An ecstasy of silverfish writhed under the sink units. In the living room, dark mould spread fingers up the walls. The air was damp and reeked of piss. On the television, a gardener showed how to keep frost off a vegetable patch.

Sean listened to Vernon in the hallway, smashing a collection of tiny Wade whimsies from the MDF cabinets and wonky shelves.

“Where are you, Mrs Moulder? No point hiding, lovey. It’s not me who’s blind.”

Sean heard the click of the bathroom lock and was at the door as the handle turned and Mrs Moulder fell through the gap, her skirt around her ankles. She had hold of an emergency cord in her hands and was yanking on it.

“Jesus Christ, Vernon,” Sean said, bending to help Mrs Moulder to her feet. Her thighs were dark with waste. Her breathing was hard and shallow, her face white. “I mean, Jesus Christ, Vernon. She’s just an old woman.”

“It’s okay, Sean, I’ve got things under control now. Why don’t you go and make yourself comfy in the living room? Watch a bit of telly, and I’ll give you a call when I’m finished here, okay?”

Sean backed off, checking first that Mrs Moulder was okay and wasn’t likely to simply pitch over or succumb to a coronary. In the living room he tried to busy himself with the newspaper but the damp on the armchair was seeping into his trousers and Vernon’s voice seethed through the flat, making the ornaments shake.

“I give you so much leeway, May. So much. But no more. I do not put up with you lot pissing me around. No more. I will fuck you to within an inch, girl, if you try to piss me around any more. Now. You will hand it the fuck over, hear me? I’m not going away empty-handed this time, you night-seeing cunt.”

Sean felt the sensation of a darkening in the room, as if someone had pulled the curtains to on a bright day. Now he heard a conversation in the hallway. Two men.

This was not good. Not good. Sean gritted his teeth and tried to force the violence out of his body. What was driving Vernon Lord to this kind of action? Fear? He couldn’t actually enjoy terrorising old people, could he? And who was the other guy? Where the hell did he spring from? Sean edged to the threshold and peered around it. In the kitchen, the surgeon was standing with his back to Sean, a hand in a white rubber glove holding a pair of scissors that snipped at the air as he played with them. As he knelt, he gripped the old woman’s jaw with his free hand and Vernon leaned around him to close the kitchen door, winking and mouthing the words fuck off to Sean.

Footsteps in the glass outside the door. Sean’s head cocked to one side. Three men, it sounded like. Heavy. Fit.

He shrugged off his jacket to prevent it from limiting his movement. During his time in the police he had never once, despite the misfortune of some of his colleagues, been placed in a position of having to defend himself. Part of the reason for leaving, he considered now, as the footsteps transferred to the carpet, was that he did not want to invite physical violence which, the law of averages demanded, became more likely to visit him the longer he remained in uniform. On her first day in the Force, Sally had been headbutted by a shoplifter in Greenwich. Broke her nose. It could have been someone with a knife or a gun. Next time, it might be. Next time, it might have been Sean.

And here he was, tensing, ready for the mash of fists and the stamp of boots. Ready for blood on his lip. A blade, even. All in the name of Naomi.

“WHO WERE THEY?” Sean asked again. He couldn’t see out of his left eye. It felt as though somebody had inserted one of those needle adapters for footballs into his forehead and inflated the flesh. It ought to sting like a bastard, but he couldn’t feel any pain.

He felt drained and sick. His body was tight, as though his skin had been cinched around the muscles. Adrenaline drained away, lactic acid in the meat of his arms and legs conspiring to make him feel as shitty as one of old May’s stockings.

Vernon glanced at him again. There was affection and awe in the way he favoured him. His voice was cowed: “The way you moved,” he said.

“It wasn’t a Fred and Ginger moment in there, Vernon. It was down and dirty. I’ve never seen fighting like it. They were fucking evil.”

Vernon nodded. “I’ve not seen fighting like it either,” he said. “You didn’t give them a chance.”

Apart from the crack to his eye, an anonymous elbow early on in the skirmish, Sean hadn’t received any other injury. He remembered little of the scrap, apart from the way it started

(Sean: Who are you?

Bucket-faced ape: Chin that fucker. Deck him now.)

and the way it finished, with him slamming one head repeatedly into another while the third goon tried to breathe around the splintered newel post that had been rammed into his neck. All through it, Mrs Moulder had been whining like a puppy: “I haven’t finished paying for this carpet! I haven’t finished paying for this carpet!” Bizarrely it had helped him keep his focus. Vernon had stood there with the bat limp in his hand, drying his tongue out. When it had finished, he had been comically polite to Mrs Moulder, telling her that he would be back next month and thank you very much.

“Well? Who were they?”

As they bypassed it on their right, the cooling towers of Fiddlers Ferry power station belched white plumes towards Widnes. As a child, Sean had been able to see the towers from his bedroom window. Red lights punched into the towers gleamed like demonic eyes.

“I don’t know. You saw her pulling on that emergency cord like she was at bell-ringing practice.”

“They looked pretty tough for people who come round to plonk you back on your commode.”

“Estate security then, who knows? Who cares?”

They drove in silence until they reached the general hospital, where Sean told Vernon to drop him.

“A quick nip of something warm back at yours?” Vernon tried.

“Don’t think so, Vernon. I’m knackered. I’ll see you at work tomorrow?”

Vernon shook his head. “Got business out in the sticks tomorrow.”

“You don’t need me?”

Another shake. “Salty’s coming with me.”

Sean tried hard to seem nonplussed. “What’s this? I mean, why do you need me sometimes, and Salty others?”

“What if I do?”

Sean made a dismissive gesture. He was hungry. And he was sick of Vernon. “Whatever you say, boss.” He was about to walk away when Vernon tooted him on the horn.

“Thanks for back there,” he said. “You did well. There’ll be forward motion for you soon. I promise. Be patient.”

“Better than being a patient.”

Vernon chuckled. “You’re right there.”

BACK IN HIS bedsit, having walked once around the block to make sure that Vernon wasn’t tailing him, he withdrew the bottle of Absolut from the freezer compartment and sat by the window in darkness, refilling a cracked shot glass until the vodka had lost its syrupy chill and night clogged the streets.

Sean fought the urge to bang the rest of the bottle back and get started on another. Getting pissed wasn’t going to help matters; it would only make his confusion more cloudy. Already it resembled some congested storm-anvil of black thoughts, questions and possibilities, reaching up into his head. He sipped his drink and felt the air change outside, as if it were mirroring his emotions. A gust of wind staggered through the badly fitting window, drunk on exhaust fumes and the smell of dog shit drifting over from the park.

Sean couldn’t understand why he felt so instantly linked to Emma, but her ghost clung to his waking hours. He decided he was going to take another drink after all, as the rain started spanking down on the slates. The weather had made up its mind that it liked the taste of this town and bit deep. Wind howled at the weak spots of the house. Sean felt constantly as though he were trying to escape. Sometimes his skin felt too tight for the anger that moved within him. He felt directionless and wild. Emma had been like a magnetic field, drawing all of his focuses, taming the chaos. Swallowing the sour residue of his fourth, fifth shot glass of vodka and rising for a refill, he felt cheated. He had saved her, despite her protests, from a rape at least, murder at worst. Yet what would she be doing now if not what she had been paid to do before he helped her escape from those men?

In an effort to distract himself, he thought of Tim Enever, crapulous, coughing Tim Enever moving through the rooms of the de Fleche building as slowly as a sloth in lead boots. How he caressed the walls. What had he been up to? Was it enough that he was just weird? Sean didn’t think so. Maybe he should go back there. Later tonight. Check those walls, see if there was something behind them. Something hidden.

On the back of an envelope, without trying to think too much, he wrote the name de Fleche. He couldn’t understand why it might be important, but it wouldn’t hurt to check it out. Suicide, Rapler had said before Ronnie came in to shut him up. Suicide.

Had he ever considered, even obliquely, the easy way out in the days following Naomi’s death? Watching the creep of cold across his pane and the ice spreading through the puddles on the street, he couldn’t force his mind to find a region of similar cold. In the extremities of his despair, he had thought about a communion of thoughts with Naomi, but had he meant that to be as literal as it now appeared? He could never entertain such thoughts while her killer remained at large, but privately, he feared that he was not strong enough to stem the tide of such thinking for too long. The exertions of violence had wearied him, but the violence was nothing. It did not take a strong man to inflict pain on another, or to shed blood. The strongest people were the Emmas of the world. And yes, the Mrs Moulders. Sean took another drink and thought, yes, he would check himself out pretty soon if he ever found himself in a spot similar to the old woman. Outwardly he might appear strong. Inwardly he was as brittle as the icing on a stale cake.

Sometime around midnight, the empty bottle slipped through his fingers, skidded and slithered on the floor, coming to a stop with the mouth pointing his way. When the glass followed it and shattered a few seconds later, the sound was not sufficient to wake him. Foggy street-lighting caught in viscous dregs smeared across the fragments and reflected his slumped form in a thousand different ways.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: BROCKEN SPECTRE

SADIE AND ELISABETH were in the back of the Campervan, playing with Eiger the dog. Up front, Will shared his seat with about a hundred Ordnance Survey maps as well as half a tonne of karabiners and buckles and straps. Flint, the mountaineer, drove with one hand while the other searched his Berghaus waterproof for a tube of mints.

“Where was it you said you were going?” Flint asked. Will couldn’t see his mouth through the tangle of red beard. His eyes were dark, sharp and turned nasty by a ridge of black brows that reared away from his head. The hair was long and straggly, held back in a pony tail by an elastic band. It was a hard, north Wales voice, barely softened by years of travel.

“I didn’t,” Will said. “Where are you going?”

“Scotland way,” Flint replied, finally tracking down his elusive Trebors. He offered one to Will. “I want to get up to the Old Man of Storr, eventually. Always fancied that, though I’ve never done a stack climb before.”

“Well, we’re heading up to Warrington, if it’s convenient.”

“Nothing’s convenient, the way these roads are being systematically buggered.”

“We’ve been out of the loop,” Will said, conscious again of the state of his clothes. He wondered if he was starting to smell, but judging by the state of Flint’s Camper, he didn’t think it was something that would be noticeable here. “We’ve not heard any news.”

Flint coughed and spat out of the window. “Since the first wave of bombs, on the motorway, there’ve been daily attacks. Single explosions on A roads, B roads, bridges. Nobody has a clue why. Al-Qaeda have gone out of their way to dissociate themselves with it all.”

Off the motorways, progress was still frustratingly slow. The mountaineer had picked them up outside Nuneaton. They had followed the A5 around Birmingham to Shrewsbury, where they joined the A49 going north. Flint told them that this road, if it was safe, would take them straight into Warrington. So far, it had been ignored by the terrorists, but it was a main road that ought to be a target, if the roads that had been attacked over the past few weeks were any indication.

Flint was from a tiny village outside Wrexham. His father had died in a lead mine and he had been forced to bring up his brother and look after his mother, who had lung cancer, without any outside help. He said it had toughened him and made him feel able to deal with any situation. Climbing, Flint explained, was the only pastime that helped him feel alive, gave him back the youth that had been lost to endless days of cleaning and feeding and being the role model to his younger siblings.

“Have you ever fallen?” Will asked, feeling faintly stupid once the question was out, but enjoying the ebb and flow of the older man’s voice.

“Never,” Flint replied, sucking carefully on his mint. “I’ve seen plenty accidents, mind. I’ve seen a man fall twenty-five feet into the Bergschrund on the Hotlum/Bolam ridge, Mount Shasta, this is. California. A fourteen K peak. No injury. Not even a split lip. But I’ve seen death on the rock from the slightest fall. I was with a guy called Errol about five years ago. We were climbing some top-quality granite out at Oak Flats, in Arizona. Errol was this close to topping out when a flake came off and did for him. I was in the roof crack and was pulling slack up to clip when the rock came away in his hands. Nasty wet noise on the slab. I heard it forty feet away.

“He was lucky. There was a doctor, an orthopaedic guy climbing in the area. He heard me screaming my tits off for help and he helped stabilise Errol while someone drove to the rescue camp for help.

“Errol was out cold the entire time. He was splinted, back-boarded, insulated, intubated, the lot. They probably put a bandage on his dick so it didn’t feel left out. Helicopter short-hauled him out in a Bauman Bag. Turned him over to Eagle Air Med who flew him to Phoenix, seventy miles west of the Flats.

“He was mightily shagged, I tell you. Skull fractured like a slab of treacle toffee, left arm radial, ulnar and wrist fractures, left hip fracture and left leg tib/fib and ankle fucked to Shreddies. He was unable to speak. No shit. He was three weeks in Surgical Intensive Care. And for what? A bit of loose rock.

“The worst deaths I dealt with were never anywhere near the face. The worst deaths happen in beds, let me tell you.”

“I can’t agree with you,” Will said, his throat constricting slightly.

“Errol went in bed. This six foot fuck-off meat hill. Strong. The mountain made an old man of him. All that medical care and he goes and necks a big bottle of paracetamol, first thing he does when he gets home. No way he was able to climb again, so he checked out.”

Flint went quiet, concentrating on pushing the tired blue Campervan through the south Cheshire countryside. At Tarporley, he told them that their destination was maybe a quarter of an hour away. Then he said, matter-of-factly: “Police.”

At the moment of his saying the word, Will saw the spastic blue lights pulse and skitter around the interior of the van. Elisabeth knocked twice on the separating wall.

Will said, “Look...”

Flint was smiling. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”

“What can you–”

“Well,” Flint said, “I can’t outrun them.”

“Somewhere in the back. We could hide?”

Flint laughed as he applied the brakes. “In a Camper? Piss off.”

“Then we’ve had it.”

“What did you do?” Flint said.

“They think I killed my wife.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“I believe you,” Flint said, simply. “Where is it you’re heading, exactly?”

“Sloe Heath,” Will replied, tensing in his seat as the police Rover pulled into the side of the road behind them. “The hospital there.”

“Right,” Flint said, and floored the accelerator. The van tore away, faster than Will might have expected. At the last moment, before Flint yanked the wheel to the left, sending the van bucketing over frozen shoulders of land, he heard sirens and the girls in the back of the van screaming. He saw Flint lean in close towards his face, lips peeling back into an obscene leer that didn’t seem possible in a mouth that had appeared so small. The black eyes consumed his as the van tipped into a fence by a small stream, sending it into a roll. The window smashed and Will felt himself bounce out through it, enveloped by sharp shards of night. He hit the ground hard and skidded across the topsoil of a field at the other side of the stream for about twenty metres until he came to a stop. Raising his head slightly, he saw two officers standing at the top of the road looking down at the upturned VW as steam billowed from its destroyed radiator.

Will stood up but his legs spilled him immediately. His shoulder flared with pain. Somehow he scrabbled over to the van but found it empty. The policemen were gingerly making their way across the stream. The intense dark in the field meant that he could not be seen. He risked calling out for Elisabeth and Sadie but there was no reply. More sirens. The feathered beat of a distant helicopter. Will saw its floodlight dancing across more distant fields than this one, approaching rapidly. He had to get moving, before its cameras picked him up. He moved through the field as quickly as his unsteady legs would allow, clasping his shoulder tight to him as he went. By the time he reached the far edge of the field, he was shivering violently and could not rid himself of the conviction that Elisabeth and Sadie were face down in the stream, unconsciously sucking water into their lungs.

A last look back as the authorities sealed off the accident site and searched for bodies. There was light everywhere, and mist resettling on the field where the movement had previously broken it up. Contained in one of these surging fists of fog, like something wrapped in a wad of cotton wool, Will saw a figure sprinting. It seemed far too tall and lithe for Flint, but suddenly it had flattened and spread into the elongated shape of a fast dog in full flight, changing so swiftly, so fluidly, that Will could not be sure he had thought the figure human to begin with.

Either the mist thickened, or the figure outran it. Either way, in a second or two, it was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKES

THE PHONE CALL came at a little before six on Saturday morning. Sean was jolted from his chair, pain shooting through his back and legs as he listed towards the kitchen to answer it. Rubbing feeling into his thighs, he listened as Rapler told him to not bother going into work on Monday.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because there’s no work to go to,” he said. “There was a fire this morning. Around two o’clock. The fire brigade have only just got it under control.”

“Arson?”

“It’s too early to tell really, but if you were to ask me, I’d say that it was.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because de Fleche Cheshire South, down in Chester, went up too. At the same time, would you believe?”

“What about work?”

Rapler put on an avuncular tone. “Sit tight, mate. We’ll have something else come up soon. Build ’em up, knock ’em down, there’s always something going on. I’ll be in touch. The work you did for us did not go unnoticed.”

Sean replaced the receiver, wondering which work Rapler was referring to.

He breakfasted on toast and coffee, trying to rid himself of the vodka that had turned his head sticky. He briefly considered a run to purge himself further, but quickly rejected the idea. He had seen people vomiting in the streets: it wasn’t impressive. A cold shower and more coffee helped, as did sticking his head out of the window for a few seconds to let the wind strip it raw.

He didn’t know what to do.

There were various options available to him. He could take a trip out to the de Fleche building anyway, as he had promised himself the previous night, in case something turned up. He could find Tim and quiz him about his wall molestation. Really quiz him. Or he could follow Vernon, see what was so important for him and Salty to discuss.

It was then that he found the envelope upon which he had scribbled the previous night. He reached for the phone.

“SO, BONNY RONNIE,” Vernon Lord said. “What makest thou of events thus far?”

Ronnie Salt hated Vernon. He hated the way he dressed, the way he slicked back his hair in that ridiculous pony tail. He hated the way he talked. And more than that, Ronnie hated the way he talked to him.

“I don’t trust him,” Ronnie said. “The fucker stinks of cop.”

“What’s not to trust, Ronnie? The guy spilled blood for me.”

Ronnie hated this place too, with its high-backed stools and its lunchtime menu. He hated pubs that smelled of vinegar when you walked into them, instead of beer. Pubs were for drinking in, not eating, for Christ’s sake.

“So you and Redman are nicely loved up, eh? Well that’s nice. All I’m saying is that I don’t trust him. He’s not us. He’s not with us.”

Vernon steepled his fingers above his lager. “I think he should be.”

Ronnie bristled. “You want to bring in new faces when we’re this close? This fucking close?”

“Who was it, you think, who started those fires this morning, hmmm? Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think? There’s movement. London say so. Inserts on the prowl. There’s been a collision, son. You know, like has met like. Maybe it won’t be too long before they work out what’s what where they’re concerned.”

“London sorting it, are they?”

“One dead. Two left. They’ve got someone on the case, yeah. Someone shit-hot, from the way they went on about her.”

“Her? Her? Fuck me. We might as well pack up.”

“Ronnie. Become enlightened. Transcend this pig-headed stick-in-the-mud that you’ve become over the years. You don’t want people calling you Ronnie Sour, do you? Ronnie Bitter? Women... I tell you, women are the new men.”

“Fucking fuck-up, top to bottom,” Ronnie said. “Used to be security was an important matter. This tit Redman. What do you know about him?”

Vernon tapped his head and waggled his finger, then he put his hand to his gut and nodded. “Most of us think with the wrong organ, Salty. I don’t care for checking up on people. You can cover up. Everyone wears a different face when it suits them. I go by my gut. Always have. I went with my gut when you came on the scene, and I was right. I think I’m right with Sean too. If you saw the way he took punches for me, for us, Salty, you’d change your tune.”

“I hope you’re right, Vernon,” Ronnie warned. “We’ll break through before long and end it all. We could do without any interference.”

“If there’s any interference to be done, Ronnie, this woman from London will be doing it. For us. She... according to those in the know... is special.”

“So you say. So they say. Whoever. Whatever. I just want to be sure, that’s all. Nothing wrong with that.”

Vernon patted his arm and went to the bar. When he came back with more drinks, Ronnie said, “So the fires mean we’ve got two doors sealed. Any news on the third?”

SALLY CAME THROUGH with the information for him after just half an hour.

“Are you not busy enough?” Sean asked, when she called.

“Do you want this or not?”

“Go ahead.”

Sean made notes in a pad as Sally told him about de Fleche. He seemed to have been an interesting man, if completely insane. When she had finished, Sean made smalltalk and she answered him non-committally. When he asked her what was wrong, she told him she was feeling a little poorly. Her period was due, Rostron was being a wanker, and her new partner, a wet-nosed pup called Firmstone, was more interested in chatting her up than nailing villains.

“I wish I was still there, in a way,” Sean said, only half-joking.

“From what I gather, you’re busier than when you were in uniform. What are you up to?”

“Can’t say,” Sean whispered. “Phone might be bugged.”

Sally cut through him with a clipped, serious tone. “If there’s something going on up there, something serious, I want to know, Sean. I can help you.”

Sean said, “I know.”

“Why can’t you talk to me?” Sally asked. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“I’m just going over Naomi’s past. That’s all. Seeing what I can dig up.”

“These men you were telling me about. At her funeral. Who are they?”

“Not sure. Not sure about anything really. I’m just mooching about. I’m being careful.”

Sally’s sigh, 200 miles away, made him feel good to have her as his friend. He could picture her expression: tired, kind of happy, kind of sad. “You’d better,” she said, finally. “Call me. If things get rough. I can be there in two hours.”

“I’ll do that. I will.”

Sally said, “There’s more on this guy. Stuff about what he was into. Designs, you know. Too much to tell you over the phone. It’s in the post.”

Sean read through his notes as he made his way outside to the car. Peter de Fleche had been born in Helsinki in 1934. He studied at Helsinki Polytechnic and ended up lecturing there in the 1960s when he taught a student, Adrienne Fox, who would later become his wife. Nothing that Sally had told him pointed to any suicidal tendencies. Successful man who had modest tastes. No children. He had moved to the Northwest of England when he was commissioned to design a cluster of intelligent buildings for the Warrington-Runcorn axis during the boom years of the 1980s. Coincidentally, his Dutch father had roots in Merseyside and persuaded him to stay in the region. After the death of his father two years later, the year in which the de Fleche buildings were completed and his wife left him, the architect disappeared, or at least became a recluse. No address for him. No second-hand testimonies about him. No nothing. Apart from Ronnie Salt’s aside that he used to drive around at the dead of night, crawling past his constructions, one hand on the wheel, the other keeping an open bottle of brandy warm. Slowly going insane.

Sean got in the car and joined the late-morning traffic dawdling along the College Road, north out of town. A mile shy of Sloe Heath, he saw the old bell tower rising from the clutch of hospital buildings, capped with its roof, the arched windows black, sad eyes surveying the grounds. Whenever he saw Sloe Heath mental institute, Sean shivered. He remembered playing in the fields here with a friend whose father was a doctor. What was his name? Snarled up in traffic, Sean racked his brains for a face. A Pakistani, he was, who joined his school around the time that Naomi and he were becoming fast friends. Good at chess; they used to play during rainy playtimes, with a roll-up board and plastic pieces that packed together like Russian dolls.

Naeem. That’s it. Sean burst out laughing when he remembered. How could he forget? – it had tickled him because it sounded so much like Naomi’s name. He used to frustrate them by calling out Naeem’s name and when he turned round say, “No, I wanted Naomi,” or vice versa. Really funny.

The traffic came to a standstill. There had been a crash further up the road, towards the motorway traffic island, a shunt that had caused the two-lane carriageway to become hopelessly strangled.

Naeem had lived with his two brothers and two sisters in a big house on Hollins Drive. He was the youngest, Sean’s age. It was a good place to go to play. They would take their bikes and a football into the grounds of the hospital and kick it mindlessly back and to until it was too dark to see. Or they’d take their fishing rods and a few slices of bread for bait down to the gravel pit at the side of the M62 and try to tempt the tiny roach and perch to give themselves up while cows ambled over to watch.

Thursday nights, there was a film shown in the recreation hall, deep inside the hospital. He and Naeem would creep in, especially if it was an X-rated movie, and sit on the ping-pong table that had been moved to one side to accommodate ranks of plastic chairs for the patients. A fug of tobacco smoke hung around them, and something thin and antiseptic, as, slack-jawed, pyjama-clad, they watched what Naeem called “boo” movies: Jaws or Friday the 13th or Still of the Night. While Sean and Naeem jumped in all the right places, the audience’s reactions were disarmed by their dosages. There would be the odd moan, the zombified turn of a head, a cough that seemed too wet for anybody’s throat, but it added to the pleasure of the illicit viewing. Before the lights came up at the end of the film, the boys would leave, ostensibly to avoid capture by the projectionist, but mainly because the slow dance of the patients as they unwound from their seats was too horrible, too languid to observe.

It was nice, it was good to remember this stuff, but there was something unpleasant there too, as if another memory was itching to be seized upon, a memory that Sean had purposefully kept hidden because of the damage it might do him. The changes it might wreak.

It was too seductive though, this business of remembering, to be able to stop now. He had not spoken to Naeem for nearly twenty years, but his voice was loud in his head now, his features clear. The way he Brylcreemed his hair to one side. The shirt and trousers and shoes, no matter what the occasion. Stealing through the windows of the lodge house to play interminable games of snooker. Finding a hospital gown and taking it in turns to wear it, pretend to be a patient, lumbering out in front of the traffic. Bored one day, they had followed a couple for a mile to a field full of haystacks and, giggling until Sean was sick, watched them make love.

A police car had arrived and its occupants were now directing traffic around the collision. Feeling cheated, yet oddly relieved, Sean forced his mind back to the road and accelerated away from the accident. He steered the car around the large church, with its smoke-black masonry, and parked at a pub nearby, the Swan.

He walked up and down Myddleton Lane, the street where, according to what Sally had told him, Peter de Fleche had built a house for his lover back in the 1980s. Yet none of the houses on this long street bore the hallmarks of the multi-purpose blocks that de Fleche had designed. An hour later, the air filling with flecks of rain, Sean went back and sat in the car where he tried to read through his notes again. But the words would not settle before his eyes. Little bits of the past were forcing themselves into his consciousness. How he had never shared any of the meals that were cooked in Naeem’s house because he had been scared of spicy food. He used to have beans on toast, or biscuits and milk. Or cream crackers, crumbled into a mug of coffee. He’d kill, now, for some of the dishes Naeem’s mother assembled in that large kitchen, infused with cumin and coriander and turmeric.

He looked at his watch. The boys were meeting up at Victoria Park in half an hour. In the back of his car were football boots that hadn’t seen the light of day for ten years. Sean could almost feel what the pain in his body would be like on Sunday morning. He guided his car back onto the road and travelled towards town. This time, he studiously ignored the tower as he sped past it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: THREE IN A BED

AT AROUND THE same time as Sean was receiving Rapler’s phone call, Will staggered out of a rapeseed field just south of Stockton Heath and flagged down the first of the early morning buses into town. He had just enough change on him for the short journey and huddled in the seat at the back, enjoying the heat of the engine and ignoring the distasteful glances his fellow passengers shot him. His arm was stiff and sore but it did not feel as though he had suffered major damage.

The meal he had eaten the previous day was a distant memory. He was finding it hard to consider anything beyond the simple desire for food, yet this was good, he reasoned. It meant that, guilty though it made him, it was easier not to wallow over the fate of Elisabeth and Sadie. All he could hope for was that they had been collected safely by the police and were now being looked after. Any of the other alternatives he wouldn’t entertain for a second.

It was less cold in the centre of town than in the fields, but he felt it more now, as he hopped from the bus, because he was no longer pushing himself. He was tired and hungry. The despair he felt at having no money to buy breakfast was compounded by the hostility with which he was greeted when he tried to ask the way to Sloe Heath.

In the public toilet, he did his best to wash the grime from his clothes. He soaped his hair and face and rinsed them clean. He polished his boots as best he could, ignoring the looks of the men who came to use the urinals. When Superdrug opened, he sprayed himself with a little tester aftershave to mask the sweat that was permeating his clothes. One of the shop assistants smiled at him.

He ordered breakfast at a small café, wolfed it, and ran away without paying for his meal when the waitress left the dining area. At the bus depot he talked to a driver who showed him on a map where Sloe Heath was. He didn’t have enough for a bus out there, but he reckoned he could walk it in an hour or so. He thanked the driver, who said something in return, a concerned look on his face. But Will didn’t hear him. The driver was retreating down a tunnel. Will reached out to grab hold of him so that he wouldn’t disappear, and the driver dropped his timetables. The sound was deafening as Will fell against him. Will was unconscious before he hit the floor.

GOALPOSTS WITHOUT NETS, the sound of metal studs clacking on concrete, the smell of wintergreen and cold, wet earth. Sean left the changing rooms and their stale tang of exertion for the wintry field. His breath hung around his face as he checked the half-dozen pitches to see where his team mates were warming up. He saw them in a distant corner, making half-hearted attempts at stretching and jogging, seven heavy men in red shirts that were a size too small for them and black shorts that enhanced the lard-white horror of their legs.

He trotted gently over to the pitch, where he was greeted by a stocky man with a goatee and gel in his hair. The man was rubbing his hands together and hopping from foot to foot like an overly enthusiastic games teacher.

“Hi,” he said, breathily, and jutted his hand towards Sean, who shook it. “Danny Chant,” he said. “I’m the unlucky bugger who loses all blow-job privileges as of tomorrow.”

“Sean Redman,” Sean said, smiling. He winked at Nicky Preece, who crossed him off a checklist that was fastened to a clipboard. Jamie Marshall, the guy who had joined the demolition squad on the same day as Sean, was stretching on the touchline. He lifted a hand in greeting. Robbie Deakin looked the part, lean and agile, running in short bursts and violently changing direction.

“Ignore Robbie,” Nicky said. “He does triathlete stuff, so he doesn’t count. Everyone will be knackered after ten minutes. He can run after the ball when it goes out. Drinks like a fucking jessie. He might last an hour on the park, but he’ll be the first one home tonight.”

Nicky introduced him to others whose names would be little more than a vomit-coated gargle by the end of the day. He paid scant attention to the Johns and Steves and Trevors, nodding and smiling and shaking hands. As they were taking up their positions on the pitch, Sean having been asked to utilise his “sweet left foot” in midfield, he saw Tim Enever sloping across the park, in danger of being swept away with the gusty wind, like the crisp packets and the dead leaves. He was dressed in a huge coat with a hood that, if it was deployed, would completely envelop his head. His legs were stork-like beneath the bottom of the coat, wrapped in the usual skin-tight black denim.

The football match lasted for as long as the fair weather. In that time, Sean managed to make a few impressive passes and tackles and his team went a goal up. He was starting to enjoy himself when the light failed quickly. Sopping from a cloudburst after about a quarter of an hour, Danny Chant called out, “Cocks to this, boys!” and legged it towards the changing rooms.

Back inside, socks downed, lolling on the benches as the steam from the showers mingled with the smoke from the gaspers, Sean gratefully accepted a bottle of Grolsch from a coolbox. Naked, misshapen men drifted through the steam, swearing and laughing, necking beer. One of them looked straight at Sean, swearing as he told some staggish tale of find ’em, fuck ’em, forget ’em, and then disappeared into the befogged showers. But the face lingered.

“Shit,” Sean said, softly. He knew the face but he couldn’t place it. He leaned over and put his face in his hands. A name suggested itself to him. Futcher. Was that right? Eddie Futcher.

Sean righted himself, and took another swig from his bottle. Had he, Sean, changed much, since coming up north? A haircut, the loss of a few pounds, a bit more pink to his cheeks? He hoped so. He hoped there was enough of an alteration to prevent Eddie Futcher – the first person Sean arrested during his stint in the police force – from recognising him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: MYDDLETON LANE

IT WAS HARD getting up the next day. But Sean had a little trick when things seemed to get too much for him. He thought about Naomi, and how she couldn’t get up, as much as she would have liked to. In these moments, rising from bed became ridiculously easy.

How much had he consumed the previous night? He pondered that while he showered and shaved, scrubbing the excesses from his skin, though he didn’t really want to put an amount to it. It was a lot. That was enough. A bruise had enveloped most of his left knee, another formed a blue grin across his chest where one of the boys had elbowed him during the football match. His eyes looked back at him from the mirror: someone else’s eyes, too small, too wet, red-rimmed. He chugged back a pint of Alka-Seltzer and went in search of coffee.

Outside he bought a newspaper and ducked through the doorway of Charlie’s, a small greasy spoon that was about to go out of service now that the hospital across the road was opening its own café. He ordered a full English, whispering in the hope that his stomach wouldn’t hear what was coming to it, and settled down with the crossword. He couldn’t do any of the clues. He couldn’t eat his breakfast when it came. He thought of Naomi and the third de Fleche building. He thought of Emma. And found, once he’d started, that he couldn’t stop.

He took out his mobile phone. Punched in some numbers.

“Come and have lunch with me,” he said, and then: “Cancel it. Come and see me instead. At the Swan. In Winwick. Take you ten minutes to drive out here. Come. Please. One o’clock.”

The rest of the morning stretched out in front of him, too many empty hours, too much bad booze in his veins. He sat back in his split plastic chair and stared at the traffic swooping under the railway bridge. He ordered more coffee and let it happen to him, every greasy, grizzly minute.

How had he got through that nightmare? It was bad enough trying to dodge Eddie, but there had been one outlandish, Carry On moment that almost undid him. Assembling outside the changing rooms, in preparation to move on to the nearest pub to start the day’s drinking in earnest, Sean had cried off to Danny and Nicky, complaining that he hadn’t slept well and was feeling really washed out. He had batted away all protests and was turning to go when Danny told him that Eddie wasn’t staying either and could give him a lift into town.

“Do you know,” Sean said, “I think maybe you’re right. Mullered as I am, it might just do me the world of good to get some ale inside me and have some fun for a change.”

It had proved to be only a slightly better alternative to facing up to Futcher and risking his being exposed as an ex-cop. Punishing wasn’t the word. There hadn’t yet been a word invented to describe the hell Danny’s stag night visited upon him and, judging by the appearance of some of them come midnight, his companions too.

After the football, relocating to the Cheshire Cheese for a restorative first pint, it was put forward that the logical progression for the day was to walk to town, dropping in at the pubs on the way, and then head in the opposite direction, stopping off for a few lanes at the bowling alley, then turn back into town for the evening slog, a curry, and on to a club.

Sean did all that, and the last thing he remembered before the alcohol took him over and plotted its autopilot course for the evening, was how pleasant it was, really, to be legless in daylight. Tim Enever hung on the coat-tails of the pack, drinking orange juice and eating endless packets of prawn cocktail-flavoured crisps. He refereed during an impromptu pool tournament at the Lord Rodney. He got up at Tempo, a fun-pub with more video screens than punters, and sang an excruciating version of “All Time High” on the karaoke that shut up the entire pub and brought the manager downstairs to ask if it was possible that Danny Chant’s party could leave “before freakboy scared everyone away”.

Sean remembered speaking to Tim, as well as Robbie – before he made his excuses – and Nicky Preece, but he couldn’t remember what it was they had talked about. All he could picture was Tim’s owlish eyes rotating in his head and spilling their rheum and Nicky with his arms around him, calling him his “Wonderwall” and asking if he was planning on knocking himself in with his lump hammer.

He had pretty much dismissed all suspicions of the boys being in with Vernon Lord at all, or having anything to do with Naomi’s death.

Two a.m., he had been sitting with Danny Chant and some guy called Norman who Sean was adamant had only just turned up but who, according to Danny, had been there from the very start.

“And you were dancing with him, Redders, in the club.”

They were sitting on a fence overlooking a bowling green belonging to a social club. A bottle of port nobody could remember buying was doing the rounds. As was a cold doner kebab. Danny’s eyes were doing figures of eight.

“I pity the poor sod who’s getting married,” he said. “You’ll never catch me at that game.” Then he leaned over to vomit gracefully in the rhododendron bush, slipped and was asleep before he hit the deck.

“I need to take a piss,” Sean said, and leapt down from the wall, landing a foot either side of Danny Chant’s head. Norman raised the port bottle in acknowledgement.

“Don’t mind me,” he said, taking a swig.

Sean staggered deep into the trees, enjoying the gentle striping of wet twigs against his face. The canal emerged through the knot of branches, coils of reflected white light mixing into the treacly water. Something thrashed against the surface, a pike maybe, before becoming submerged again, leaving only a cluster of bubbles and a spreading ripple to suggest a presence in the first place. It was impressive to think anything could survive in that soup. From here, the smell was brown and oppressive; it lingered like the urinous reek of scorched dinners in your clothes. Sean unzipped himself and added to the rich stew. He watched steam from his waste rise lazily and drift off to the row of gleaming black railings that separated the banks of the canal from a clutch of depressed shops and upper-floor bedsits.

Sense descended on him; he recognised this place. He had rescued Emma from the bushes over there. Remembering what he had been doing around here was harder to dredge, but it came, when he recalled the route he had taken while running that morning, and the defunct ironmonger’s that he had observed Ronnie Salt enter.

He was sobering by the minute thanks to the cold and this business of remembering. A pervasive mist was reluctant to leave the canal’s dip; it sat deep and itchy in the pit of his lungs. Sean slipped and skidded down to the fence that kept people away from the bank of the canal. As before, he leapt over it – somewhat less stealthily this time – and hunkered in the shadows, listening hard for any movement that his clumsiness might have provoked. The light here was poor, only just reaching him from the opposite bank of the canal, where an illuminated towpath accompanied the journey of the water. The diffuse glow bled through the mist, picking out broken computer monitors and the radiator grilles from cars that had ruled the road during his youth: Capris, Chevettes, Princesses, Cortinas.

At the wall, and the high wooden gates of Boughey’s, the ironmonger’s, he tried to see through the cracks but the light here was not so generous. At least the building looked as dead as last time; there was no flicker of a lightbulb in any of the windows, no sound from a tinny radio station, or rustle of a newspaper page being turned.

Sean rooted around in the grass and found an old carpet with more holes than weave to it. It smelled heavily of soil and mildew. He hauled it to the gates and rolled it as best he could before slinging it over his shoulder. He began to climb, jamming his boots sideways into the gaps between the wooden planks. Nearing the top, he let the weight of his upper body hang on his left hand, curled over one of the stiles that supported the gate against its hinges. With the other hand he shook the carpet open, gritting his teeth against the strain, and flung it as high as he could so that it dropped onto the razor wire, protecting him from it as he scooted over. He waited until his breath quickly returned to normal. Adrenaline was chasing the booze from his system. Again he listened for movement within the building before sidling up close to a window. The view was as inky as that outside. He couldn’t see much beyond a few vague lumps that were outlined against a window on the opposite side of the floor.

The back door was a bastard. No way that was going to budge. Sean had found an iron bar and was considering putting a window through when he saw the black zig-zag of a fire escape camouflaged against the sooty walls. He clambered onto it and skipped up the metal steps, making little ting-tang noises with the toes of his boots. At the top, the landing fed a fire door that was only slightly more substantial than the entrance to a Wendy house. Using the bar as a jemmy, Sean wrenched it away from the lock, almost splitting the puny wooden architrave apart as he did so.

A breath of old things enveloped him. A smell of dryness and polish.

Again, he listened. There was a metronomic plesh of water dripping from a tap or a crack. The fluting of wind through a chimney that had not exhaled smoke for decades.

Sean pulled the door to behind him and let his eyes become accustomed to this fresh dark. He wished he had a torch, and considered coming back in the morning to explore properly, but realised there was no way he could do that now. When Salty saw that the door was broken it would be repaired and a better job made of it next time.

Ahead, a narrow wooden staircase took him down into an open-plan office above what must have been the ironmonger’s proper, where two old desks were arranged, facing each other. There was a Bakelite telephone on one desk, thick cord wrapped around itself. There were also two polished wooden trays, bearing labels upon which were written, respectively, in a cursive hand: IN and OUT. On the other desk sat a bulky Remington Noiseless typewriter, edged with a grin of light that had found its way in from the main road. There was a bowl with a single lemon in it, that had dried and shrivelled before its small wound of rot was able to spread. A game of patience had been abandoned.

Everything was coated with a fine patina of gum and dust. On the wall, a calendar for 1976 was pinned, forgotten. Sean flicked through it for anything to inspire him, but there was nothing beyond the glossy curves of women with bouffant hairstyles and heavy make-up.

Sean went to the window and looked out at the main street, feeling an itch beginning in the back of his mind that wouldn’t go away. Something wasn’t right. Across the road, saplings in a garden had been wrapped in plastic sheeting to protect them against the cold. Down on the shop floor, there was still a great deal of unsold stock. Grates and bedsteads and ovens formed solid shadows. Sean walked the narrow aisles between them, breathing air that was heavy with the clean, almost animal tang of the metal. There were drawers from old chests that were used to store different gauges of screws, nuts and bolts. A huge ledger was open on a crate, balancing a mug and a pencil within its pages. Saws on a rack winked at him as he went by. A heavy cash register sat on the counter, its tongue out. Post was still being delivered to the shop. A glut of it was fanned out by the door, ignored by Salty or whoever else locked and unlocked it.

Sean ducked under the counter and checked the recess for anything that might give him some edge over his colleagues. Three cardboard tubes were tied together with string, leaning against the back of the register.

It was while he was trying to make sense of the charts within the tubes that a key trembled through the lock and the front door swung open.

It was Ronnie Salt. Sean hunched under the counter and watched the older man stride through the shop, a mass of rope looped around one shoulder. Level with Sean, he stopped and sneezed. Sean watched him press a nostril closed with his thumb and blow the contents of the other nostril onto the floor. He repeated this process with his other thumb before climbing the stairs to the office. Sean was wondering whether to take the charts and escape when Salty came back. He retraced his steps through the shop and relocked the door. From outside came the snarl of an engine and the sweep of headlights across the shopfront as Ronnie departed.

Breathing raggedly, Sean nipped up to the office with the charts and, throwing caution to the wind, wrapped his jumper around the shade of a table lamp and snicked it on. Under the crepuscular flood, at first glance, the charts resembled blueprints or schematics, or architectural drawings, so clean and precise was the presentation of their lines. Yet Sean soon realised that he was looking at a series of maps, though they were constructed along the rules and regulations of no projection that he knew. The lands that were represented did not stir any recognition; they were unlike any countries he’d seen in an atlas.

He didn’t understand how these maps, if maps they were, could be of any help to him. After a few moments’ consideration, he repackaged them and stacked them behind the counter in their original position. He left the way he had come, after a cursory search for clues had yielded nothing else. All the way home, he thought of nothing but the alien charts that he had seen. And he carried them into his dreams too, the lines given substance, and he realised the places he had seen on the paper were places he knew in his own mind. Areas of his brain that had not been walked for many years.

He woke in a sweat, his hands shaking, but the dream was dead in his mind. As much as he paced, drinking coffee, he could not remember what it was that had filled his thoughts during sleep. Frustration had him on the verge of tears. He knew there was knowledge to help him. He just didn’t know how to access it. What lingered too, more than the maps, was the vision of the rope on Salt’s shoulder and the noose tied into one end.

EMMA LED A rogue stream of sunshine into the pub as she entered. Her fringe was flattened by her hood, and as she released it she gave it a scrub with her hand and made a beeline for the bar, smiling and pointing to Sean’s glass to see if he wanted another.

“What’s that?” Sean asked, when she returned with another pint for him and a small tumbler for herself.

“Malt whisky,” she said, luxuriously. Her green eyes filtered the light and spat it back at Sean, glittering with colour. Light fed her face, made her look impossibly attractive. She took a sip and her meaty lips disappeared as she savoured it. When they reappeared, they were red and wet and smiling.

“What?” she laughed.

“I’ll tell you, before too long,” Sean said, leaning across the bar to kiss her. He felt empowered whenever she was near. Unassailable.

“So what’s happening?” she asked. “You buying me lunch?”

“Of course.”

“What is it brings you up this way?”

Sean told her about the architect. “The place where I’ve been working is one of his,” he explained. “I’m pretty certain that the guys I’ve been working with were looking for something there. But they won’t find it now.”

“Why not?”

“Someone burned it down today, this morning.”

Emma said, “My God.” She reached for his arm. “You could have been working there.”

Sean shook his head. “I think one of the boys I work with did it. I think they just wanted to be sure that this something was there. I don’t think it was something you could put in your pocket and take away with you.”

“How do you know?”

“Just a feeling,” Sean said. “I think it was a search and destroy job.”

“What king of thing?”

He smiled. “I don’t know.”

Sean showed her the notes he had made. “There’s a house around here. This architect chap used to live there, or at least keep his fancy women there. I think these guys I work with would like to know about this place too. I think this place has something else in it that they don’t want others to know about.”

“Where is it then?”

“I don’t know,” he said again. “But neither do they.”

“Do you want me to help you find it?”

Sean drained his glass and nodded. “I think your intuitive skills might be of use. But no rush, hey?”

“Table twenty-six?” the waitress called out. They ate sandwiches and pinched chips off each other’s plates. Sean watched a customer punch buttons on the jukebox: Bowie, “Modern Love”. “This was the first single I bought,” they both said at the same time.

Emma told him that she was thinking of applying for a teaching course to get her out of the town. To start afresh. Sean spoke of his friendship with Naeem. Talking about him seemed to authenticate the memories, make them even more fresh and real in his mind.

“What’s he doing now?” Emma asked.

Sean shook his head. “I have absolutely no idea. Isn’t that the saddest thing? You grow up with these people and you think it’ll be you and them for ever. It should be you and them for ever, you get on so well. But something drives you apart. You lose touch. It’s criminal.”

Emma rubbed his hand. “It would be easy enough to find him, you know? Do an Internet search. Or he’s probably still in the book.”

“Maybe,” Sean said. “Come on.”

Outside, Emma ribbed him about the deliberate way in which he was walking. A huge articulated lorry thundered past, its logo in bright orange against a green background, a phone number two feet tall imploring customers to call now.

“I don’t seem to have a hangover any more,” he said, “but my legs are shot.”

Emma laughed. “They’ll be worse tomorrow. That’s what happens when you get older.”

Sean mock-chased her up Myddleton Lane, breaking off his pursuit when the uniformity of the buildings impinged upon him.

“He lived along here somewhere,” he said.

“Did he build the house himself?”

“I thought he would have done, but look, they’re all the same.”

Semi-detached blocks stretched away on either side of the street. Occasionally there were differences in taste represented by cladding or pebbledash or adornments, such as the metal butterflies stuck to the roof of one house, or the garish green used to paint the windowframes of another. Not one stood out. Nothing that said de Fleche.

“Have a nosey inside, then,” Emma suggested. “Maybe that’s what’s different.”

“It’ll take for ever,” Sean complained. “Do you know how many houses are on this street?”

“Ooh, I don’t know,” Emma said. “Twenty-six thousand?”

Sean stopped walking and stared at her. “What made you come out with that number?”

Emma shrugged. “I was kidding. Hyperbole, dear boy.”

“Something’s not quite right here,” Sean said.

“It’s raining, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, it’s numbers is what it is.” Sean grabbed Emma’s hand and led her across the road. “In the pub, what table were we on?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Then I’ll remind you. Twenty-six. It was table twenty-six.”

“So?”

“So you just said twenty-six thousand.”

“So?”

“So. The wagon that just went by. The phone number was two-six-two-six-two-six.”

“Sean. Don’t be so–”

“I’m not being so. The Bowie song in the pub. The guy keyed in A-twenty-six.”

“Ah. Well then, if you mention that, then it must–”

They came to a halt outside a house that looked much like any other they had scrutinised.

“Number twenty-six,” Emma said. “I didn’t know you were superstitious.”

“I’ve got nothing else to rely on,” Sean answered.

The garden was a riot of weeds. The bones of an ancient BSA motorbike leaned against the front wall, beneath the windows. There were no curtains in the windows at the front of the house but the view inside was hampered by a series of screens that reached from floor to ceiling. Two off-white buckets filled with cleaning rags and rusting screws, bolts and washers stood sentinel at the front door, comprised of a badly painted black frame that encased a single opaque pane, the view through which was further confused by an elaborate dimpling of the glass.

Sean rapped his knuckles against it and rang the doorbell. A few minutes’ wait brought nobody to answer it. He turned to Emma, who was standing by the gate, her arms crossed. He winked at her. “Let’s try round the back.”

A narrow archway punched between the semis allowed access to the rear of the house. Passing through a wobbly wooden gate that filled its intended space as well as a square peg in a triangular hole, Sean and Emma struggled across a tiny patch of thigh-high grass to a back window that was as miserly with its view as the front had been.

“What would you say to me if I told you that I think we should break in here?”

Emma closed her eyes and groaned. “I’d say, ‘What’s with this we shit?’”

“Good answer,” Sean said, and sent his elbow through the glass. They stood in silence, listening for movement, before Sean reached through the hole and unfastened the window.

“Cosy, isn’t it?” he said when they were standing inside, gingerly picking the larger shards of glass from his leather jacket.

“It’s bloody freezing,” Emma said, rubbing her arms and looking around the plain white room, which was unadorned by anything as simple as even a lampshade.

“It’s not been lived in for some time,” Sean guessed. There were two main rooms on the ground floor, of equal size, and a hallway, the floor of which was a mosaic of blue tiles that travelled from the front door to the back and gradually shifted through every conceivable shade from ice to navy as they did so.

“I think this is the place,” Sean said. “Let’s have a look at his kitchen.”

The kitchen was a bright, welcoming room with a large wooden table and a fireplace. The floor here was also tiled, in all shades of orange: a sun radiating spirals of energy reached out to the walls.

“Nice idea,” Emma said.

“Isn’t it?” Sean agreed, moving the toe of his boot along one of the spinning arms of colour. “Do you think it means anything?”

“There doesn’t have to be a signal in everything you see, does there?”

Sean looked at her. “I wonder, sometimes.”

Emma said, “Funny though, I feel I know this place. Maybe it was featured in one of those décor magazines once.”

Back towards the stairs, Sean held up his hand. The shadow of a man was on the glass of the front door. As long as they were frozen, studying the figure for a clue as to what action to follow, they could see that the man wasn’t doing anything. He was just standing there.

“Now that,” Emma said, when she realised it was an illusion, “is creepy.”

“Look at how he did it,” Sean said, pointing to a series of mirrors up the stairs that, when sunshine hit them, projected the shadow of a doll onto the glass of the door.

“What kind of a man wants to piss around like that?”

Sean started up the stairs, his boots thumping dully on the bare wood. “Maybe he liked to feel less alone,” he said. “Figures at the door, maybe they made him feel popular, as if he was getting lots of visitors.”

“Yeah, right,” Emma said, trudging after him.

On the top floor, the bathroom was an ice cavern, but without any shades of white whatsoever. It glowed in colours that could have been blue or green or both or neither. The two bedrooms were as spartan as the rooms on the ground floor. The tiles on the floor in the back room depicted a green island in the centre of a sea of aquamarine. Along the hallway to the front room, the colours suddenly disintegrated – soft reds meeting an ash-grey mess that took over until the threshold. Beyond it, the tiles created a perfect black limbo without anything to arrest the eye.

They were about to return to the ground floor when Emma stopped Sean. She had the look of someone trying to root around in her mind for the key to recognition of a face so weathered by time and experience that there could be no hope of success.

She was looking at a map of Pangaea stitched into heavy fabric hanging on the wall, the continents when they were all part of the same land mass. A breeze from somewhere was causing the bottom edge to move slightly.

She reached out and tugged one edge of the map away from the wall.

There was a door, a tiny wooden door with a loop of string for a handle, behind it.

A picture, drawn in crayon on an old piece of paper from a school exercise book, was tacked to its central panel. It was a childish scrawl, a bald man in grey standing on a green hill, with white holes for eyes. The sky was black and a black sun burned in it, edged with brilliance, like a perpetual eclipse.

Sean said, his voice breaking, “I know that place.”

Emma said, carefully, calmly: “I drew that.”

Their hands found each other.

Behind the door: more stairs. They were only half-way up, Emma at the rear, when she heard Sean’s voice, low and breathy, come whistling through his teeth: “Jesus fuck. Jesus fuck.”

The room stretched away from them. Emma was frightened to a point where she could not think clearly. None of the houses along this street had three floors, did they? And the roofs were too shallow to allow for this level of conversion. The ceiling was of an unknowable height, an insane height. The impossibility of it crushed her.

Sean stood on the threshold to the room and she could tell by the movement of his shoulders that he was crying.

“What is it?” she asked, softly. The house creaked and groaned around her as the wind and rain buffeted it. It too seemed affected by whatever it was that Sean had discovered.

“I’ve been here before,” he said. “When I was a child. But I can’t remember... I can’t remember how.”

She pressed against him and looked through the gap between his arm and the curtailment of the banister. The room had no tiles in it; the floor was covered with a ragged piece of matting. Chalked signs and messages had been scratched into it. The walls seethed in shadow and light, spoilt further by an imbroglio of graphite and ink and spray paint.

Emma said, in a voice too small for the room: “Me too.”

What illuminated the walls, what quaked and pulsed at the centre of the room, was hidden within a tube of fabric that was pinned and pegged to a scaffold that reached up to the eaves. An arched window, the only one on this level, provided a view of the tower at Sloe Heath, as if it were a painting, framed and hung.

Sean unfastened the fabric and let it fall. The fire that was revealed, burning in a small, ceramic crucible, was unlike any flame Emma had seen. The tongues of it, reaching to the newly revealed ceiling, were sometimes milky and smooth, sometimes purpuric. Acid whites became mottled with cartoon orange; sudden, impossible black flames measled with slowly expanding moments of electric green. At the ceiling, they rilled and plaited like flecks of rain on glass. The sheer alien spectacle was enough to shock tears from her, but what elicited the pain to go with it, a bone-gnawing sadness, was what coalesced at the heart of the fire.

She had not seen her grandfather for twenty years, yet here he was, bathed by the flames, as scrubbed and as fresh as a child. He turned to look at her, his eyes animated with joy. He was trying to speak to her but either the words were being soaked up by the conflagration or she wasn’t close enough to hear. The enticement of listening to a voice that had been lost to the vagaries of time and her untrustworthy memory was irresistible. She edged towards the tower of fire, cocking her head to improve the trajectory of his words, and saw Sean doing the same. Tears made his cheeks shiny. How could he be feeling this way for someone who belonged to her? She remembered weekends spent with this man, when her parents were having some time to themselves. She would sit on his knee while they watched Charlie’s Angels or Starsky and Hutch or The Six Million Dollar Man. He would waggle her toes and tell her stories about dark horses in stormy fields and angels who played with your hair while you slept and how that was what made you become more beautiful every day. He brought her cakes from the factory where he worked as a confectioner, icing buns and decorating birthday sponges.

She couldn’t say “Grandad” back then. It was too hard a word for her. She called him “Gaga”.

“Gaga,” she said now, the first time she had uttered the name since his death in 1976. It was like understanding what life meant. It was like, for an instant, glimpsing a detail of God’s face. He might as well have died yesterday, so fresh in her mind was he now. And suddenly she could remember how he spoke. The richness of his voice slammed into her consciousness with such clarity that she staggered. Sean reached out and grabbed her arm. He appeared to her as though through a sea of syrup. His eyes were wide, his mouth comically stretched. Was he shaking his head?

Emma flapped his arms away and turned again to her grandfather. He was laughing, his eyes screwed up, happy wrinkles squeezed into the corners of the face. “Count my happy wrinkles,” he’d say. “Count my happy wrinkles and times by five, that’s how long I’ll stay alive.”

Here he was, saying things to her again that she couldn’t hear. Conscious that Sean was behind her, reaching out, trying to stop her from being with a man she had loved so much, she ran to her grandfather, arms outstretched. The flames, when they consumed her, didn’t hurt at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: SALAMANDERMAN

“CROSS HIS PALMS with crimson, traveller,” the nut said, capering in Will’s wake like a harlequin on speed, busting his guts to impress a king. Ahead of them both, a man in a long brown coat was striding across the cricket pitch, the straps of his First World War flying helmet whipping around his neck in the wind.

“Plasma or fire, he takes either,” the nut was saying now. “He’ll juggle with flames and make your blood disappear into his skin.”

Will was exhausted, and in no mood for verbal trickery. After recovering from his faint, the bus driver giving him a cup of tea from his flask, he had thumbed a lift to Sloe Heath from a guy in a lorry on his way up to Leigh. At the hospital entrance he had stood for an age, as sunlight began colouring in the things around him, not quite believing that he had reached his destination. His relief was offset by the hollowness of losing Elisabeth and Sadie so close to his target. If it wasn’t for him, neither of the women would be... Well, best not to think too much about that.

He had not been approached by any staff as he made his way through the hospital grounds. It seemed that they were quite happy to allow pedestrians to use the path through to the north end of the site. He had barely walked for five minutes before he was accosted by this nut and his tall, silent, striding friend.

“Where do you want to go?” the nut asked. “Where do you want to be?” He was dressed in blue plus-fours and a white T-shirt. A red baseball cap was jammed down on his head, the peak violently curved. He wore tiny round sunglasses. His eyebrows were conjoined, forming a single black bar above the lenses.

“I don’t know just for the time being, thanks,” Will said, in what he hoped was a dismissive way.

“Just browsing, are you?” the nut said, and gave him a shocking, wolfish grin, full of long, white teeth. “Tarry a while,” he said, putting on an upper-class accent. “Take tea with Christopher and I, and we’ll talk of how we might help you. He said you’d be coming. We waited for days. But he was right. He was right. You came.”

Christopher wasn’t hanging around to see what Will would do. Will shrugged. It was just nice to get the offer of help after such a long time making his own luck. Keeping up with someone who was around six and a half feet tall wasn’t easy though. Will and the nut had to jog in order not to lose him.

“What’s your name?” Will asked, in an attempt to halt his plasma and fire nonsense.

“Yoda,” the nut replied.

“What’s your real name?”

“Tonto Moratorium-Pith. Junior.”

“Yoda it is,” said Will, trying hard to conceal his irritation. “What about him?”

“That,” said Yoda, reverentially, “is Christopher.” He said the name in a voice filled with awe and looked at Will expectantly, as if he should know who he was talking about.

“Who is Christopher?”

Yoda affected a puzzled look and pointed at the diminishing figure. “Christopher’s him.”

“Yes,” Will said, patiently. “I know. But who is he?”

“He is special,” Yoda said. “Come on. He makes blinding tea. And biscuits. Sublime biscuits the like of which you have never eaten.”

The sublime biscuits turned out to be a plate of malted milk, ginger nuts, and Jammie Dodgers. In a room that was like a shrine to brown, Christopher served tea from a brown teapot and sat cross-legged to drink it, his attention solely on the television, which was broadcasting a Rita Hayworth film.

“He won’t blink while he’s watching this,” Yoda educated Will. “But his mind will be ticking over like a Swiss clock factory.”

Will slurped his tea and ate more biscuits than he was probably welcome to, and found that they were sublime after all.

Yoda said: “Watch this.”

He cleared his throat and crouched by Christopher, looking up at his face as a mother might regard a son who had just come top in an exam.

“Twenty-eighth of May 1959,” he said.

Christopher said, in a sing-song voice: “Thurs-day.”

“Fourth of February, 1962.”

Christopher said: “Mon-day.”

Will sniffed. “Is that right? How are we supposed to check?”

“You try him then, doubting John-Thomas.”

Will shook his head. “This is stupid.”

Yoda took off his sunglasses. He might as well not have bothered. The eyes were small, black and round. Red marks remained where the bridge and arms had been. “You pig our biccies and won’t play? Then git, boy. Git. And see if anyone else will help you out. Our hospitality is third to second. And we’re second. And we happen to be second to none and all.”

“Sorry,” Will said, and thought of his own birth date. “Christopher. Eighth of June, 1970”

Christopher said: “Mon-day.”

Will clapped slowly. He thought of the date he had lost his virginity. “Tenth of May, 1986”

Christopher said: “Sa-tur-day.”

“Hurrah,” Will said. “Nice trick. Impressive.”

Christopher turned to lock eyes with him.

“Oh dear,” Yoda said. “You distracted him from his viewing.”

Christopher was crying. He said: “Flame me.”

“What?”

Yoda was flapping. “You heard him. Quick, quick, or it’ll be blood he needs. Where are the matches. Where are those bloody-goody matches?”

He reached over and drew Christopher’s hand out, palm upwards. Yoda struck a match and gently placed it onto the skin. The match flared and went out. A line of smoke rose from Christopher’s palm. Christopher leaned over and inhaled it.

He said: “21st January, Osaka, 2.03 p.m. 22nd January, Basel, 5.22 a.m. 22nd January, Darwin, 6.47 p.m. 23rd January, Birmingham, 10.19 p.m.”

“What’s this?” Will said, laughing nervously.

“I don’t know,” said Yoda. “He’s done it before but I don’t know what it means.”

“Write them down,” Christopher said. “Write them all down. You’ll wish you had if you don’t.”

He went on for another ten minutes, listing dates and locations and specific times. His tongue peeking from between his lips, Yoda scribbled what he was saying on the inside cover of a tattered Graham Greene novel. When Christopher had finished, he fell into a deep sleep from which he could not be revived, even when Will started kicking his chair and demanding to know what these dates meant.

“Leave him,” Yoda said, reverentially. “He has spoken.”

“Spoken gibberish, more like. I shouldn’t have come here. What a waste of time.”

“Christopher said, while we were waiting for you, that the girl wasn’t dead. That she would return to you. Soon.” Yoda’s beatific smile failed to curtail Will’s sudden rage.

“Sadie? What do you know about it?” he shouted, leaping from his chair and causing Yoda to rock back on his heels and fall to the floor. “Where is she? What about Eli? Cat?”

“I don’t know,” Yoda said, trying to crawl away. “I don’t know. Christopher said...”

“Christopher said? Christopher said? He doesn’t fucking know me.”

Will didn’t know what he was going to do but he had a very strong feeling he might actually try to harm Yoda or Christopher, anything in order to get some information from them.

He was reaching down to grab hold of Yoda’s T-shirt, ignorant to the barked demands for an explanation for his presence from the starched nurse standing in the doorway, her hands squirming together. He was reaching when, out of the window, he saw the mountaineer, Flint, striding towards him across the grass, gripping by the hair the heads of Elisabeth and Sadie.

But then he saw that it wasn’t Flint after all, just a groundsman carrying buckets of pondweed. The nurse had her hand on Will’s arm now, but he couldn’t turn away, even though the shape of his shock had been softened, made manageable.

“I think you should leave, sir,” the nurse was saying, at the same time as exhorting Yoda, whom she called Mickey, to get up and tidy his magazines. “It is you who should be leaving, isn’t it?” she said to Will, her brow knitting as she volleyed a glance between the three of them.

“Probably,” Will said, shaking his head. Nice place, he thought. Even the staff get in on the madness. He took the Graham Greene novel and stuffed it in his coat pocket, wondering what he should do now. So much of his hope had been pinned on Sloe Heath that he had been unable to see beyond what might happen here. He had hoped to find an answer to Cat’s death, or even to find Cat’s killers. He had not expected this Laurel and Hardy nonsense to impede him. There must remain some kind of clue here – why else would those murderers have mentioned it?

Unless, he thought grimly, as he headed for the exit, he had misheard after all and had wasted all of this time. If that was the case, then he deserved to wander these corridors for ever, with the rest of the nutjobs.

“No, no, no,” he heard Tonto/Yoda/Mickey whining, “you’re not right. You’re not right,” and the increasingly shrill demands of the nurse to shut up and play nice.

Will ran his fingers along the dense block of pages in his pocket, wondering what the dates could mean. A slap resounded through the shiny corridor, followed by the smash of a lamp. Will heard Christopher, his voice laden with sleep, laced with terror, say: “You promised never to hurt me! You promised you’d leave me be!”

And now someone else was speaking, but it wasn’t Mickey and it wasn’t the nurse.

“Did I make a mistake?” it asked, in a voice that sounded full of wetness. “Did I err?” An airless giggle tightened Will’s skin. He stood in the middle of the corridor, looking back the thirty feet or so to the open door on the left. Thin shadows jerked across the blade of pale sunlight that had collapsed across the hallway matting. Mickey and Christopher weren’t talking any more.

Will crept back towards the doorway.

“Was it him?” the nurse was asking. “Was it the other?” Her voice was muffled, and punctuated by rhythmic, moist smacking sounds. A lump stuck in Will’s craw; he suddenly could not get the dream memory of himself fucking Sadie out of his mind.

As he reached the crack in the door, he moved only his neck, stretching to make sense of the movement within that narrow gap. He saw the nurse half-undressed. But then, how could clothes be expected to cling to her when her own flesh could not? She was gamely trying to gather loops of subcutaneous fat as they peeled apart from the muscle, like so much molten cheese. But her true focus was elsewhere. It looked as though she were kissing Christopher. Her mouth was fast against his, but surely her face should not be journeying so deeply. He heard her trying to talk again, as she burrowed further. The tall man’s body hung slackly from the powerful joist of her neck. His leather flying helmet jiggled around his throat.

Will turned and ran when he saw her teeth begin to inch their way out of the back of Christopher’s skull.

“My God,” he moaned, as he hurtled for the exit doors, waiting for the crash of her pursuit. “God.”

Outside he pounded across the car parks, past a gaggle of white-coated doctors bewildered by his haste. Climbing the rise that took him onto the cricket pitch, he risked a look around and saw the nurse’s arm like a prop from a horror film, reaching out through the brick wall.

“Fuck.”

The cricket pitch was greasy from the previous night’s downpour, and Will forced himself to traverse it before he checked again as to her whereabouts, lest he slip. He felt horribly exposed on this huge square of lawn, the naked trees surrounding him, rattling in the wind. The space made him aware of the frantic schuss of his coat and the hiss of his breath as he sprinted. The colour and shade of the grass merged and separated under the insistent wind, like the nap on a suede coat when it is brushed. He was almost at the other end of the pitch when he saw the nurse emerging from the grass: a swimmer hauling herself from the deep. She even shook her head a little, as if to rid her ears of water. He viewed, with nausea, how scraps of Christopher’s face clung to the uncertain flesh of her own, how green blades from the pitch slashed her skin as she dragged herself clear and turned to look up at him.

He wouldn’t meet her gaze; not until he had to. Not until she had him and he could look nowhere else. He swerved right and scampered for a ramp that would take him into the laundry department of the hospital. Large, lidded skips queued outside, bulging with yellow plastic bags awaiting incineration. The smell of shit and disinfectant hit him like a shovel as he shouldered the door open; he heard the ratty clitter of what could only have been claws moving fast across the road in his wake. Elbowing past great steel cages rammed with dirty linen, Will ducked into a mess room and forced himself to freeze. A kettle was boiling on a Baby Belling, funnelling steam into the face of a chimp on a calendar. That day’s Sun fought for possession of the small table with a series of coffee rings and a bowl of labelled keys. Will silenced the room by removing the kettle from the hotplate. Sweat blinded him. He blinked it away. What if she was smelling him out? As if to confirm the fear, he heard a snuffling in the corridor, as of a dog pinning down the location of a hidden bone.

When the door opened, and one of the cleaners came in, Will laughed in disbelief. Because it was her. It was her. The woman who had chased him and Elisabeth from her house all those days ago in London.

“Cup of tea, mate?” she asked, and in doing so, a slick of drool flooded from her mouth. “Bit parky, isn’t it?” Her top lip fell from her face like a slug from a branch.

She made to rub her hands together but the mime only resulted in her gluing the muscles of the two limbs together. Her flesh stretched and tore as she attempted to separate them, and, her concentration lost, she made herself fully known to him, shedding the hastily donned disguise of whichever hapless cleaner she had devoured outside. Will took two steps towards her and swung the kettle, connecting with her head just above the right eye. There wasn’t any sense of jarring, just a sickening giving way of the meat, as if there was no bone beneath to support it. Perhaps there wasn’t. Boiling water spattered her face, and poached an eye in an instant, turning it opaque. Her shriek, Will guessed, as he dived for the doorway, was not of pain but of frustration. He didn’t hang around to see how that fury would manifest itself.

He clattered through corridors, turning left and right at random, hoping that the sickly-sweet smell of medication, disinfectant, and mental decay would unhinge her and shake her off his tail. He thundered out onto a tarmac drive that led to the carriageway. He was half-way up the gates, trying to cock his leg over the evil spikes without skewering himself, when he heard her behind him, mewling like a lost pup. He watched as she staggered after him, and feared that there would be no respite until she had him dead and ingested.

In the seconds before he managed to disentangle himself and drop to the ground, he found himself marvelling at her mercurial skills, no matter how clumsy they were, because he knew she was better than she had been when he first encountered her and that she would no doubt continue to improve. He backed away from the gate as she shambled towards it, reassembling herself from whichever body patterns she had absorbed and made her feel comfortable. She hit the gate and wrapped herself around its bars, becoming interstitial, forcing the solids through her body with little grimaces of pain. He didn’t hear the sounds of tyres screeching on the road, or the blare of a horn. It was almost, in the moment that the car hit him, that Will had become like her, so that instead of being shunted onto the road the vehicle would simply travel through him, and he would filter the metal and plastic and leather and tissue through his body until it was on the other side of him, and the car could go on its way.

He didn’t see her finish her journey through the bars. He was too busy screaming at the pain that was ricocheting through his body. And dimly, he was aware that the scream was not just for his pain, but an accretion of agonies that had heaped upon him over the last week. Agonies and terrors in equal measure that his body, in extremis, was only now beginning to deal with.

PART THREE

ULTIMA THULE

Death is talking to us. Death wants to tell us a funny secret. We may not like death but death likes us.

– Gustav Hasford,

The Short Timers

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: THE GUARDIAN

SEAN’S HEAD RESTED against the lip of the bath. His arms were bared, as if readying themselves for a needle. Blood in the water webbed the flesh below his elbow where it had been flayed. Deep cuts to his thighs hung in feathered crimson gouts. In his despair, he’d done for his left eye: its gelid cargo formed a clear, stiffening thread of fluid over his cheek. The razor blade was a red tablet sticking up from Sean’s thumb.

Emma studied the scene as a way to concentrate on staying upright and calming her heart. She found herself snagging on minutiae previously overlooked: a spatter of bleach discolouring the shower curtain, a crack in one of the wall tiles.

She sat down on the toilet lid. Eventually, Sean opened his good eye.

“I waited for ages,” she said. “I thought it was happening.”

He wiped the mess from his cheek and fingered the sticky remains of his socket. He said, “This isn’t going to fucking work.”

THEY HAD BEEN staying in the safe house for the best part of four weeks. As she dressed Sean’s wounds while he sat on the edge of the bath trying to fasten the gashes in his thighs with safety pins, Emma thought back to the moment that Pardoe had caught up with them. In the intervening weeks, she had been able to think of little else. The little man in the round spectacles and the brown worsted suit had arrived on Sean’s doorstep a little after three in the morning, when she and Sean were trying to relax Will. It had been a bizarre evening up until that point. After almost running Will over on the dual carriageway back into Warrington, they had bundled him into the back of the car when they saw what was trying to follow him through the gates of the hospital. All Will had done, in his delirium, was mumble what sounded like “casually” over and over. In a way, Emma had been grateful for the incident. It prevented her from concentrating too much on what had happened at 26 Myddleton Lane. It prevented her from suspecting she had finally gone mad.

Once they got Will back to Sean’s bedsit (he had railed violently against being taken to the hospital), they covered him in a blanket and let him sleep. Still he persisted with his strange litany, only now, Emma noticed, as he relaxed, did it sound as though he was repeating names. “Cat”, he would say. And “Eli”.

“Who do you think he’s talking about?” she asked Sean, but Sean wasn’t saying anything. He was sitting in the dark, in an armchair by his window, his fingers steepled together and pressed against his lower lip. She thought, maybe, by the way the low light from his kitchen glistened on his face, that he was crying. She did not go to him, but sought her own retreat, curled in a ball on Sean’s bed, hugging a pillow.

An hour later, Will woke her with his thrashing on the sofa. In sleep he was begging to be killed. She went to him and revived him, helping him to calm down, bringing him tea, stroking his forehead. Sean had not moved.

“What’s to be done?” she asked him.

“Things haven’t even started yet,” Sean said, cryptically. She wanted to ask him what he meant, but he was distracted by the sound of footsteps on the pavement. He put a finger to his lips and glared at her. When the footsteps ceased outside his door, Sean went downstairs. Emma heard him open the door while the visitor was in the middle of knocking.

It had been the strangest day she had ever lived. And now it just got weirder. The oddest thing, Emma thought now, as she carefully dressed Sean and kissed him lightly on the mouth, was that she had taken in everything Pardoe said to her as if he were trying to sell her life insurance. She had been mildly bored by it, yet understood that it was really quite important.

Jeremy Pardoe had been Sean’s guardian, many years before. “The only one left,” he said, almost smugly. “You would have had a guardian yourself, Emma, but no more. Frederique, her name was. Nice woman. Ran an amber shop somewhere out in East Anglia I believe. She died a number of years ago. I’m getting a little too old for running around after Sean now. I never thought I’d have to again of course, but, well, there you go. I’ve got some younger legs outside in the car to do my running for me.”

Pardoe had a sleepy voice that carried something of the Highlands’ softness in it. When she asked him about it, he confirmed that he was from Oban. A maltster by trade, as had been his father and grandfather.

“What brought you south?” she asked him.

Sean had rubbed his forehead, irritably. “Emma, he’s doing the talking. Let him finish, and then we can get on to swapping recipes and putting each other on our Christmas lists, okay?”

“No, Sean,” Pardoe had said. “It’s really all right. It might be best for her to hear this at her own pace. You’ve had a busy day.”

“Where’s my guardian?” Will said, groggily.

Pardoe had smiled. “You, sir, never had a guardian. But you’d make a very good guardian for someone else.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Will said, and turned away from their conversation.

“Well,” Pardoe sighed, moving to the window where he teased open the net curtain with his little finger. “I’ve known you, Sean, for a long time. I was detailed to shadow you from your fifteenth birthday, a couple of years after we lost you. You know, when you ran away from home.” He put his hand to his face and rubbed a while. “God,” he whispered. “I thought there’d never be a time when I had to tell you this. I thought the links were down. I thought the territory had been barred.”

Sean heard something squeaking stertorously but couldn’t be bothered to show surprise when he realised it was the sound of his own breathing. Deliberately, he walked to the sideboard and pulled Will’s gun from the drawer. Turning, he pointed it at Pardoe’s head. Pardoe was ice.

Emma said, “Who’s we?”

Sean and Pardoe ignored her. Sean said, “You know about my parents?”

A nod.

“You killed them? What? You worked with them?” He was getting jittery. Sean had never trained a gun on anybody before and he did not like it one bit. In the Force, he had done a little target practice, but had never taken it seriously. A rookie, he was a long way off being considered for armed service.

Emma said: “What about your parents?”

Now Pardoe held up a hand. “I don’t know about any of that. We didn’t know your father was involved with anyone or had deals with anyone. We were trying to track down people with, ah, a strong constitution.”

“What are you talking about?” Sean asked, his bead on Pardoe already wavering. Although he didn’t understand what the man was saying, he understood him to be innocent. Somehow he was as familiar as the jacket Sean had owned for ten years.

Emma’s first question caught up with him and he echoed it. “Who’s we?”

Pardoe did not answer. Clearly he had rehearsed this moment for some time, and his delivery was as dead and level as his hands were active, moving against each other, lightly greased with his perspiration. “You were the vanguard of a special project funded by a secret... society,” he said. “At the age of thirteen, as you reached puberty, it was decreed that you would be controlled, killed, and sent on your mission. You too, Emma. And a girl called Naomi.”

At this, Will turned his attention back to Pardoe. His face was all: What have I got myself into now?

Sean dropped the gun to his side. He suddenly looked very weak. “Naomi? Killed? Mission? Jesus, Pardoe I–”

“There was a man. A very important, very dangerous man called de Fleche. He disappeared. To a place he should not have gone to. We had to track him and bring him back, or... things would have become really not very nice. That’s when we started work tracking down suitable Inserts. The first wave we tried either died or were trapped inside. With hindsight, I suppose we put them in too early, before their training was completed, before we really knew what we were dealing with. But you... you were the true vanguards. You took to the Negstreams like a babe to the teat.”

“Negstreams? What the fu–”

Pardoe silenced Will with a wave of his hand. “I’ll fill you in on Negstreams some other time. For now, I reckon it’s important you find out who you are. Or rather, that you remember who you are.”

“Who was it tried to kill me? Weird woman she was. Coming apart at the seams like something made out of wax.”

“Ah,” Pardoe said. “I didn’t know about her. That makes things a bit trickier, it has to be said.”

“Who is she?” asked Emma.

“Well, I don’t know specifically, but she sounds like Canaille to me.”

“Can I?” Will said. “Can you what?”

“Canaille,” Pardoe enunciated. He spelled out the word.

“Like that’s supposed to mean anything to me?” Will sat up, his face hard-edged.

“You’ve drawn a blank with us too,” Sean said.

“Our opposing forces have a knack, shall we say. There’s a way of plucking from the ether certain individuals who, crude as they are to begin with, have skills that are above and beyond anything you or I could boast. Give them a little time and they can hone these skills until they are ultra-sharp. We are talking about extremely dangerous killing machines. Sorry to get all horrorshow about it, but there you are.”

“Plucked from the ether?” Emma said the words as if they were the magical combination with which to invoke a spirit.

“After a fashion, yes.” Pardoe rubbed his hands together, clearly delighted with the prospect. “They need a way in, it has to be said. A physical entry. This usually will be an expectant mother. Not that there’s much hope for mum or child once the Canaille individual has borrowed that route into the world.”

“I don’t fucking believe this,” Sean said, the words coming hard and nasty, curling his lip.

“Believe it,” Will said, quietly. “I saw it happen. I saw her. I remember her. They called her something. Cheke, I think it was.”

“Cheke. Yes, that’s one of the swine. We know about Cheke.”

Emma’s face bore the look of someone who had eaten something sour. “It has a name?”

“Of course.” Pardoe seemed put out. “We’ll have to watch out for her. Do not underestimate her. She might seem a bit ungainly at the moment, but she will grow into her role. She is a supreme talent, make no mistake. She will improve.”

“You sound like you admire her,” Will said, bitterly.

“Oh, I do. I do. She is to the land what the shark is to water. She has few peers. Be alert, my friends. You must be very, very careful. I can’t emphasise that enough. She’ll do for you all if you aren’t.”

Pardoe’s jaw clenched and relaxed as a silence wadded the air between them. Into it, Sean whispered: “Why are you telling us all this?”

“As I was saying, there were three of you, three Negstream Inserts,” Pardoe continued. “I thought that only Sean had survived. But his running into you, Emma, sounded the alarm bells. It’s like there’s some kind of, shall we say, ripple when Inserts get together. It’s there. Very strong too. If you know how to look for it.”

Inserts. That word again. Sean liked that. Not one bit. He returned to the cupboard, put down the gun, and withdrew a bottle of Absolut.

“Sit down,” he said. “Tell us everything. But don’t expect me to stay sober.”

It was almost five a.m. by the time Pardoe finished. Sean and Emma and Will had drunk most of the vodka; the bottle lay stoppered on the floor between them pointing out through a window that was gradually filling with chalky streaks of light. Pardoe had refused to drink with them. He told them he would wait in his car, an olive-green Jaguar that was parked in the street, for as long as it took for them to feel comfortable enough about the situation to join him. He would take them somewhere safe. Where they lived at the moment was not safe. Outside elements were closing in. It was time to move.

Unspoken questions fluttered around Sean’s mind but their urgency had been tempered by Pardoe’s gentle voice and his unheralded, understated revelations. Sean’s unease about Pardoe had vanished before the knowledge that he had found an ally for the first time in his life. It helped to be told that Naomi had been a part of it, something that he instinctively knew to be true, as it was with Emma.

Hadn’t he always felt something different? A calling, a significance that plucked at his imagination, like a dream that refused to be remembered? Hadn’t he always possessed the dead zone of what had happened to his parents without ever fully understanding the source of it? It was a dark land that he returned to whenever he slept. He had always thought that the knots in which he was trapped were for him alone to pick at. He never believed the knot might be solved by someone else. Having a discussion that involved his parents, people he had not referred to in public for as many years as they had been dead, made him feel sick.

An hour or so later, Sean, Emma, and Will trooped out to the Jaguar. Pardoe was sitting in the passenger seat, nibbling on a croissant. A large man in a blue cagoule nodded at each of them via the rear-view mirror as they got into the back. Jamie Marshall.

“Hi, Marshall,” said Sean. “Recovered from the stag night?”

“Sorry to be so hush-hush, mate,” Marshall said.

“I doubt I’ll ever be surprised by anything ever again,” Sean remarked.

“You know each other?” Emma asked.

Marshall drove for twenty minutes, navigating A roads and B roads with an almost supernatural knowledge of where explosions had prohibited access. They arrived at a church on the outskirts of Warrington just as sunlight was touching colour to the streets.

There Pardoe kept them, and told them what they needed to know.

“It is unfortunate,” he told Sean and Emma, when they gave their account of what had happened in the house on Myddleton Lane. “But, expected, given your resourcefulness.”

“Why unfortunate?” Emma wanted to know.

“Because once you have passed through a Negstream, you cannot use it again. You have to find your own way back. We think that this is ultimately what did for de Fleche. He constructed his follies around these glorious gateways, one of which he no doubt passed through, and then found that they were as useless to him as a fart in a colander. Oh, do excuse me.” Pardoe flushed. “I’m given to these pathetic little collapses in etiquette. Quite unforgivable. When he found another, he went through and stayed there. He’s been there ever since.”

“And we were detailed to go in and get him?” Sean asked. “Get him how? You can’t bring a dead man back. You can’t kill a dead man.” He looked around at the others. “Can you?”

“Well, he’s not dead. That’s the thing. There are ways and means. It really is fortunate that we found you. De Fleche, in the years since we lost you, has become quite a problem. He’s upsetting the balance and causing a gradual decay. Which is bad for all of us, really. He shouldn’t be there. That’s the bottom line. Negstreams were never meant to be used for travel. They are momentary monuments to the dead at the instant that life departs. The soul made visible as it leaves the body. Death’s mirror, perhaps. Sometimes, like the one you found, Sean, they remain. Flukes of nature, they are. Frozen memories of a life. True ghosts. They are not doorways. Not doorways.”

Will wanted to know if what he had glimpsed after his accident with Elisabeth on the motorway out of London had been a Negstream. He wanted to know where the “there” Pardoe had mentioned was and what it might be. He wanted to know if Catriona might be “there”.

“It’s possible,” he said. “But I wouldn’t bother trying to find out if I were you. You aren’t trained for it, dear boy. You aren’t... one of us.”

“What can happen if this guy stays over there?” he asked. “I mean, he’s been there twenty years. So who cares? Let the fucker rot.”

“He isn’t dead. And he’s in a dead zone. How healthy can that be? He is in the place where we all go the second we die. His presence is causing it to decay. Dead things cannot rest easy there.”

“How does that affect us?” asked Emma.

“Well, now, how should I put it?” Pardoe pressed the back of his hand to his mouth and studied the middle distance for a few seconds. “I suppose it affects us because, well, because the dead can leak back.”

Will said, into the heavy silence: “You. Fucking. What?”

Pardoe nodded. “Marvellously put, lad. It’s true. The dead walk among us, if I might be so bold as to put it in hammy language.”

They sat in silence, digesting this, while Pardoe slurped at his tea.

“How do we go about getting back there then?” Sean had asked.

Pardoe spread his hands. “Do you know, I haven’t the foggiest.”

SEAN GREW JITTERY around ten o’clock so Emma took him walking. She’d fastened his coat up to the collar in order to disguise his scarified features. Sunglasses concealed the destroyed eye. They’d draw attention on this wintry night, which they could do without, but not as much as an open wound.

He walked stiffly against the restraining bandages on his legs. He leaned heavily against her and she smelled the copper of his blood seeping through the makeshift dressings. She helped him walk to the estate entrance, where they turned right, towards a tunnel of pedestrian bridges and sodium light.

“Can we stop a moment? I’m having trouble breathing.” He hacked up a lot of blood, and she wiped away the crimson bubbles and ropes from his mouth while he bared his face to the rain. “God, Emma,” he said, “didn’t it used to be so easy? You’d turn a trick here and there and have food for an evening; I’d break my back chasing shoplifters and things would keep moving. I’ve made a bit of a mess of things. I do apologise.”

She hushed him and held him a while, thinking that, compared to what she’d been doing when they first met, this wasn’t too bad. Not really. Remembering his conversation with Pardoe, she gently asked Sean about his parents and why he had not volunteered the information about them earlier.

“Why?” he asked, cruelly. “Because you feel an extra-special bond between us? Because you think you’ve got a right to know stuff just because of what we are?”

“Never mind,” she said, trying to smile to show that she didn’t care what level of divulgence he wanted to allow. The smile didn’t fit too well.

When she felt the rain trickling down the back of her jumper she moved away from him. “Come on,” she soothed. “Let’s get us a drink. Get us both dry.”

In a grim little pub, Sean slumped into a chair while Emma bought whisky. They sat together in silence and sipped, Sean’s damaged fingers curled awkwardly around his shot glass. The punters formed a thin gruel of human waste in the bar that evening. They were either propped up like puppets in broken chairs or sinking their measures of rocket fuel in slow motion, eyes fixed upon a hazy somewhere between heaven and hell. Around the red baize of a pool table pock-marked with cigarette burns, three men took it in turns to smack the cue ball into the pack without the manifest intention of potting anything.

The bartender leaned against the counter at the far end, eyes swivelling up from his motorbike magazine to watch old sports videos playing on the TV that dominated one side of the room. The sound was muted; two teams – one wearing red, the other, blue – stroked a football around a pitch.

A woman in a fake fur coat piled through the doors, the wind and rain at her back as though fuelling the fury she seemed to contain. “Where’s Joey?” she shrieked, looking around the bar. “Shitting priests, I’ll swing for him!” Then she was gone, the door rattling in its frame.

The bartender hollered at the men playing aggression pool to help with the storm shutters, and they returned a few minutes later, having secured the wooden covers over the windows, to be offered free drinks and a towel.

“I like this place,” Sean said. He regarded his drink for a moment and apologised to Emma for snapping at her. “It’s just, I’ve kept so much locked inside me for so long. Sometimes I think about talking to someone about it, but it’s almost as if it never happened and that talking about it will make things bad for me again. Not talking about it keeps the lid on tight.”

Emma leaned over and hugged him. “What are we going to do?” She could see her reflection in the brass tabletop. Even in its honey colour, she could see the dark patches that shaded her eye sockets and hollowed her face. That morning she had brushed her hair and been mortified to find a hank in the bristles the size of a tennis ball. I know what I shall look like in the coffin, she had thought, inspecting the mirror. It had not taken a gigantic leap of the imagination to see how she would appear when she was old. And only ten years previously she would have been unable to legally buy a drink in this bar. All that tautness, that sass, was gone. All that pink.

Sean noticed Emma slump and reached out, stroking the back of her wrist. When he had opened his eyes in the bath to find her sitting by him, waiting, he had been overcome with a surge of need and affection for her and knew then that he loved her. He had recognised their link, at a level too deep for him to comprehend, and believed she did too. Making flesh what had until now been some kind of forgotten knowledge made things between them awkward. But they had both found de Fleche’s house and the strange flame within it. They had both peeked through to see what lay on the other side of the portal before Sean pulled them out as the door locked, the flame solidifying and crumbling to dust as they staggered back. But this whole experience was obviously debiting her reserves of energy. He could see it in the pallor of her skin and the lines that grooved her forehead. The way she looked at him now, for example, over the rim of her glass, an expectant look in her eyes. And a resignation too. Slow fright. He knew that she was building up a defence against the fantastic events that were invading their lives. If he wasn’t careful, she would shore herself up so completely that he would have a hard time getting her to speak to him about anything. She was slowly closing all the doors, all the windows. Switching off all the lights.

“I’ve always dreamt of that place–” they both said.

IT WASN’T TELEPATHY, but Emma understood him, and trusted him, more than anybody else she had known. She had dreamed of the hill and its strange population ever since childhood, but she had never credited it with much thought beyond her sleeping hours. She had no idea what it signified, if anything, nor did she pay much heed to it, until now, when Sean confessed of his own awareness of the place.

Sean said, “Pardoe told me that Inserts were agents who were trained to work in unusual territories. Under unusual conditions.”

Emma shook her head. “But I don’t recall being trained for anything.”

He wasn’t fazed by that. “You know I’m telling you the truth. We share the same dreams. I don’t remember being trained either. I just know something happened when I was younger. Something bad.”

She shrugged. “Race memory. Coincidence. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not because I’m an Insert, or a Pervert or whatever jargon it is that you’re trying to sell me.”

“Pardoe says that we are in danger if we stay here. Anywhere, more than a few days at a time.”

“Oh really? Why?”

“He says that we’ll be tracked down and destroyed.”

Losing patience now. “By whom?”

“Whoever it was that trained us in the first place, when we were kids. They thought we weren’t fully formed when we escaped, that we couldn’t have any sway on what happened. But obviously we can. He says that the same ripple that alerted him could also alert the people who got us involved.”

He made to take another swig of his whisky, but he had finished it. The bartender noticed and brought a bottle over.

“You saw that thing, that doorway in Myddleton Lane,” Sean continued when the bartender had taken up his original position. “We almost went through, for God’s sake.”

Emma nodded. “What is that place?”

“Pardoe kept referring to it as the Zoo. I don’t know.” Sean rubbed the back of her neck with his fingers. He noticed that the guys playing pool had picked up on the bandages covering his wrists. The bandages that were staining heavily.

“Look, Emma, do you think you could help me staunch some of this blood? It’s getting a bit too obvious. I mean, do you think I’ll ever stop bleeding?”

Emma rummaged in her coat pockets and pulled out some fresh packets of gauze. “What’s the Zoo? And how can we influence what happens in it?”

“I don’t know what the Zoo is. I suppose it’s the area we dream of. And I don’t know how we affect what goes on in there. But someone thinks we do. And feels threatened enough to do something about it.”

Sean was looking tired. She felt sorry for giving him such a hard time, but she couldn’t accept the way things were panning out. Her entire life so far had been dangerous, but predictable. It was when events started getting so that she couldn’t second-guess them that she became worried.

Sean said, “I need this. It might help me to find who killed my parents. Who killed Naomi. Naomi was a part of it. She was like us. They want us dead.” His face was set and she could see this was something he had been patiently waiting for all his life. He was hooked. He said, “You’re not convinced, are you?”

She shook her head, a little sad smile trying to soften the blow. And then: “I don’t know.”

“Let’s get back,” he said. He said: “I love you.”

RAIN, AND LOTS of it.

Marshall left a dent in a corrugated fence, failing to stop as he barrelled out of the alleyway opposite the tower block. He hardly felt his knee smarting. All he could think about was the gun in his hand and the need to get up the stairwell without expiring. The smell of toasted car and petrol hung around his clothes and clogged his nostrils, flooding his throat with a burn that at least kept him awake.

He had never seen anyone move like that before. He looked back. She was nowhere to be seen.

He wiped his face with a soaking handkerchief. Okay. Up ahead, losing itself to the sheet of rain above the streetlamps, stood Bagg Tower, one of the less savoury estate buildings in this part of the city. He picked up his pace, splashing out into the main road, having to climb over the bumpers of the parked cars clogging the street. As he stepped onto the road a shot rang out and he watched his left hand turn to mist at the end of his arm.

It’s not hurting, he thought, a moment before the pain exploded up his side and swamped his mind. Gritting his teeth, he dashed into the shadows beneath the punched-in forecourt of the estate, grateful that the streetlamps were smashed and the windows on the first two floors dead or boarded up. He chanced another look back from the safety of the dark but still couldn’t see anything. Another shot: the shell scorched his cheek as it screamed by and embedded itself in the wall.

He took the stairs at a canter, trying to listen above the clatter of his heart and the static hiss of rain for her noise as she pursued him. Pain flooded his body and he greyed out, only regaining his senses when he clouted his head against a drain pipe. He could smell the wetness of his flesh where the shell had torn him open.

Here she came. Here she came. He could hear her moving through the rain. It wouldn’t have surprised him to see her dodging the drops, mindful of how the water in her clothes might slow her down. The way she moved... in his delirium, Marshall almost laughed with the grace of it. He managed to lever himself up to look over the edge of the balcony, and as soon as he did so about a square foot of masonry disappeared, inches away from his face. She was shooting on the lam and she’d be here in about thirty seconds to mop up. He knew he was dead. It was just a matter of timing.

“Sean!” he called out, but his voice was relinquishing him, or he was relinquishing his voice. It was strange. He had never before felt so pumped up and yet so tired at the same time. The adrenaline flying through his system had no doubt been put there by the bullet that took his hand off, but the loss of blood was getting to him already. A veil was falling across his vision. There was not long left.

Marshall let himself into the flat with the key Sean had had cut for him. He moved through the corridor, listening to the rain fly off him and spatter the thin carpet. It was dark in there. Reaching out to flick on the light hardly helped, but he knew what all that was about. Hold out, just for a bit. God, the water. It was coming off him like he had a tap switched to flood mode. It was only when he reached the end of the corridor, where the unnaturally white glare from the strip-lighting in the kitchen fizzed its acid tones across the linoleum, that he realised that it was his gored arm that was causing the noise, emptying him of blood in little spurts and spits.

“Sean?” His voice was a croak, nothing more. Behind him, in the thrashing rain, he thought he heard footsteps on the stairwell, but they didn’t seem fast enough to be hers. He doubted he would hear her anyway. “Emma?”

Up ahead, the bedroom door was ajar. He could see shadows moving across the wall. He made his way, perilously slowly, towards the chink of light, wondering at the motes of colour that were spinning around the threshold. A moan. He heard a moan from the bedroom. God, please, had she beaten him to it? Was she here already? Was she killing them already?

Marshall staggered on the carpet and reached out his hand to break his fall. He collapsed against the door, feeling the specks of whizzing colour sting his flesh as though they were travelling right through him. In the bedroom, he saw through eyes that were filling with blood that Emma was naked, straddling Sean who lay on the bed. They couldn’t see him. They couldn’t hear him. Fading, he pulled his gun and summoned as much strength as he could to fire a bullet into the ceiling.

Emma whipped her head round at the retort. Marshall couldn’t be sure if the shock she registered was at the sight of him or the spectacle that filled the doorway behind him. He wished he could have stuck around in order to find out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: WORST CHASE SCENARIO

DEATHCHASER.

Will thought of the word and felt the bitter taste flood the back of his throat again. He had first heard it whispered in a café that morning as he breakfasted on poached eggs and toast. It had clearly been used to describe him; nobody else was eating at the neighbouring tables.

“You say something?” he asked the men hunched over the counter, drinking from chipped mugs of coffee. Heads shook.

Will had returned to his meal, mildly satisfied by the way he had silenced them. There had been a degree of fear in the way they regarded him, he felt. That could only be a good thing.

But, deathchaser.

They couldn’t know of his mission, could they? It was something he had decided to embark upon alone. So that meant – what?

Will twisted the rear-view mirror around so that he could see his face. Did he look that bad? Really that bad? The dusky arcs beneath his eyes, the pauperish complexion, the mottled aspect of the skin stretched across his hands – did these things make him appear as though he were on some irrevocable decline? Couldn’t it be seen as a good thing, his losing some weight?

He pushed the mirror away and concentrated on his job. On the passenger seat lay the Graham Greene novel. The End of the Affair. God, if only. It was in a parlous state now, that book. The covers had slowly come away and he had had to tape them up to keep the volume from disintegrating entirely. He had tried reading it, during cold nights parked off the roads, in an effort to keep sleep at bay, but as much as he admired the style, he had found it much too depressing. The bombs, the hatred, the jealousy of it all. It was all a little too close to home. Instead, he ran his fingers over the list of dates that Christopher had recited to him, in the hope that the ink from those dates past might imbue him with some comfort. The list was death. The list, though written in ink, might as well have been chiselled on stone, branded on the foreheads of the coming dead, an irrefragable mark of Cain.

The twenty-ninth of March, Hungerford Bridge, London, five past midnight.

Wasn’t it the ultimate irony, his travelling back to the capital after such a traumatic journey north? He felt like a character in a paranoiac novel, shoved from dire situation to even more dire situation. The night streamed around his car. Somewhere out there, Elisabeth and Sadie were buried or on the run. He hoped it was the former. It seemed that anyone coming in contact with him these days was better off dead.

He had narrowly missed out on the last date. The last English date, that was. He had neither the money nor the steel to attempt to travel to the other places in Christopher’s list. The chances of being picked up for Cat’s murder at air- or seaports were too great. Desperation had driven him to the roads. That and the knowledge that police resources would be stretched to extremes during this wave of terrorism.

Where had it been, that last one? His first attempt to get to one of the locations after the penny dropped as to what Christopher was getting at. Somewhere outside Leeds, a village on the outskirts. Boston something or other. Will had been trapped in traffic, maybe five miles from his goal, when the time Christopher specified elapsed. There had been nothing for it but to go home. On the way, his radio told of a fire in a tea shop on the main road through the village. A reporter at the scene was saying that fire crews were struggling to get the blaze under control and that the hopes of finding any survivors were low. It had been busy in the tea shop. It always was, according to neighbouring shopkeepers the radio reporter had interviewed. The woman that ran the tea shop never had a bad word to say about anybody, apparently.

Will checked his watch. He had a good six hours to make it to London and her river. This was positive action. Unlike the navel-gazing that Sean and Emma were being exhorted to undertake. He couldn’t understand how he had been cheated of new friends by that primping, preening prick Pardoe. For the first time he had felt safe, among similar lost souls who might be able to understand his dislocation, who might be able to offer answers to questions he did not yet know how to frame. But they were lost to him, hours after saving his neck.

“Jesus, Christopher,” he said. “Jesus. You were superb. But I’m glad I didn’t have to live in your head.”

21st January, Osaka, 2.03 p.m. There had been an earthquake in the afternoon, measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale, just as people were emptying canteens and parks in the city, filing back into their offices after lunch. The death toll, 24 twenty-four hours later, had been put at a conservative 12,500.

22nd January, Basel, 5.22 a.m. A coach from England, carrying around fifty tourists on a skiing vacation, plunged off the road into a ravine, killing everybody on board.

22nd January, Darwin, 6.47 p.m. A birthday party turned into a grisly search for bodies after half a dozen backpackers staying at the Froghollow hostel went for a swim and were set upon by great white sharks. Will had seen a picture of one of the two survivors. He had a chunk out of his torso that resembled a bite mark in a biscuit.

And on, and on. A catalogue of carnage. How had Christopher been able to foresee all of this? How did he live with the knowledge? More, why didn’t he act upon it and prevent the accidents from taking place? The more he dwelled on the questions, the worse he felt. But if it weren’t for Christopher and his crystal ball, there would be no way of finding out what had happened to Catriona, of that he was certain.

Five miles shy of the capital, Will ditched the car and thumbed a ride into the city from a woman in a Morris Minor on her way to Elephant and Castle. In the half-hour it took for Rebecca to take him to the Strand, he learned that she was coming to stay the weekend with friends as part of a college reunion. She was getting married in the summer, to a man she had met on her course ten years previously.

He wished her well as he released the seatbelt and lurched out of the car. She was smiling, and in the colour of her cheeks, the rude clarity of her eyes, he recognised, for a second, something in her that until recently had fed him. He felt saddened by their conversation, as if it had tried to impinge on a part of him that had once been aware of hope and love. The clunk of the door as he slammed it shut might have been the shutters locking in the part of him that had understood warmth and security. All he wanted now was answers. There wasn’t much time for sentiment. Not much space for it either.

In a pub on the main drag, he drank lager without tasting it and swung his gaze to the clock behind the bar with metronomic regularity. It was a busy night. The pub was convenient for Charing Cross station and welcomed a mix of politicians, City workers and theatre-goers. Cliques buzzed and vibrated in batches of movement and regimented colour, magnets that repelled other groupings. There was tension in the air and Will wondered if it was being engineered by something beyond this social bagatelle. Maybe it had its source in what Christopher had foretold. Did these people, as they sipped their Pimm’s and gins and Guinnesses, have some animal signifier that was coming alive within them? Did they sweat in its shadow? Did they prickle?

Will felt it, coursing through his bones like cold. A couple of women in tight, shiny dresses knocked into him as they made their way to the toilets. He barely felt it, although they had caused him to drop his glass. He didn’t hear it shatter, or their apologies or offers to buy him another drink. He pushed his way through a corridor in the scrum and felt the bitter night air crystallise on the sweat that coated his chest as he reeled outside. Rain flashed in broken obliques where the streetlamps picked it out, liquid Morse code carrying messages too swift to be read. He splashed down towards the riverbank, clutching the Greene novel in his hand as though it were a cudgel. A train was nosing out of Charing Cross station, one of the last rides home, and he watched its broken passage through the lattice of girders on Hungerford Bridge. Couples were bent against the driving rain as it laced them on the pedestrian walkway across the Thames. Big Ben tolled midnight. Will scampered up the steps to the bridge and waited, his tongue thick and dry in his mouth, for something awful to happen. He counted seconds and had reached 300 when he heard the beginning of it.

What had he suspected, during the lonely drive south? A drowning, a collision of trains. A car crash. A collapse of scaffolding. Someone. A few somebodies. A blip on the statistical charts compiled by end-of-year accident and emergency investigators...

The thrum sounded like persistent thunder. It vibrated in his chest and made the rails and the girders pick up the song. Studded in the rain-scratched darkness, following the trajectory marked by the old river on a path to Heathrow, were the headlights of what sounded like a jumbo jet. But there was something not quite right about the sound it was making. It sounded like a big plane trying to do an impression of an even bigger plane and failing badly. It sounded, machine though it was, like a shriek of distress.

Will felt the cold air drying his tongue but could not close his mouth to protect it. He watched as the jet came out of the sky, twisting over to the left in a graceful banking manoeuvre that did not correct itself. Black smoke was chugging out of one of the engines on the port side; its mate was intermittently breathing fire. Carbon streaks concealed much of the empennage and the portholes. The air appeared ready to shear apart under the weight of the protesting engines as the pilots struggled to right the plane. Will felt the bridge quake as the portside wing clipped it. What he saw next, as the plane tumbled overhead, was hindered by the criss-cross of black metal. The bridge, where it had been struck, was on fire. Some pedestrians, drenched with aviation fuel and alight, had thrown themselves into the water, mindlessly desperate to consume one form of death with another. A train with its roof ablaze stopped short of the platform, as if unsure as to what to do. Will could see figures on board, rushing along the aisles to doors that were locked.

He sprinted across the bridge to the South Bank, trying his best to dodge the liquid flames that dripped from the metalwork above him. He was just over half-way across when he heard the jet impact. He felt it through his feet as the bridge shuddered. He hurried down the stairs and followed the Queen’s Walk east. A false sunrise had come to the city. It lit up the south-facing sides of the Houses of Parliament and Banqueting House. It turned the water furious orange. Fire surrounded the London Eye, which was tilting precariously over the river. The smell of aviation fuel was mixed with scorched dust and a terrible stench that was like burnt hair. As he approached, the heat already drawing the skin tight across his face, the Millennium Wheel gave up the ghost and toppled into the Thames. A huge tidal wave took off up the river, competing with the roar of the fire. Unable to get any closer, Will cast about for some sign, frantic that he was missing something.

Arc lights stitched the night over the city: scrambled rescue helicopters coming in fast and low to circle the accident site. Will saw Lambeth Bridge in front of him and Waterloo Bridge behind become clogged with emergency vehicles, but their sirens were no match for this roast’s clamour. The snout of the jumbo had pitched up against what remained of Westminster Bridge, a jagged grin having torn the undercarriage away from the part that housed the cockpit. It resembled the head of a shark coming up to attack. Bodies flung from the aircraft lay naked and glazed in impossible positions. Across the water, on Victoria Embankment, a great swathe of people had materialised, appalled and mesmerised by the inferno.

Will’s tears evaporated as soon as they fell. He retreated from the intense heat when he realised his jumper was smoking. He was about to turn away from the broken jet – firemen were pouring onto Jubilee Gardens – when he caught sight of a dimpled sheet of molten metal that emerged from the twisting columns of black smoke at the heart of the fire. It was perfectly square, and upright. It looked to Will like a large mirror, but its reflecting surface was a rilling, fluid riot. He remembered seeing something like this on the motorway, when he had carried Elisabeth away from their wrecked car. Then, as now, he was tickled by the conviction that he had been allowed a glimpse behind the complexity of death and understood what it meant, what it signified. But it was like waking from a vivid dream and finding it unwilling to resolve itself in the mind. Out of reach, on the tip of his tongue: a black thing in a dark room, and Will was hunting for it wearing sunglasses.

The dimpled sheet faded from his view, perhaps as the shattered hearts around it gave up their pulses and their last pints of blood. He couldn’t have approached this thing and touched it, as he would have liked, or looked upon its surface to view what might have been written upon it, and hoped to survive. He’d have been dead as soon as he came within fifty feet of it.

It was only as he hurried back along the Queen’s Walk, bitterly enjoying the fresh bite of cold air, that he realised, after all, that might be the point.

CHAPTER THIRTY: IN COUNTRY

“HE’S DEAD. LEAVE him.”

“But Sean, we can’t just–”

“We can. We’re going to. Now.”

Sean was moving as best he could, collecting his clothes under one arm and shooing Emma towards the door with the other. He caught sight of a slender woman in a black cocktail dress moving through the front door with all the padded stealth of a panther.

“Who’s there?” he asked. For his pains, he got an eyeful of timber as the doorway flew apart. Emma yelped and scrambled into the kitchen, trying to pull on her skirt.

“Fire escape,” Sean said, grabbing the Walther from Marshall’s fist. He was moving backwards slowly into the kitchen, dressed only in a pair of boxer shorts, when she leaned her head around the doorway. The eyes were shifting around the flat, taking it in, the body constantly moving, like the seep of oil. Sean squeezed off a round and watched the bullet pass straight through the flesh of the woman’s forehead. The wound rippled and closed itself up. The woman might have frowned. That’s all.

“Right,” he said. “Fine.”

Emma was on the fire escape by now, clanking down it as fast as she could. Sean followed close behind, again moving backwards, his gun cocked and ready, for all the good it would do them. They struck off across the wasteland at the back of the tower block, aiming for the canal and the numerous neighbouring streets, which they hoped were gloomy and narrow enough to allow them to lose their pursuer.

Sean kept checking back and was rewarded with the sight of a black figure, moving impossibly fast on the other side of the wasteland, seemingly intent on blocking off their progress. They got to the canal, where Sean lost sight of their attacker among the long reeds that fringed the bank.

“Come on,” he cajoled. “Across the bridge.”

They scuttled over the wooden walkway, Sean peering into the distance but seeing nothing. He eased up on the opposite bank and, keeping his gaze fastened on the only access point across the canal, pulled on his trousers and shoes.

“Who is it?” Emma demanded, breathlessly.

“I don’t know, but Will, remember Will told us about that crippled thing that was chasing him? I think that’s her. I think. Maybe.”

“Fuck,” Emma said. She seemed impressed. “She, she...” Emma waggled her hands, trying to put it into words. “...she moved.”

“I know. Come on.”

The thick nest of terraces were formed like a maze. Darkness helped them move through it, sucking them into the core of green at the centre of confused streets and pathways. Few of the streetlamps were functional. Around half of those that did work spat and fizzled chancy orange light, a poor man’s disco. It did strange things to colour, this sodium pulse. It turned the skin into a dappled, beaten armoury of greys. Twenty minutes of rat-runs saw them hunkering down behind a squad of wheelie bins by a creosoted fence. The house at their rear was still awake. The sounds of laughter and glasses chinking. A smell of curried food. Beyond that, the night was silent but pregnant with something that felt like anticipation. It prickled the skin.

“How long do you think we’ve been waiting?” Emma asked after another twenty minutes had expired. “I’m cold.”

“Oh, not long enough,” he replied, drawing her under his arm.

“How long before we can go? How much longer do we have to wait?”

“Bit longer,” he said, and turned to smile at her. “Helpful, aren’t I?”

“Marshall’s dead, isn’t he? We couldn’t have saved him?”

“I don’t think so. He had lost a lot of blood. He was coming to warn us, remember that. He wasn’t coming to us for help. He saved our lives.”

“What do we do now?”

Sean squeezed her arm. He felt better. The wounds were knitting together quickly now. He could feel the fizz of repair coursing through his body.

He remembered something from his childhood. His mother leaning over him with a wad of cotton wool dipped in TCP.

“Where does it hurt, love?” she had asked him. “Show Mummy.” And he remembered laughing and trying to pull the cotton wool out of her hand. What had he done? Tripped on the road and grazed his knee? But in the time she had pulled his trousers down to sterilise his cuts, the wound had healed. A quick healer, they had said about him. It’s because he’s got good blood. He’s a strong lad, that one. On the football pitch, hoofed into the air by reckless defenders, he had picked himself up and plodded on. Tin legs, they had nicknamed him. Sean had believed it all. If you weren’t used to injuring yourself every time you fell over, you didn’t question your lack of bumps, bruises, breaks.

“When Marshall came in,” Sean said, “what was it he was covered in? I mean, what was it in the doorway? The colours.”

“While we were fucking?”

“Yeah. The colours. The light.”

Emma kissed his cheek. “Maybe you were dizzy. I was that good.” She kissed him again. “It was that good. Had to be we were disturbed on our first time, though, hey? I was ready to knock Marshall’s block off, before I saw what had happened to him.”

Sean returned his attention to the opposite edge of the lawn, where the pale narrow houses huddled together as if mirroring or mocking them. “I think, maybe, it was a way through. Being, I don’t know, born.”

He felt Emma drop away from him, an infinitesimal collapse. “Because we were fucking?”

Sean shrugged. “Jesus, why not? It was our first time. Remember what Pardoe said about ripples happening when we met up. Well, having sex... maybe it’s intensified the ripples. It’s triggered off something else. Something new.”

Emma digested this for a moment and then giggled, drawing herself into his protective warmth again. “You shouldn’t be throwing such big stones in,” she said.

Emma was having trouble trying to stop laughing now, but it was bitter, edgy laughter that threatened to spill over into madness or tears. Sean stopped it by kissing her hard. He wished he could pass something on via the kiss, as if in his saliva he possessed some balm that could help Emma make this transformation and help her cope with the immensity of the changes in her life.

Sean

He whipped his head up.

Emma, sobered now, said, “What is it?”

“Shhh.”

Sean

“Someone’s here,” he said. “Can you hear?”

Emma stiffened. Her hand rose out of the shadows between them and a finger pointed. Out of a black cumulus of hedges, Marshall stumbled. Now they both heard him, his voice weak, almost childish.

“Sean?” He sounded unsure, as if the mind controlling the utterance could not fully appreciate the awful prospect that he was still alive. “Sean. Help. Me. Emma. Emma. Save. Me. Oh. God.”

Emma began to rise, her breath coming in stitches, her eyes filled with tears.

Sean held her back and put a hand over her mouth. He drew her face close to his and slowly, deliberately, shook his head. Emma’s eyes widened and grew angry. He leaned into her and whispered, as quietly as he possibly could, “Marshall is dead. That is not Marshall.”

Marshall was standing at the centre of the green, cocking his head, as if he had somehow caught a sliver of what Sean had passed on to Emma and was trying to pinpoint where the fragments of sound had come from.

Watching Marshall, Sean could see little things, little tell-tale signs that suggested it was not the man. Marshall would not wear his hat so far back on his head, like Sinatra. His belt buckle was tied across his coat, something Marshall never did because it made him feel restricted and didn’t allow him access to his gun. This Marshall had thrust his destroyed hand into his pocket. Sean guessed that was because, dead, it would have stopped bleeding. This Marshall could not replicate the flow that was needed. This Marshall had to hide the lack of bloodshed.

Sean saw the only way they could escape. “Here,” he mouthed to Emma. She gaped at him uncomprehendingly. “Love me. Fuck me.”

Already his hands were moving under her skirt, touching her, trying to coax some heat and wetness from her. She protested, trying to wriggle back, her eyes on Marshall as he staggered across the green. But maybe something in Marshall’s gait, the way his drunken stumble had arrested itself and was becoming, by the second, more controlled, caused her to give pause.

“Trust me,” Sean said, rubbing his fingers against and into the soft, moist yield of her sex. He guided her hand to his trousers and she unzipped him, drawing him out into the cold. He risked, “I love you,” because he needed to say the words and he needed her to be reassured. She nodded and leaned over him, quickly stiffening his cock with her mouth. She drew away and shuffled over him, apeing the position they had been in earlier. When she sank on to him, she had to stifle a moan by stuffing a fistful of jumper into her mouth. They moved against each other as slowly as they dared, and instantly rainbow motes began to tremble in the air, six feet away. It was like white noise on a television screen. Emma’s thighs trembled at the end of every upstroke, Sean’s when he rose to meet her coming back down, the price they had to pay for stealth: every shred of them wanted to speed up, to sprint for that delicious moment.

Emma watched Marshall, or what had once been Marshall. He seemed to have shed every aspect of the pretence, but for his shell. He knew they were there. He could read it in the warmth that had impinged upon the cold air of the park. He could smell the animal in them as they rutted. But he couldn’t see them. Yet. She recalled the pathetic, determined figure that had pressed through the bars of the hospital gates, like an unpopular child desperately trying to keep up with the would-be friends who were attempting to lose her. This person had evolved. This was real danger. It possessed knowledge and guile and strength. Will would have been dead by now, were he in the same situation from which they had rescued him. She wondered, as she felt herself grow giddy from the soft, impossible rhythms that her body was being sucked into, if the creature’s evolution had reached its ceiling yet. She wondered if, in a short while, it would be able to see them in the dark, if its eyes might develop some kind of thermal recognition now that it realised such a thing would be useful to it.

Pondering this, she felt the moment upon her. She knew she was going to come soon and could not stop herself from upping the ante. Sean tried to respond by reining in her new energy but she would not be denied. The colours sparkled and pulsed, as if catalysed by this development.

And Marshall saw.

The colours coalesced, forming a vertical palette. Smears of fresh hues as the colours merged ran up and down the palette as it twisted, creating a column. The air around it seemed to distort, as if unsure what side of the column to be on.

Emma bucked against Sean, beginning to make soft, yelping noises. Sean gave himself to the feeling too, and within a few strokes was there with her. They lurched apart at the moment of climax. Cheke was rushing them now, the glamour that was Marshall already reabsorbed. She shot twice, but the curtain of colour between them distracted her aim and the bullets were wayward. Dogs had started barking all around them. Lights were coming on in bedrooms. The third bullet caught Emma in the throat and she went down, clutching her neck with both hands. Somehow Sean managed to drag Emma into the maelstrom before Cheke laid her hands upon them. He had the final impression of her gun rising, level with his head, but he threw his arm across his eyes and toppled forwards into the cold fire. This time there were no faces in the flames, no incitement or enticement. None was needed.

Now, as with the first time in Myddleton Lane, Sean rewarded his courage, or recklessness, with a scream that he believed would never end.

A LOCK-UP GARAGE in the south of the city that he had broken into. A bottle of cheap wine. The remains of a bad chicken sandwich from a petrol station’s shop. Was this all he had left? Everyone with whom he came into contact had left him or died. Everything he owned had been reduced to rubble.

Will spread the tabloid on top of the crate and shifted his position on the cold, uncomfortable stone floor. There hadn’t been a car in this garage for years, although a black oil-stain proved that it had once been used for that purpose. Now it seemed the garage was used primarily by tramps, or crack-smokers. Someone had tried to set fire to the garage and succeeded only in blackening the walls and leaving behind a permanent sour-scorched smell. There was a sleeping bag in the corner, but it looked too ragged and stained to offer any comfort. Inexplicably, a garden rake and a broken hockey stick leant against the wall. The only other object in the garage was a cardboard box filled with swollen, mouldy paperback books.

The death toll from the previous day’s accident had reached a thousand. Of those, around six hundred had died on the ground. The number of victims was apparently increasing by the minute. Emergency crews weren’t rising to the questions asked of them by grisly reporters as to the likely final total. The newspapers had gone ahead with their guesstimates anyway. There were a lot of noughts.

Had Parliament been in session... they fantasised, lustily. If the crash had taken place at rush hour...

Will’s thoughts turned to that beautiful rippling mass at the centre of the inferno. It had resembled a wall of water, or of molten steel. He wanted it so badly. He could almost feel what it would be like to immerse himself in that thing. He might displace the surface without breaking it for some time, like the dimpling that a waterboatman’s legs create on the surface tension of a pond. He might suddenly burst through its pellicle in a sudden implosion of silver bubbles. He could taste a bright, fresh flavour – what an apple might taste of if it were a hybrid of fruit and steel – feel the gush, a slight astringent sting, through his nostrils. Brilliant shivers against the skin. What might there be to see on the reverse? He had to have it.

But there were no more dates from Christopher. The Graham Greene novel’s dark itinerary ended with this crash. He rubbed at the inked appointments as if believing that some final secret date might reveal itself from the smudges he was creating. He sat for a long time, trying to remember what Catriona’s laughter was like or how her lips felt on his body. He couldn’t do it. His memory wasn’t up to the task. Or was it that, as he shed the people who connected to his life, they became intrinsically, essentially unimportant? They didn’t have immediacy any more. They were memory. And memory faded. When Will died, he thought, Catriona would cease to exist for anybody anywhere. It would be as though she had never set foot on the planet.

Will pushed himself away from the crate, suddenly aware of the panic in his breath and the restive knock of his heart. Had Catriona existed at all? What proof had he that she had been there? If he met a stranger and tried to convince him of the reality of a woman that he had loved, that stranger might be as unmoved as the garden rake by the wall. He wouldn’t have to believe in her because he didn’t care. Whether she had existed meant nothing to anybody who had never met her.

Will jammed the heels of his hands against his eyes. She means something to me. But how could that be true, when remembering the colour of her eyes, or which of her breasts bore a pair of freckles, defeated him? He spent more time now thinking of the perfect stillpoint that announced itself in the midst of chaos than he did the thousands of seconds he had spent with Catriona.

He flung the Greene at the cardboard box and grabbed the rake. If Catriona did not matter to him, then how could anybody else expect to?

“IT’S DIFFERENT,” SHE said.

“How?” he challenged. “I can’t see any change.”

“Look.” She took his hand and led him along the path. The black sun burned fiercely in a white sky scratched with black chalk clouds. “The last time we were here, just for those few seconds, these buildings here were fine.”

Sean looked at the buildings, then looked at Emma. He didn’t get it. Patiently, she described how the windows of the building, the last time they were there, were clean and whole. Now some of them bore cobwebs and greasy smears. Some of them were cracked or missing. Others had been boarded up.

“So?”

“So nothing. So something. So what?”

They walked on. It was too new an experience and too much of a relief to have cheated death to allow a coldness to develop between them. Sean apologised.

“It’s okay,” Emma said. “It’s been a bad day.”

Had he been disappointed to find a humdrum city through such a magical, awe-inspiring door? It had not been high on his list of expectations. He found himself wondering if they had passed through into a different place at all, when he saw the people on street corners chatting while they toted carrier bags rammed with food, or dogs crouching in the gutter, emptying their bowels. It didn’t appear to possess anything to mark it out from the place they had departed. No angels. No dragons. No Cheshire cat.

“What’s this place called, do you think?” he asked. “The Zoo, as Pardoe said?”

“We could invent a name for it, if you like.”

“I’m sure it already has a name.”

“Why? It might not. Just because it seems familiar to you, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it will be called something like Stoke or Liverpool or Hull.”

Sometimes he thought he caught a glimpse of the nuances to which she alluded. It was a little bit like playing spot the difference. A police car might flash past and it would be a full minute before he suspected, the image catching up with him, that the C in POLICE painted on the bonnet was actually a K. POLIKE. But it was after the fact that he had these intuitions. He couldn’t check them out. The next time he saw a police car, the letters were spelled correctly, but after the car was long gone, he started doubting there had been anybody sitting inside it. A bird flitting from the branch of a rare tree was gone before he could ascertain whether or not it owned a beak. They turned a corner just as the corner of his eye insisted that a woman walking down some steps to a wine bar was shedding little pieces of her body. A bus roared by, belching clouds of black smoke from the exhaust, which blinded him to his initial sighting of a man in the window taking bites out of a badger.

By the time they reached the end of the long, busy street, his head was pounding.

“I need to slow down a bit,” he said. “Can we have a rest?”

In the rear of a coffee shop, well clear of the entrance, Sean rubbed his head and sipped hot chocolate from a large mug. Whatever else was out of whack about this place, his drink was real, almost life-affirmingly hot and sweet. He warmed his hands on the mug and looked around him, catching his reflection in a mirror that eclipsed one entire wall. His eye had recovered well and a surreptitious peeling back of his cuff revealed a completeness about the flesh, where it had been riven. Only a slight discoloration remained, the razor’s route outlined in white.

Emma was resting her head in her hands, regarding him across the table through the steam from her green tea. The bullet’s path through her throat had left scarring but already the wound was sealing itself. Being here seemed to have changed her, slightly. Her eyes seemed to contain less white; the iris was fatter here. When she spoke or breathed, tiny, almost imperceptible vibrations spoilt the air around her lips. Sudden movement caused a similar disruption. He saw it as he stirred his drink with a spoon. He saw it too blur a woman’s head behind the counter as she sneezed. Watching for too long made him feel nauseous.

“I can’t believe that the hill we dreamed about will be a part of this place,” he said. “It all seems too busy.”

“I don’t know,” Emma said. “It’s busy, but it seems manageable. Best we don’t give up on it before we’ve started. We’ll get there in the end.”

Sean nodded and drained his mug. He had noticed another subtle upheaval: the change in their dynamic. Before arriving here, Sean had definitely driven their progress and felt, sometimes, that he was shielding Emma. Now the balance of power had shifted. He felt good about that. He felt comfortable. She reassured him as much, he hoped, as he reassured her.

“It doesn’t seem so noisy, outside, does it?”

Emma picked out her tea bag and discarded it on the saucer. “Well, we’re underground.”

“I know, but still. The din up there was awful.”

The din, when they returned to street level, was still awful, but Sean couldn’t shake the belief that it had been reintroduced as they came back to it. As if it was all for their benefit. Something about these people too, so vital, so vocal, hinted of only recent animation. When he voiced his concerns to Emma, she seemed uninterested. “You might be right,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be sinister. It’s just different.”

They continued down the street, happy for now just to absorb the newness of this experience. It was nice to not have a direction in mind. To not have immediate purpose. “Do you think she can come through too?” Sean asked. He didn’t feel he needed to qualify the “she”.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe if she does, she’s different too.”

Sean fell into step beside Emma. He held her hand and tried to accept the differences around him. He couldn’t accept that there might come a time when they would never seem alien to him. He turned his head, too late, as a door snicked shut. He looked at Emma but she hadn’t seen. Or if she had, she happily accepted that a man could reach into his own chest, pull out his beating heart, put it to his ear and return it, seemingly satisfied, back inside.

THEY CORNERED WILL in a school.

He had been shot in the leg and he could feel blood still seeping out of the wound, even though he had tied his belt around the calf, just above the bullet’s point of entry. How had it come to this? He didn’t understand. It was frightening, really, to consider how far, how rapidly, one could fall from what had been, on the face of it, an unassailable position.

It had all gone wrong so quickly. He had stalked up the high street with his rake, but all his intentions had been spirited away the moment he started trying to choose victims. Should he take the lives of the old or the sick? Might he get the same result if he killed a dog? The beggar sitting outside the bank? Who would miss him?

In the end, his choice was taken from him. He accidentally tripped up a man of about twenty with the handle of the rake that he was dragging along behind him. The man’s mouth was full of the anaemic pie he clutched in one hand. The other was stretched around the shoulders of his girlfriend, an older woman on the heavy side, with features that seemed to be concentrated too much at the centre of a large face. It was as if someone had fed a hook through the back of her head and was trying to pull the face inside. She wore a large, billowing white T-shirt and leggings that emphasised podgy, orange-peel thighs.

“Ot the uckinell jaffink...” the youth began. A blue tattoo teardrop clung to a cheekbone. Across the knuckles of the pie-wielding hand, more blue: LUVV.

“Paste him, Teddy. Go on.” The pinched singularity of the woman’s face made little tremors as she spoke. A rouged pinhole at the centre was plugged with a cigarette that she sucked violently.

The man looked at his girlfriend, looked at his pie, and looked at Will. Then he dropped the pie and extravagantly slapped invisible crumbs from his fingers. Then he swaggered forwards, rotating his shoulders, lifting his arms, and waggling his hands. “Kincomonden! Come on!”

Will raised the rake and slashed it across the youth’s face. He saw the tines bite into the flesh and lift it clear of the boss of his skull before the tissue tore and the rake came free. The youth screamed and dropped to his knees, clasping his face to stop it from dribbling clean off the bone. Blood made red gloves for his hands. The pinched face on the girl relaxed and the cigarette dangled from her mouth, threatening to ignite the fuzz on her chin. She looked suddenly vulnerable, but then she breathed deeply and screamed for the police.

Will hit the youth on the back of the head, but had to stop to be sick when the teeth were hindered on their way out by the grinding of bone that he felt work its way through the handle of the rake. The youth was squealing, his face ashen. His eyes were closed.

Wiping his mouth, Will yanked again on the rake, which came free with a sucking noise. Something was spitting and bubbling out of the back of the youth’s head. He didn’t wait to see what it was, but swung the rake a final time, forcing the tines through the youth’s throat. He might well have been dead before that moment, but now Will was certain of it. He looked wildly around him. The street had filled up quickly, to rubberneck.

“Come on,” Will beseeched the sky. “Come on!” Blood from the rake, held aloft, splashed on his forehead.

The spectators drew back, thinking he was addressing them. A siren came to them through the streets and all heads turned in its direction. Will ran. Where was it?

In the playground of the school he had grabbed a girl and dragged her into a classroom. He sat on the floor with her while the evacuation went on around him. He heard lots of sirens wailing in the distance and cars pulling up on the road outside the school. There was a helicopter too. Someone said something he couldn’t understand through a loudhailer. He ignored it and soon they stopped trying.

They played Snap. She told him her name was Fiona and described what she had received for Christmas. On the way back from a visit to the toilet, he was shot in the leg by a police marksman. Now Will and the girl were sitting in the corridor, with their backs to the wall, beneath the window through which he had been fired at.

“Does it hurt?” Fiona asked him. Her brown hair was in bunches. On her finger there was a plaster that she was now picking at.

“Only when I go jogging,” he said. She laughed.

He wondered if Catriona might have given birth to a girl. They both had hoped for a daughter. Cat had said it felt like a girl even though it was her first child and she wouldn’t have known if a boy felt any different.

“Do you want to do some colouring in?” he asked her. He was so tired.

She brightened at this idea and nodded her head. She said, “You can help. I’ve got a farmyard to do. Can you colour in the chickens?”

He nodded. “Go on. I’ll catch you up.”

She ran back to the classroom. He heard the static of radios going mad as the snipers reported this. A minute later, he heard a door clicking open and footsteps in the corridor. He didn’t look up.

“I have a gun,” he said. “In my pocket.”

A calm voice, surprisingly young, told him to lie on the floor, face down, with his hands on his head.

“I don’t think so,” Will said. “I don’t think I’ll do that.”

“It would be more helpful to us if you did,” came the voice.

“I’m tired of being helpful. I didn’t kill my wife, you know. Everyone reckons I did. But I didn’t. I didn’t do quite as much as I might have done to help her, but I didn’t kill her.” Now he looked up into the face of a young man, a ridiculously young man, holding a Heckler and Koch submachine gun. Will remembered running around a playground like the one outside when he was little, pretending to be a British soldier, or, if he drew the short straw, a German. Pretending to hold a Tommy gun. Pretending to spray the enemy with bullets while you made that noise with your tongue and your teeth: Ddddrrrrrrrrraaa! Ddddrrrrrrra!

The armed policeman said, “It doesn’t bother me what you did or didn’t do. We can sort all that out later. You need some rest.”

Will nodded. “Lots of it,” he said, and reached into his pocket.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: KATHEUDO

HE OPENED HIS eyes and the sound was all around him. Incessant whispers, nervy bleatings, a cacophony that set his teeth on edge. The tree behind him bore a mass of black parrots chiding him like bitchy next-door neighbours. The stench from the parrots scratched at the back of his throat. White guano streaked the tree and turned its tarry bark into a nonsense emulsion, gleaming as it ran and set in the midnight sunlight. It wasn’t the parrots making the noise. He couldn’t see where the noise was coming from. Or what it meant, for clearly they were words: sibilants and fricatives multiplied by the many voices until form was lost to a hellish, snake-like hissing.

Will sat upright. He was perched on the edge of a path. Behind him, an ocean he couldn’t put a name to exploded repetitively on a shingle beach. On the other side of the path, a rank of houses turned tawny-coloured, peeling faces to the view. Made from tired wood, with overgrown gardens and gates that sagged like Friday-night drunkards, not one of the houses looked remotely habitable from Will’s vantage point.

Will too felt a little inebriated. Gathering himself, he rose, which brought a fresh, sarcastic chorus from the parrots. They flapped their wings, exposing deep-red feathers, and points of wild light, as if they were dotted with sequins or bits of broken glass. The air was warm and sweetly spiced, much like his mother’s kitchen had been when he was a boy. She made apple pies on Sunday mornings. Bramley apples that collapsed in a pan with a little more sugar than was strictly necessary. She put cinnamon in the pies, an idea that she pinched from the Americans. They were good pies, especially if they were served hot, with vanilla ice cream.

His mind on pies, he crossed the street to the houses and tried to remember what had happened in the seconds before he became aware again. It was no use. All he could picture was a childish face being obliterated by a black hole that became suddenly, intensely white, splintering like glass in his eyes.

The houses, as he had believed, were uninhabited. Through the windows he saw sofas that sagged with invisible bodies, and tables laid for a coming meal. Coats were piled on the newel post of stairs littered with childhood gear. Now and again, Will would blink, thinking that he saw movement. A hand on the banister; the shadow preceding a body, approaching along the hallway; a dog’s tail wagging. But it was all periphery. Whenever he jerked his head to catch the mote, it would be gone. A flaw in the eye, then. A blight on his focus.

Frustrated, he tried knocking on one of the doors, to prove his conviction that the row was deserted. The door duly opened, but there was nobody behind it. Will went in and hunted for life, room by room. The house didn’t smell old or disused; it smelled of nothing at all. Nobody here. He stalked out of the house and slammed the door shut. Marching across the street, he ignored the guffawing parrots and struck out towards the treacly sun, his boots crunching across the shingle beach.

The tide was out: the dark edge of water, periodically creaming into the shore, was only just distinguishable against the salt-and-pepper beach. The stones were smooth and uniform in size and myriad in colour. Some kind of coral provided relief for the eye, a friable, greyish species that poked from the stones like tiny signposts. A little further along, when he came across the bleached skull of a cat, he realised that the coral was not coral after all. He tried hard not to study the beach after that, and would have returned to the lane were it not for the fact that it petered out, swallowed by more acres of shingle. There was little to break up the skyline apart from the spire of a church that looked as if it should be in a children’s fairy tale: crooked and black, it made an arthritic gesture to the heavens. For want of something better to do, Will angled towards it, fingering the strange puckered mark that had risen on his forehead.

The church sat in the centre of a poorly tended graveyard. Bloated insects he couldn’t identify buzzed drunkenly by him. The trees here were stunted, purposefully it seemed, their heads lopped off before they could reach a certain height. Their boughs were famished affairs, the branches leeched of colour and as brittle as the bones on the beach, as if the stuff that lay in the ground was sucking the life from them. Will strayed off the path and tried to study some of the headstones, though time and neglect and the weather had conspired to polish the headstones almost clean of their inscriptions. This one, though:

Here lies Evelyn Marley, beloved wife of Hector. She died when the knife of a robber split her heart open. Humble Street, where it happened, knows her blood.

And this:

Beneath this stone are the mortal remains of Gregory Phipps who died, aged sixteen, brained by a stone wielded by his father. Ten days he took to die.

And this:

The bodies of Robert and Jessica Bunce feed the worms here. Fire took their sleeping forms and gave them eternal rest.

IT WAS A well-stocked graveyard. The stones encroached on each other’s plots and leaned into each other like poor teeth. Will was about to leave the cemetery when he heard a gritty noise rise up from the bottom of the churchyard. He stealthily padded among the stones until he saw its author: a woman wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, hacking at the gravelly soil with a trowel.

“Hello?” Will said, grateful to see another soul in this strange wilderness. The woman raised her head and Will was struck with a frustrating sense of recognition which would not reveal itself. “I know you, don’t I?” he asked, approaching.

The woman straightened and searched his face. “I’m afraid you’re at an advantage,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before in my life.”

“What’s your name?”

“Alice.”

“Alice. No, I don’t know an Alice. But you look like someone I know.”

They stood awkwardly, regarding each other among the bastard cabbage.

“Interesting graveyard,” Will said.

“Isn’t it?”

“But crowded.”

Alice nodded. “Yes, it is a little densely populated. But the beach is a fine overspill.”

“Isn’t that a health hazard?”

“For whom, exactly? The dead?”

Will laughed shrilly, and clammed up. It didn’t feel right. None of it.

“Well, I need to get on,” Alice said, waving her trowel at the weeds. It seemed a pointless chore when so much of the graveyard had already been conquered by yarrow, milfoil and fleabane.

“Don’t let me stop you,” Will said, jollily. “I just wondered if you could tell me where...” The question ran out of steam when he realised how odd he was going to seem when he finished with the hell I am? Without too much of a pause, he diverted to: “...I can find the nearest train station?”

“Oh, trains, they don’t come out this far. What is it? Are you lost?”

“I think so,” Will said. Despite their uncanny conversation, the woman made him feel comfortable. He felt that he could confide in her without embarrassing himself. “I can’t remember where I was about an hour ago. I woke up and I was on a beach. Empty houses.” It sounded so ridiculous when out in the open. “Parrots.”

Alice seemed unimpressed. “There’s a little village, a bit further along the beach, called Gloat Market. You might be able to find somebody to help you there. There’s a pharmacist’s. And a taxi service. They might be able to ride you out to Sud, or Howling Mile, or Mash This. Fair distances, but you’ll find trains there.”

“Gloat Market,” Will said. He didn’t know the place, or the others that Alice had mentioned, but he felt more confident now that he had a few locations to refer to. “Are we in Suffolk?” he asked, but shook his head when she regarded him with bewilderment. “Never mind. Thanks a lot. You’ve been a great help.”

“That’s okay, Will. Travel safe, now.” She reached out and touched his arm.

He waved and tramped towards the cemetery gates. At the threshold he stopped, trying to remember something. He turned back. Sixty feet away, her figure was bent over and earnestly engaged with the trowel, the edge of the blade tearing at the earth.

“How did you know–” he began.

She reared up and he took a reflexive step away. Her eyes glowered at him. The tool dangled from her grip, dribbling what looked like blood into the soft, gritty earth. He was smitten with the impression that she had been able to control who she really was while he talked to her, but that now, with contact broken, she had rediscovered her true form. Will pursed his lips to finish his question, but his mouth had drained of spit. She seemed to lean towards him, but she took off in the opposite direction at speed, moving to the blind side of the church before he could think about pursuing her. Half of her face seemed to be hanging off, a badly knitted balaclava that refused to hug the contours of her head. He hurried back to the beach and tried to calm himself down by reciting the name of the village, Gloat Market, over and over again.

GLOAT MARKET ROSE out of the shingle like an elephant’s graveyard. Great vertical twists of bone formed an ivory wall, protecting the village from the winds that steamed in off the sea, smelling of oil and dead fish. As Will passed through the postern gate at the edge of the village environs, he was again assaulted by the belief that there were others here, as real as he, capering just beyond the confines of what he was aware of. He saw flashes of movement, swatches of clothing; heard snippets of sound that were gone almost before they arrived. A brief smell of frying sausages, of dog shit, of soap. Yet there was nothing, in truth, for the village stretched out in front of him, as animated as the graveyard he had left behind an hour or so earlier. Didn’t it mean you were brain damaged, if you entertained the illusion of sensory input?

The bone shield seemed a little grand for the tiny web of streets it contained. A cross-roads at the village centre was marked with a stone flower. Some of the houses that flanked the lanes greeted his passing them by with open mouths; their doors swung rustily on tired, oil-shy hinges. The parrots, at least, had followed him. They sat on washing lines like scraps of filthy linen and heckled him remorselessly.

“Fuckhead!” they screeched. “Minging cock-gobbler! You piss shit! You piss shit! You do! You do!”

Above it all, a constant loop, a soughing as of summer breezes. It was there always, but he had only become conscious of it when the parrots provided their anti-rhythms.

He ignored the parrots and turned onto a lane that appeared to be more densely populated by buildings. It turned out to be called Humble Street. Will wondered if it was the same Humble Street that had seen Evelyn Marley’s final fall. He found the pharmacist that Alice had referred to, but it was closed. Rather, it was open, but unstaffed. Huge glass orbs sat on the shelves gathering dust. They were filled with powders and liquids of extravagant hue and even more alien names: Grivellage Salts, one was called. Dandiprat’s Tincture, was another. A phial of bleached green crystals bearing the label Paleshrikes found its way into his pocket, mainly because he liked the sound of the name, but also because he needed to have something real to put his fingers on. Too much of what he saw here seemed without substance or anchor. He felt that, once his back was turned on it, it would all dissolve to dust, or fly away into the sky.

Further along the lane he saw a trap without a pony and a pack of thin dogs conferring by a pond. They looked at him without interest as he walked by. As he drew alongside the gates of what appeared to be a salvage yard, filled with cracked, claw-footed bathtubs, radiators, steel buckets, and propellers, a voice cried out to him from an upstairs window in the building that backed onto the yard.

Will stopped and peered through the wooden slats of the gate.

“You, boy!” the voice called. “Give us a hand, won’t you?”

He saw a face at the window, and a hand waggling impatiently at him. Will pushed the gates open and jogged through the yard to the back door. Inside was a kitchen that smelled of suet and overcooked cabbage. Puddings wrapped in muslin were cooling on a windowsill. A recipe book was open and floury fingerprints spoilt a colour plate displaying a hollowed rabbit that was ready for the oven.

“In yet?” the voice called, a deep voice that was being peeled back to reveal a shrill centre.

“I’m coming,” Will said, and hurried up the stairs. On the landing he was greeted by an ecstasy of half-stuffed wildlife. He pushed by the still menagerie, with its glazed eyes and rictuses, and found the room in which the figure stood.

It was a man of around sixty years of age. He was naked. Will tried not to look, giving his attention instead to the framed maps on the walls. “My name is George,” the man said.

“Are you all right?” Will asked.

All bluster and bile, the other sputtered: “Of course I’m not all right, you blithering butterhead. What have you, a spatchcocked chicken for a brain? Can’t you see, I’m cut and bleeding and in a rare old state.”

Wishing he had carried on without stopping, Will said, “Do you have any bandages?”

“Do I look like a besodded pill-pusher? Great yawning twats, man. I should have called for help from that beetle over there.”

George had not yet turned around. Will’s eyes took in the heavily larded tectonic plates of his buttocks and thighs. One of this man’s calves could have stood in for Will’s chest. His back hung in layered scoops of fat that resembled a Christmas tree, the edges of which had been softened by snow. Slowly he turned, this shithouse, this pagoda of blubber, to fix Will with a niggardly eye like a currant pressed into pastry. Again the impact of recognition: there was something in the cast of these features that recalled those of Alice.

More of George was revealed. Will saw the manner of his injury and blushed. He had been winding his cock tight into a vice and had obviously caused some serious tearing at the moment of his climax. Will thought he was taking things very calmly, all things considered.

“Do you know Alice?” he asked, as much to deflect his study of the ruptured organ as anything. It jutted between the fat man’s thighs like a button mushroom. His abject expression might well have been displayed as a result of the wound, but it was for Will’s benefit.

“Shall we take tea and pikelets while we discuss such matters? Hmm?” George drew a podgy hand across his features and Will was struck with the horrifying certainty that the doughy mask would come off under his fingers. “I know of no Alice. All I know is that I am in pain, sir. The kind of pain that makes a man want to tear off his own head and cast it into the fire. Now, as you can see, I have damn-near castrated myself in a lunatic moment of self-absorption. Kindly fetch me something in which I might bind the old peashooter and help me get dressed. You might try that gallimaufry of men’s magazines over there. Under those.”

Will rooted around beneath the glossy, pink pages but only came up with a clean handkerchief folded into a neat square. He helped to jemmy George’s folds and flaps into his waistcoat and britches while they both wheezed with the effort. By the time Will had finished, the windows were steamed and George’s face was as ruddy as the blood on his hands.

“I’ll just buff the old wanking spanners, dear boy, then I’ll make you a bite. I apologise for the inconvenience, but not for my habits. I’m a lonely man who just happens to need extreme relief from time to time.”

In the kitchen, George pottered from larder to refrigerator to table, adding pickles and sausage and cheese to a large white plate. He handed this to Will and instructed him to cut some slices from a slab of bread. Will picked at the food, his appetite gone. George finished his food, then took on Will’s remains. His face in the trough, George became a personable companion, far removed from the objectionable bully Will had seen initially.

“Cakington-cakely?” George asked, when the last forkful of coleslaw had disappeared between his worming lips. Without waiting for an answer, he leaned across to the cupboard and extracted a huge Swiss roll.

It was something in the eyes, Will thought. Something that he and Alice shared. They must be related, he thought, regardless of George’s insistence that he did not know anyone of that name. He watched as George went at the cake with a spatula like a fencing expert showing off his best moves. Who was it that George and Alice reminded him of? He tried to push his mind beyond the young face and the black hole, the light, but he was not equal to it.

“My name’s Will, by the way,” he said, in the hope that offering his name might jolt some shred of recognition from his host.

“Short for?” George asked, working the question around a piece of Swiss roll that would have satisfied a family of four. Crumbs the size of £2 coins were ejected, retrieved and pasted into submission by his fearsome jaw.

“Just Will,” Will said. He heard the fatigue in his voice at the same time that he noticed the black sky begin to boil with clouds.

“George isn’t short for anything either. Good, stout, monosyllabic names. You can’t beat them.”

Unable, and unwilling, to mask his tiredness, Will said, “Where am I, exactly? Where is this place?”

“This is Gloat Market, quite evidently. There are signs as you enter.”

“Yeah, I know it’s Gloat Market, but what is Gloat Market in?”

George frowned. “Don’t follow you, friend.”

“I’m lost. I’ve never heard of this village, or Howling Mile or wherever else we’re near. What’s going on? What is this place?”

“Gloat Market,” George said irritably. “Crisp and oozing nips, man. I’ve never been to any of the other places. No need, really. I’m quite happy where I am.”

“What about everyone else?” Will persisted. “Are they happy where they are?”

“I’m quite certain of it.”

“Then where are they? It’s deserted. You and Alice are the only people I’ve seen all day.”

George gave him a look that suggested his leg was being pulled. “You’re tired, sir. Have a nap and all your nonsense will be forgotten.”

“I’ve had enough of this,” Will spat, and rose from the table. George laid a hand on his arm.

“You might want to try to settle in here,” he said. “Sometimes it’s best not to look too hard for something, even if you don’t know what that something is.”

“What are you trying to say?”

George’s hands flew into the air and he smiled a shockingly toothy smile. “Nothing, dear man. Absolutely nothing whatsoever. Just sorry I couldn’t be of more help to you. As you were to me.”

Will said goodbye, and hiked up a short hill. The clouds gave up their attempt to hold on to the rain in their bellies and vomited a heavy, oily deluge that soaked Will to the skin in seconds. Cursing loudly, he ran to a cluster of trees and, once in their shelter, saw another house in their shade, its front door swinging merrily in the gusty blow of what was fast becoming a nasty little storm.

Will called a greeting as he entered the hallway and blinked hard as he saw a splash of motion – a woman carrying a tray – at the threshold to a dining room. There was nobody there. He hurried upstairs and flicked a light in the bathroom. There was nobody here either, despite the stroboscopic blip depicting a young woman soaping herself in a bath full of bubbles. He undressed and showered, leaning against the wall while the jet of water fizzed against his skin. When he finally stepped out of the cubicle and started drying himself in front of the mirror, he had to blink hard again, but not because he had seen the ghost of somebody sharing the bathroom with him. He reached out to the mirror and rubbed away the steamed surface. When it was clear, he was able to see the two patches of rot that were eating into his flesh: one on the side of his arm where George had touched him, the other on the back of his forearm: Alice.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: MARAUDER

PARDOE HAD SAID there were just three Inserts. Sean, Emma, and Naomi. But others, it seemed, had learned the secret. Crossing the bridge that spanned the river (known as the Timeless, according to an impatient tradesman on his way to buy calves at an auction), Sean had leaned for a moment on the parapet to watch the traffic below. A barge made its way to the north bank, farting black clouds of diesel smoke in its wake. At the bow, he caught a glimpse of Tim Enever. He was certain of it. By the time he’d nudged Emma to tell her, he was gone.

“I wouldn’t know him anyway,” Emma said, reasonably.

“Well, you won’t ever forget him when you do clap eyes on him. Come on.”

They hurried to the other side of the bridge in time to see the barge dock and the harbour master secure the boat with rope as thick as an arm. Goat-swift, Tim was off the boat and scurrying into a warren of backstreets, his arm clasping to his chest a package wrapped in cream-coloured paper. A red bloom was spreading across the bottom. For a moment, Sean supposed that the other was not Tim – how would such a physical wreck be able to move like that? – but then Sean himself was finding that he was able to move much more quickly over here. Over Here was how he preferred to call this place. Over Here and Back There. It tickled Emma to hear him talk in this fashion. She had christened it Tantamount.

As he cut into Tim’s lead, Emma began to drop back. He called to her to wait by the river and she pulled up, her hands on her waist, as he dived into the alleyway that had borne Tim’s feet not twenty seconds before. He kept to claws of shade as a filthy shower of sleet began, moving from pillar to post, pylon to pergola as Tim flitted through the heavily peopled alleys, his hair flapping around his tiny head like an anemone. At a covered market, he slowed to walking pace and took some time to inspect the produce, all the while rubbing at his booty (his lunch, was it?) as if it were a cat in need of succour. The stalls here were thick with game, vegetables, and pulses. Spice jars emphasised the lack of colour all around. Dogs and ferrets chased each other through the forests of legs while customers argued the toss over a couple of coppers to pay for their cockles and bully beef. A basket of chickens tumbled across Sean’s path, causing him to veer into a scrum of elderly men drinking tarry wine from a huge moonshine jug. Their curses followed him deeper into the gloom. A sticky smell of hemp hung here, like fragranced steam in a sauna. Tim was dawdling now, stopping to chat to a woman selling beads and to take a small cup of strong, thick coffee with the neighbouring café owner. Tim had a swagger here that seemed ridiculous in such a reedy frame. When he pushed on into the bazaar, Sean hurried over to the bead seller and pretended to browse her wares for all of two seconds before:

“That man, just now. That man you were talking to. Who is he?”

The woman looked up at him from beneath a pair of eyelashes that must have been three inches long. A rat squirmed in and out of the folds of her clothes. Her breasts sometimes jiggled into view, small and brown as nuts. She smiled at him and showed off teeth that had been ground and patterned like tiny tablets of sculpted ivory.

“That was Mr Edge,” she said. “Alderley Edge. He’s very popular round these parts.” She rubbed her finger and thumb together. “He has big pockets.”

“Does he live near here?” Sean was getting anxious. He would lose Tim if he wasn’t careful.

“Yes. He has an apartment in the clipper.”

“The clipper?”

“Yes. A grounded boat in Frenzy Square. You won’t miss it, I promise you.”

“Nice rat,” Sean said, as the animal slid luxuriously into the woman’s cleavage and lounged there, twitching at him.

The market stalls thinned out. He emerged in a tunnel filled with fresh air but scant lighting. At the other end, a courtyard floored with large, terracotta tiles boasted a ship at its heart, listing heavily to the port side without any water to support it. Huge wooden stanchions supported its bulk and prevented it from tipping over any further. He saw a figure against one of the portholes, observing his approach. He wondered if Tim would recognise him as he clambered aboard, a wave of vertigo almost tipping him over as the freshly canted decks of the boat, the Flat Earth if the nameplate above the wheel were to be believed, spread out around him.

“Tim?” Sean called gently, thinking, Alderley Edge?

The door to one of the cabins had not been closed properly. Sean let himself in and found Tim sitting on a chair by the porthole, trying to get the cork out of a bottle of rum.

“Do you want a hand with that, Tim?”

Tim tossed the bottle to him. “I’d rather you called me Alderley. Or Mr. Edge. Yes, Mr. Edge would be best.”

He took two glasses from a leggy cupboard that had been customised to deal with the absurd angles and set them down on the table. Sean poured. “So what are you doing here?” he asked, taking one of the glasses and drinking deeply.

“Any question you ask, I could ask of you,” Tim parried.

“I’m here because a girl died. If we’re playing quid pro quo, then I believe it’s your turn.”

He was still the gawky, ponderous Tim when you got up close. But cleaner somehow. Sharper. None of the serous fluids that wept from his cavities, or rumbled in his chest were in evidence here. The boy was almost good-looking. He realised that this would be answer enough for his question, but Tim led him in a different direction.

“There’s gold in these hills,” he said. “Why should I tell you about it?”

“Smuggling?” Sean guessed.

The curl went from Tim’s lip. “How would you know about that?”

“Oh come on, it’s obvious. I’ve been with Vernon on his little trips around the Northwest. I’ve seen his hand-overs. The little parcels. What’s in them?”

“You don’t know?” The curl returned.

“I could make you tell me.”

“You have no power over me here,” he purred.

Sean reached out to grab Tim’s arm, but his fist squeezed the meat out of both ends until he was holding on to nothing. It was like trying to grasp water. Tim’s arm reattached itself as he watched.

“Quod erat demonstrandum,” Tim said. “See, you’re not the only one who knows Latin.”

“Pallida Mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas regumque turres,” Sean said, enjoying the crease in Tim’s forehead.

“Fuck off, Sean,” he said. “I’m strong here.”

“And you, such a spaz back in Warrington.”

“You’re dead, you know that, if you go back. Pig.”

“You been reading up on me, have you? Doing a bit of research?”

“Vernon is disappointed in you. He thought you were good stuff. He thought you were going to help him for years to come. He’s mostly disappointed in his own judgement though. He’s a harsh critic, is Vernon.”

“Which one of you was it?” Sean said. “Killed Naomi?”

“The name means nothing to me.”

“Do you at least know why she died? You were, after all, at her funeral.”

“In the bird’s nest, I am a quail’s egg, matey. If you’re looking for ostrich produce, you’re in the wrong place. I was at the funeral to keep a look out–”

“With your eyes?”

“–for somebody who wanted to disrupt the ceremony before she was put into that quiet earth. Anybody who wanted to make contact. She was still useful to some people even when dead. In the ground it was game over. We were there to protect our interests.”

“Well you didn’t see me, did you?”

“Maybe we did, but you wouldn’t have been classed as dangerous. Sorry to disappoint you. No, the danger would have come from someone a little less obvious. Someone using this place as a shield from which to attack us.”

Sean refilled their glasses. The paper parcel had been hidden somewhere. Sean sat back in his chair and sipped his drink. The walls of the room were festooned with sea-faring equipment: photographs of sailing boats, a barometer, portraits of salty old Jack Tars, a sextant hanging from a hook. Tim sat on the other side of the table, his head tilted, hands clasped softly together like those of a priest taking confession.

Sean heard a bell tolling in the distance, and a voice bellowing “Seven o’clock and all’s well!”

“That’s the sentinel,” Tim informed him. “The watch has started.”

“The watch?”

“Every night, from seven till dawn. This is the time of day when all the fun starts.”

“I’d like to see some of this fun.”

“You might. But then you’ll definitely see some if you go home too.”

“Are the others in on this?”

Tim blinked at him. “The others?”

“Yeah. Lutz, Robbie. That lot.”

“Foot soldiers. Cannon fodder. They’re helping us out. They don’t know a thing.”

“Helping you try to find the Negstream at the de Fleche building.”

“Why did you leave the flatfoot club if you’re so clever?”

“That’s nothing to do with you.”

Tim leaned across the desk, his hands splaying on the wood. “And, my friend, this place has nothing to do with you. Stay clear, or you will be harmed. I promise you that.”

“I won’t stop until I find out who killed Naomi.”

“I can’t protect you, Sean. I won’t protect you.”

“I don’t need protection from you, muppet-boy. Who’s going to look after you, at the end of the day?”

Tim smiled. “I am a king here, Sean. I’m better off here than I am back home. I don’t need protection. I’m well looked after. I’m untouchable.”

“I suppose it was you who burned the buildings down, once you were sure of where the Negstreams were.”

“Of course. Just following orders.”

“There are others. You haven’t got a stranglehold on this place, you know.”

“That’s not our concern.”

“Then what is?”

“Work it out yourself, you so-called Peeler.”

Sean stood up. “I’ll see you again, Mr. Edge.” He walked over to the door. “Thanks for the rum.”

EMMA WAS SITTING by the bridge when he returned. She was kicking out at a flock of shabby sea-birds that were circling her, shrieking for food.

“Have fun in the market?” she asked, but the cockiness in her voice cracked as soon as she spoke. She went to him and hugged him tightly.

“I was worried,” she said.

“It’s nice to know that.”

“Don’t leave me alone here ever again.”

He buried his face into her neck and breathed her smell deep into him. “I won’t. I promise. I’m sorry.”

“Where to now?”

Sean lifted his head to look at the river. “I suppose we should try to find the hill. I expect we’ll find answers there.”

Emma scanned the horizon, a daunting panorama filled with black glass and towers made from steel and neon signs that burned like little suns. Packed into the interstices were suffocating markets like the one Sean had explored, great scaffolds in which tents and bivouacs fluttered, hundreds of metres off the ground. The roads were jammed with dead cars that were either improvised homes for some or materials to be cannibalised for skeletal scooters that putt-putted along pavements thronged with tramps or thieves, and dead bodies that could not be buried for lack of space. They were salted, these corpses, and left to desiccate. Emma saw some of their mummified flesh used for storm shutters on crude windows. She saw others floating on the surface of the river.

“Do you think this is the kind of place where you might find a hill? A pond? A wood?”

“No,” Sean said. “But it must be here. It must.”

“De Fleche came here to stay. There must be more to it than this. Why would he want to stay here?”

“You’re right. We’ll find it. But let’s go back first. I want to talk to somebody.”

Emma held his hand. “What if we can’t get back the way we got in?”

He smiled. “Well, at least it will be fun trying, won’t it?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: THRESHOLD

WHEN HE WENT back to confront George about the marks on his arm, and to ask if he knew of anybody who might help treat his complaint, he saw that George had skin problems of his own. The yards of skin that contained the man had been stuffed into the toilet, as if it was a peel-off costume made of paper that could be flushed away. No other trace of him remained.

He found a cab with a horse attached, but nobody to drive him. As he had no map to show him the way to Sud or Howling Mile or the other place, Mash This, it seemed he was stymied. He needed to find a train station if he was to make any exploration of the countryside count. To understand this landscape might help him go some distance to understanding how he might find Cat. Nothing else mattered to him any more. Sean and Emma were too wrapped up in their own needs to consider the simple urge that now governed his life.

He got into the driver’s seat of the cab and took up the reins. He tried a few encouraging noises, and with a jolt that threw him back in his seat the horse began to trot along the lane. A couple of minutes and the village was behind him. One road lay ahead, bisecting the scorched fields and the crippled, denuded woods. The black sun burnt without heat, and after an hour of their journey it began to snow. Black flakes landed on Will’s skin and burnt into it. He had to draw the sleeves of his jumper over his fingers and hunch his head into his neck to shield himself from the acid flurry. The horse didn’t seem to mind, jogging along gamely, its white mane seething in the wind. No houses were visible on the roadside; no traffic passed him on its way to Gloat Market. He was alone. The fear of that speared him and he wept into his jumper for a while, but knowing that he was in the same place as Cat revived him. He would find her. Imagining how she would look, how she sounded, filled his heart to a point where he thought it must burst. The baby too, might be here, with its mother. All he had wanted was a quiet life. The three of them together, happy.

The horse drew to a standstill. Will shook the reins and made more chivvying noises but to no avail.

“Are you hungry, nag? Is that it?” He felt in his pockets for food but found nothing edible. Under the cushions on his seat was a carrot but when he offered it to the horse, it wasn’t interested.

“What’s wrong? Do you smell something?”

The road stretched ahead of them, seemingly no different from the road they had traversed so far. The same razed fields and stunted trees. The stench of dead things. The bones sticking out of the earth.

He tried tugging on the reins to lead the horse forwards but it strained against him. Will gave up and left the horse where it stood. The road led on for another half-mile or so before it petered out.

“Super,” Will sighed. The terrain grew rockier and the trees disappeared altogether, replaced by spiny bushes. It continued to snow, the large black flakes like wafers of ash from a burning house. Their burn was bearable, once you got used to it. Will clambered over the rocks and saw the house immediately. It was still a way off, but smoke was whipping from its chimney and a single window was a square of pale orange. The sea was here once more, fizzing against the shore, its skin vibrating with reflected crescents of black. Spume made quivering sculptures that the wind tossed into the air. Will reckoned it would take him twenty minutes or so to reach the house, but before he had crossed half the distance, he came across the woman.

She was lying on a ledge on one of the bigger rocks. She looked to be asleep; her limbs were not twisted to indicate a bad fall. Will got down beside her and patted her gently on the shoulder.

“Hello? Are you okay?” His voice, after a long silence, sounded alien to him. It buzzed in his ears, atonal and waspish. But it did the trick. The woman woke, frowning, her mouth moving as she tried to make words come.

“It’s okay. Here, let me help you stand.” Will gently pulled her upright. The woman was flapping her hands around as though batting away flies. Her eyes twitched and then flew open. She regarded Will with shock, as though she had never seen a fellow human being before. And then she screamed. The sound distorted as it came from her lips, glissading into a metallic, digitised howl, something that might be happened upon on a short-wave radio. Flakes of snow found their way into her mouth and she choked and spat them out. Her breath was coming in tight, short blasts.

“It’s okay,” Will soothed, trying to squeeze her hands together so she could do neither him nor herself any harm. “Try to relax. You’re okay now.”

Okay, he thought. Nobody here is okay.

Slowly the woman found some poise. She looked around her, taking in the surroundings with the wonderment of a child at the zoo. Will was ready for her first question, the inevitable, when it came.

“I don’t really know where we are,” he said. “But I just came from a small village a couple of miles back that way. There don’t seem to be very many people around.”

“Who are you?”

“Will.” He stuck out his hand and she shook it. The frown had yet to leave her brow. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, with a long, sleek pony tail and grey eyes. She didn’t have any of the characteristics of Alice or George. He was glad about that.

“Joanna,” she said. “My voice sounds funny. It’s like talking through a kazoo.”

“Yeah, I don’t know why. But there’s tonnes of strange stuff here. You won’t believe some of it.”

“I don’t know how I got here.”

“Me neither.”

“I remember...” Joanna faded out, looking away in the direction of the road Will had just travelled along. Her eyes seemed to be searching for visual clues as to what had gone before. “I remember two brilliant lights, and a roar. And falling, like you know, in a dream.”

Will had pricked up his ears at the lights. He mentioned his own hazy recollections. “I was just on my way down to that house. To see if they could help me find a train that went to somewhere with a bit more life.”

“Can I come?”

Will felt like hugging her. “Of course. I’d have been disappointed if you didn’t.”

They made their way over the rocks to a narrower path, hampered by offcuts from boulders and muddy puddles. The black sun had sunk behind the edifice they had left behind. The snow too had lifted; only a few flakes fell now. Will checked his hands. They were chapped and sore, but the skin had not broken.

“This place seems to me,” Joanna was saying, “the most familiar place in the world. But at the same time, I feel as though I have never been here before.”

“I know what you mean,” Will said. “I’ve been wandering around as though I’ve been lost, but not once have I panicked about it. It’s like I’ll turn a corner at some point and there will be a lane that I recognise, or a house belonging to somebody I know.”

“Not this one, though?” Joanna said, pointing to the building that loomed above them, on a small incline that formed a welcome mat to a dense, purple mass of strangled trees behind it.

“Afraid not,” Will said.

“Thank you for helping me,” she said, as Will reached up to ring the doorbell. He turned to thank her. And in that second, the light in the window went out.

Joanna said, “Ah.”

“That’s encouraging,” Will observed, and rang the bell anyway. They waited but nobody came to greet them. A chorus of rasps fell from the trees.

“Hahahahahahahahahaaaaaaa. You focken eejit! Knock-knock? Who’s there? Some git. Some git who? Some git who’d be better off throwing himself in the sea!”

Will picked up a rock and hurled it at the branches of the nearest tree. Three or four of the parrots took off, circled, shat at him, and resettled in the trees to blow raspberries or send him the odd extravagant curse.

“I have an elevated class of friends here,” he said. Joanna wasn’t comforted by his humour, preferring to watch the door intently as a shadow fell upon the pearlescent glass at its heart. It opened a crack and a child’s face peeked out. It couldn’t have been any older than ten or eleven. Will’s first impression was that this was the offspring of Alice and George. It unsettled him to the marrow. But then he saw that the likeness those two had shared was not in evidence here. The boy was on the floor, looking up at them.

“Did you fall over?”

The boy shook his head.

“Is your mother in?” Will asked, appalled at his feeble voice. The boy shook his head, and then shook it again when Joanna asked to talk to his father.

“Can we come in then?” Will asked, trying to sound calmer, for the boy’s sake as much as his own. “Wait for them?”

“I’m not supposed to allow anybody through this door,” the boy stated, in a cultured voice that belied his years. But the statement sounded rote-learned. His eyes were playful and welcoming, as if he was grateful to see somebody who had come to visit. Picking up on this, Joanna asked: “How long have your mummy and daddy been away?”

The boy let the inch-wide crack of the door grow to a foot. He raised his eyes to the sky, adding and subtracting, the triangular tip of his tongue peeking from between his lips. “A year or so,” he said, carefully.

Joanna and Will swapped a glance. A parrot in the tree shouted: “Don’t let him in, kid. The peg-selling freak. He’ll have your Action Man! He’ll have your Tonka truck!”

Joanna squatted on her haunches and smiled at the boy. Even though Will could see she was scared, she still had a beautiful smile. “Can we come in, please? We just need somewhere to rest. And we need a big, brave boy to look after us. We’re both scared.”

The boy swung the door wide enough for them to enter. The light was poor in the hallway, but they could tell that he had trouble walking. They saw his head jerk in the darkness as he led them deeper into the house, heard his feet flailing spastically against the floorboards.

“What’s there to be scared of?” he asked, pushing open a door into another room that was darker than the hall. Will tried the light switch but the bulb was gone. Black shapes formed in the gloom. “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll make a fire.”

When Will’s hand accidentally brushed against Joanna’s, she clasped it tightly. The sofa that they lowered themselves into didn’t seem to have any upholstery. They sank into cushions that were slightly damp and smelled of laundry that had failed to dry properly.

“What’s there to be scared of?” the boy asked again, as he set about building a small pyre of kindling and folded paper.

“What’s your name?” Joanna asked.

“Luke,” said the boy.

“Luke. Where did your parents go?”

“One of them went back. One of them went on.”

“What does that mean?” Having conquered the tremble in his words, he now found he was close to shouting. He couldn’t find a happy medium; hysteria was close all the time. “Do you have to be so cryptic? A straight answer, from anybody, would be nice. Went back where? Went on where? Jesus.”

Joanna touched his knee. Her eyes were egg-large in the gloom, straining to swallow the most feeble glimmers of light. Will rubbed his face with his hands. It struck him that, throughout all this, his stubble had not grown any longer. He tried to remember the last time he had had a drink. A beer would be good now. A beer would be outstanding.

“I have been here for so... long,” Luke said, the words packaged in a long sigh. Tiny flames began to tongue at the bundle of tinder, green and blue. They liked the taste and grew. Shivering light enveloped the boy, outlining his shape for Will and Joanna behind him. His legs had no recognisable form; they looked as though they had been removed, fed through a mangle, and then reattached. They flopped around ineffectually as Luke arranged some larger logs around the heart of the fire, and then the boy slithered backwards as its heat became greater. Will didn’t know what to say. Joanna seemed to be trying to say something, but nothing was coming out of her open mouth.

“I know this place,” Luke said. “Not everyone finds it. Most only stay for a short time.” The words sounded familiar, like old friends. Perhaps the boy had been internally rehearsing them for a long time, and only now was putting a voice to them. “Some time ago, I remembered where I was before I was here. I was in a car with my mother and father. Dad was driving. He was arguing with my mum about money. I was sitting in the back with my colouring book. I was colouring a dragon. I remember I was angry because I didn’t have a green pencil for the scaly skin. Just this awful yellow. Dragons aren’t yellow.

“I looked up just as Dad lashed out and struck Mum across the face. She hit back and she was swearing at him, telling him she hated him, ordering him to stop the car. She was getting out. She actually opened the door. We were on the motorway. Dad kept telling her to shut up. She hit him again and his hands came off the steering wheel. The car went into a spin and then came off the road and hit a tree. Mum went through the windscreen. Dad’s head was wobbling like a doll’s. I was flying around the back of the car, but my legs were crushed under the chair in front. And then I was sitting on the doorstep outside this place. Mum and Dad were with me for a little while.

“Raymond Meadows told me at school about coma. His mum is dying from something in her brain. She’s in a coma. That’s where we are now. This is coma. It isn’t any kind of life. And it isn’t any kind of death. Mum went on. Dad went back. And now I’m on my own. I don’t know how long you can stay in a coma for. Maybe for ever. Coma is what we want it to be when we are asleep. I think death is like that too. We make death the way our dreams want it when we sleep. Nobody could accept death if it wasn’t prettified like that.”

Luke turned, the edge of his face limned with firelight. He giggled nervously. “That’s what I think, anyway.”

Will tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry. His throat clicked with the effort. Joanna’s eyes were filmed with tears.

“How long have you been here?” she asked, breathlessly.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I was born in 1960.”

“How did you remember what happened to you?” Will asked. “I can’t remember.”

“It comes to you. Eventually.”

Joanna’s mouth was on the verge of collapse. Fear shaded in all the places in her face where age was making a home.

“What is it?” Will asked.

Joanna put a hand to her mouth. “Harry, that’s my husband. We... we said to each other once, if ever we were on life support, if there was no hope... we said we’d switch the machine off. He’ll pull the plug on me.”

THEY ALL DIE on me, Will thought. I try my best to care for people but it doesn’t mean anything to anybody.

He and Joanna had left the house when the fire became too stifling. They thanked Luke and asked if he wanted to go with them.

“Go where?” he asked, not unreasonably. “There is nowhere to go. It’s all the same. All different types of badness. The same old badness dressed in different, horrible clothes. What’s the point?”

The point for Will was to not let the child’s melancholy infect him. But here it was, stringing out visions of Catriona, Elisabeth, Sadie, and now Joanna, all those who had gone with him and paid the price for it. He had fucked up. He remembered now, wanting to die, knowing that he might be able to make a difference from within, knowing that Catriona waited for him somewhere magical. He had lived like a clown. And now he couldn’t even die properly.

“I don’t know what happens to time here,” he said, as he and Joanna skirted an inky lake that bore awful salty deposits at its edges that resembled claws and faces stretched into different masks of pain. “Maybe it’s condensed or spun out.”

“I don’t know how long I’ve got,” Joanna said.

“Maybe it isn’t all that bad,” Will reasoned.

“I have to remember,” she said. “I have to, otherwise, I’ll die without knowing how I died. How tragic is that?”

“Is it? I’d rather not know.”

Joanna sat on the ground, brushing away the twigs that resembled fingers in rigor mortis, and the tiny leaves that were like desiccated eyelids. “My husband, Harry, God, what if he’s here too? I don’t remember if he was with me. What if he died?”

“Then you won’t be going anywhere. Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean–”

But Joanna had ignored his tactlessness. “The last thing he said to me... I can see his face, he looked concerned. And then the flapping all around me.”

“Birds?”

Joanna shook her head. “Fabric. Like someone airing a bedsheet, but all around me, as if I was trapped in a bed while somebody was making it. Silk. Lots of billowing silk. And freezing. I was freezing my tits off.”

“You were sailing, maybe?”

Joanna snapped her head up at him. “No. Not sails,” she said. “Parachute.”

JOANNA’S RELIVING OF her sky-diving trauma helped Will in the remembering of his; a kind of trickling down of horror. He flinched as he remembered the barrel of the police rifle empty its contents into his head. It was as if he could follow the trajectory of the bullet enter his temple. It hadn’t taken his life, though. Just his senses. He fingered the bizarre, proud crater now, and saw how what he’d seen as the coquettish angle of Joanna’s neck had been caused by something far more awful.

“I need you to do something for me,” he said. “If you go back. If you get out of here and you’re okay.”

“God, I hope so.”

Will held on to her hand, almost desperately. “Remember this. I want you to find me. And help me to die.”

“But I couldn’t!”

“Please. You must. I need to die. I have nothing but that. I want nothing but that.”

It took hours to persuade her but in the end she agreed. Perhaps her relenting, or the forceful way in which he had put his argument, had helped to colour the scenery; either way, it had suffered more erosion. It was as if the heat of his need had scorched away layer after layer of rock and rubble, a gradual onionskin weathering, until everything was level, sanded, clean.

“What now?” she asked. Her exhaustion had manifested itself in the papery cracks around her mouth, the stone and glass that had filled her eyes. Her voice was the lonely shifting of wind across sand.

Will said, “We have a train to catch.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: CONTRABAND

THERE WAS A mini riot kicking off in Blackwood Crescent. The police had set up a cordon and would not allow Sean and Emma to pass.

“What’s going on?” Emma asked, trying to see further along the street. An armoured police van was parked on the pavement.

“Families at war,” the police constable told them. “Are you all right, mate? You look like you’ve just been caught up in something like this.”

“I’m fine. Look, my gran lives in there. Let me through, will you?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“I’m a copper too. Down in London. Here’s my warrant card.”

He showed him the defunct credentials that Sally had sent back to him, and the police constable sucked his moustache into his mouth. “Met, eh? Good pay down there is it?”

“You get by,” Sean said, giving him a grin.

“Danger money, isn’t it, though?”

Sean nodded in the direction of the police van. “You say that, but...”

“Aye. It happens all over, I suppose. Go on then, before my sarge catches me.”

Sean clapped him on the shoulder and he and Emma slipped through the cordon. He led her down a narrow walkway parallel to the main road. Tough-looking men and tougher-looking women watched their progress, tight-lipped from bedroom windows and back gardens. Dogs barked at them from behind every gate.

They caught a glimpse of some of the trouble as they neared Billy’s house. Two factions were pointing at each other and arguing heatedly. A policewoman was trying to broker some kind of peace. Two or three of her colleagues were standing by, sniggering into their hands. On its back, smouldering in the centre of the road, was a Ford Ka.

Sean rang the front doorbell and, too late, remembered how Billy had escaped the last time. A willowy woman poked her head out of the upper window and asked him what the fuck he wanted. Ash from a cigarette clamped between her lips dusted Sean’s beanie. A child was crying inside with rare athleticism. The sound drew goosebumps onto Sean’s skin.

“Billy,” he said. “Is he in?”

“He’s playing fucking footie. Try down the park. Now fuck off.”

The window slammed shut. As they walked away, they heard the woman berating the child, whose response was to take the shrieks up a notch.

The park was five minutes’ walk from Blackwood Crescent. They could hear the exhortations of the crowd and the snapped instructions of the players. They found a path through some wintry trees to what was little more than a morass with a few blades of green sticking up through it. Labouring in the mud, two teams whose identities had been lost to the plates of dirt that covered their strip, made the air steamy with sweat and foul language. On the touchline, two desolate-looking girlfriends tried to keep warm with cigarettes and gossip.

“Which one’s Billy?” Emma asked.

“I couldn’t say. We’ll have to hang around till they’ve finished.”

Sometimes the muddied ball seemed to get lost, camouflaged by the grey-blue miasma. But then a player would kick it into the air, more often than not falling onto his backside in the process. Tackles were going in all over the pitch; it didn’t seem important for there to be a ball involved sometimes. Minor skirmishes erupted. The referee blew his whistle but nobody noticed. Both goalkeepers leaned against the goalposts as though waiting for a bus. The lack of interest permeated the crowd, who both wandered off towards the pub. When the referee called an end to the match, nobody seemed to know who had won. Everyone trooped towards the squat changing rooms.

“Wait here,” Sean said, and followed the mudmen through the door.

The showers were already on, hot jets filling the changing rooms with acrid steam that tickled the craw. A malty smell of naked, damp bodies mixed with the harsh odours of cheap soap and shampoo. Talk was turning away from the football, to what was going to happen later that night. The pubs they would meet in, the girls who would be up for it, the men they wanted slain.

“Billy?” Sean called. Three men said: “Yeah?”

“Billy Morgan?”

“He’s outside,” said one of the other Billys. “Taking down the nets.”

The sweat that had been driven onto Sean’s skin by the steam froze instantly when he returned to the freezing pitches. He saw Emma mooching under the trees, looking at the flowers and the mushrooms. She waved at him and then shrugged as if to ask: What’s going on?

A more distant figure was struggling to unhook the nets from the goalposts. Sean pointed at him and motioned for her to stay where she was. Emma threw back her head theatrically but gave him a smile that made him forget all about the cold.

By the time Sean reached him, Billy had managed to divest the goalposts of their net and was bundling it up into a manageable shape to carry back to the sports centre.

“Want a hand?”

Billy froze as Sean approached, the net dangling from his grasp, giving him the bizarre appearance of a cheated fisherman. Billy scrutinised the stranger, the gauze over one eye, the black beanie, the way he favoured one leg over the other as he approached. “Who are you?”

Sean smiled. If Billy bolted before he was within arm’s length, he’d never catch him. “The name’s Sean. We’ve met before.”

“I don’t thi–” But now the eyes widened a little and the net fell from his arms. “Fuck off. I’m finished with him now. That Lord. That bastard. I don’t owe him nothing.”

Sean held his hands up, kept the smile in position. “I know, I know. I wanted to apologise to you.”

“You what?”

“Apologise, Billy. I was working for Vernon Lord, but I didn’t know what it was he was up to. I still don’t. I thought he was a debt collector. I swear. That’s all.”

“He was,” Billy said. His voice had calmed down, but he was still taking steps backwards, keeping the distance between himself and Sean. Sean stopped. Billy stopped.

“But you said, that day, that it wasn’t money...”

“It was never money,” Billy said.

“Then what?”

“Why should I tell you? You caught me that day. Gave me a hiding. Set me up for that bastard.”

“I’m sorry, Billy. I was... I’m a private investigator. I was trying to find out who killed a girl.”

“I don’t give a fuck what you are. You’ve spoilt me for life. I’m a wreck.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I hope you never have to.” Billy walked around Sean in a wide arc, as if fearful of a repeat attack.

“Billy–”

“Fuck off.”

Sean trudged after him as he returned to the changing rooms. The others had finished cleaning themselves and were standing around outside, hair nicely combed and glinting in the pale sunlight, sports holdalls slung over shoulders, car keys clinking in their fingers. Billy dumped the nets and went inside. Sean followed.

“I want to help you,” Sean said. “I want to get Vernon Lord. I think he had something to do with the death of this girl.”

Billy said nothing. He slowly peeled the kit from his filthy body. Sean turned away. “Who was the other guy who turned up after I left you that day, Billy? The man in the mask?”

He heard Billy snort behind him. The squeal of a tap was followed by the blast of water on tiles. Sean turned to see Billy eclipsed by a cloud of steam as he began to soap his body. “That was Dr. Chater.”

“Dr. Chater?”

Billy’s hair stood up in soapy tufts. His eyes closed as shampoo creamed across his face. He looked impossibly young. “Yeah,” Billy said, spitting out water. “Vernon has a deal sorted out. He finds prime cuts and Dr. Chater comes to harvest them.” The steam from the shower dissipated under a breath of air from outside.

There was still plenty of moisture in the changing rooms, sluicing along the floor, hanging in the air, but none of it could help the dryness that stripped Sean’s throat in the second that Billy’s body became visible.

Billy stood in the cubicle, rinsing his gelded body with a flannel. Wintry sunlight diffused by the frosted windows turned his flesh to powder; the spasming striplights arranged on the ceiling softened him to such an extent that it seemed the angles of his bones had been sanded down. Sean stared at the mangled nub of his pubis, beribboned with shining scars, as if a slug had made criss-cross journeys across him. And then he noticed Billy was watching him. As Sean made to say something (what comfort could he have offered?) Billy made a barely imperceptible shake of his head and, bringing his finger to his lips, locked the words Sean might have uttered deep inside him for ever.

“CHRIST, WHY?” EMMA asked him.

They were sitting in a café. From his seat, Sean could see through the misting windows to the muddy fields they had just departed. The sugar in his weak, hot tea was slowly making inroads to the core of his shock, thawing him, bringing him back. He shrugged.

“Billy said something about a deal. I’ve got a horrible feeling about this.”

“What?”

“I think... I think that Vernon is selling organs to someone over there.”

“In Tantamount?”

“I think so. I think he’s harvesting organs here and giving them to Tim Enever to sell over there.”

Sean told Emma about the package Tim had been carrying. It had been a smallish parcel, wrapped as the cuts from a butcher might have been wrapped. He told her of the blood that had seeped to the bottom of the parcel. “I thought it was something he had bought. For lunch. I’ve seen Tim eat the most God-awful lunches when we were working. Anaemic meat puddings, ribs from the Chinese takeaway that looked way out of date; it wouldn’t have surprised me, what he had in that parcel for his din-dins.”

“Why Billy? What’s so special about him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because there’s nothing obviously special about him. Maybe that’s it. On the surface it looks as if he’s being chased for dosh. Nobody looks twice. Happens all the time for those poor bastards.”

“What about the others you visited?”

“Jesus,” Sean said shakily, his hand trembling against his cup. The rattle of it against the plastic table drew attention from some of the other customers. “Those poor bastards.”

“Hark at him!” cawed a craven figure who seemed to have created himself from the sooty skin on the wallpaper by the café window. “Precious little wanker. Have some respect. Don’t think you’re any better than the rest of us.”

“God forbid,” spat Emma, screeching her chair legs back on the lino. “Come on, let’s go.”

Outside she held on to Sean while he tried to make his legs work properly. The cuts in his thigh were bleeding again, showing through the thinning denim. “God, I’m a mess,” he said wearily. His face was grey and scooped-out, like a pumpkin for Halloween.

“Over here you’re a mess. Over there, in Tantamount, you’re strong. You’re unbelievable.”

“Oh, go on,” Sean said, affecting a camp voice. Emma laughed.

“It’s true,” she said. “I watched you run after that Tim guy. You were incredible. People stopped to look. You were strong and fast.” Emma took his head in her hands and drew it towards her. She kissed him on the mouth, gently at first, but with mounting desperation, as if trying to feed off some of the steel she had referred to.

“I should check on those others,” he said. “Make sure.”

Emma nodded. “Okay. I’ll come with you.”

HE WAS GLAD of that, in the end. Although he was not attacked by the people he had had to disable when he first came with Vernon Lord to visit the old woman, Mrs Moulder, in the tiny flat near Runcorn’s Shopping City, the presence of danger was very real and constant. Emma helped just by being there. She lent him the mettle that she thought she had seen in him in the other place, over there.

Her door was closed but the latch was off. Inside, the smell of death was overwhelming. There were no signs of struggle, but there was an intense feeling of a presence in the flat which they both acknowledged.

Emma said, “It’s as if someone has just left the room, do you know what I mean?”

Sean nodded. “Or is hiding. Is still here.”

They found Mrs Moulder in the kitchen. Sean said, simply, “Cheke.”

If her method of dispatching victims was becoming more skilled, the manner of her disposal of the bodies was shockingly clumsy and tokenistic. Mrs Moulder had been forced into the oven, but when Cheke had found she would not fit, the old woman had been abandoned, half-sprawled on the floor, her head burned like a forgotten roast. An older wound in her chest told the story of Sean’s first visit here. A story, the ending of which he had not been privy to. The ribs had been snipped open and bent back to reveal the heart, which was no longer there.

Cheke had half-heartedly begun hacking off Mrs Moulder’s legs, but had given up, no doubt bored. The body was partially digested too: a naked portion of the abdomen bore sucker scars and the flesh had turned to porridge. Presumably Cheke had given up on this idea too when she realised how pointless it would be to assume the form of an elderly blind woman.

“I’ve seen enough,” Emma said.

“She’s closing in on us,” Sean observed. “When we give her the slip, she simply goes back to the trail and rubs it out bit by bit until she makes fresh contact.”

“When does it end?”

Sean squeezed her arm. “When we go down. Or her. Don’t lose that thought. She’ll have an Achilles heel.”

They were on their way out of the flat when Emma halted Sean, her voice a whispered, frantic appeal. In the cracked, foxed mirror hanging in the hallway, trapped between the silvered background and the solid reflections of Sean and Emma, Cheke lingered, in the act of departure. Emma reached out for Sean and held tight to his hand as they studied the wolfish profile and the volley of deep-red hair that tumbled across her shoulders. The eye regarded them, unseeing, yet giving the illusion of awareness. It hung there, beneath the lid, sly, gem-bright. Teeth glistened between slightly parted, ruddy lips. She had a bloom about her, even in the ghost of this reflection. She was formed. Ripe.

“She looks so real,” Sean said. “She looks... beyond real. Jesus.”

He delved for some kind of conversation as they drove back to town, but nothing could penetrate the vision they had witnessed. He guessed that her reflection, in its reluctance to leave the mirror, counted for something, might point to a weakness, but was baffled as to what that could be. He had been shocked by the perfection of the woman. She looked so hungry and ambitious, yet utterly fulfilled at the same time. She was an advert. She was aspirational. His lust stirred at the thought of her wide, thick mouth, the carnality that played in its shape. She had developed so much in the short time since her last attack it seemed impossible to believe it could be the same woman.

“How far can she go? Where can it take her?” Emma asked. He saw in her glazed countenance how Cheke had stayed with her too.

“I don’t know,” Sean said. “But she’d have us as a part of her in an instant.”

Saying the words, he hadn’t meant to invest them with enthusiasm, although that was how it had sounded. Would it really be a bad thing to have your make-up absorbed by her, to become a part of the perfection she was zeroing in on? Would it hurt so much? He thought of her body opening, sliding across his, the heat as she sucked him into her. To be indivisible from her.

He swallowed thickly and wound down the window, allowed the frigid January air into the car.

“She would kill us in a second,” Emma said. “No mercy.”

“I know.”

“Be strong,” she said. “Be careful.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: MASH THIS

THERE WERE OTHERS.

Sometimes they appeared as subliminal slivers of colour and movement. Sometimes they loitered. Will slowly began to understand the migrations here, but he never got over the patterns of damage, the abundance of injury in all its manifold, grotesque variations.

Joanna said, “Look.”

A boy and a girl hurried along a path flanked by fluorescent yellow mushrooms. In contrast to her brother, the girl seemed to have only superficial injuries: a slight concave aspect to her skull, a ragged wound that flapped on her arm. Half of the boy’s head was hanging down his back, like some ghastly pony tail. They skipped and giggled, oblivious to their plight, excited instead by the lure of this strange wonderland.

“Look.”

A woman was trying to pick the crystallised cobwebs from hedgerows packed with thorns and fingers and teeth. She kept forgetting, it seemed, that she no longer had the hands to perform the task.

“Look.”

An elderly man with bulging eyes and empurpled skin tried to force his fingers into his gullet to remove a chicken bone that was lodged there. Somebody had performed a tracheotomy on him: a black hole in his throat wheezed and sputtered as he calmed down, realising that he could quite happily exist here with the foreign body trapped in his windpipe. Somewhere, a surgeon might be operating on him now, trying to remove the bone, trying to bring him back.

“Look. Look. Look.”

He did not become inured to the circus that passed him by as they sought the train station. When he asked a woman for directions, he completely missed what she said to him, partly because of his fascination at the sight: the mouth through which the instructions were coming had been widened by the blade of an axe that separated her face; partly as the words were rendered unintelligible because of it.

In the end, a man with a sanitised, almost beautifully neat incision across the centre of his forehead pointed them towards the station. Will led Joanna through a ticket barrier that was unmanned and over a small footbridge to a similarly unpopulated platform.

“If we were in real-time,” Will posited, “this train might actually take about a thousand years to get here.”

“Don’t,” Joanna admonished. “That’s just too bloody cheery.”

He asked her about Harry and her job. She was studying to become a barrister. Harry worked in the City, part of the pinstripes and braces brigade. “But he’s all right, believe it or not. He makes lots of money, but he’s not a wanker.”

“It feels funny, doesn’t it,” said Will, “talking about this kind of stuff while we’re standing here, waiting for a train? Especially when we’re not waiting for a train. We’re lying on crisp white sheets in a hospital somewhere, while the machine that goes bing! goes bing! by our beds.”

Joanna nodded. “It’s grim, when you think of it, that everybody in a coma thinks about a place like this. Our minds come up with this. Of all things.”

“Yeah,” said Will. “Imagine what we’ve got lined up when we die. It won’t be The Magic Roundabout, that’s for certain.”

There was the sound of a whistle, splitting the cold, foggy air. In the distance, smoke billowed into the sky. A minute later, the snout of a steam train rounded a curve in the land and bore down on the platform, pistons shunting the train forwards, the sound of the engine chuntering happily. The engine was created from bones. Skulls adorned the buffers; ribs that could have only come from a whale bent around the wheel arches.

“Nice touch,” Joanna said, as the train drew alongside. A becapped figure leaned out onto the footplate and beckoned them to hurry aboard. The point of an iron had been driven into his eye; the rest of it stuck out, the flex dangling as though he were a robot with his innards unravelling.

Will and Joanna found themselves alone in the carriage. The seats were beautifully patterned with gold thread, the wall space ornamented with sketches of steam trains in full flight. The train gathered pace, forging a path through the busy sprawl, nosing into a countryside filled with mountains and veldt and vast lakes that bubbled and geysered what might have been tar, what Will hoped was tar, many metres into the sky.

They bought tickets from an inspector in an immaculate black uniform who, like Will, sported a gunshot wound. His, though, was located under his jaw. It had made an exit wound through his nose, turning that part of his face into an extraordinary melange of pink tissue and black, burnt meat.

“I’b god a dreadful aib,” he said, apologetically. “I could neber eben pid draight, neber bind blow by own head off.”

A haughty voice came to them, crackling over the tannoy, to direct their attention to some piece of local interest or another. Somebody else came by with food for them. A woman asked if they needed their shoes cleaned.

Somehow, Will fell asleep, a weird sleep within sleep, in which he dreamed of his real life, his animated life. In it, he was sitting with Elisabeth and Cat and they were enjoying lunch together on a sunny patio. There was wine and cheese and fresh bread and fruit. He kept wanting to turn around to look at the lawn that was behind them because he could hear something approaching, but Cat kept stopping him.

“You don’t want to see, I promise you. It’s best you don’t see.”

Elisabeth would back her up, craning her neck to look at whatever was coming towards them. She’d pull a face and nod. “I’m with Catriona on this,” she’d say. “It’s probably best all round if you just sit tight. Maybe, if you’re quiet, it will go away.”

Joanna woke him from this uneasy snooze. He found he had been crying.

“How long have we been on this train?” he asked her, in an attempt to deflect her curiosity.

“You’ve been asleep for an hour or so. Whatever an hour means here.”

The crisp, authoritative voice burst out of the tannoy soon after, as if invited by Will’s impatience.

“We shall shortly be arriving at Mash This,” it said. “Please ensure that you take all your belongings with you. Have your tickets ready for inspection and leave no blood or body parts behind. Enjoy Mash This and be sure to travel with us again soon.”

Will collared the inspector as the train drew alongside the platform. Three children in swimming costumes were waiting to climb on board, shepherded by a lifeguard in mirrorshades with a shark bite the size of a dinner plate in his abdomen.

“What’s in Mash This?” Will asked.

“Whad idn’t, sir? Bash Thid id the playboy cabidal of our liddle world here. Ib you can’t bind a good tibe here, you bight as well be dead.”

They presented their tickets at the booth and were waved through onto the station concourse. Grunge music was being played at ear-splitting volume from speakers set into the ground that were as regular as cats’ eyes.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Joanna asked.

“I don’t think I had anything specific in mind,” Will said. “But take your pick. I think we’ll find it here.”

A taxi pulled up alongside them. A yellow cab that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the streets of New York, if the driver had been able to do something about the bubbled and blistered appearance of his skin. “Blowtorch,” he said, conversationally as they piled into the back seat. His eyes followed them in the rear-view mirror. They were large and vivid, almost obscenely big, like orbs of white icing on a sticky treacle cake. “Hurts like nothing you would believe, until the nerve-endings get fried off. Wife had it arranged. Hitman with an imagination. Not what you want, really. But the last laugh’s with me. I lied when I said I’d leave her everything. She’s in the hospital now. Tears streaming down her bloody face. ‘Pull through, Freddy,’ she’s whining. ‘Attaboy. You can do it!’ I tell you, it will be a tragedy if I come out of this. I’m having a fantastic time. But listen to me blabbing on. Where can I take you?”

“I could do with a drink,” Will said. “Know any good bars?”

“Do I know any bars? If people had nicknames around here, mine’d be Freddy ‘Bar-knower’ Fisk. Sit back and enjoy the ride. I hope you remember it after a night out at the place I’m going to take you to.”

The ride was like something out of a nightmare. The road was a trampled approximation of flatness, comprised of ancient speakers and strobe lights. Music was everywhere; rock competing with opera, acid jazz trying to subdue hip hop, reggae jousting with bhangra, all of it at volumes designed to make the ears retch.

Walking wounded shuffled along pavements or sat in recesses away from the throng nodding their heads to the variable beats. Great palaces of litter had risen from the sides of the road and faced each other across the traffic, a death’s door Vegas. Edged with flashing lights, they begged and bossed passers-by to come and watch dancing girls, and lose their money at the gaming tables. Other, less obvious attractions jostled for attention: gladiatorial bouts; suicide pits where failed souls could watch how-to videos by people who had checked out properly; mutilation chic clinics where those embarrassed by their wounds could glitz them up into this season’s must-haves.

Freddy dropped them off opposite a bar with a neon sign depicting a man drinking endlessly from an unlabelled bottle of hootch, his eyes turned into plus signs. The bar was called Cunted? You Will Be.

“I could come and pick you up later. Literally!” Freddy offered.

Sex alleys away from the main drag were rotting rat-runs filled with booths where the depraved could let loose the desires that convention and legality had forced to be hidden in life. Any permutation of animal and human was available, whether it moved around on the hoof, paw, webbed foot, or flipper. An old man whose mouth was a blood bath filled with dental equipment was standing on the doorstep of one of these cess-pools, stroking his chin while a bouncer challenged him to come up with something new that he couldn’t show him inside.

Gargling slightly, the dentist’s victim said: “Shaved cat used as a dildo on a superfat woman while a black guy, who’s being sucked off by a birthing goat, slams her tits repeatedly in the passenger door of a Peugeot 206.”

“I’ll get back to you on that one,” the bouncer said.

“Christ,” Will said. “Let’s get a drink.”

Inside Cunted? barstaff were trying to clear up the aftermath of a small war. Tables and chairs had been overturned. People were hitting each other with the abandon that comes with the knowledge that it won’t make a single bit of difference. Will and Joanna found a place at the bar; a bartender slid a couple of cocktail menus their way.

“I’ll have an Eggy Chin,” Will said, picking a drink at random.

Joanna said, “Piss on Your Chips.” The bartender went about magicking the drinks from the bevvy of shakers and bottles beneath his bar.

The entertainment, as far as Will could discern any beyond the brawl that was gradually being brought to an end, consisted of topless dancers on a stage going through a number of tired routines. Weary of the constant music, Will studied their injuries, which seemed to be fairly tame, apart from in the case of one lithe blonde who was gamely trying to dance with the branch of a tree rammed through her chest.

“Have you seen any more people like the ones you left behind at Gloat Market?” Joanna asked.

“Not yet, and I hope I don’t. That was too creepy. It was like looking at a series of really old photographs of your family and seeing your own eyes replicated in a person from each one.”

Jolted into remembering what he had seen in the mirror after his experiences with George and Alice, Will fingered his lower arm and his shoulder. Both areas felt sore and much too soft for his liking. Their drinks came. Will’s was some kind of hellish nog and spirits brew, while Joanna’s looked as if it had been drawn from a dodgy tap in the toilets.

Will excused himself and made for the gents, promising to come back quickly. He slalomed around the dregs of the fight, easily dodging punches thrown by the bloodied sacks staggering into each other, and pushed his way through a door bearing a medical diagram of a cross-section of the male generative organs. Bodies were piled up in the urinals, sleeping off the violence and the vodka. In the single cubicle, slumped on the seat, a man was trying to have sex with a woman who was fading from this place. Will watched, horrified, as he saw how it happened. How it would be for Joanna if her husband carried through his promise. The man didn’t seem to notice as he thuggishly, drunkenly lunged his hips into an area that was greying out, failing, rippling to nothing in his hands. Will caught a glimpse of skeleton, little more than a dim X-ray suggestion, and then the man was alone, reality slowly dawning on a face made imbecilic with booze.

Will averted his eyes, remembering what he had come here for. He unbuttoned his shirt and gingerly tugged back the two halves, almost swooning when he saw the spread of decay. His flesh resembled bacon that had been retrieved from the back of a fridge many, many days after it should have been consumed. It glittered and flashed iridescently. The patch on his shoulder had reached over to his chest and was consuming the pectoral on the left side. His right arm was completely infected, to a point just above his wrist. But for all that, he felt fine. As fine as it was possible to be, in the middle of a fever dream shared by all the poor bastards who were walking the tightrope between life and death.

The woman from the cubicle lodged in his thoughts. How her face had aged and crumbled as she fled towards death. The rictus of her mouth leered behind Will’s eyes. This was how Cat had gone. And the others, no doubt. He remembered his grandfather dying. It had been a dignified death, the doctors had said, something Will’s father had repeated whenever the subject came up. A dignified death. Did any such thing exist? After witnessing this, Will doubted it. Death was a down and dirty affair. You could wear a freshly pressed suit and your nicest tie as you prepared for the end, but your bowels didn’t give a fig for that when it came. A death during sleep, in a comfortable bed with the family holding hands around you, was the best way, he had thought. But someone would have to wipe the sputum from your face as the death rattle took hold of you. Someone would have to take the shitty sheets and burn them after you were carried out in a box or a bag. Death wasn’t dignified. Ever. It wore a joker’s costume and slipped a whoopee cushion under your backside as you relaxed into it. It shoved an exploding cigar in your mouth as you struggled for those memorable last words.

Will washed his face as best he could with the foul water in the basins and dried himself on the sleeves of his shirt. The light in here wasn’t the best kind, hardly flattering, but he knew he would never be able to look at himself again without being able to see that grinning loon pressed against the flesh, trying to break free. The harlequin, the skull beneath the skin.

“HAVE ONE OF these,” Joanna said, reeling against him as he fought his way back to the bar. “They’re really very good.”

Will sipped some of her cocktail and ordered a fresh one from the bartender.

“He must be wondering how he got the raw deal when it came to coma existence,” Joanna whispered, drunkenly. “I asked him his name. ‘Emperor Hirohito’, he says. I like that. I like that you can be whoever you want to be here. It doesn’t matter. I’ll be Ava Gardner, I think.”

A congenial buzz was spreading around the cavernous bar. People were righting seats and using them to sit on for a change. The glazed dancers scurried off the stage as a big band blare stormed from the speakers. A small man with oiled hair came onto the stage holding a wireless microphone with a huge blue muffler at the end, his red, velvet suit garnering a chorus of wolf whistles from the audience. Through squeals of feedback, his voice came at them in crescendos of sleaze. Will found himself wiping his palms on his jeans for the duration.

“Laze ’n’ gennermal. Thanoo, thanoo verr mudge. I’ve been Brad Pitt and you’ve been a wunnerful aujence. Abzlootlwunnerful.” The mic never left his lips. He strutted prissily around the stage, peering into the audience like a long-sighted passenger trying to read the number on a bus. “We’ve got a big, big treat for all you lovely, lovely folks now. All the way from wherever you want her to be, the delectable, the adorable, the you’ll wanna take her home in your pocketable, the one, the only, SiiiiiiiGOUrrrrrney WEAverrrrrrrrr!”

The MC backed off into the wings, his arm outstretched. From the other side of the stage, struggling with her balance thanks to the embryo that was hanging in a sac from her waist, Sadie emerged.

Will watched, spellbound, as she prowled around the stage in a slashed, tight black dress, filleted to allow the watery sac and its hideous progeny to depend comfortably from her abdomen. The foetus within turned slowly in the fluid, its ill-formed face and hands bumping against the membrane, dimpling it. Sadie sang a seductress’s song, baring plenty of flesh, pouting and winking at the shadowed heads dusted with a corona of soft, violet light at the front tables. She swung the umbilical cord that joined her to her baby as if it were a microphone cord. She bumped her hips against it provocatively. When the song ended she bowed and motioned to the bouncers at the back of the bar. Will saw them close the doors from outside and heard the heavy clunk of locks being slid into the place. He eyed the bartenders nervously. They were backing out of the bar and closing doors behind them. Joanna had passed out, her head resting against the chrome handrail.

Sadie walked to the edge of the stage and put her foot up against the highlight deck. Calmly, in the same velvety voice in which she had sung the song, she said: “Every man jack of you get on your knees now and worship your queen.” She whispered, “I want satisfaction. I want a show of loyalty. I want a sacrifice. And I want it now.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: KEV

THE ALLOTMENTS ON Longshaw Street were a sad sight in late winter. Some of the rows had not been raked over since the cold snap; the dregs of last year’s crops lay like severed tongues on the soil, withered and brown amid the frigid lines of white. Some hardy vegetables were clinging on: sprouts, chard, leeks, but the majority had given up to the hard frost that had attacked the town in recent weeks.

Most of the plots were in some kind of disarray, except for one. Sean and Emma trudged along the tamped soil pathways towards it. A brief smell of peppery soup laced the chill afternoon air. To the west, over the dead airbase at Burtonwood, the sun was being teased into bloody ribbons by a thin raft of cloud. An upturned wheelbarrow rested against a compost heap enclosed by discoloured sheets of corrugated metal; off-cuts of carpet prevented the rotting matter from drying out. An old plastic bath was being used for water storage. Old window frames, complete with their thin glass squares, were a pauper’s greenhouse making the best of whatever sunshine was available. Halved plastic bottles improvised as cloches. Rolls of chicken wire and endless lengths of cane leaned against scruffy old sheds.

Restive eyes glared out from these retreats. The coals of cigarettes showed when the gloom within proved too great. Wirelesses played bland music or muttered dully. A man in a deckchair with deeply pitted, leathery skin sipped tea from a flask and turned the pages of a newspaper, refusing to acknowledge Sean and Emma as they walked by him. Somebody was leaning into a distant bonfire, feeding it with sticks and paper. Its smoke drifted across the allotments, making them insubstantial, enhancing their wasted appearance. It was hard to believe that this no-man’s land, this demilitarised zone, could cultivate anything so fancy as life. A slumped scarecrow stood sentinel, watching over a strip of ground choked with weed.

Plot number twenty-seven was a tidy strip of land tucked into the centre of the allotments, an exception to the utilitarian rule. The soil here had been cared for; it had been raked over and sieved for stones. Trimmed lengths from black binbags had been weighed down with bricks to protect something growing in one corner. A metal box contained non-biodegradable waste: packaging for organic slug pellets, tomato fertiliser, discarded seed trays, emptied cartons of Murphy’s tumble bug.

The shed was brightly painted and its window possessed a pair of curtains. A weathervane in the shape of a chicken rotated slowly on the roof. From within came a cough, a painful, damaged sound.

Sean called out. “Kev?” The name was brittle in the cold, a non-name, a pointless sound. Nevertheless, it drew a figure from the shed. Clad in a heavy blue greatcoat, a man of around sixty emerged, the bottom half of his cadaverous face swathed in a thick, bottle-green scarf. He looked at Sean first, then Emma, before casting a look further afield, at the allotment that was deserted but for the refugees from fracturing, loveless homes. The eyes came back to them, shadowed and hangdog.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice little more than a shifting of tortured air over dead or mangled vocal cords.

“I’m Sean Redman. This is Emma Lavery. Are you Kev?”

“Yes.”

Sean stepped a little closer. “It’s just that I was expecting someone younger.”

Kev allowed himself a dry little chuckle. “I was younger,” he said.

Sean said, “We wondered if we could talk to you.”

“About?”

Sean was about to answer when Emma stepped in front of him. “Is that a bird’s nest up there, mister...?”

“Blackbird,” Kev rasped.

“Mister Blackbird?”

Sean thought he saw a slight crinkling of the other man’s eyes, but if there was any humour there, it wasn’t reflected in his voice. “Mister Lovesey,” he corrected, briskly. “That is a blackbird’s nest.”

“I see,” Emma said. “Sorry.”

“No need to apologise. Now, what is it you want? How did you know I was Kev?”

“A friend of yours told me about you. Guy called Preece. Nicky Preece.”

“Nicky. Oh yes?” None of the suspicion was leaving his words, or his posture. He hovered at the doorway to the shed, cupping a plantpot in his hands. “What else did he tell you?”

“He told me how you used to work for Vernon Lord.”

The mention of the name made Kev step back into the shadow of the shed door, which obscured Sean’s view of him. “Oh? What of it?”

Emma touched Sean’s arm. “Mr. Lovesey, can we buy you breakfast? We understand you’re a bit of a connoisseur of English breakfasts.”

Kev moved out of the shadow of the door once more. He appeared even more pale and diminished. “It’s nice of you to offer, but I don’t eat much these days. No doubt you know why.” He moved the scarf around his neck, so that it sat more comfortably. “You’d better come in,” he said, “seeing as you’ve come all this way to talk to me.”

Sean and Emma stepped over the corrugated iron fence into the well-manicured plot. They followed Kev into the shed, which was frugally furnished: a wooden stool, a fold-away table, a camping stove. The remains of a game of patience were spread out on the table. Garden tools made a homely jumble in the corner, a fresh, edaphic aroma rising off them. A sleeping bag was tightly rolled up and stored on a shelf over the door. A broken shotgun hung from a large hook beneath the window. A box of shells sat on the sill, open, ready.

“Sorry I don’t have more chairs,” Kev said, in a voice that was anything but. “The floor’s clean though, if you want to park yourselves.”

Kev went on with his game of cards. At close quarters, they could hear the wheeze of air in his throat as he took breaths.

Emma said, “How come you don’t have a scarecrow, Mr. Lovesey? Aren’t you worried the birds will take your crops?”

“None of us here has a scarecrow. Bloody worthless things. And it’s not crop-sowing time anyway. Nothing to take.”

“But there’s a scarecrow out there. Someone’s stealing a march on you.”

Kev grunted and shook his head. “No scarecrows here.”

Emma stepped outside and pointed. As soon as her arm was outstretched, she dropped it. “Oh,” she said. “I’m sure I saw one in that plot over there.”

“Nicky was fond of you,” Sean said, giving Emma an irritated look. “I think all of the lads were.”

“How do you know ’em?”

Sean spoke of the softstripping contract and the time he had spent with the crew. He stopped short of divulging that his relationship with the others had ceased, that any friends he had made during his time there were enemies now.

“And Lord?” Kev asked, his hands now still on the deck of cards.

“I went with Vernon on a few jobs,” Sean explained.

“A few jobs,” Kev said, and this time his blasted voice managed to carry a trace of sarcasm.

“You know what I’m here for,” Sean said.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“People are dying. You were nearly killed for what’s going on.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Sean persisted. “It’s still happening, what Vernon is doing. He’s still collecting. Sometimes he takes... sometimes it’s unborn babies. Did you know that?”

Now Kev swivelled on the stool. His eyes were raw and flat: oysters on the half-shell. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“He needs to be stopped. I think he killed a girl I used to know. Or someone working with him did. I want you to help me.”

“How?”

“You know all about him. You’ll have seen things. You know his weaknesses.”

Kev shook his head. “It isn’t Vernon you should be worried about.”

“Oh really?”

“Why don’t you just leave me alone? I don’t want to get back into that nonsense. I’ve got too much to do.”

Sean hitched around on his seat to get a view of the allotment. “Yeah. You’ve got a hole in your wheelbarrow needs mending and a rake to clean.”

“It suits me,” Kev said, quickly.

“I heard you were a good guy for Vernon. He rated you, I heard.”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care any more.”

“I heard you were loyal and wouldn’t ever lie down for anyone. Hundred per center. Hundred and ten per center.” Sean leaned over and picked at the dried mud on a trowel. “Will you at least tell me what you know? And tell me why you bailed out? It wasn’t the gunshot wound, was it? At least tell us what happened with that.”

Kev sat across from him, staring at the younger man while Emma stood by the doorway, looking out at the pockets of mist in the rowans and the hawthorn. Chickens in a coop squabbled among themselves for a few seconds. The smell of the bonfire drifted through the open door. Kev’s stony face broke open to reveal a smile.

“Have a drink,” he said, pulling open a drawer and removing a half-bottle of whisky. “A nip, to keep out the cold.”

He poured three measures into three mugs and passed them around. They took sips. They nodded at the agreeable flavour, the migration of warmth through their bodies. A robin landed six feet away from the door and eyed them coolly.

Kev said:

I first met Vernon while I was working on the docks. I was doing anything I could for money back then. Seventy hours a week I’d be breaking my back loading or unloading ships. Fruit, textiles, meat, sometimes arms, although that was often midnight stuff. And never at the docks. Very naughty. Vernon was on one of the boats bringing in an illegal shipment of pistols from the Americas to sell on to Europe one night when I was helping out. I didn’t know much about his operations but I’d heard he was just about the best smuggler there was. I’d heard about him long before I met him. He was a bit of a legend.

We went down to a boathouse on the river and helped take the boxes off this boat while Vernon sat on a chair smoking cheroots and watching us working. When we’d finished, he called me back and thanked me, told me I put my back into it more than any other dogsbody that he’d seen. He was looking at me strange, like I had something green on my face. The others were in the boathouse by this time, divvying up the booty and loading it into the backs of stolen cars for delivery. They gave me filthy looks as they walked back and to.

Vernon never blinked when he talked. First time I ever saw his eyelids was when I caught him asleep one time. And even then I had to look twice because it was as though they were so thin they were almost translucent, like he was watching you while he kipped. He gave me a chunky little glass filled with rum and told me to down it. After the drink he asked me straight if I wanted to come and work with him. He needed someone he could trust, he said. He needed another set of eyes. Another set of hands. It was getting too dangerous, he said, this line of work he was in. He was getting too old. He pinched my cheek and laughed when he said this. He said that the rewards for helping him out would be great. Unimaginable.

I didn’t like it, the work he was offering. But I stuck at it and developed a tough skin. The boat work tailed off anyway. We lost our gills and went inland. I took beatings for Vernon. I took a knife once. I got harder. The beatings didn’t happen so often. I started doling the beatings out more than I was taking them. Vernon and me put the frighteners on this part of the country. We had the Northwest in our pockets. We got word of the rich pickings and went round to collect. I didn’t know then that it wasn’t money that Vernon was picking up. I thought he was a debt collector pure and simple. I never asked who for and I never asked why. I just matched him pace for pace and stood behind him in the shadows, cracking my knuckles while he pleased and thank you’d and scraped shit off his heels on the steps of all those sorry little houses.

It was seven or eight years before I twigged. A long time, I know. But if I’d been known for the quality of meat between my ears I’d never have been in this game in the first place, would I now? There’s me, picking up my grey hairs and getting a bit of lard round the guts and Vernon, my elder and better, looking as thin as a stiletto and twice as sharp. I never saw him exercising. He ate like a gannet and drank as if to chase off the Devil’s thirst.

We were friends by now. Fast and firm. We talked a lot, but he pretty much clammed up when the chat turned on him, his family, his loves. He got a cloud in his eyes when I asked him about his loves. Because I never saw him once with a lady on his arm. He had no tattoos proclaiming his desire for a Mavis or a Maude, or a Malcolm come to that. But we talked. One night he had had a bit too much to drink and the shakes were on him. I thought he was fearless, but this night he shook so much I could hear his bones rattling. He told me he was never going to be able to stop working. He was scared to stop working because he didn’t know what would happen to him. It wasn’t the poor bastards we visited that put the willies up him, nor was it the people he delivered the money to – what I thought was money. He said he was scared of himself. He had terrible dreams, he said. Dreams in which he walked through a corridor of mirrors and was terrified to turn to his left or right to see what kind of reflection walked with him. Ask him how he was feeling and he’d tell you that he didn’t feel himself today. Then he’d cackle to himself darkly for a bit. The drinking got worse. I drove him everywhere. But he got on top of it. Beat it, I suppose. Wrestled his demons to the ground like the hard bastard he is.

Doesn’t matter any more, he told me, when I asked him if he was okay. He dreamed of his corridor of mirrors and walked along it, smashing every one down with a baseball bat. Dead if I do and dead if I don’t, he told me. I never let it rest. I asked him to tell me what was going on. I dogged him. I went after him about the true nature of his work like a hound after a fox. I threatened that I’d leave him. He came round after that.

He showed me, one night, what the fuss was all about. We went out on a collection. A little house in Widnes. Old couple. Desperate for cash. Well, they’d got their bit of cash and Vernon came to balance the books. Instead of leaving me outside, he took me in with him. I wish I’d had a drink beforehand, let me tell you. What I saw... what I saw...

Vernon lays his hand on the old girl’s shoulder. Myra, her name was. Her old man, Clive, he behaves like a good boy and buzzes off to the kitchen to make us all a cup of tea. There’s the three of us standing in the room. I blink. And there’s four of us. I didn’t hear the door open or close. No footsteps. He’s just there. And it takes me a moment or two for it to sink in because he’s so still. This tall doctor bloke with a paper mask. His eyes are crawling all over Myra. Insect eyes, he had. They didn’t stop bloody moving.

Vernon goes, This is Dr. Chater. His voice is cracking all over the place like a wafer, like a bloody choir boy at bollockdrop. I realise, despite the smile on Vernon’s face, that he is shitting himself.

Dr. Chater moved like nobody I had ever seen before. If you think of a film of someone moving, and then take away all the frames that contain the getting from one position to the next, it was like that. Like looking at photographs. One second he was looking at Myra, the next second his hand was full of knives and she was forced back over the arm of the settee, antimacassars all over the shop. Another second, her blouse is up around her ears and Dr. Chater’s hunched over her. I watched him cut her. I watched him take a lung. No blood. He moved too fast for her body to even realise it was open. Clive came in with tears in his eyes asking who took sugar. One look at her and he shut the kitchen door. A good boy, Clive. She was stitched up and in her armchair within seconds. She was dead. She’d had a heart attack.

Dr. Chater slipped the lung into a plastic bag and tossed it to Vernon before propping a Radio Times into Myra’s hands, the doctor’s bloody prints smeared all over it. I blinked. There was three of us again. We left before Clive came back. I wanted to ask Vernon all kinds of questions but I couldn’t talk. Spit had turned to glue in my mouth. We drove for an hour until we came to a house in the country. Nice house. Big. There was this bloody freak waiting for us. He looked as if he was in a state of constant drowning. Snuffling and choking and coughing. I can see by your face you know who I’m talking about. He took the parcel and told us to wait. We were there for about half an hour, standing around, waiting. When he came back he had mud on his feet and he gave Vernon a couple of pebbles from his pocket. Do I eat this, I asked and Vernon started laughing his head off. The sickly kid was laughing too, but it was the kind of laughter people do when they don’t get the joke, but don’t want to be seen to not get the joke. Put it in your pocket, Vernon says. So I do and I sleep the sleep of kings that night and when I wake up in the morning I check for the pebble and it’s gone and I look in the mirror and all my grey hair has vanished.

That was 1970.

Couple of years ago, I’m with Vernon at a night club. This streak of piss called Norman Spence ran the place. Vernon had sorted him out with a loan and now he’s prospering, his club doing really well. We go round there for an eye. Eyes are needed for some reason. Vernon doesn’t get a chance to touch Norman, to bring in Dr. Chater. Doesn’t even get an audience with him. Bouncers pull guns on us. Guns are the thing now. I’m wondering, as this meathead draws a bead on me, is that one of the guns I carried off the boat all those years ago when I had a wet nose and wide eyes? Could be. Bastard shoots me through the throat. Tears half of it out. Vernon got me out of there. God knows how. Hail of bullets. He patches me up. We get Norman back. We sort him out. You might bump into him if you go paddling in the Mersey. I stick around for a while but my nerve has gone. It’s time to hand in my notice. Tears and hugs and take it easy mate, see you around.

He’s still caught up in it, Vernon. In his eyes, when I called it a day, I could see him thinking I was a jammy sod. I could see him wishing for what I had done. He’s been at it a long time. Maybe that payment, those pebbles, maybe it was worth it for a while. But you get trapped, don’t you? If he stopped now, what would happen to him? All that time, that experience, all of it comes piling down on you, crushes you. It would kill him to give it up now. He knows that. He has to carry on. He has to keep giving, in order to receive. He’s the most generous man in the world, but he doesn’t have a say in the matter.

Kev said, “Vernon Lord was born in 1892.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: THE GRAND PANJANDRUM

WHEN IT BECAME apparent that Sadie wanted someone dead, there weren’t as many rushing for the exits as Will might have anticipated. Some volunteered. And if Will had realised what was lined up for him, he might well have done the same. There was plenty of genuflecting going on as she stepped down from the stage and walked among the punters, the utricle hanging off her side sloshing in time to the swing of her hips. The sad-looking, pickled thing within turned and turned, its ill-formed arms hugging itself. Will realised what it was in George and Alice that he had recognised. It was Sadie.

Brad Pitt was back on stage now, trying to calm everybody down. He minced around, patting down his oily hair and lifting his voice to compete with the hubbub as people threw themselves at locked doors or tried to break windows with chairs.

“This guy walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a double entendre. So the bartender gave him one. Now then! Hey?”

Nobody was listening. Will slipped over the bar and knelt among the beertaps and barsnacks. From his position he could look up at the splashback mirror that ran the length of the bar beneath the optics and watch as Sadie stalked among the audience, rating and discarding potential victims. It took a few seconds for him to realise that there was another man down here with him, cowering just a foot to his left.

“Hi,” Will said. The other regarded him as if he had just extracted a monkey from his ear.

“Do you know who this bitch is?” he asked.

“Yes,” Will said. “Her name is Sadie. I rescued her from a bunch of travellers a couple of weeks ago. She’s a real handful.”

Will was rewarded with a slow shaking of the head, from the moment he had begun to speak. The monkey had become a belly-dancing piglet wearing nipple-rings.

“That’s Sigourney Weaver,” the man hissed. “The piece of skirt that bosses this place.”

“The bar?”

“No. The entire place. Queen bitch.”

“Really? She’s just a spoilt brat, you know. More trouble than good.”

The man was looking in the mirror now, his eyes widening all the time. He reached up and loosened the knot in his tie. “Okay. Well if you know her so well, put her in her place.” With that, he launched himself away from the box of crisps he was hiding behind, vaulted the counter, and hurled himself through the window into the night. When Will returned his gaze to the mirror, Sadie was standing at the bar, regarding him coolly.

“Fix us both a drink, Will,” she said. “On the house.”

“ARE YOU GOING to sacrifice me?” he asked.

Sadie, halfway into a swallow, looked at him uncomprehendingly and burst into laughter, spraying some of her champagne on his shirt. “God no,” she said, when she had finally managed to compose herself. “My hero. My saviour. Why should I do that?”

“You were looking for sacrifices.”

“And I’ll have one,” she assured him. “But not you. Not Uncle Will. There’s better in store for you. A more noble role.”

“What happened to you and Elisabeth, when I left you?” he asked, steeling himself for some awful reportage of what the mountaineer had done to them after the crash.

The bar had been emptied. Once it was clear that Sigourney Weaver had someone in her clutches, widespread calm had broken out. The bartenders reappeared and unlocked the doors, and people filed into the foggy twilight, chatting about where they were going to spend the rest of their evenings. Now a few bartenders were clearing away glasses and wiping down the tables. Bouncers were gathered by the doors, arms folded, nodding apocalyptically. Brad Pitt was sitting on the edge of the stage with a half a lager and his pants unbuttoned to allow his beer belly a breather, crooning to one of the cleaners who was gazing at him, a bucketful of cigarette ends in her hands.

“We’ll come to that, presently,” Sadie said. “In here, little man, you are no longer the boss. This is my playground. My sandpit.”

“How long have you been in a coma?” Will asked. Sadie laughed again. Maybe she was laughing because Will was studiously avoiding the obvious question. Maybe she was laughing because she found his questions to be piffling and trivial. Whatever, it was pissing Will off.

“I’m not in a coma, chucky-egg. It’s you who’s in a coma. You and all the other veg-heads floating around here.”

“You’re deluding yourself.”

“Am I?”

“Everyone here...”

“Everyone here is in a coma. Except me.”

Will looked around him, bored by the argument. “Tell me what happened to Elisabeth. Is she here?”

Sadie took a sip from her glass and rearranged the sac on her knees. The homunculus within rolled onto its back and gazed at her through the milky suspension with pale eyes. “I told you, we’ll come to that. When I say.”

Will turned the frosted glass in his fingers, spreading a base of condensation across the scarred bartop. He said, “If you’re not in a coma, what are you doing here?”

“Putting the fear of God up my subjects.”

“Subjects?”

“Yes. Here, I’m important. If I was a cheese here, I would be a big one.”

“I don’t get it.”

Sadie winked and rubbed the shiny skin of the sac. It wrinkled and gurgled beneath her fingers. “You did get it though, didn’t you? Remember? In the church? Naughty boy.”

Will forced himself to concentrate on one thing at a time. He felt as though he were sinking under the weight of so much innuendo and concealed threat. If he was going to be of some use to Cat or Eli, wherever they were now, then he had to tread water. “Why are you so different?” he tried again. “What marks you out as something special?”

She said, “I was an Insert once. Like your friends. One of the first. A guinea-pig. They lost me as soon as they put me in. I’ve been lording it here ever since. I’m a rare bird, Will. I can cross over. I have that talent thanks to the men in the white coats and the big beards. A failed experiment, but I’m not complaining. I didn’t go in quite as far as they were hoping, or needing, me to go. But, as I say, I’m not complaining.”

“And what about George and Alice. Relatives of yours?”

“Ah yes,” Sadie said. “George and Alice. No. Not relatives. That was me. A welcoming party for you. How’s your arm?”

Will stiffened. “What’s all that about?”

“Well, a girl’s got to eat, hasn’t she?”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Sadie?”

She licked her lips at him. “What is it, you think, keeping our child here sustained? Nourished? Gold top milk and a pot of puréed chicken and sweetcorn?”

“It’s not my child. I don’t know what sickness has got into your brain, but it’s got to stop, Sadie.”

“Will, meet Cherub, Cherub, meet Will. Daddy’s home.”

The curl of grey flesh twisted. A smile curled its lip.

“Come home with me,” she said.

“Fuck off, Sadie. I’m not scared of you.”

Sadie widened her eyes. “Jesus, Will. You should be.” She tapped a nail against her teeth; her other hand absently stroked the umbilicus joining her to her progeny. “Tell you what, let me show you why you need to be scared. There’s plenty to be scared of, you know.”

She reached behind her, for one of the puling idiots begging to be put out of his misery: an elderly man whose spine was a shattered bow sticking through the sheepskin coat on his back gibbered his appreciation. He placed a gnarled hand in hers at the same time that she caught hold of Will’s sleeve.

A blink: the bar resolved itself into the twisted, burning carriage of a passenger train. Commuters lay around the carriage in various states of physical collapse. There was a lot of blood. The old man was now lying half in, half out of the train, his spectacularly ruined back shredded apart on the mangled remains of the window. Will watched as he turned his face to them, his shattered teeth bared in a grateful leer, bloody bubbles bursting on his tongue as he fought for breath.

“Now,” he begged.

Sadie leaned over and covered his mouth with hers. She drew breath so violently that it seemed half the old man’s jaw was sucked between her lips. His body jerked twice and was still. She let him fall. The scene disintegrated around them as she let go of the man’s hand.

“Now then,” she purred, leaning over to kiss Will’s cheek with her bloody mouth. “Come back to my place.”

“I saved your life, Sadie. I came after you when you went missing.”

“Pah.” Sadie dismissed the claim with a flap of her hand. “I was prospecting for a mate. You were strong and resourceful. And your arse looks good in jeans. Now. Home.”

He could hardly object, not when two of the bouncers moved behind him, casting long, long shadows across the bar.

“Meet Kynaston and Drinkwater,” Sadie said. “Evil bastards the both of them.” The two bouncers saluted him.

Joanna murmured as they brushed past her.

“Who’s this?” Sadie asked. “Got some competition, have I?”

Will said, “I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

Sadie smiled. She reached out and flicked the end of his nose. Her fingers smelled of cold, old things. She nodded at one of the bouncers. “She’ll do. Take her.”

THEY WALKED THROUGH the seething streets, but nobody jostled them. Bodies parted in Sadie’s path as though she and the oncoming throng were repelling magnets. Eventually, the strip clubs and dive bars and street corners haunted by junkies dwindled. The traffic shook off its insanity. Will followed Sadie along a series of ever-narrowing corridors in a mangled spread of housing that seemed to have been jammed together like ill-fitting Sticklebricks in a child’s playpen. Flues and drainpipes, vents and fire escapes clung to the superstructure, little more than add-ons or afterthoughts. Some people were on the fire escapes, drinking tea or watching the stars or fucking. Cardboard boxes, tarps and plastic sheeting had been arranged on some of the landings, makeshift houses for the wretches who couldn’t find themselves a toehold. Will wondered about them, what their lives beyond coma must be like. So-called lives.

It grew so dark in the rabbit warren that Will had to listen out for the sluicing of the foetus in its membrane. At least, in here, he didn’t have to look at it. Nevertheless, his mind settled upon the developing child, and he imagined it rotating in its vital jelly, watching him as he followed Sadie through passageways so thin he could feel the cement of the walls muscling in against him. He smelled Juicy Fruit on the breath of the bouncers marching behind him, and when he looked back he could just see a reflected gleam off the insectile lenses of their sunglasses. They walked until they came to a set of storm doors set into the floor, at a point where the walls actually converged. All around them, lifting into the night, were sheer edifices of urbanity: greasy windows filled with dirty yellow light, a jungle of satellite dishes and TV aerials, telegraph wires, and cables. Will saw figures using these as a monkey might use a vine in a rainforest. It seemed a safer option than using the streets. As if in confirmation of this, the rooftop horizons were spoiled by the shape of tents and bivouacs.

Kynaston pushed past Will and grappled with the storm doors. Sadie descended, but paused when half of her body had disappeared to look back at Will.

“Welcome to my palace,” she said.

SHE SAID, “I need you.”

He knew he ought to be impressed by what she said, and at some level he knew he was, but for the time being his eyes were too busy to allow anything else to bother him. They kept returning, despite the opulence of the surroundings, to the head on the stage behind him. One of the eyes was only half-shut, as if trying to trick people into thinking it belonged to a dead person. At any moment, the mouth seemed as if it might open and sing-song: “Fooled you!” The head had begun to shrink, and the skin had tightened into an arid mask, but the hair was still lustrous, the thing that helped Will identify it as belonging to Elisabeth.

Sadie’s palace had turned out to be an underground theatre that had been gutted by fire. Seated in the auditorium, either slumped with decay into the burned seats or erect with rigor mortis, death grins, and clenched fists, corpses blankly contemplated the stage with its craters and its mountains of ash. Joanna had been draped across the laps of one of these bodies. Her arm was around its shoulders. She twitched in sleep and nuzzled up against its puffball throat. Up in the gods, bodies twirled slackly on ropes, swollen necks bent bonelessly over the slipknots.

Whatever fire had scoured clean the theatre had done for the curtains too. Immense runners hinted at their extravagance; Will could almost imagine a great weight of maroon velvet and gold brocade sweeping across the stage to consume the players. He could almost hear the clamour of the ovation, the hands blurring as they clapped beneath the smoky floods. The flowers. He could taste, behind the coarse, carbonated bones of the theatre, the electric clash of sweat and nervous excitement. He clung to those ghosts. Knowing they had been real once helped him to cope with the atrocity that had been visited upon Elisabeth and the madness that was devouring Sadie’s mind.

“We both need you.” She came to him and unbuttoned his shirt, looking up coyly through her fringe as she had when he came to rescue her from the travellers. He saw now how that had been a test. A trap, even. He had unwittingly created a bond in that moment that had doomed him as surely as the fly accepting the courtesy of the spider in his parlour.

Will looked down as Sadie gently peeled the shirt back from his shoulders. The rot that was displayed made Will gag. The muscle had stripped back almost to the bone, the edges of the wound were furred and discoloured, slowly spreading outwards to the uninfected areas of his body like a recalcitrant flame on damp paper.

“I’m dying,” Will said simply.

“Yes,” Sadie confirmed. “You’re being consumed.” Though she said the words gravely, she was racked with giggles. She covered her mouth with her hand and stepped back from him, her eyes becoming wet. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to make fun of the dead. Or rather, the dead to be. But it was a good joke.”

“I’m cracking a rib here,” Will said, flatly. “What have you done to me?”

“I’ve touched you deeply,” Sadie said, and she was off again, chuckling into her palms.

“You’ve poisoned me.”

“No,” she said, hastily. “I’ve not poisoned you. I’ve taken from you, because my child... our child... needs nourishment from her father. That’s the way it is here. A true two-parent upbringing.”

Will licked his lips. “That,” he said, pointing at the sac, “is not my child.”

“In the church,” Sadie said softly. “Do you remember how I fucked you? How my legs spread wide on top of you? How I sucked in every inch of you? Do you remember how hard you came? Do you remember the shadow, the shade? The black shape that moved in the corner of the church? You know what that was. You know full well. You thought you had a headache, you weren’t entirely sure that any of it had happened.” She smiled and leaned over to kiss him. Will recoiled but one of the bouncers stepped up behind him, making a wall with his chest that Will could not knock down. Sadie’s lips were cold against his. Her tongue wormed between them. She tasted of damp woodlands. He closed his eyes when the sac slapped against his thigh and he felt the spindly limbs of what spun inside it grope for his hands.

“It happened, Will. You poured yourself into me. We made heat. We made a baby. And you have to provide for the child. You have to. You belong to us now.”

Where she had kissed him felt strange. There was a tingle there, like the phantom sensation on the mouth that heralds a cold sore.

“Don’t touch me any more,” he said. “Please.”

Sadie said, “Can’t make promises like that, Will.”

He raised a finger and probed his lips. They felt mushy and hot. They felt as though there was nothing as firm as teeth behind them. Fluid seeped onto his fingertip; it appeared black in the poor light. He hoped to God it wasn’t.

“I do like a sacrifice,” Sadie said, suddenly excited. “Don’t you? Doesn’t it just fill you with importance? A death, for your sake. This will be for you too. For our new family, for as long as you last.”

She caught hold of the sac by its umbilicus and swung it up so that she was eye to eye with its occupant. “And baba makes three! Yes he does!”

Joanna was stirring on her macabre throne. Sadie gripped Drinkwater’s arm and dragged him towards their prisoner, asking him if he had a knife or a gun or a grenade they could use. Attention diverted from him, Will moved towards the stage. He drew himself up onto it and carefully navigated his way around the weakened boards, the holes, and the splinters to the pike.

He reached out a hand slowly, reluctant to touch the failing flesh of her face but desperate to make one last contact. In the end, it wasn’t so bad, not really. It felt a little like the skin on his grandmother’s face when he had visited her in hospital, towards the end. She had been sleeping; he touched her cheek and it had been cool, dry and soft, slightly powdery. She had woken with a start and he had tried to smile at her tired, bewildered eyes, but it hurt too much to do so. “I love you,” he had told her, around the lump in his throat. The first and the last time. I should think so, she had replied, in a voice full of mock-chastisement.

“I love you,” he said now, through the mess of his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

As gently as he could, he wrenched her head from the spiked end of the weapon, feeling to the core of his bones his revulsion as it came suckingly free.

He turned to Sadie, who was pushing sticks of dynamite into Joanna’s pockets, into her mouth, under her seat. She was laughing with Drinkwater, who handed her the TNT as if it were treats from his pocket.

Will leapt from the stage and launched himself at them. Somebody was screaming, and it was only when he was within slaughtering range of the others that he realised the screams were coming from his own mouth.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: SOFTSUCK

“I DON’T FEEL very well,” Sean said, pausing a moment to lean against the wall. Window-dressers stopped draping winter clothes on startled mannequins to watch. Emma moved to block their view and put a hand to Sean’s brow. Her fingers came away wet with his sweat.

“You were fine a moment ago,” Emma pointed out. “You were going on about ice cream. About how much you’d like to have some.”

“Well I’m not fine now,” he snapped. “Jesus. It feels as though my guts have been filled with hot grease. I think I’m going to vom.”

Sean staggered away from his resting place and dropped to his knees by the roadside. The occupants of the nearest gridlocked cars started honking their horns and yelling at him to puke on somebody else’s doorstep. One woman snatched the curtains together on her passenger-side window. In the next car, a man who was washing dishes in a tub clamped to the door tutted away like a faulty Geiger counter.

Emma gently rubbed his back and mouthed apologies to the bystanders while Sean heaved. Astonishing heat was rising out of him and changing the nature of the air. Jewels of sweat broke out on his nape and stained his blue T-shirt. There was an awful, vertiginous moment for her when she heard the cackle of a child and looked up to see a bird with a pair of fingers between its beak. Then Sean’s back moved in a way it shouldn’t have and she returned her attention to him in time to see her own hand sink into him. She had a brief, shocking sensation of her fingers grazing against the nubs of bone that formed his vertebrae, and then she was pulling away, dizziness clouding her vision. She was not so giddy that she missed the way that Sean’s back arched unnaturally at the apex of every retching fit. He seemed to become spineless, his body twisting so violently during the spasms that it threatened to bend him double. The small of his back where she had touched him developed a serious dip, a pocket that resembled the suck of a plughole as it devoured everything around it. He barked out, his face clenched shut with pain, and then the extremities of his body were drawn into the hungry pit at the base of his spine until, a second later, all that was left was a spinning disc of hot air trembling in the cold sky. By the time that vanished, Emma too was beginning to feel unwell.

“PARDOE. YOU BASTARD. You might have warned us.”

Emma was creased on the floor, her hands splayed out on the carpet of Pardoe’s living room. Her own vomit was drying on her fingers. Her stomach felt as though every muscle in it had been strained, her ribs like they had been swapped for a handful of scorched firewood. Six feet away from her, Sean was lying in a foetal position, shivering by the radiator. Pardoe was sitting in an ostentatious leather chair, regarding his two visitors bemusedly. He had shed the avuncular air he had carried with him on their first meeting. Instead of a slightly worn cardigan, he now wore a suit with creases so sharp they might have sliced flesh. On his desk was a telephone and a bunch of keys, a couple of paper clips, nothing else. He played with a small, matt-grey pen, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger.

“Do you enjoy the big blue yonder? Do you like the Zoo?”

“Is that what you call it?” Emma asked, wiping her mouth.

Pardoe sniffed. “It’s called what you want to call it. It’s home to some, it’s hell to others. To some it’s the Dead Zoo. I’ve heard it called Arcadia, Z, the Place... Tantamount, that was yours, wasn’t it, Emma? Particularly good name, that. We knew it simply as In Country. But I’ve heard it called – and this is a particular favourite of mine – Oh Shitting Nora, Is This It?”

Sean glared at him. “Considering you put us through enough grief to get us in there, you didn’t hang around for long to pull us out, did you?”

“I had news for you. What was I supposed to do?”

“There has got to be an easier way to communicate with us when we’re in,” Emma argued. Her mouth was spiced with her own sickness and her left eye felt dry and scratchy. “There’s got to be something safer than just pulling us out like that.”

“You find it, we’ll use it,” Pardoe said, and then, his temper showing through the usual reserve, he flicked a paper clip at Sean. “Oh get up, you big baby. Christ, anybody would have thought you’d just been born.”

“I can imagine what that must feel like now,” Sean croaked, pulling himself up to a sitting position.

“De Fleche,” Pardoe said, conversationally. “Any word?”

Sean shook his head. “We’re having trouble getting to the hill, where we think he’s based.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“Every time we go in, we find ourselves in a big city. We never get in anywhere else. The hill–”

Pardoe coughed to interrupt. “This hill,” he said, ruminatively, the pen twisting faster in his grip. “What’s that all about? What makes you think there’s a hill, if you haven’t seen it? Surely it would be expedient to search this city. He must be there.”

Now it was Emma’s turn to shake her head. “No. There’s a hill. We both dreamed of it many times when we were children. I think it must have been around the time of our initiation.”

“Then find the fucking hill,” Pardoe said. “We don’t have for ever. I’ve had reports already of leaks in a number of places. The first in this country have occurred. We’re mopping up, but we’re missing quite a few.”

“How long do we have?” Sean asked. “Before it gets serious?”

“Oh, it’s already serious. But we’re holding our own for now. I’d say that in three days’ time, if we haven’t done for de Fleche, then the breakdown will be more pronounced. Think floods instead of leaks. Think of the sky rotting. Think of the ground falling away as you walk. It’ll be grade-one chaos. A free-for-all, with the dead at the head of the queue.”

They took this in, trying to wipe away the effluvia from their clothing.

“And this news,” Emma remembered. “What’s going on? What was so important?”

Pardoe studied a nail and took his tongue on a tour of his teeth. He slid the nail in between his incisors, digging for a speck of food. Emma and Sean waited, used by now to Pardoe’s theatre. “Your friend Will,” he said, finally.

“What about him?” Sean asked.

“He’s had a bit of an accident.”

DRINKWATER WAS QUICKER and more fancy on his feet than his bulk suggested. Will lunged with the pike but he was too slow, and Drinkwater ducked easily out of the way. Overbalanced, Will hit the edge of a chair with his shin and started to topple over. If the chair had survived the fire without damage, it might have floored him, but the arm came free at the moment of impact and Will was able to right himself, turning to defend the attack that Drinkwater had already initiated. A knife flashed in his hand.

Drinkwater was fleet, but he was stupid, relying on brute force and lots of noise for his offensive. Will was intimidated, but not to the point of freezing. He swung the pike around as Drinkwater reached out to slash him and lanced the biceps of the bouncer’s right arm. Having hooked him, Will dragged him around in a wide arc, and then, at speed, jerked back on the weapon and watched Drinkwater disappear over the backs of some of the chairs while about half a pound of his muscle flicked up into the air.

Will turned quickly in time to feel the fist of the second bouncer pile into his jaw. He staggered back, driving the back end of the pike into the shredded, scorched carpet beneath him. It skidded for a short while, and then caught in a series of cracks, inviting Kynaston to impale himself upon it as Will fell hard onto his back. But the bouncer was smart to the trick. He sidestepped the pike and batted it away with his forearm. Will changed his grip, holding the pike horizontally as Kynaston dropped on to him. He managed to lodge the handle under Kynaston’s ribs and tilt backwards, vaulting the bouncer over his head.

He was dimly aware of applause in the background, of Sadie clapping wildly, before Kynaston was back on his feet and rushing him again. Will feinted to go to his right and checked left, unbalancing Kynaston sufficiently to allow Will enough space in which to smack the blunt end of the pike across the bouncer’s jaw. He heard a splitting sound and Kynaston’s parted chin began bleeding profusely. The bouncer was preoccupied with keeping his face together with his hands, and backed off as Will approached.

“Enough,” Sadie called. She was standing over Joanna with a Zippo in her hand, flicking the wheel with her thumb.

The bouncers regrouped, their injuries already on the mend. Fibres of muscle knitted themselves across the gouges in Drinkwater’s arm; Kynaston worked his jaw as the skin zipped itself up over the rent in his chin.

Sadie kept the wheel turning, rasping sparks against the fuel nozzle. When it caught, the flame roared a foot into the air. Then she would extinguish it and begin again. With her other hand, she played with the fuse on the stick of dynamite in Joanna’s mouth. “When I play at mean motherfuckers,” she said, “people stay hurt.”

Will moved towards Sadie, but she drew another flame from the Zippo and kept it burning, wafting the flame towards Joanna’s face, a slow grin blossoming, made grotesque by the tremble of light against her skin.

“Don’t,” Will said. The thought of his being responsible for another woman’s death turned him ice-cold inside. His heart, once so warm, once so full of hope, was now little more than a hard twist in his chest. When it beat, it spelled out the names of Catriona and Elisabeth. They were scar tissue on the tired, cold chambers. He didn’t think there was room enough for one more without it stopping altogether.

“I thought you said you’d never seen her before. She meant nothing to you.”

“She doesn’t,” Will said, but his voice told her otherwise.

“You have to learn,” Sadie said, soothingly. “You have to know that I’m in charge around here.”

Was it the light sucking the colour and the firmness from Joanna’s skin? Her cheeks hollowed out. Her hair lost its shine. She settled more completely on the wasted limbs of the dead man in his chair. She opened her eyes and turned to him, ignoring the indignity of the TNT jammed between her teeth and tucked into her cleavage. She smiled at him around the stick and winked. She nodded. She was gone.

“You missed your chance,” Will said. Did she die, or was she pulled back?

Cheated of her display, Sadie lapsed into a shrieking fit. She swore and stomped and burned the unfeeling flesh of Joanna’s husk. She promised Will a thousand million years of suffering. She screamed at him until his face was pitted with her spittle. But he didn’t hear a single word. He was watching Joanna’s face sag on the bone, failing in seconds. At one point, just before the top half of her body crumbled away from her spine and made a nonsensical dustpile on the floor, he thought he saw a spiral of light lift from the centre of her chest: a fine necklace catching the light as it was removed by a lover’s careful hands.

And then the bouncers moved in at Sadie’s behest to show him how well their injuries had healed.

IN A HOSPITAL room in east London, a woman’s eyes fluttered. Sitting beside her, her husband put down the book he was reading and leaned across the bed. Around them, well-wishing cards crowded the tables and the windowsill. The amount of cards, the various colours of hope, could not shake the husband’s belief that his wife was as good as dead. He had decided, when the week was up, that he would switch her off. She wanted it that way. They both did. The ventilator had been breathing life into her for five days. It could not fix the warp of her spine, the crushed vertebrae, the jigsaw puzzle of her ribs.

Her eyes opened.

The husband ran to find one of the nurses. She told him to relax, then gently pushed past him and closed the door on the bedroom. A short time after, there was activity. A great deal of it.

“Joanna,” he said, his voice staggering over the word, as if he had never said it before. “Joanna.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: THE HILL

THEY MADE LOVE. The Negstream shivered into view. They went in.

It was still daytime. A raw wind funnelled down the street, stripping the soporific warmth of climax from their bones.

Sean said, “Pardoe found three leaks this morning. They had passed through overnight and were walking down a Newcastle street. They killed and ate a dog. They didn’t have much clue as to where they were or what they were doing, thank God, or it might have been a lot nastier. Pardoe said that he spent most of last year tracking down what the police had thought was a serial killer. It was just a very clever leak who developed an appetite for young women. He took seven before Pardoe caught up with him and sent him back home. They found some of the bones in an old skip near the public tip. He had been living there. Or dying there. Whatever.”

Emma looked tired. Her eyes were developing raccoon-like rings and her lips carried a grey tinge that had nothing to do with the flat, colourless light here. “How long, do you think, before there’s a flood?”

“Pardoe reckons two or three days, but he looked a bit white while he was saying it. I reckon we’ve got around twenty-four hours. Give or take.”

“Give or take a minute?”

Sean laughed. Emma was still strong, despite the attritional nature of crossover. The Negstreams caused no immediate wear and tear on the body or the mind; rather, it caused a gradual stripping-away of the body’s defences. Sean was managing with the erosion for the time being but Emma appeared to be feeling the full brunt of its subtle violence. She was being steadily dismantled, softstripped from within. Sometime soon he would reach out to touch her and she would implode, like a fractured china jug handled by a clumsy child, or the shell of a condemned building battered by the wrecking ball.

Seeing Will hadn’t helped. Thin and pale in his hospital bed in high dependency, he had been surrounded by machinery and nurses. The police were nearby too, guarding him from vigilantes who wanted to mete out some rough justice to a man who had used a young girl as a hostage. Maybe they were also on hand to make sure he didn’t make a miraculous recovery only to bolt. That didn’t seem to be an option to Sean as he had looked down at the other man’s bandaged head. Serious tissue loss, a doctor had told him. Which was a fancy wrapping for half his brain was blown away.

A nurse had come in to wipe Will’s face and check his IV was feeding the right amount of saline into his veins. The slackness of his skin as the swab cleansed his lips and eyes had made Sean’s back creep. It was as if Will was dead already but his body didn’t know how to play the part.

They had promised him that they would visit him again, but Sean doubted he could hear their pledge.

At the end of the street they came upon a park that, for a moment, filled Emma with enough hope for a little sunshine to return to her demeanour. But there was no hill to be found in the park, just a pond with water so still and black it resembled a polished slab of ebony. Sean hugged her for a long time in an attempt to lift her out of her disappointment.

“We have to go at this a different way,” he said.

“Doggy style?” Emma asked, her voice muffled by Sean’s jacket.

“No,” Sean laughed, closing his eyes and breathing deeply the scents that clung to Emma’s hair. There was apple in there, and honey. And good old-fashioned I-want-you-till-I-die pheromones. Not for the first time, he wished this was somebody else’s problem and he could get on with unwrapping Emma’s various layers, getting to know the woman who meant so much to him. It had been a long time since he felt so committed, so clear about what he wanted. Being with Emma was like sucking a strong mint: she cut through all the dross in his head and found the little part of his brain that said yes all the time.

“I think we have to try to remember how we found the hill when we were children. I know it came to me so easily sometimes, it was as if it was hanging around behind my eyes, just waiting for me to shut them.”

Emma nodded in his arms. “I know. I can still smell what the grass was like. It was always midnight on the hill. There were always people walking around. They seemed lost but they gave off this indestructible air.”

“Who else but the dead can be indestructible?” Sean asked.

“Maybe we should find a hill near Warrington. Maybe that would help.”

“At night.”

Emma moved away from him. “Yes, at night. We should take a picnic. Kids’ food. Comfort food. Try to find a way back to a time when we were young. When we didn’t have to worry about anything.”

“We could go to Hill Cliffe. There’s a pretty little cemetery there. And a good view of Warrington. You can see the parish church and the detergent factory–”

“How lovely...”

“–and Fiddler’s Ferry power station. You can see the old clocktower in the centre of town, at Market Gate.”

“I’ll make us jam sandwiches, that really sweet, seedless stuff. And margarine. On cheap white bread.”

Sean closed his eyes and smacked his lips. “Mmm-mmm!”

“And Monster Munch,” Emma suggested.

“Pickled onion flavour?”

“Of course.”

Sean opened his eyes and frowned. Something was going wrong. The sky had bruised a little and the air had grown chillier. Looking at Emma was like looking at someone through unwashed gauze. Her edges had softened; there was a smudgy gleam to them. He reached out for her and told her to close her eyes, to lie back on the grass with him. She didn’t question him. Her breath, excited and hot, told him all he needed to know. His heart was pounding.

Emma said, “And I’ll bring some of those cheese triangles...”

“Ugh, I hated them,” said Sean, remembering the flavour in his mouth, the sludgy texture. “But I liked sweets. Sherbet fountains and moon dust.”

“Okay. We’ll get some. And comics.”

“The Beano and The Dandy. 2000 AD. Look-in.”

“Twinkle,” Emma said.

Sean shrugged. “It’s a whole different world to me, all that girl stuff.”

“Didn’t you have a sister?”

Sean shook his head. “Naomi was always into whatever I was into. Football, war comics. Bollocks like that.”

“Shall we take some toys to the hill?” Her hand in his grew damp; the dewy grass moved through their clothing. The air turned heavy with moisture. Something was happening to the ground at their backs. It felt as though they were being gently tilted.

Don’t open your eyes, he sent to Emma, hoping that she’d get it.

I won’t, I won’t.

“I preferred Sindy to Barbie,” she said, squeezing his hand.

“I had an Action Man with rubber hands and eagle-eyes. Proper hair. Not that plastic moulded shit you get these days. I had a Six Million Dollar Man too.”

“In a red track suit?” Emma was getting so excited it sounded as though she were being pumped with helium. Other voices were joining theirs; deeper, more sombre, less urgent. They were far away, a susurrant shifting. Getting closer.

“Of course! And he had those bits of rubber for skin. You peeled them back and you could get at his bionic circuits in his arm.”

“What was his enemy called?”

“Maskatron. I had one of those too. Quite nasty, really. You could put his own face on, or Oscar Goldman’s or Steve Austin’s.”

“Before he grew that minging moustache, thank God.”

It was like word association, only much deeper than that. He was getting aromas and tastes from his childhood that were coming back after a twenty-five-year absence. He remembered programmes from the television that he used to watch when he came home from school at lunchtime. Rainbow and Pipkins and Handful of Songs. He remembered wrestling with his dad on the patio, Dad pinning him to the ground with his superior weight and challenging him: “Now get out of that, go on.”

Pink, dusty Anglo bubblegum. Fruit Salads and Mojos for half a penny each. Dandelion and burdock. Lurid green American cream soda.

“I banged my head when I was three years old,” Sean said. “On the door of my dad’s van. I had to have stitches.”

He put his fingers to the old scar. It felt febrile, tender; he withdrew his hand and opened his eyes, half-expecting to see fresh blood. Five stitches, the nurse had given him. He had not cried because the nurse was young and pretty and he didn’t want the tears to prevent him from seeing her clearly. She had given him a lollipop when it was over and told him her name. Gloria. Gloria would be a middle-aged woman by now. Nearly an old woman. She would have known, perhaps, many different kinds of love in the three decades since she treated Sean. He hoped they were all good.

Emma was squeezing his hand.

“I know,” he said. The night sky, with its feverish black sun, boiled above them. Cool grass sprang between their fingers as they pressed their hands into the ground to sit upright. The hill spread out around them.

He said, “We’re here.”

Up ahead were a number of figures, a gathering of grey smocks meandering on a hill above the ocean. At the bottom of the hill lay a series of drab, grey buildings with narrow windows and flat roofs.

“It’s just how I remember it,” he said.

“Me too. Just think, when we were young, when we came here, we might have walked past each other without knowing.”

“Naomi would have been here too,” he said. “She might be here now. She ought to be.”

“Don’t get too hopeful, Sean,” Emma warned. “We don’t know as much about this place as we feel we do.”

They saw how the topography roughly traced the same lines as the city that existed here during daylight. The sea followed the path of the river and consumed the south bank that had lain beyond it. The skyscrapers of tents and shacks and scaffolding had been eclipsed by the hill. Occasionally, perhaps due to some de Fleche-inspired fault, they witnessed a flash of daylife. A man carrying bread in a basket. A woman shouting for help after a pickpocket had helped himself to her purse. The barge as it ferried people across the river. Sean remembered the black clouds he had seen on the day he chased Tim through the marketplace and realised they must have been some hint of this aspect.

They walked towards the figures as they milled slowly around the top of the hill. As had happened many years before, they respectfully stepped out of the way and bowed ever so slightly as Sean walked by. They talked in low voices, too deep for any sense to be made of it. The grey smocks and the pale, bald heads edged with fuzz relaxed Sean for some reason. The murmuring too, though the content was unknown, worked on him like a masseur’s fingers. Yet even here, on the hill, de Fleche’s insidious presence was noticeable. It stained the bark of the trees with white rot. It turned large patches of the pasture into scarified stubble. Spume lacing the shoreline carried with it the whiff of raw sewage.

It had not been like this early on, when de Fleche had only just discovered this dead country and Sean and Emma had first wandered its confines. But long years had elapsed. Enough time for his freshness to stain what relied on the dark and the cold, just as death and disease will eventually cause what is wholesome to fail. There was taint in the air. It caught in Sean’s craw and made him feel sick.

“This isn’t good,” Sean said. Little ribbons of a blackness so deep it seemed to be blue or purple shimmered against the night sky or wormed through the meadow. Some of the figures avoided these cracks as if they represented the Devil’s maw, but others tiptoed at the edges, peeking, awed, into unconscionable depths.

Sean and Emma explored for what felt like hours. They plunged into the forest at the foot of the hill, alive with the marine scent of the nearby ocean and the wet, autumnal musk of mushrooms and leaf mould. They scared animals into flight that they had never seen before and they were glad that the dark kept them from being revealed completely. On the beach, they picked up strange shells that resembled fossilised organs. Other flotsam and jetsam looked more like petrified limbs than driftwood.

They saved the buildings until last. Time, and perhaps de Fleche’s mischief, had ruined their symmetry. What had once been sharp corners were now crumbling bevels. Some of the steel reinforcement rods peeked through the mortar, brown with rust. Lancet windows peppered the structure; glassless, they let in the wind. As they prowled the exterior, Sean and Emma could hear the grim tunes it played inside.

“I can’t see a door,” Emma complained. “Not that I want to go in.”

“Yes you do,” Sean said. “We have to.”

“Can you hear anything, other than the wind?”

Sean tilted his head. There was another sound, but it was distant. It was deep too, as if it was coming to them from beneath the ground. It sounded like old machinery, steaming and clanking, struggling to provide the energy for whatever was being constructed or processed or destroyed.

A splinter group had broken away from the gathering on top of the hill; five men, deep in conversation, were slowly walking towards them.

“Excuse me?” Emma called. “How do we get in?”

All of the figures bar one made a detour at the sound of her voice and strolled away. The dissenter hesitated for a few seconds and made a beeline for Emma.

“We cannot sustain more aliens here,” he insisted, in a voice that seemed to be the sum of a cathedral full of echoes. His eyes were lilac and filled the sockets with colour, leaving no room for any white. “There is imbalance. We are in danger and you are endangering yourselves. You must leave us.”

Sean joined Emma and explained that they couldn’t leave until they had found de Fleche. “Do you know where we can find him?”

But the other man was already shaking his head, the bluish dome of his scalp waggling like a fallen saucer coming to rest on the floor. “Names have no place here,” he said.

“Then where do we have to go? How do we get in there?”

“You can’t,” the man said quickly. “And anyway, why should you want to? I wish you would leave. It’s dangerous for you here. There are monsters...” He bit down on the word as if it were forbidden and he had committed an awful transgression by uttering it. “I wish you would leave,” he said again, before hurrying away in pursuit of his colleagues. “You have no place here. No right to be here.”

“He’s lying about this building,” said Emma. “There must be a way in.”

“I’m kind of on his side now, though. I mean, why would we want to?”

“Because it’s here. Because there’s nothing else.”

Sean rubbed his chin. “What’s all this about monsters?”

Emma grabbed his hand. “You’ve had a stomach full of monsters over the past few weeks. A couple more aren’t going to frighten you off.”

He watched the gathering of smocks as they drifted out of sight over the crest of the hill. The night swarmed around them and the ocean whispered as it collapsed against the shore. In the forest, new noises were emanating, from things Sean guessed they hadn’t seen when they first entered it.

There are monsters. If the dead could be moved by such things, if they could suffer fear, then what hope was left for anyone else?

PART FOUR

THE SHERIFF’S PICTURE FRAME

What shall we be when we aren’t what we are?

– Derek Raymond,

He Died With His Eyes Open

CHAPTER FORTY: XX

LAST NIGHT.

Last night, it had seemed there would be no end to the pleasures that accosted her every move. There were many options and she explored them all. It was a long night. It was a very messy night.

At first the town was too bright for her. Lights on every building dazzled her as she walked through streets thronged with people. She felt her mouth watering but quelled that appetite in the hope that it might be superseded by another. She saw herself, ghostly and unsure, in the deep-black panes of shop windows. She concentrated on her panic, which threatened to engulf her whenever she lost her reflection to a group of men or women walking by. Just because she didn’t see herself didn’t mean she wasn’t there. Once the group had bypassed her, she returned to the window. The black dress. The long, almost uncontrollably curly hair. The eyes that seemed too green to be human and better suited to a large cat. The décolletage. The curve of the buttocks. The jewel on a necklace. She saw these things on herself and echoed on the women around her in different styles and colours. The men looked at her. The women did not. She fitted in.

She focused on a group of men and followed them into a pub called the Tut ’n’ Shive. The inner walls of the pub were painted black and the lighting was more subtle than on the street. The music and voices were very loud however, and she had to compensate for that. Susannah’s hearing was extremely good – too good – but she found that Simon’s was less so, which helped in here. She felt confident about the way she looked, an amalgam of the best of those with whom she had come into contact.

She ordered a drink at the bar, pointing to a silver bottle that a number of other women were swigging from. When the bartender asked her for money, she stared at him blankly.

“I’ll get this.”

She turned to find a man standing next to her, brandishing his wallet.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot.”

“Forgot your purse?” The man shook his head. “It happens.” When she took a sip of the stuff in the bottle (foul – so sweet it coated her throat with an awful, syrupy skin) she sensed him assessing her body. It made her giddy and it was all she could do to stop herself from grabbing him right now, and doing what the women in the pictures had done.

“I’m Mick,” he said, wiping a hand against his thick denim shirt exaggeratedly before offering it for her to shake. This she did, tasting him through her pores and finding it hard to relinquish his fingers. He didn’t seem to mind too much.

“I’m Susannah,” she said. “Susannah Gleave. I’m twenty-four. I have good tits.”

Mick’s eyes widened. “Well, yes, I can see that.” He assessed her more openly. “Yes. The jury has returned its verdict. Guilty. Of having good... bosoms.” He laughed, a strange, staccato yammer that sounded like a child’s impression of a machine gun. “Are you foreign?” he asked.

“Foreign?”

“Yeah, you know... not from these shores.”

Cheke smiled uncertainly. “You can tell?”

“Not much,” Mick said, theatrically. “What are you? Swedish? You look Swedish. Athletic. Tall.”

“Swedish,” Cheke said, trying out the unfamiliar word. “Yes. If you like.”

Mick took a sip of his pint, the first flicker of a frown creasing his forehead. He shook it away. Cheke looked him over. He was quite a bit shorter than she was. His hair was dark, but was silvering at the temples. He was balding at his crown. He wore his shirt outside his trousers. Black, chunky boots rooted him steadily to the beer-soaked floor. She liked his overall chunkiness. She liked his pale eyes too. Grey, like Gleave’s. Wolfish.

“Your prick,” she said. “I need to know. Is it–”

Mick spluttered foam over the edge of his beer glass. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry... I mean... your cock? Is that right? I wondered, is it big? Are you shaved? Down there? Have you fucked before? What noises do women make, when you–”

Mick held up his hand. “Look, if I’d had twelve Kronenbourg, it might be that I’d be all over you for what you’re saying right now. But as it is, this is my first. And this is all a bit too weird for me. So, good luck. Maybe some other time, hey?”

She watched him back away and then press through the cluster of bodies massing at the bar. Somebody vacated a stool and she slid onto it, nursing the bottle between her fingers. She was considering going after him when another man stepped up beside her, glanced once at her and then, when she didn’t avert her gaze, turned to face her and smiled broadly.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Derek.”

“You’re black,” Cheke said.

The smile died. “Yes. I am. Is that a problem?”

Cheke was astonished by the cat and mouse. There didn’t seem to be any scope for direct talking. She thought of how quickly Mick had retreated when she cut through any charade. She smiled, as warmly as she possibly could, shifting her body around on the stool so that he could see whatever, and as much, as he wanted of her. “No,” she said. “You’re beautiful.”

It was the right answer.

He took her back to a flat in Woolston, on the eastern fringes of the town. He poured her a glass of wine from a half-finished bottle in the fridge and put on some music – something he called hip hop – before making it clear that the stereo cost a month’s wages. The music meant nothing to her. It hurt her ears, made it hard for her to understand anything he said. He asked her if she fancied some coke, extracting a small bag of white powder from beneath a sofa cushion. She nodded, said sure, she wouldn’t mind, and waited to see what he would do with it. He chopped a few lines with a razor blade on a mirror and offered her a rolled £50 note.

“You first,” she said. She followed his lead.

After they had snorted a couple of lines each, Derek pushed her back against the sofa. He unbuckled his jeans and let them fall to the floor.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked. He was wearing white cotton boxer shorts that hugged his hips. The outline of his cock was obvious. It made a long, vague S-shape.

“Do you like what you see?” he asked. “Would you like to see more?”

She nodded.

“Then you have to take something off too.”

She unzipped the dress and let it slip off her shoulders. The coke had made her feel tingly at the back of her brain, as if she was being tickled by a feather there. It was hard to keep control of herself. Derek’s fingers slipped into the waistband of his boxers. His eyes were fixed on her nipples, which were visible through the sheer fabric of her bra. Susannah’s nipples, Susannah’s breasts. Small, perky breasts; very pink, very stiff nipples. He failed to see the slight failure of her right hand, which morphed for a fraction into the gnarled fist of the guard she had attacked at Gleave’s hideout. Get a grip, she ordered herself. Concentrate.

She wondered whose pudenda she should present to him. Susannah’s was a tight, pink, neat affair, the blonde pubic hair trimmed, the mons moisturised and scented. The nurse from Sloe Heath had a sex that was looser and more hairy, but shockingly carnal in a way that Susannah’s was not. Perhaps she should offer her own. She felt a flood of warmth through her loins, and an almost unbearable heat that gave her a melting feeling in her stomach.

Derek slipped the waistband down over his cock, which sprang lightly away from its nest of hair. It was thick and heavy, not yet fully erect, and it bounced to the rhythm of his heartbeat. It was different to the guard’s, or the pictures she had seen. A sheath of skin covered the glistening core. She was about to ask him what it was, but remembered Mick’s retreat. She must feign some sass, some knowledge.

Derek dabbed half the remaining coke from the mirror onto his finger. He smeared it onto the tip of his cock and leaned over to kiss her. She moved back under the weight of his mouth as it melded with her own. His tongue tasted of rum and Coca-Cola. This was like the pictures in Jonathan’s magazine. The stories too. She made a low noise in the back of her throat and reached down to caress his balls. She had read this in a reader’s letter: Marge from Crewe. She squeezed lightly, aware that the organ needed to be treated tenderly. Derek closed his eyes and hissed.

Now she moved her hand so it encircled his cock. She lightly moved the outer skin against the stiffening core until the prepuce peeled back from the head, swollen and tan and glossy.

“Put your mouth on it,” Derek said, his voice thick. He had his hands under the frame of her bra and was massaging her breasts, rolling the nipples between his fingers. It felt good. The tickle at the back of her brain increased and spread. It linked up directly with the V between her legs. If he didn’t rub her there soon, she would have to touch herself. It was almost unbearable.

She slid down on the sofa until his cock was level with her mouth. She saw the pictures in the magazine and gently enclosed the head with her mouth, moving her head slowly down the shaft until his balls were flush with her lips. He gasped.

“Nobody did that before,” he said. “Nobody took the lot. What are you? Linda Lovelace?”

She ignored him; she didn’t know what he was talking about. She continued to suck, remembering the pictures, remembering to keep her hand moving on the base of his cock, remembering to keep it wet, keep it moving, keep it moving. Never let up. He began to tense. She remembered the magazine. The readers’ letters. Rhiannon from Newcastle. He began to jerk and she moved her hand underneath him, between the hard, muscled curves of his buttocks. The tip of his cock began to pulse and spasm – she had read about this too – and she slid her forefinger deep into his anus. He cried out and rammed into her mouth. She felt his come, so much of it, too much of it, jet against the back of her throat and she gagged. She pulled away and he fell back against the sofa cushions.

“Me now,” she said, wiping her mouth.

“I’m knackered, babe,” he said.

“No,” she said. “Me now.”

“Tomorrow. Let’s get some kip.”

“No,” she said. Something in her voice made Derek’s eyes snap open. He shifted uncomfortably on the sofa.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I want it all. I want you to suck my clit and fuck me every way there is.”

He knelt before her. His cock was ebbing, dwindling, its tip endowed with a pearl of come. The sight of her pale, smooth thighs didn’t resurrect it. Neither did her pink, liquid core as she yanked off her knickers and spread her legs. Her cunt yawned before him.

“This doesn’t feel right,” he said.

“Put some of that powder on it,” she demanded. “That coko. Put some on.”

“The music needs changing.”

She clamped his head with her calves and, leaning forwards, pressed a fingernail against the bridge of his nose. “Do. It.”

Derek collected the dregs of the coke from the mirror and rubbed it into her lips. Cheke gasped and screwed her eyes shut. She clenched her buttocks and thrust her crotch up against his fingers.

“Easy, girl,” Derek said. He continued to rub, his wet fingers slithering against her clitoris, slipping up her cunt, or sliding against her anus. He changed the rhythm and pace, the depth of his strokes. Cheke was crying with pleasure. He leaned forwards and covered her vulva with his mouth. Cheke’s eyes flew open. She reached out and grabbed Derek’s hair, pressed him deeper into the soft, hot centre of herself, a place where she no longer seemed to hold any sway, a place that didn’t appear to have any substance or structure any more. Waves of heat were rolling deep inside her. She locked her heels behind his back and squeezed him deeper. It wasn’t enough. She needed him inside her. She pulled him up alongside her and began working his spent cock with her hand. Nothing was happening.

“Fuck me,” she whispered to him.

“I can’t,” he said. “The beer. The coke. I’m done in.”

She forced his cock against her and pressed with her fingers, trying to nudge the flaccid tip between her lips. Again, she locked her heels at the small of his back and dug down. “Come on,” she said. “Come on.”

“Susannah, you’re hurting me. What’s the rush? Susannah?” He grunted and his eyes bulged. He lifted his chin off her chest and tried to speak but only tiny noises were bursting from the back of his throat.

She felt his pelvis pulverise under the persistent crush of her feet. “You fucker,” she said. “You miserable fucker.”

She let herself come through.

Cheke watched Derek’s eyes, hazy with pain, as her body changed beneath him. The puckered mouths emerged through the taut flesh of Susannah’s torso and gulped at him. Her own cunt grew and broadened until it trembled beneath Derek’s shattered groin.

“Give me what I need,” she said, and sank him into her. Before too long, Derek was unable to say anything, even if his mouth had been able to form the words. The blood, so much of it, could only get out of him that way.

HER INDUSTRY WAS not to be questioned, surely, and she had done well so far, or so she thought. Gleave came to her at the house, stepping through the drying waste of the hallway with the look of a man who had just found a hank of hair in his soup. She had been warned of his arrival; her inner eye, recalling the previous night’s excesses, had been interrupted. She envisioned Gleave’s car sweeping into the street, saw his grey face press up against the window pane as the neighbouring houses rushed by. There had been enough time to change: another of Susannah’s black dresses, sleeveless, short, generous around the bust. In the mirror she checked her colouring and sucked out a deep, plummy colour from the palette of mouths in her memory, dusted her cheekbones with the hint of blush Jonathan had sported when she took off her robe in front of them, before he understood what was happening to him.

“What are you doing?” Gleave asked when they were seated in the living room. Cheke had left one of Jonathan’s magazines open on the coffee table in the hope that Gleave would see. She wanted him to do to her what the men in the pictures were doing. She wanted to do to him what the women were doing. The more she did it, the closer she would come to knowing the secrets. Maybe in this way she would understand what normal was. What it meant to be human, to be a woman.

“I thought you’d like to see me being less unusual.”

Gleave took something from his pocket and sat down on the sofa next to her. He trawled the fingers of his other hand through his soft, white hair.

“Do you like me like this?” she asked. She said: “Can I call you Daniel?”

Gleave turned and smiled savagely at her. “No, you cannot call me fucking Daniel,” he snarled. He showed her what was in his hand: a canister that fit snugly in his palm. He flipped off the lid and sprayed the contents full in her face. He calmly replaced the lid and slid the canister back into his pocket. Then he stood up and clasped his large, soft hands in front of his greatcoat, watching her all the while.

“I think,” he said, “that it’s time you understood what pain is.”

Cheke blinked at him. She brushed away the spray from her eyes and waited for him to go on. She was not yet aware that half of her face had come away with her fingers.

“Pain is master, anywhere you look in the animal kingdom,” Gleave said. “So it is with us.” He spotted an errant hair on his cuff and tweezered it off with his elegant fingers. He removed his lenses and polished them on a white handkerchief which he then folded precisely and kept in his palm. “I thought you were aware of the job you had to do for us,” he said at last.

“I am,” Cheke wanted to say, but the words would not form, in the same way they had failed in the seconds after she was withdrawn from her resting place. The word am didn’t have any closure about it. It drifted on instead: ahhh. Drool glazed her chin. She felt for her mouth and there was no bottom lip for the top one to shut against. As if triggered by this ghastly discovery, a flood of heat wound tightly around her lower jaw. She made a gagging sound and dropped to her knees.

“You will know pain,” Gleave said. “Maybe that’s where we went wrong at the start. We should have tied you to your job with the threat of pain. You must not underestimate us, Cheke. We need you, but there are others. Do as you are told and then we can discuss your rehabilitation.”

He stepped towards her suddenly and she flinched. Gleave smiled. “It’s good that you are afraid of me. Good that there is something to scare you. Fear is an ally. It will help you to stay alive.

“Now... open wide. Godspeed, my angel.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

SHE GAVE HIM hell, and then some. She forced him to wear a saddle and carry her around the blistered chambers of the theatre. Together, they explored the areas beneath the stage, cluttered rooms filled with thespian paraphernalia that was now wreathed with permanent smoke ghosts, all detail sealed black by the long-spent flames. There were uniformed mannequins that had once stood in for warring hordes as a backdrop to some military drama or other; deep wooden chests stuffed with costumes; scorched stacks of plays tied up with string. Everything had a wafery feel to it; the rooms had not known moisture for decades. An hour of stalking through these secret rooms with Sadie on his back gave him a furious thirst. If that wasn’t bad enough, the thing that was developing in Sadie’s external womb had begun to teethe. It chattered and ground its new gnashers in his ear as he negotiated the maze of thoroughfares beneath the stage and the auditorium. He caught glimpses of it in the corner of his eye as it twisted and grinned like some malformed specimen pickled in formaldehyde.

Sadie liked to ride him naked. She liked it better when he had his shirt off too. She bounced around as he galloped through these catacombs, a nightmarish Godiva and steed, pulling at his hair to turn him left or right. When he was allowed to reduce his speed, he padded along, breathing hard, checking the progress of his strange disease as it turned his limbs black. The infection was reaching a critical stage, he saw. His flesh and bones were becoming as pulpy as overripe bananas. These parts – his shoulder, the lower portion of his arm – had been digested by the monster in its sac via some supernatural method of ingestion. Something was going to give soon. He wished it hurt more. To simply see his body failing like this without even the remotest twinge made him feel inhuman, unreal. He knew he existed at some level in the world of the living, but any dignity he might have had here was being literally stripped away.

“Cherub will be on solids before long,” Sadie commented blithely, as if she were relaying to him the price on a tin of carrots.

He would kill himself, he decided, coolly. If Joanna had forgotten about him or the infection looked likely to incapacitate him, he would end it somehow. And he would try to find some way of taking the bitch and her fucking demon child with him.

SHE COULDN’T DREAM of anything else, she found. And it was strange, but whenever she settled on an aspect of it, her mind, unbidden, tossed her little nuggets of information. It must have been a result of the trauma of her accident, she thought, a jolting of her brain that meant it spewed out facts at every possible opportunity. It was as if her imagination had been given a power surge.

This man, for example, with his brown curly hair and hurt expression. Big brown eyes. He looked lost and lonely. And, without digging for it:

His name is Will.

“Oh really?” she whispered.

“Chick?” Her husband leaned over her.

His name is Harry. She giggled.

“How do you feel?”

“I don’t feel anything,” she said. She wanted him to go away. She wanted to return to her curly-haired man, with a mouth that looked so soft and red that it might burst when you kissed it.

“You’re very lucky, you know,” Harry said. “We thought you were a goner. But you came back. My strong chick.”

She said, “Water.”

“Water you shall have,” he said, folding his newspaper and leaving the room.

He didn’t look well, this Will chap. He looked scared and cold and injured.

He’s been shot. He’s in danger.

“I don’t doubt it,” she muttered. A nurse put her head around the door, smiled, and retreated.

She pictured Will in a bar, looking around him like some hunted animal. And then it was as if her brain gave up its control and Will turned to look at her mind’s eye. “You promised,” he said. “Find me. Follow me.” He raised his glass in a silent toast and drank the contents, never taking his eyes off her.

“I can’t,” she said. “My injuries. I think... I think I was paralysed.”

His eyes on her as she opened them, the first time. It must have been a dream. That place with the strange emulsified tones, the glaring whites and the glossy blacks. Like walking through a negative strip of film.

“You aren’t paralysed. You were lucky. It’s just bruises and bumps. You made a miraculous recovery.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, Will.”

When Harry came in and saw Joanna sitting on the edge of the bed, timorously combing her pony tail, he dropped the glass of water.

“I need you to take me somewhere, Harry,” she said.

THE MOOD OF the night was on the wane. Sean could see it in the way the scars bled into its colour; could hear it in the hum – like that of bees trapped in a jar – that steeled in from the invisible horizon. The grey smocks on the hill had vanished. They were alone. The sealed, scarred walls of the ziggurat leapt away from them, its uppermost heights lost to the dark.

“Do you think it’s safe to be here?” Emma asked.

He turned to her; she was watching his face. “I’m sure it is,” he soothed. “How bad can their monsters be? I’m sure they’re just seeing little flashes of what it’s like back where we’re from. Maybe they’ve forgotten. They see a bus or a plane and, well, if you didn’t know what they were, I’m sure you’d be scared too.”

“I am scared.”

Sean kicked her playfully in the seat of her jeans. “Come on. We’ve got to find a door.”

They moved around again to what Sean guessed must have been the rear of the building, abutting as it did the edge of a thicket of dense purple and green reeds. There was no obvious route up to any of the windows, which were, in any case, much too narrow to squeeze through. Sean was about to suggest that there might be a more prosaic means of entry, similar to their passage to Tantamount, when Emma noticed the stream.

It was a paltry affair, piddling between the reeds like urine pissed into the woods by a drunken camper. Yet it was constant, and it ran down through the thicket to a point where it met the ziggurat and ended. They spent five minutes dragging away the reeds and ferns that were clustered around the base of the ziggurat. A metal grille, badly corroded, framed the water’s route into the building; they could see the trickle disappear into a throat of black. Sean worked his fingers between the struts in the grille but he didn’t need to pry it off: it broke under pressure.

“I don’t think I can go in,” Emma said.

“It’s okay,” Sean assured her, snapping more pieces of rusted metal. “We have an escape route, don’t we? We can pull ourselves out of it at any point.”

“I don’t like it. I just don’t. The thought of pushing myself down a tunnel. We might get trapped.”

“Are you listening to me?” Sean asked, pausing to look at her. She was sitting back on her haunches, her hands clasped in front of her, arms outstretched, as if she were offering him her wrists to be bound. “We can get out at any point. Whether it’s monsters or claustrophobia or a need to pee. We can do it.”

Emma breathed deeply and nodded. “Okay.”

Once Sean had cleared a hole big enough to accommodate his shoulders, he edged his feet over the hole and slid into it until he was half-way through, keeping his body levered upright with his hands either side of the grille.

“It might be that once I let go,” he said, “I’ll go very quickly. It feels as though it’s pretty well greased up underfoot. So come in soon after me, yes?”

Emma nodded.

Sean blew her a kiss and lifted his arms.

There was no light whatsoever. But there was plenty of sound, the sluicing of the water and the hiss and chatter of unseen animals nesting in little ledges and bunkers off the main chute. The clank and throb of machinery was closer, echoing through the tunnel, causing it to vibrate as Sean slithered along on his backside, trying to keep himself from going into a spin. He heard Emma close behind him, yelping as the tunnel took unexpected turns left or right. Sean only became aware that the sides of the tunnel were closing around him when the water started showering the top of his head instead of providing a frictionless cushion for his back. He hit his head twice against the metal duct, but even though he drew his body in as tight as he could, he was slowing down. Emma’s feet slammed against his crown and he saw stars for a second. When everything became clear again, they were stuck and Emma was wailing.

“This is fucking it,” she cried. “We’re going to be here for ever.”

“Relax,” Sean said. “We’ll opt out, easy, and then we’ll come back in again and try to find another way. Portion of micturate, as we used to say at my posh school.”

Emma said, “Okay, okay, okay, okay.”

Sean pressed the cuff of his sweater against his mouth and felt for the pin secreted there. He withdrew it with his teeth and transferred it to the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Too fucking right,” Emma said. He smelled her breath, hot and sour with panic. He stuck the pin into the thin flesh of his wrist, relishing the bright pain and the tiny bubble of blood that appeared there.

“Fucking Einstein,” Emma said, her voice screechy with panic. “Fucking Einstein.”

Sean tried again, using the point of the needle to score his skin rather than puncture it. A beaded line of blood popped onto the surface. The pipe did not retreat, nor did it resolve itself as something else from the world he preferred.

“Something’s not right here,” he said. “Something’s gone wrong.”

Emma wasn’t listening to him. She was thrashing around like a beached fish. He reached up and tried to stroke her legs, imbue her with some of the impossible calm that he was feeling, but she wasn’t having any of it.

Trying to ignore her feet as they clouted his scalp, Sean probed the pipe with his feet, stretching as far as he could. Its bore did not seem to decrease much more. Travelling south was a risk they had to take anyway; they couldn’t return the way they had come. He began working on his clothes, shedding them. He unbuckled his jeans and worked them down his legs. By kicking off his trainers (they slithered down the pipe at some speed, giving him hope that the route, if they could just get going again, would not impede them) he was able to lose his jeans and then he worked on his jumper, hunching it back over his shoulder blades while all the time Emma kicked and cursed and screamed as her phobias came home to roost. He scooped as much grease from the sides of the pipe as he could gather and rubbed it into his hips and shoulders. When he began to shift, slipping incrementally down the pipe, he stalled his progress by grabbing hold of Emma’s trousers. Inch by inch he hauled himself up until his hand was able to undo her belt. As he dragged her trousers down over her legs she seemed to come to her senses.

“What are you doing?” she yelled.

“Look, trust me,” he soothed. “Take your top off.”

She began to laugh. “Take my top off? What are you after? A fuck? Now?”

“Emma, take it easy. Trust me, please.” Her trousers were in his hand. He handed them to her, asking her to stuff them behind her shoulders. He could feel, by the heat of her breath and the exertion of her body, that she was obeying him despite the protests. Her body slid down a considerable distance, threatening to block them both in, but he pushed out a hand to lever himself away from her. It was enough to set their bodies sliding along again. They gathered pace. He warned her to keep her head back. Seconds later, maybe half a mile traversed, the pipe opened out and they were upended into a tank of water at the centre of a huge arena, the walls of which twisted fluidly with umbral colours and shapes. Theirs was just one of maybe half a dozen similar pipes emptying into this reservoir. Other pipes came in, changed their minds, and plunged back out again through the wall, in black, wormlike U-turns. A fan beat slowly, high overhead, concealed by the steam rising from the hot floor. Sean could just make out, on the bottom of the container, another grille, much larger and sturdier than the one he had broken into. Maybe this recycled water was coolant fed to the area where all the industrious machinery pounded away. They heaved themselves out of the reservoir onto cold stone flags.

“What is it they do here?” Emma asked, struggling into her wet clothes. “I mean, this place is supposed to be the dead zone, the final resting place. And what’s going on? They’ve got a fucking mine up and running.”

Fully clothed, they cast around for an exit but found that there wasn’t one. Sean led Emma towards one wall and pressed his hand against it; it went through, visible but paler, like a vegetable blanched in boiling water. “The dead don’t need doors,” Sean said, cheerily. “And apparently, in here, neither do we. Come on.”

WILL RAN UNTIL he dropped and then she flogged him. The thing in the womb woke as she beat him with a broom handle, and grinned at him whenever the fluid shifted it around to a better view. It winked at him, it licked its lips. Sometimes Will caught glints of teeth when it did this. Sometimes, in his darker moments, when he believed that Joanna had died or had forgotten about him (believed he was part of a dream?), he imagined the thing was sizing him up.

Whether his mind was giving up on him or his injuries were causing delusions he couldn’t be sure, but he wondered now if the shadow he had seen in the church that morning, the morning after Sadie had forced herself upon him, was in some way an aspect of her reality, or a foreshadow of the thing that he had helped to impregnate in her. He had half-hoped, in some fractured way, that the shadow in the church had belonged to Catriona, or their dead child. A sign meant for him from them, a comfort.

“Do you know somebody called de Fleche?” Will asked, breathing hard as Sadie turned her body this way and that in a full-length mirror that had escaped the fire relatively undamaged. A crack across the centre jarred the firm length of her flesh slightly as she stretched and twisted, eyes following each curve as if seeing it for the first time. Her use of the whip had brought her out in a healthy glow. She was sheened with perspiration.

“I never looked so lovely,” she said, wistfully. “And I’ll always look like this.”

“De Fleche? Know him?” Will persevered.

She regarded him with ill-veiled disdain. “Of course I know him. Why do you think I was trained as an Insert in the first place? We were told the story, Christopher and me. We were given the meat and two veg of the whole affair.”

Will took advantage of Sadie’s distracted attention to sit down on the cinder-caked floor. The meat of his buttocks spread a little too broadly and moistly for his liking. “But you fucked it up for them?”

Sadie cupped her breasts with her hands and lightly pushed upwards. She licked her fingers and gently pinched her nipples erect. She shifted to let the light glance moistly off them, making a little affirmatory murmur. “They fucked it up for us, more like. We were promised all kinds of stuff. A lot of money, for a start. I was stuck in the shittiest job on the planet when I saw their advert. I was working in a canning factory. Who’d have thought they’d advertise for that kind of work?”

“What happened?”

Now Sadie had turned and was watching the muscles in her calves become taut as she stood on tip-toe. The foetus in its sac applauded silently.

“What happened was that Christopher went mad and, well, I suppose I did too, to a certain degree. We both legged it, but I had a better grasp of this terrain and used it often. Chris couldn’t get his malfunctioning head around it. They caught him and put him in the nuthouse. Safer for everyone with him in there.”

She bent over from the hips, her hands sliding down her thighs like some grotesque pole-dancer in a shifty drinking club. Her hand swung round to check on the curve of her backside. She made another approving sound, deep in her throat. Will could see that she was getting turned on. He pulled himself to his feet.

Sadie continued: “They realised they had got it wrong. A bit gate-after-the-horse-has-bolted and all that, but that’s what happened. I’ve had a price on my head for some time but they’ve never been close to getting me. They realised they needed kids. Impressionable types. It would have worked too, but they fucked up again, didn’t they? And now de Fleche has got it all wrapped up, nice and spicy.”

Sadie drew herself upright and stood opposite him, breathing hard. She was stroking the little V of fuzz between her legs. Will clenched his teeth when he glimpsed the thing in its womb: its tiny prick was hard and cherry-red, like a twist of lipstick.

“Call the doctor,” she said. “I think my waters are breaking.”

THE MAN IN the rugby shirt and the long scarf parked the car in the hospital car park, as close as he could to the main entrance. Then he turned to his wife. The hospital porter heard everything as he wheeled his laundry trolley from the geriatrics ward to the wash rooms, a brief trot in the cold between buildings. They had their windows down and it was a still, frosty night. He had good ears and the sound carried.

“I still don’t understand what we’re doing here, Joanna,” the man in the beanie said. “You’re beginning to scare me, do you realise that? Do you understand?”

His partner fumbled for the door lock, her limbs moving as though hampered by glue. “I’m okay, really I am. Stop worrying, Harry. You’ll get crow’s feet.”

“I’ll get that,” Harry sighed, climbing out of the car and coming round to the passenger side to help his wife. She felt brittle and hot under his fingers, like a pile of barbecued ribs. Her eyes had locked with the entrance doors of the hospital.

“He’s here,” she said.

“Who?” Harry demanded. “Jesus, Jo, we’ve been driving for three hours and you haven’t told me a thing. You haven’t even said you’re happy to see me.”

Still gazing at the hospital doors, she cradled Harry’s face in her hands and kissed his cheek. “Darling, I am thrilled to see you.”

“Why are we here?”

“A friend is in need of my help.”

“Who?”

“A chap called Will. At least, I think that was his name.”

Harry puffed out his cheeks in frustration. “We don’t know any Wills. You’re imagining it. You’ve been out cold for days, love.”

“But you didn’t refuse to bring me here, did you?”

“Of course not. If anything, I thought we could do with some time away. Get up here, see the Lakes maybe. Go further. It’s been years since I went up as far as Ullapool.”

Joanna started walking towards the hospital.

“Wait,” cried Harry. “God, you can hardly walk. We’ve got a wheelchair in the back of the car you know.”

“I don’t need it.”

“Well, I’m sorry but I need it. I need you to be in it. Do it for me, please.”

The couple toned down their conversation when they caught up with the porter, who smiled at them and helped Harry get the wheelchair up the ramp after a rogue patch of ice made him slip.

CHEKE WATCHED THEM move along the corridor after they had asked to see Will and were given a private room number. There was a policeman outside the room, warned the staff nurse. He might want to ask questions.

Cheke followed at a distance, dumping the laundry trolley for a new prop, a watering can that was sitting in the reception area. When the guy pushing the wheelchair looked around at her twice, she slipped into the nearest gents’ toilets and reassembled herself. Derek came out of the toilet, smoothing down his hair, straightening his £500 Armani jacket.

She was getting the moves down pat, now. Gleave had shown her where she was going wrong. He had taught her what pain was. Not what she thought it was. She had thought pain was being born into a world without asking for it. She had thought pain was sifting alien molecules – a wall, a door, a pane of glass – through her own. It wasn’t. That was nothing next to the agonies Gleave visited upon her. She had told him she loved him when he started. By the end, she wanted him dead, his family dead. She wanted to find the bones of his ancestors, dig them up, and stomp them to splinters. But she was focused. She knew what was expected of her, and any interest she had shown in tampons, hairstyles, or whether to wear a liquid-filled or an underwired bra, was forgotten.

Gleave, standing over her, his arm in her throat up to his elbow. Gleave, ripping out her heart and showing her how black it was, how malformed. “Your heart in my hand, girl, and you stare up at me as if I was holding a sick puppy. You should be dead. If you were like us, you would be.”

And then:

You aren’t human, you will never be human... learn it... believe it...

“Afternoon,” Derek said, as he caught up with Harry and Joanna. He held the lift doors open for them. “Which floor you after?”

“Three, please,” Harry said.

“Nice one,” Derek replied. “Me too.”

WILL’S NOSE STREAMED with blood but it had nothing to do with any injury Sadie inflicted upon him. Out of the blue came a torrent of red. It was a fashionable colour. Sadie was on all fours, gasping as the sac tore open. Gore was flushing across the black floorboards, giving them a gloss that no varnish could deliver. The child wriggled on its back, trying to chew through the cord that connected him to his mother with teeth that looked like broken bits from a straight razor. Even as he did this, he was scrabbling with his hands, trying to gain purchase on the slippery boards, trying to crawl over to where Will was crouched.

There was no exit behind him. High above, thirty feet or more, the ruptured stage let through shafts of granular light, thick with dust. The only exit was beyond Sadie and her grim spawn.

Staunching the flow of blood with the back of his hand, Will stood up. Sadie swung her head to look at him. Her face was covered in sweat and darkened by blood, building up in her temples. Her teeth were bared and a rope of saliva shivered from the corner of her mouth.

“Say hello. To Daddy,” she managed, the words coming out packaged in little coughs of pain. “Give. Daddy a big. Kiss.”

“Fuck that,” Will said, and took off.

He hurdled Sadie, but she managed to lift her forearm, which she smashed across Will’s shin. He toppled forwards and landed heavily against a rack of microphone stands. There was something wrong with the way he tried to stand up, and he saw that he couldn’t get any leverage from his hand because now it was lying, palm upwards like a weird ashtray, six feet away from his body. The thumb and forefinger made an OK sign. He closed his mind to what was happening. He stood up, shakily, and tottered over to the hand, which he picked up with the other

Nice to meet you, I’m fine, how are you?

before vomiting thinly and lurching away from Sadie, who had rolled onto her back, scrabbling in the wet for her crop. He stuffed the hand into his pocket and backed off, his head ranging to and fro, trying to spot the child in the gloom. Presumably Sadie was shielding it from harm. Perhaps it was too raw to harm him just yet. He eyed the microphone stands, their heat-warped, splintered bows of metal, but what use was a weapon here? He could slash, spear, or cudgel Sadie, but to what effect? She was this place and it was her.

“I saved your life, you fucking bitch,” Will said, needing to say something, anything that might get through to her and stop her from causing his decomposure. She sagged back into her own juices and stared at him, her mouth parted, hissing through her clenched teeth a sound that might or might not have been laughter.

Will jogged for the exit, briefly appalled by another spray of blood that gushed from his nose. He needed to find somewhere dark and quiet, somewhere he could turn his thoughts inwards, to make some sense of what was happening to him. Once free of the awful cinders and smokiness of the theatre, he ran until his lungs burned, ignoring the hellish fragments being enacted on these stages around him. He caught glimpses of animals forced into acts that made them shriek; shadowy things swinging on the ends of ropes in dank alleyways; men huddled around a core of something wet and pink that mewled when they leaned into it. He blocked it all out as he ran, or tried to trick himself into believing that the scenes around him were more benevolent than they appeared. It was the only way to deal with it. He had no choice. It was all move, keep going, the next thing and the next. It didn’t matter any more what leapt out at him or winked from the shadows. The goalposts had moved and he had to move with them. Keep going. Keep going. What was the alternative?

He stopped running when the blood from his nose was smeared across his chest and splashed into his eyes, making him blind. He could taste it, hot and bright in the back of his throat, next to the sweetish flavour of his own depletion. The blood was an honest taste. It persuaded him that he was still alive and that getting away was still of use to someone, even if that someone was no longer himself.

Up ahead Will saw a boat moored to the bank of a slow-moving river. He slid and scuffed his way onto the bank, where the heavy, organic smell of the water assaulted him, slapping him further awake. The boat was a small cutter tethered to a post with a series of old, fraying ropes. A faded name etched on a brass plate, Koimao, was attached with rusty screws to the bulwark. It listed heavily to starboard, and the aft deck was a riot of birdshit and sodden flyers exhorting visits to clubs that might well have been called abattoirs in another time and place.

Cautiously, he stepped aboard, risking a “Hello?” before pushing open the cabin door and peering into the depths of the boat. A smell of boiled onions and vinegar. Six inches of brackish water on the floor. A coil of rope, fat and sodden like a snake on a chair fit for anything but sitting on. There was nobody on board. Will grabbed a rusty knife from a rack in a galley that was decorated with grease and mould. He went back to the bank and cut the boat free. Then he took his hand from his pocket and tossed it into the water. One of the black, spangled parrots gawked at him from the coach roof when he turned around.

“Wanking hand, was it? Tough titty, tough titty, tough titty...”

Will sat back and watched the bright and broken lights of Mash This retreat. The river had the cutter and it tugged it slowly with a current that rocked the collapsing vessel. Will responded to its rhythms, allowing the currents of his own exhaustion to pull him on too. He folded his damaged arm under the other, to keep it warm. The ancient wood of the vessel sang and cried as it rolled downriver. The mainsail, jib, and stay sail were ragged triangles shot through with holes. The water stretched out behind the boat like braids of hair slowly being plaited together.

A querulous chittering.

The baby’s hand wrapped itself – a wet, pudgy claw – around the rail. Its oversized head rose like an awful moon. Will saw the glitterflash of light off its razor teeth and felt a perverse wave of pride wash over him.

HARRY TOOK IT in, sat down calmly on a chair next to the bed, regarded his wife with cool detachment, and whispered: “Are you completely and utterly out of your nutty bloody skull, woman?”

“I promised him this,” Joanna said. “Like you promised me. I’ll sit by him until, well, until whatever.”

“Promised him how?” Harry asked.

“When I was in a coma I... well, I don’t know, I somehow joined up with him. There was a link there, Harry.”

Harry was looking at Joanna as if she had suddenly grown a ginger beard. “You should still be in that hospital bed,” he said.

“I’m perfectly fine, Harry,” Joanna maintained. “But this poor guy is not. Believe me.” She searched her husband’s face, but it was grey and flinty with worry. She took his hand. “Listen,” she said, “if I was making all this up, how come I knew that there would be a coma patient called Will in this hospital?”

Harry shook his head. It didn’t seem enough to convince him.

“Why don’t you wait outside,” Joanna said, gently. “Get us a couple of teas, yes? I’ll be out shortly.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Sit with him for a while. See if he wakes up.” She shrugged, smiled. “I don’t know.”

Harry got to his feet and kissed the top of his wife’s head. “I’ll get us some tea then.”

WHEN HE THOUGHT to look at the sky and try to find the moon, something to comfort him and make him feel rooted to reality on some plane or another, he was too far gone in sleep to manage it. Amazing, that he could drift off while that child, his child, that creature came slithering along the deck for him.

In sleep, he saw Joanna’s face leaning over his. She kissed his lips tenderly. He couldn’t open his eyes to ask her what he needed her to do but he could pull back from the dream and imagine himself lying there between the sheets, gaunt with skin like tallow. With his good hand, his fingernail, he gouged a message on his sleeping form’s forehead. Blood magicked onto the surface of the first letter as he moved on to the third. The word sprang out of his skin and Joanna sat back, shocked.

Do it, he urged, pressing the thought out of him with as much force as the child’s jaws as they closed around his ankle. He closed his mind to the terrible wet snacking and the absence of pain.

Do it.

OUTSIDE THE ROOM, the police officer looked up at Harry from his chair with ill-disguised boredom. A faulty striplight sizzled above, intermittently spitting bleached light or dropping shadow onto them.

“I’m getting some tea,” Harry explained. “Would you like a cup?”

The police officer shook his head.

Harry left him and headed down the corridor to the drinks machine, wondering about the policeman’s hands. Pianist’s fingers, he had thought, idly, when he jotted down their names and addresses in his notebook. “I’m his ex-wife,” Joanna had said. But, he saw now, they weren’t pianist’s fingers. Folded in the policeman’s lap, they were thick and meaty. Like pork sausages.

The light then, playing tricks. The light and the effect his crazy wife was having on his brain. By the time he got back, his hands being slowly scalded by the superheated tea in its flimsy plastic container, the policeman had disappeared and Joanna was leaning over Will, crying a pool into the tucked skin between his thumb and forefinger. Scars on the man’s forehead were vanishing as he watched. They looked like letters. What was it they said? Was it, was it Kill me?

“It’s finished,” she said, looking up at him and smiling crookedly. “All done. All done.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: THE BLACK FACTORY

THE ZIGGURAT WAS the tip of what was proving to be a monstrous iceberg, a labyrinth that twisted and U-turned, jinked and kinked back on itself like the fissures of a brain. Sean and Emma moved through the walls, children cheating the maze by crawling beneath its hedges. They were slowly advancing on the foundry sounds at the heart of the construction. Hot and cold air rioted against their skin. They smelled sour sweat and heard the hitching whimper of babies in discomfort. A snatch of melody, a lullaby. A scream that started off as something erotic and became terror-driven.

Sean was remembering. It had been hard, over the years, to give much thought to the terrible occasion of his parents’ death, harder still to acknowledge their complicity in the use of him as an Insert. Cash had gone into their pockets while his mind had been invaded, tuning him into the frequency of the dead. It was difficult to accept that he had run away from home and fended for himself for so long without belief in his own ability. Perhaps it had been a way of blocking out the hideous memory of the double murder. He had run half the length of England but had failed to get away from the cold facts. He was different. Trying to gouge out that difference with a drill all those years ago had served only to illustrate his rarity. Trying to kill himself was as much an attempt to confirm that dreamlike knowledge that he could never take his own life as it was a need to damage himself into oblivion. Emma had been the walking stick he needed. Though she was growing ever paler, and tired-looking, in here she was strong and limber. Her eyes were wide and bright here. In here, her brain was lightning.

“It’s opening up,” she said now.

He saw she was right. The walls were further apart and the light was improving, deepening the corners of the corridors, picking out the patterns in the floor and ceiling. The patterns were replicated in the walls too, he saw, squinting to study what they might be. It was a little like staring at complex patterns on wallpaper, or the mesh of twigs in a winter tree. The patterns forced faces out of the wall.

“Sean,” Emma said, her voice toneless, inelastic.

He couldn’t understand her terse address. But then he saw that the faces were really faces, two-dimensional visages locked into the fabric of the wall like tesserae in a mosaic. They possessed animation, these tiles. They blinked and gurned and pouted, shifting along like the accretion of frost on a pond.

“Who are they?” Emma asked.

“People dreaming,” Sean said. “People dreaming of death. People dying. This is where our minds go when we sleep, when we’re closing in on death. The cusp of it. Death is like one huge plughole and when we sleep, when we play dead, it sucks us towards it.”

“I can hear babies crying, Sean. It’s horrible.”

“Babies know death well. They’re closest to it when they’re born. Being born is like cheating that plughole at the last moment. Babies scream at the moment of birth because they know what death tastes like. They know that they have been born in order to die.”

The corridor broadened and then it was no longer a corridor because the walls sank and curved, feeding into the floor. They stood on a desert of faces that moved ceaselessly, minutely, like the incremental journey of a dune. A hundred metres away, the floor heaved up again and became a column that rose so high that they could not see the tip of it. There was no machinery here, but there ought to have been. The air was thick with movement, as though all of the molecules in it had been heated to a point of constant agitation. Some huge labour was occurring on a plane of consciousness that was beyond Sean and Emma. They felt the tongues of furnaces lick their foreheads and backs wet; puffs of arid air exploded across them from the pistoning of unseen hardware. Motors and rotors churned and whipped the air, girders plunged and spun as the giant, invisible machine ground out its unknown product.

Sean ventured out onto the landscape, clasping Emma to him when its limitless expanse threatened to squash him to nothing. They approached the column, seeing at a distance how the faces were drawn into it and coiled around the cylinder as they were sucked up like the slashes of blood and bandage in a barber’s shop pole. The symphony of creation went on around them, smashing and howling as steel heated up and steam was vented and bolts and pulleys clanked together. Sean got a trace of its mischief as the column loomed miles above them. White tunnels, friendly faces, open arms. Brilliant light.

“It’s feeding them,” Sean said, the faces on the column as they neared becoming easier to pick out. These faces were less motile, less lined. They had the serenity that comes with reassurance, with knowledge. When they woke, the corporeal forms that projected their identities down here would feel fresh and heartened.

“De Fleche is behind this,” Sean said. “A sugar-coated version of what death is, slammed into the dreaming mind of those who need it. It’s like TV. It’s like bad TV.”

“What is?” Emma was holding on to his arm, trying to read the messages she saw in the twisting core of faces.

“This place, dressing up death in a pretty frock and pearl ear-rings. Bit of slap. Bit of scent. All those pitiful fucks sucking it down, befriending the costume and not the clown that wears it.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Emma wanted to know. “Is it bad to not be scared? Of dying, of death?”

“No it’s not. But we develop our own defences. We read our holy books or we believe that Uncle Fred is ‘up there’ looking down on us, minding us as we dawdle after him, catching him up. We deal with death our own way. We pack our travel bag for that journey because nobody else can pack it for us. This...” Sean waggled his hand at the busy, hot air, “...this is force-feeding. This is Walt Disney on a bad day.”

“But why is he doing it?”

Sean said, “The dead are seeping back into our world, Emma. They’re infecting the living, damaging life, just as his being here is damaging this place too.”

“Why though? Why does he want that?”

“I don’t know yet. But we’ll find him and we’ll stop it.” He looked back the way they had come. “Out there is what death is really all about. The hill and the forest and the sea. And the monsters. Tranquillity and discord. It’s all we’ve ever wanted from anything we do. Life, stories, love... there’s no life without darkness. So it is here. So.”

Emma kissed him. “De Fleche,” she said. “Where do we find him?”

Sean looked at her. “The place where all the monsters live. In fairy tales. In fact.”

Emma said, “The forest.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: POSITIVE ID

CHEKE WITHDREW THE policeman deep into herself and allowed Susannah to come forwards. She stepped onto the hard shoulder of the M62 and waved at the oncoming articulated lorry as it steamed up the inside lane. She breathed in and pulled her shoulders back, smiled, showed Susannah’s tiny, white teeth.

Immediately, the HGV indicated and pulled onto the shoulder. Susannah ran alongside the lorry, its passenger side door opening even before the wagon had come to a stop, and clambered up into the seat.

She noticed the badge on his shirt pocket first – Come ride my long vehicle – then his sunglasses and an unattractive beard as tight and curly as sheep’s hair. The boy-in-a-sweet-shop smile. Those lenses could not hide from Cheke his long gaze into the valley between her breasts. She leaned over and let him have a better view, then she killed him. He jerked and bucked as if he were a robot and she a technician, trying to reattach some faulty wires in his CPU. His glasses fell off revealing a new expression for her burgeoning library: it was neither repulsion nor relief and probably wasn’t even a combination of the two. When she’d taken it from him she rested, trying to bring some harmony to the constant ripple of her body. Finally, he was still and she could begin.

The last thing she had been expecting as she closed in on Will was that her job would be executed for her by someone else, and a weak-looking invalid at that. She had dogged them, the man in the scarf and his extraordinary wife, intending to kill them both, but it was clear that the couple were going home. They had no impact on what was about to be played out here because they were oblivious to the situation, that much was clear from their expressions as they hurried from the hospital. Their agenda with Will was separate, inspired – judging from the abject look on the woman’s face – by pity. Fair enough. She would claim the kill for herself. Gleave would be none the wiser. It angered her a little that she had been dispatched to get rid of this runt of a man, this no-hoper, this failure. Will was nothing special, she felt. He was just somebody who stumbled upon horror and reacted as anybody might react, if their hand were forced. But, as Gleave had pointed out to her, to get to Will was to get to all of them. It was for such reasons that she was a doer, and not a planner.

As she fed on the gruel that had once been the driver, mopping up juices as his baseball cap deflated on a baked-vegetable head, she considered her next move. She had the scent at last, for the quarry in which she was most interested. It tingled in her nostrils like pepper. It was so fresh and near she could almost envisage its owner, sitting at a midnight table with a glass of something warming, riffling a newspaper, listening to the radio, his muscles squirming gently against each other, built for action.

Cheke brought the trucker back, scooted over behind the wheel and let his driving instincts take her over. She glanced in the rear-view mirror. That God-awful beard! She erased it, replacing it with Derek’s smooth jawline. Better. Much better.

THE FOREST HAD changed since their initial recce. Its purple boughs were streaked with moss. Mushrooms clustered in moist creases like rashes of acne. It seemed much denser, much more forbidding. Emma said as much as they strode deeper into it.

“I know,” Sean said. “Something’s happened. Something’s brought this on. Be careful.”

He wasn’t just pleading with her to be cautious because of the more menacing aspect of the forest, she saw. Great swathes of the thing just didn’t exist any more. Like blighted tracts of land in an otherwise green, rolling plain, the forest had suffered losses. It was difficult to stare into the abyss gouged out of the loam. It was plumbless, brimming with a vast pacific nothingness that was beyond anything that death could possibly mean. Looking into these vacuums was too much like studying one’s own heart. Emma shivered and hurried after Sean, who was picking his way over a series of collapsed branches. Magnificent trumpets of fungus had erupted across the timber, exuding a rich, meaty odour and a sweat too, which dribbled across the flesh of the growth and ringed its uppermost parts before lifting, weightless, into the black like some sort of strange, anti-gravity rain.

“Don’t touch a thing,” Sean cautioned.

There was death in the forest, as he had expected. How could there not be, in death’s homelands? This was death’s acres, death’s back yard. Death came out to play Ring-a-ring-of-roses and What time is it, Mr Wolf? Death told sick jokes in its own playground, where it was bully and best friend.

The corpses were lined up neatly for a while and then strewn higgledy-piggledy as though the person laying them out had grown tired of his own methodical approach. But they were not corporeal. They had owned the ephemeral nature of old cobwebs or dandelion seeds. Just walking past them caused enough of a draught to lift half a dozen of them into the air and separate them to the extent that it was hard to believe they had had any recognisable form to begin with. They were like candyfloss shells, a playtime dead.

Tiny creatures, that may or may not have been lizards or skinks, had spent so long sitting still on the limbs of trees that they had fused with them and become dreadful, blinking twigs. Spiders had spun webs of gold between the reeds and ferns, sometimes stretching a tightrope of glittering silk across the path. When Emma reached to swipe it away, it sizzled into the edge of her hand, branding her with pain. Sean caught sight of one of these trap spinners, a tiny pale orb ringed with eyes like succulent blackcurrant pips and legs that seemed too thin and long to carry even that infinitesimal weight. It didn’t shuffle off into the shadows when they approached; it stood its ground, slowly turning to watch them go by, milky venom oozing from a cleft beneath its eyes like sap from a rubber tree.

The forest was deep and dense. They drifted down an incline until the darkness was raven-blue, writhing in front of them. The roots of great banyan-like trees were too mighty for the soil and rose above it, choosing instead to decant their nutrients from the more slender boughs around them. The roots were knotted, huge things, hispid with moss like the limbs of men in repose. At the heart of one configuration, Sean saw a hand, white and stiff as asbestos board. The fingers jerked at him.

“Jesus,” Sean said. “Emma, come and help me.”

It was Will. They could just make out his face through the slow strangulation of roots around his torn, white body, and the scar in his forehead made by the police marksman’s bullet. Sean closed his mind to the fear that had been sown by the forest and tried to send Will a message, but Will was panicking too much to prove a clear receptor.

“My puh–” he was saying. “Myyy puh!”

Sean slid his hand into one of the cracks between a root and Will’s hot chest. He felt ribs with his probing knuckles: a stick being dragged across a xylophone. He was dimly aware of Emma’s attention wandering from Will’s rescue to something in his peripheral vision.

“Puh... kit,” Will breathed. “Puhhh-kitt!”

Emma was moving away. Sean made to call out to her, but now Will was trying to speak again and the earnest glare in his eyes, the effort going into it, made him concentrate hard.

“Tekkit,” he wheezed. The root cosied up closer to him, like a python beginning its death squeeze. White spittle had formed a crust on his mouth. He looked frostbitten and feverish and fucked-up. Sean realised he must be dead and that it didn’t matter how he looked any more. Will showed him his teeth and hawked up some strength from somewhere deep inside.

“Mah... pocket!” The sound was a violent gargle. Sean watched a split running up the length of Will’s torso and a thin slick of lymph flood out. “Qui...” he heaved, imploring Sean with his eyes. “Qui...” The split became a broad seam, flesh tonguing out of it like a dark red cloth fed through a mangle.

Sean tore at Will’s clothes, trying to find a pocket, any pocket. He found the mouth of one pocket and the neck of what was sitting inside it. He pulled it out. It was a slender phial of green crystals, with a label that read Paleshrikes. He held the container at arm’s length, looking at Will uncomprehendingly.

Emma said, “Sean.”

He turned. She was staring off into the trees, as if, through all of the vertical slashes of wood, she could see something else, something different. Some tree tops maybe a hundred metres away were shivering but there had been no wind on the hill, no indication of any kind of weather here. Now another clump of trees shivered, a little nearer. There was a splitting, rending sound, a groaning and thrashing. The tree tops in the distance sank from view. Sean was put in mind of King Kong, a film he had first watched as a child. He remembered how frightened he had been when Fay Wray had stopped struggling against her bonds on the sacrificial plinth at Skull Island and looked up at the trees as they shuddered and parted with the coming of something that ought only be given life in the depths of nightmare.

Will was sending him another garbled message. “Lidov... porrit... qui...”

Sean again tried to make his mind a millpond, flat and still and deep. He ignored the ground-shaking approach and Emma’s increasingly urgent demands that they do something now. He focused instead on Will’s brown eyes, still clear and animated despite the fact that they, and the soft cradle of his face that they lay in, were gradually turning to soup back in the real world.

Sean sent: Will, relax. Tell me what it is you want me to do. Feed this stuff to you?

Will’s eyes became less intense, as if Sean had done something unexpected to disarm him, which, he realised, was exactly what he had done. The tree squeezed its baby to its bosom, five tendrils – slim tubers extruding from the tap root – tentatively meshed with Will’s hand like the fingers of a shy girlfriend.

No, Will sent, as much with his eyes as his mind. Open it, pour it on the tree. It’s foreign to this place. It’s poison.

Sean unstoppered the phial and shook some of the crystals onto his palm. They looked like bath salts. He flung them at the roots and the dense trunk and stepped back as the bark began sloughing off in great swathes, like the skin of an unfortunate who had been consumed by fire. The roots blackened and popped, petrifying in an instant. The whole tree took on the appearance of a child recoiling from a mad dog. Will slithered from its grip and lay gasping on all fours, keening and puking into the fractured loam.

“Nice one,” he said at last, sticking up an approving thumb.

“What is this stuff?” Sean asked, shaking the remaining granules in the phial.

“I picked it up in Gloat Market.”

“Where?”

Will shook his head. “No matter. I don’t know what it is. Weedkiller, maybe.”

Emma looked at them, a mix of disgust and dread spoiling her features. “Boys,” she said. “I mean, boys!” Her finger was pointing at the treeline as the great columns were felled in an instant. The noise now was deafening, a timber tide crashing against their shore. The final cluster of trees dropped to reveal no monster, no Kong, no dream demon from the Sandman’s bag. The pulverised trunks formed a path buzzing with wood-dust. A smell blasted over them of sourness, rotten timber heavy with the waste of weevils and disease. As if in sympathy with this little eco-disaster, a fresh puncture sucked away the ground into a limitless black throat. Far away to the right, a small group of grey smocks had gathered on the hill and were watching this new round of cataclysms with stoic indifference. It was as if they knew they were here for the duration, no matter what the outcome. Were they the true dead, the ur-dead? The people who had shaped this mirror-Eden only to find it, like the villages and towns and cities of the world, become cluttered with litter and pollution; populated by murderers and despots and the self-destructive. De Fleche, then, was the Serpent in this garden, knowing the smell and flavour of ruin and how best to help it spread. Vernon Lord was right to fear this place. Death, a release? A big adventure?

What was it de Fleche hoped to achieve? Where was the sense in building one last great folly and filling it with dark confections to soothe the dying, the agnostics who didn’t know, who hoped, but couldn’t be sure? What was the worth in luring shaky atheists who hammered up their barriers until death began to pluck at them and then removed the nails one by one, daring to peek through the cracks to see if, maybe, there was something else after all?

Emma said, her voice misfiring, “What is this?”

The wood-dust settling, they could see at the end of this arboreal gorge a figure sitting with his back to them. He was hunched over, gazing out at a mere ringed with brown, wilting reeds. Sean moved towards him but Will hissed at him to stay put.

“It’s de Fleche. He has to die,” Sean said.

“How, exactly?” Will asked.

The question flummoxed him. “I’ll busk it,” he said. “It’ll come to me.”

“This is his playpen,” Will warned. “He has more toys than you.”

The grey head of the figure vibrated. His hair danced as though it were plunged in water. Even at this distance they could see the black scimitar grin in his face, the gold tooth as it winked. “He wants you to go to him. Look, he’s psyched up for it. He knows he can finish you now.” He laid a hand on Sean’s arm. “There’ll be a better time,” he promised. “A fairer deck.”

“But Pardoe said we have no time left.”

“There’s time enough,” Will said. “I saw things happening, before... shit, before I was shot–” He paused at that, and tried to absorb it. Emma rubbed his shoulder. “This kind of decay is going on back home,” he said. “People passing back who have been dead a long time. I remember, when Cat died, a guy called Gleave who came to collect her and the woman, Cheke, the killer. He said something about ‘leaks’, about mopping them up. They have to be stopped, Sean.”

“But Pardoe was adamant that de Fleche–”

Emma said, “Pardoe is a dinosaur. All he’s interested in is carrying through a plan that’s twenty years out of date. Will’s right. De Fleche can’t do anything while he’s stuck here. He’s done what he set out to do. The wheels are in motion.”

Sean watched the old man swivel on his seat and gaze back at them. Distance reduced his features to a whitish smear. “I can’t believe that’s it. That’s all. There must be something more. De Fleche isn’t dead. He’s an intruder here. What’s the point of drumming up an army of dead people to walk among the living if...” Sean frowned, “...you weren’t going to come back when all the killing was done?”

“Who said anything about an army?” Will stammered, the thought of it, the weight of it settling in him like a badly digested meal.

The figure was standing now, turning fully to face the three. He began to pace towards them. At this distance, he seemed too angular and unathletic to cause them any harm. Sean bristled as if sensing a confrontation. Will pressed a hand against his chest.

“Go,” he said. “Take Emma and get away. Plug the leaks.” He offered a flattening of his lips which passed for a smile. “Do what I couldn’t do,” he said, bitterly, “and save a few lives.”

The old man was approaching quickly. From his hand swung a length of rope. They could tell, even at this distance – some eighty metres – that he was grinning, his mouth a scythe of teeth.

“Okay,” Sean said. “Okay.” He gave the phial back to Will and took Emma’s hand. He pressed the edge of his knife against the flesh where it joined and, fading as he drew blood, said to Will, “Watch yourself. You’re dead. It’s probably for the best that you try to stay that way.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: THE CUCKOLD'S NECK

THEY STOPPED IN front of an electrical shop in Market Gate to watch a news bulletin. Shaking cameras relayed live footage from Charing Cross Road of a cordon of mounted and armed police trying to peg back a mob of pale, unblinking corpses. They were untainted by putrefaction, these dead. It was as if they had been rehabilitated, captured at their physical peak, perhaps thanks to the abiding memories of those they had left behind. Nobody wants to remember the sick and the infirm.

Emma said, “How long, do you think, before we have the same problems up here?”

“I don’t know,” Sean said. “Maybe never.”

“Yeah, right,” Emma chided him. “Looks like it.”

The town centre was deserted. When the clock struck the hour, Emma jumped and the sound flew through the empty streets, carrying its cold, lonely message.

Cars had been abandoned on the roads, some of them having flipped onto the pavement or been involved in minor collisions with other vehicles. In one of the more serious accidents, a woman had been trapped in the driver’s seat of her Mini by the steering wheel, which had been pushed forwards into her chest by the force of a bus’s impact. A fire had broken out and ravaged her. Smoke rose from her charred remains. Her eyes swivelled as Sean and Emma walked past, and followed their progress along Sankey Street. Emma thought she was grinning at them but felt something rise in her throat when she realised it was only because her lips had been burned away.

At the town hall Sean broke away from Emma and jogged towards the taxi rank. The lawns of Bank Park surrounding the town hall were in need of a trim. A lawnmower had been left in the middle of the task. A single gardening glove lay next to it, bright orange in the green.

There were no drivers in the taxis, but more than one had failed to take the keys out before leaving their cab. Getting into one, he started up the engine – a shocking roar that broke the silence – and swung the cab out of the queue, halting in front of Emma, who climbed into the back.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Farmhouse,” Sean replied. “Somewhere I saw a gathering of my softstrip friends some time ago. I didn’t get a chance to go in and look around. But I think that’s where their HQ is.”

The streets radiating out of town shed their drifts of traffic until the route was relatively unimpeded. Emma saw dark figures in windows looking down on the cab as it wound its way towards the dual carriageway. The houses in these terraced streets seemed to be affected by the tension in the air, the loss of community. They hunched together, seeking safety in numbers, and closed their eyes to the outside world. Their hard, cement faces found sympathy in Sean’s and – Emma noticed in the rear-view mirror – her own.

The dual carriageway became a road became a track littered with leaves and mud. On either side, ploughed fields spread out, their furrows parallel to the road, perspective sucking all of their lines to a point straight ahead where a farmhouse with a sunken, defeated look sat waiting for them.

Sean ditched the car half a mile shy of the building, having turned it to face the opposite direction. He pocketed the keys and they took to the field. Hunched low to the ground they slowly neared the farmhouse, their breathing becoming more laboured, hanging like empty speech bubbles around their heads.

It was late in the afternoon and the sky was heavily bruised but no lights had come on in the farmhouse.

“We could be in luck,” Sean said. “It might be empty.”

“Wait,” she said. She drew him to her under the protective spread of an oak tree made naked by the cold. The bark of the tree was true and good. Somebody had carved their name in the wood, an ancient graffito professing love for another. The person who had scratched that wish might well be dead now. Emma clung to her man and her skin felt as crumbly and delicate as the tree’s. Sean had made his mark on it long ago, before he was aware of her, branding her with his heat. She had felt the scorch of it deep in her heart and she knew the warmth she felt now was partly down to Sean’s arms around her, but also partly due to the core of need he had fixed in her all those years ago. She wanted to make love to him here, now, but it was too cold and he was too focused.

Something about the farmhouse worried her. It might have been the way its slouched windows frowned down at her or the broad door beneath its arch, like an opened mouth. She held on to Sean and rubbed his back, ran her fingers through the clipped fuzz at his nape, and moved her body so that as much of its surface was in alignment with his. She searched for the things she wanted to say to him. She wanted to tell him she loved him, but the look in his eyes told her that he was fully aware of that.

“I don’t like it, Sean,” she whispered. “It doesn’t feel right. I’m not happy.”

Sean pulled back and placed the warm flat of his hand against her cheek. “It’s all right. We’ll be careful. Promise.”

She allowed herself to be escorted closer to the farmhouse, but the nearer they got, the more she felt repelled by the ugly building. Red curtains in the windows reminded her of the freshly harvested hide of animals her grandfather had hunted during her youth. She remembered one freezing morning in particular when she had been given the treat of accompanying him on a shoot in the fields near his house. She had trotted happily alongside him, the memory of the warmth of her bed lost to her but for a crumb of sleep in the corner of her eye and her pyjamas, which she had refused to take off and which provided an extra layer of warmth beneath the jumper and coat and trousers.

The sky had a bleached look about it. The sun was imminent, a burst yolk dribbling across the horizon. Chalky scratches in the blue told of aircraft nosing towards somewhere far away and much warmer than this starved place. Emma had gabbed away at the hawkish profile of her grandfather as he stalked across the frozen ridges of the field, shotgun broken across his arm, heading towards the mist-bound acres of the wood at its far end. She couldn’t remember what she had talked about – her dolls, maybe, or an enjoyable painting session at school. But she remembered turning around when the church bells tolled six to see the quickening sun pull the shine out of the spire and the clockface. For a moment, the church seemed to be on fire, and then she heard a mighty crack and she whirled to see her grandfather’s gun slotting smoothly into the cushion of his shoulder. She caught a brief glimpse of movement high to her right, a flutter of wings, and then came the explosion of the gun and she screamed, tears in her eyes before the retort’s echoes had spent themselves on the field’s furrows and fences.

He sent her to collect the downed wood pigeon and she did so, not because she wanted to – she could have been the definition of squeamish in the dictionary – but because her grandfather, in that moment, though she loved him enormously, had scared her more than anything else in her short life. His face had retained its shadows despite the sun’s attempts to pick them out. The smoke from his shotgun coiled around him, snagging on his clothes, his jaw, as if its true home was inside his body and it was struggling to return.

She picked the bird up by its legs and was grateful that there didn’t seem to be any blood, but when she had returned to her grandfather and he took the bird from her, she saw a streak of it on her hand. Her grandfather lifted it off with a thumb and daubed it against her forehead.

Sean said. “What is it?”

Emma touched the spot on her forehead and took a step back. “I can’t go in,” she said. “I won’t go in.”

“Okay,” he said. “That’s okay. But you know I have to.”

She nodded. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

He handed her the keys. “Go and sit in the cab,” he said. “Wait for me. I’ll be no more than fifteen minutes. If I’m not back by then, drive away and get the police. Tell them anything. Tell them you saw a murder here. Get a lot of police out here.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry.”

Sean kissed her hair and her mouth. “Fifteen minutes,” he said. He turned his back on her.

HE GOT IN through a rear window that had not been properly returned to its latch. His foot landed in something soft: a tray of dog food, he saw, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He realised instantly that he was not alone in the house and told himself that maybe that was a good thing. From deep inside the house came the sounds of exertion – grunts and thoughtless curses – and the squeal of wood as either its tensions were released or increased. It was the sound of light wind filling a sail, timber finding its own balance.

He padded to the door, taking care not to disturb any of the steel pots hanging from hooks on the wall. One of the pots was on the range, a thick skin having developed on its contents. Yesterday’s soup, by the look of it. In the hallway, about a dozen pairs of heavily muddied wellington boots stood to attention. The walls were festooned with brass and leather trinkets. A door on the right of the hall gave on to a drawing room with a fireplace, cold ashes in its hearth, and a table with a chess set, its pieces set up for a game that had managed just one move so far: king’s pawn advanced two squares. Classic, predictable. Sean smiled. He had the measure of these men. The paper tiger that was Ronnie Salt; the tragedy of Vernon Lord; Tim Enever who had impressed him at first, before it became clear that he was just a shabby fence. They were no-marks this lot, lowlife chancers who had hit the big time and were beginning to realise that it was a little bit too big for them.

He returned to the hall and whispered up the stairs. Momentarily, before he reached the landing, he thought he heard the beep of a car horn. He glanced out of the window up the lane to the taxi, the shape of which he could just see behind the hedgerow. No other cars.

Okay. Okay. Keep moving.

Bedrooms. Four of them. All empty. A bathroom. Ditto. He returned to the stairs. That creaking, squealing noise again. Very clearly, he heard a voice: Test it. Have a swing.

He was about to put his eye up against the crack in the door when he heard a chair being drawn back on its hind legs. He turned to see Vernon Lord standing by the chess set, looking at him. A gun was dangling from his right hand. His left held the chair and he was nodding his head, inviting him to sit.

“There’s always someone else who can do things better than you,” Vernon said as Sean entered the room. “You could practise for hours, finger shadows, perfecting a little rabbit, say, and someone will come along and do a honey osprey tearing a mouse apart.”

Sean sat in front of the black pieces. Vernon sat opposite, regarding the carved wooden figures with the interest a hungry man displays for a good steak. “Do you play?” he asked.

“I have done. When I was younger.”

“Course you have. Bright, healthy lad like you. With your big words and your gymnasium muscles. You look the part, mate, but you’re soft. You talk the talk but you don’t walk the walk. You don’t even limp the walk.”

Sean said, “If you’re trying to get a rise out of me, you’ll have to try harder.” He moved his own king’s pawn, mirroring Vernon’s move.

“There’s a surprise,” Vernon noted. “Follow my leader. That’s you all over, isn’t it? You could have had what you wanted, you know? You could have been somebody instead of fucking using me to get inside, to get at us.” He swept the pieces to the floor with his left hand and brought the fist holding the gun crashing onto the board. The barrel dented the soft wood, its muzzle pointed at Sean’s gut. Vernon’s palms were raw with rope burns.

“All I want to know is,” Sean said, trying to keep his nervousness in check, “who was it that killed Naomi Clew?”

“Who the fuck,” Vernon sneered, “is Naomi Clew?”

“I can answer that.” Another figure at the door, removing his suede gloves finger by finger.

Sean turned in his seat. He moved his lips but the air rushing past them didn’t possess enough strength to carry the name. The man had been with him since childhood but had not been allowed to dally in his thoughts too often. A man that was as synonymous with misery and dread as any of the wraiths from the Brothers Grimm.

“Godspeed, Sean,” the other man said. “Long time no parlay.”

“I never thought I’d see you again,” Sean managed at last.

“Oh, I thought we’d bump into each other eventually. I was young when I saw you the first time. And I’ve kept myself fit, see? Five per cent body fat, you know. Five per cent. Not bad for a bloke pushing fifty-seven. D’you know, I’ve got cholesterol levels so low you’d have to be a worm to read them.”

He leaned against the back of a sofa and folded his hands neatly across his waist. Without switching his focus to Vernon Lord, he said: “Naomi Clew was one of the Inserts. The next wave. The new, improved, bright white, satisfaction-guaranteed-or-your-money-back Inserts that were being trained to go In Country to do for Mr. de Fleche, the bad man they wanted to tick off for trespassing.

“I was paid a hefty wedge, hefty for the 1980s anyhow, to blow these little bastards away. I’m still collecting a fair bit of interest on that pile, even though I didn’t make the first kill until Christmas.”

“You bastard,” Sean said. He could feel his heartbeat rising in his chest, in his throat, until it was sitting behind his ears, pulling tight the skin of his forehead.

“Hey, don’t have a go at me. I argued that we didn’t need to do it. You scarpered before I got the chance to open my account. But I had my orders from up high. They didn’t want to run the risk of your tiny minds being reactivated. They were quite happy to live with the fact that you might find it odd that you healed more quickly than the other girls and boys when you burned your fingers, but what did that matter, as long as you didn’t work out why?

“Truth be told, I have slowed down a bit over the years. And since it was you that found the Clew bint... do you realise, when you first knocked on the door, that she was still alive by the way? Since it was you that started up the itch in our little family’s balls that just would not be scratched, we had to call in outside help.” Here, Gleave’s smile faltered. “Not that it’s done us much good, it has to be said. But anyway. We seem to be on top of things now. Out of the three Inserts, Verny, only two are left, and they are both fucked.”

It became just another noise after a while, a noise that couldn’t get beyond the thrum of heat in his head. Even Vernon Lord seemed bored by Gleave’s speech.

“What is it you want?” Sean asked.

“I just want to plough my own furrow,” Vernon said. “I’m just making my own sweet way in the world.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Sean sneered. “You fucking evil piece of shit. You fucking body-snatcher.”

Vernon screwed up his face in mock disgust. “Ouch,” he said, and started laughing.

“You bent old bastard,” Sean continued, stoking his rage, letting it come, getting on top of it, controlling it for what he needed to do next. “You ancient, sad old has-been. But no, I’m being kind. Sad old never-was, more like.”

Vernon had stopped laughing and was stroking the butt of the gun. “Stop it right there, you little shit,” he said. Now it was Sean’s turn to laugh.

He said, “You think a gun can do me any harm, hey?” He got up and slapped Vernon hard across the face.

“You fuck!” Vernon screamed, lurching back and swinging the gun until it was flush with Sean’s forehead.

“Go on!” Sean screamed. “Go on!”

Gleave said, affably, “Do it, Vern. Shoot him.”

The sound of the blast in the closed room was enormous. A hole burst open in the back of Sean’s head that enabled Vernon Lord to watch the framed painting directly behind him take the exiting bullet. Sean staggered back and slumped onto his backside. His head slammed back into the fireplace and his hair caught fire. It smouldered, filling the room with a sickly-sweet scorching.

“Pull him out,” Gleave said, “before he catches fire.”

Vernon, his face red and puffy with exertion, stuffed the gun into the waistband of his trousers and reached down to grab Sean. The skin of his temples was being licked by the flame.

Sean said, “Get your fucking dirty old man’s hands off me.”

He sat up. The hole in his head was diminishing, slowly spiralling shut like the iris lens of a camera. Vernon Lord had frozen, his mouth open as if to take receipt of a spoonful of soup. Sean rammed the heel of his hand into the bridge of Vernon’s nose. The resultant snap was almost as shocking as the gunfire.

Gleave was inspecting his fingernails. Vernon sat dazed on the floor, a crimson hand trying to keep his nose on his face, looking bovinely at Gleave and then Sean and then Gleave again.

Sean said again, “What is it you want?” He could see out of the window that the taxi had vanished. Maybe Emma had heard the gunshot and decided to get help. He hoped she wouldn’t be long.

Gleave said, “Peter de Fleche is a great man. An architect, but not just of buildings. Of people and dreams and futures so wonderful they’d set your head spinning. He was a seer and a joker and a thaumaturgist. Him being over there, it’s paved the way for some amazing things. A dream centre here, maybe. Dream control. Could be huge.”

Sean said, “You killed my parents.”

Gleave’s face fell, his oration wasted. “He’ll be back soon, de Fleche. A glorious return. Once scum like you have been put in the earth. Once all the Negstreams have been sealed for good.”

Sean felt heat flood his fingers, his hands. His arms stiffened with intent. “You killed them.”

Gleave affected a demure look. “A trifling detail in my biography, but yes, you’re right, I bagged those cunts.”

Sean launched himself, knocking over the table and causing the remaining chess pieces to skitter across the floor.

“Kryptonite for Superman!” Gleave laughed, and turned his back coolly on Sean as he swung a fist for him. A length of rope fell on Sean from the balcony overlooking the room. It wasn’t just the weight of the rope or its tenacious coils that trapped him, but something in the rope, something that turned and twisted with its fibres and chilled him to the point of inaction. He felt weak, drained, as though he had just stepped from a long bath that was way too hot for him.

He watched Gleave through a net of grey walk towards a set of double doors. “That, my friend,” he said, “is shroud-laid rope. It consists of four strands wrapped around its heart. It is a strong rope, Sean. And that particular coil is an ageless specimen. Its loops have held dreamships steady in the harbours of the mind. That length has known so many knots and splices. Knots that have been tied by sailors from distant lands and distant centuries. Maybe a million hands have shaped that rope into what? – sheet bends and true-lovers’ knots; the blackwall hitch, the sheepshank, the hackamore. It’s the only weapon your lot understand. It’s my gun and it’s cocked, every chamber filled; the muzzle is pointing at your heart.”

Gleave snapped the handle of the door down and let it swing open.

“It’s a long rope, isn’t it, Sean? I wonder where the other end of it could be? Hey, let me tell you, Sean, how to create a bowline knot. Let me show you how.”

Through the grey net that pulsed and shivered over his eyes, pledging to take him down into unconsciousness, he saw into the adjoining room. The rope snaked deep into it and rose into the air. Emma was swinging by the neck on the end of it, which had been lashed to a wooden tie-beam that traversed the width of the room. Her face was black and her tongue hung from her mouth, almost reaching as far as her collarbone. One of her shoes had slipped off. She swung like a metronome, ticking off the beat of his misery. He could still smell the apples in her hair.

The grey net turned black and he was saved from seeing any more.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: THE BURN

DE FLECHE HAD approached him with the timid politeness of an elderly man who wants to know the time, or directions to the library. His smile was disarming, but there was something about his eyes that unsettled Will. They looked as though they belonged to someone else, as if this body had come across them by luck, or poached them from another. They were too bright and vibrant for this vessel. De Fleche’s head flopped against his shoulder at a sickening angle as though he had no bones in his neck. He regarded Will almost curiously, the bizarre set to his head giving him a shy appearance.

“You help the man, the woman, yes? You tell them runaway chop-chop?”

Will bore down on his distaste. The voice was loose and phlegmy and sounded as though it were travelling to him over a bed of smashed glass. The smell that floated off the man’s lolling tongue – the size of a dog’s tongue – was rank in the extreme.

“I don’t know them.”

“You don’t? You chit-chat away like old friends. Talking weather? Talking sport? Talking who is poking who?” A forefinger stabbed into the O made with his other hand.

“I thought I knew him, but I didn’t.”

De Fleche grinned. “You’ll see many faces here that you thought you knew. Old friends. Old lovers.” He scrutinised Will’s face like an experienced shopper seeking bargains at a fruit stall. “You’re fresh.”

“Fresh?”

De Fleche nodded enthusiastically. “Cooling on the slab. Path man tucking into you with his saws and blades. Brain on the scales. Cause of death.”

“I suppose I’m fresh then. Yes.”

“You with me? You without me?”

Will looked around him. In the distance, a dozen grey smocks had clustered at the top of the hill, which was just visible over the tops of the trees. Their heads were turned towards him, he could tell. He wondered if they were the restful dead. The unpanicked dead. Those who had died before de Fleche’s time and were immune to his influence.

“Sorry?”

“You in my pocket or fodder?”

“Fodder for what?” Will asked. “I’m dead. I bought the extra-large T-shirt and I’ll wear it every day. I’ve done death. What else is there, for Christ’s sake?”

“Death is a beginning. Oh it’s other things too. It’s irony’s best mate. Death is a joker with a bag of pepper sweets. Death is an appointment it doesn’t know how to keep. Death doesn’t wear a watch. Death is yesterday and tomorrow all wrapped up in one. But most of all it’s a beginning. If you want it.”

“And if I don’t?”

De Fleche leaned into him, conspiratorially. “I know of things here, if you know where to look for them, that will devour your soul.” He stepped back, beaming at Will as if he had just told him a rude joke and was waiting to see the reaction. “Drink?” He pulled a bottle made from smoky glass from his pocket, leaving enough of the flap open for Will to see what else lay inside, if he so wished.

“You in my pocket?”

“What are you after?” Will said. His eyes hadn’t strayed from the pocket since de Fleche had withdrawn the bottle. He ignored the drink when de Fleche offered it to him again. Something was in there; he could see light glancing off it, slow liquid light that snagged in Will’s eyes like syrup spinning from a spoon.

“Simple things in life,” de Fleche said. “A steak pie and a glass of Tizer. A woman with big tits. Friday night is comedy night on Channel Four. Revenge.”

Will didn’t hear any of it. Instead, he heard de Fleche’s original question, repeated so often it became mantra-like, became nonsense, like repeating one’s name over and over until the monotony of speech takes away all of its relevance.

“What’s in there?” he asked, lifting himself on tip-toe to try to define its shape.

“You in my pocket? You in my pocket?”

youinmypocketyouinmypocketyouinmypocketyouinmypocket

It was a book. The first book Catriona had ever bought for him, when they had been seeing each other for about a month. It was a tatty old Corgi Carousel paperback by Gordon Burness called The White Badger. Cat had bought it for him because the picture on the cover – of Snowball, an albino badger – reminded her of Will: pale, bemused, babyish. Inside, she had written: For Will. My own little badger. Love, Cat.

He remembered the smell of that book. He had slipped it under his pillow once he had read it. He gazed at it now. He yearned for its smell, for its special feel between his fingers. Something she had bought for him. Something she had touched, just for a little time. Something she had touched.

youinmypocketyouinmypocketyouinmypocketyouinmypocket

Will said, “You don’t have any power over me.”

“We’ll see about that,” de Fleche replied, deepening the view for him. “We’ll see.”

THEY LIFTED SEAN and carried him into the room, a dining room with its long table set to one side. On the walls were various pictures of benevolent seascapes and smiling, matriarchal figures in the midst of picnicking families and frisky dogs. They provided a sickening diorama against which Emma swung gently, the rope (he hoped it was the rope, God yes, the rope, and not the bones in her neck grating together) grinding and popping as it shifted against the beam.

Gleave said, “Drop her. Take her out the back and put her in the stables. And shave a few fibres from that rope. Stuff them in her mouth before you take the noose off her.”

Sean tried to kick out, to make some kind of protest, but the strength had been drawn from his muscles as finally as a sting pulled from a bee. He watched Emma sink through the air and diminish, seemingly, into the floor, so violent was her impact with it. She was too slack, too lacking in control for Sean to believe this was Emma. Even in death, she’d retain her grace, her spine. He wanted to tell someone, you’ve got the wrong girl. That isn’t Emma.

Tim Enever sloped out of the shadows, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “I told you, didn’t I? I said you were fucked.”

Sean spat at him. He wiped the spittle away with the same vapid indifference. “Do you want some kind of happy badge for that, you phlegm-head? You fucking freak.”

Tim bound Sean’s hands behind him with unexpected strength; rough hemp bit into his wrists, causing his pulse there to sing loudly. He wondered if he would exist long enough to feel it cease. When Tim had finished imprisoning Sean, he grabbed Emma by the hair and dragged her out of the room. Sean bit his lips when her head clouted the wainscot. Tim would pay for that. They all would.

Gleave had lost interest in him. He was standing by the window, looking out at the fields as their hard edges were slowly rubbed out by mist tip-toeing in from the river. Sean might as well have been dead already.

“I could be of use to you,” Sean said. Gleave did not turn around but Vernon Lord began cackling.

“Yeah, right,” he said. “Like you were a great help to me.”

“Gleave,” Sean persisted.

“You’d kill me the first chance you got,” Gleave said. He could have been soothing a child to sleep. “You’ve worked hard, Sean. It’s time you had a rest. A long one.”

Tim returned, wiping his hands on a tea towel patterned with cats. He moved in front of him and draped the noose around Sean’s neck.

Sean said, hating the wheedling aspect that had crept into his voice, “Tim, how long do you think you’ve got? Hey? Before they fuck you up too?”

“I do good,” Tim said, conversationally. “Me and Lordy. We clean up. He harvests, I deliver. Nice.”

“And all because people call you ‘sir’ over there, is that it? Do you know how sad that is?”

“Do you know how sad you are? In two minutes, you’re going to be as dead as the thing in Vernon’s boxers, dangling there, kicking imaginary footballs, but I’ll still be earning a crust and getting my back scratched by the girls In Country.”

“For how long, Tim? As soon as you start slowing down, or fucking up, whichever comes first, how long do you think they’ll keep you in custard, hey? For as long as it takes to find another weirdo who’ll happily go wandering among the stiffs while they sit back and rake in the goodies.”

Tim was staring at him, but Sean couldn’t work out if it was because he had hit a nerve or whether Tim had just switched off, as he had seen him do at the de Fleche building sometimes.

“We all share the takings,” Tim said.

“Really?” The noose was causing Sean’s throat to itch. It hugged his Adam’s apple when he swallowed. It felt as though the rope was getting to know him, sizing him up. It felt impatient for the work it was best at. “There’s more than just money. Rich pickings you haven’t been told about. Vernon there. Have a guess how old he is.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Vernon. Do you know how old he is?”

Tim’s mouth was opening and shutting like the slow gape of fish in restaurant tanks. At last, he said, “Vernon’s my friend.” He busied himself checking the knots on Sean’s wrist and around his throat, but he was troubled, Sean could see that. He must suspect something himself, even if he wasn’t saying as much now. Sean suggested that was the case.

“Just fuck off,” Tim said, the profanity sounding clownish coming from his too-soft mouth. “All right? Just fuck off. It’s not going to save you. Nothing’s going to save you.”

“What’s going to save you, Tim?” And then he told him how old Vernon Lord really was.

“What?” Vernon said, when he was distracted from his tabloid newspaper for long enough to see that Tim was gazing at him, his shoulders slumped, the end of the rope like a limp prick in his hands. “What’s up?”

Sean said, “What is it, Tim? You not getting any of this deal? They give you a bit of pocket money to shut you up and send you on your way? And there’s Vernon. Pink and perky. And old enough to be your great-great-grandfather.”

“He’s having you on, Tim,” said Vernon. “Listen to what he’s saying. The madness.”

Sean went on, “You never see Vernon with a cold, or a bad back, do you? And all those things wrong with you, Tim. They could sort you out in a second if they wanted to. But they don’t want you or anyone else getting too strong. They want people they can control.”

Tim said, “In Country, I can breathe clearly. My chest doesn’t hurt. I’m well there.”

“And how often are you allowed over there, Tim? My guess is, not very often, and when you are, they’ve got you on a leash. Vernon doesn’t take those risks, and look at him. Look at a photograph of him from fifty years ago, like I did, something Kev showed me, and you won’t find a single difference. They’re ripping the piss out of you.”

Tim returned his attention to Vernon, who had pulled himself to his feet, a sorry expression on his face. He was slowly shaking his head. Tim said, “Is that true?”

“Timmy,” Vernon said, weakly. “You’ve been like a son to me.”

Gleave strode back into the room, a mobile phone clamped to his ear. It came away from his ear when he saw what was going on.

“Why isn’t he dead yet?” he asked, waving the phone vaguely in Sean’s direction.

Tim said, “I want more life.”

Gleave’s expression was that of a father who had just returned from an apocalyptic Christmas shopping trip to find he has forgotten the turkey. “I want you to do as you’re told. Now string that fucker up.”

Tim said, “No. I want to know why I’m not in the loop. Why aren’t I getting what I deserve?”

“You want what you deserve?” Gleave asked, all patience evaporated. He grabbed Vernon’s revolver from the older man’s hand and pointed it at Tim’s face. There was a flash of light, but the sound that the revolver made, in the same instant that Tim was launched off his feet to paint the wall with his own colours, was not that of a gunshot. Sean, pulled onto his side when Tim dragged the bight of the rope with him, his neck on fire, thought that clouds had entered the room. They passed in front of the sun, blocking the light. But clouds don’t carry brick-dust in their hearts, and their thunder is not caused by collapsing masonry.

The rope liked the feel of itself against his neck. It liked the taste of his sweat as it soaked into its fibres. Sean was sure he felt it constrict against him, like a boa sensing victory: a bitter peristalsis. For a second he thought he was back in the de Fleche building with Robbie Deakin and Nicky Preece, swapping insults and working up a sweat on the hammer. Plaster dust was in his hair, making an old man of him. It stuck in his throat. They’d take an hour after work and sink a few Stellas at the Ferry Inn. Home for a bath, phone Emma, go out for a steak, and take the car up to Walton Reservoir. Watch the sun go down, kiss her throat, see what happens next.

There was a lorry in the hallway. It had come at them across the field – Sean could see out of the grotesquely slanting window frame, through the settling plumes, a haphazard set of tyre prints slewing in great, lazy zig-zags as they homed in on the farmhouse – and ploughed through the face, lurching onto its side and taking out two of the walls completely. Gleave was trapped beneath one of them, screaming so violently that there was blood in his spittle. His leg was trapped under a pile of bricks and one of the ancient beams that had dropped from the ceiling. The shin was folded neatly back on itself. If Gleave could have waggled his toes he’d scratch his calf with them.

Vernon was nowhere to be seen. The lorry’s cab with its starred windscreen was empty, the door swinging on its hinges. Sean worked his wrists inside the loop that trapped them, trying to ease them free. Gleave’s screams were like cups of espresso for a drunk; they slapped him awake when it would have been easier to drift off and let things happen without his say so for a while.

But the knots were complex and keen. Already Sean could feel an oiliness on his skin that was not just sweat. Gleave was looking at him now with clownish wide eyes. His lips had been given a coat of purple greasepaint. He was going to black out soon. He focused on the appalling injury to Gleave’s leg, and the hands, outstretched as if Gleave was pretending to turn an invisible steering wheel. He worked against the knots more feverishly, shutting his mind to the heat they forced into his wrists. His blood helped to lubricate the configurations. He felt a swooning in the centre of his brain and blackness moved in on his vision, dark fire burning at the edges of paper. He stopped for a moment and breathed deeply. To faint now was to die. He imagined Naomi stroking his forehead and kissing his cheek with her cool lips. He smelled her: rosewater, chocolate, the faint vegetable whiff of henna in her cropped hair. The knots gave a little and the snake around his throat relaxed its grip. Oxygen flooded him and he revived, the miasmal chaos of the dining room resolving itself around him into its constituent parts: pebbles of glass, dunes of dust, splintered beams. Gleave was hunched over his ruined limb, shaking, his skin bleached by shock. The engine block of the lorry had ruptured: the room was filling with the stink of scorched oil.

Naomi’s smells lifted from him, but he felt her near. If he could turn around he felt he might see her. He fought with the rope at his wrists and got a thumb free; the knot’s grip lessened and he had a hand free in seconds. He lifted the noose from his throat and rubbed at the tender burn that encircled it like strange jewellery.

Naomi was nowhere to be seen, but his disappointment was brief: she had been here for him, in some form or other. She was still alive for him, if he wanted her. He just had to deal with their new level of involvement. She was still Naomi; she was different, that was all.

Sean got to his feet and kicked away the remaining coils of rope. As soon as it was off him, he felt strength beat a path through his limbs again. Something caught his eye on the floor in the midst of all the rubble: Vernon’s whistle on its chain. He gathered it up and slipped it over his head, relishing the feel of the cold metal against his chest.

Ignoring Gleave, but pocketing his revolver, he ducked out of the dining room and padded in darkness down a corridor that led to the kitchen. A track in the lino: the heel of Emma’s remaining shoe as she was dragged to the back door. Outside, the cold air scoured the inside of his throat as effectively as the rope had done for the exterior. It beat tears from his eyes as he stumbled over the cobbled yard. A mealy smell drifted to him from the barn, of ancient manure and stale hay cleansed by the wind and made palatable.

She was a broken heap in the corner of the barn, inches away from a pile of straw that might have cushioned her and kept her warm if she had been placed in it. The foot without a shoe had blackened on its short journey outside. A stick of chewing gum peeked from the top of her jeans pocket. He went to her and smoothed her hair, rested her head on a pillow of straw, trying not to dwell on the lack of firmness in her neck, or the way her tongue would not stay inside her mouth. Instead he thought of how her neck had tightened when he kissed it, the pulse quickening as he drew her towards him. How her tongue had flickered around his own, or mapped a silver route across his torso.

He wanted to take her away now. Find the taxi and drive them somewhere safe. Force Pardoe to take care of her. Her death ought to be the end of it, the right kind of closure. He held her hand for a little while longer, then went out to find Vernon Lord.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX: HYDRA

WILL COULDN’T GET his balance sorted out for long enough to take a proper look at where he was. He remembered de Fleche’s remarkable eyes joining with his and making it hard to see anything of any significance in his periphery. At one point it appeared that he was inside de Fleche’s pocket, with its silk lining and corners deep with lint, a forgotten Polo mint and the book Catriona had given him. He had forgotten who he was and what was happening for a while, content instead to flick through the pages while what must have been a surrounding illusion tried to impinge on him. He found a receipt for a meal they had shared in a Hammersmith restaurant and a passport photo of Cat in frightened rabbit mode. He lingered over her inscription to him.

When he finally closed the book, he was on the floor, alone, shivering in an uncommonly chill wind that channelled down to the end of the alleyway in which he was crouched. Blackened brick walls made a chute that lifted on either side of him, so high that he couldn’t see where they turned to rooftops, or gave way to the night sky. The book was gone. He felt cheated, unfulfilled. What had de Fleche promised him, in the end? Words that wound themselves around his mind like mating worms.

“De Fleche!” he called out, and the flat, dead weight of his words bounced back off the walls. The wind filleted him. He did not recognise this place.

He walked without seeing another person for what seemed like hours. All of the streets he turned into were like photographs he had seen of wartime London, windows boarded up, shivering under the sky and what it might bring. All lamps had been killed. Then the rain started. Serious rain. Good old Great British rain. Rain that did not fuck about.

“This is death for me, then,” he thought. Nowhere to go, nothing to do but find a chink of light in an eternity of darkness. High on an embankment a rail track slithered away to unknown, unknowable, distances. Shop fronts that might have given him something with which to entertain the eye for a little while were barricaded with corrugated iron, their awnings selfishly hiding their names from him under coats of rot or rust or graffiti.

But he felt somewhere, not too far away, a tiny coal of warmth that pulsed in the cold, perhaps just for him. A speck of relief. The dot of an island in the Pacific.

Like a hungry dog nosing around for the merest shred of scent that promises dinner, Will made long detours into unlikely streets or cut across unkempt lawns booby-trapped with plastic toys in his search for the warmth. Sometimes – he couldn’t explain how – he knew he was on the wrong track and had to double back and find his original spot, where the feeble pulse of heat had been detected. Then he would be off again, trying to plug into the current and let it pull him in.

It took an age, and Will realised that in real terms that was exactly what might have happened. But suddenly, the heat was stronger and he gave himself to it, the decisions to turn into this street or hurry across that square coming more fluidly as the pulse quickened. At one point he laughed out loud: this must be what it was like for animals, the scent of blood hot and heady in their nostrils. He understood the thrill of the hunt as he closed in on his catch. He could almost see it, a red ball throbbing in the midst of so much blue-black emptiness. Its promise of succour was great; his veins sang and sweat broke out on his forehead, despite the wind’s cruelty.

A door. A red door. It might have been a blue or a green door, but it had been overtaken by the red of warmth. What lay behind it understood the secret of need, the science of comfort. He touched the door and suddenly he was inside the house, sitting on the edge of a bed. He was unhappy now because the interior of the house had proved to be chillier than he expected. No warm welcome. No lack of tension to relax the tight band of pain that circled his head. His hands itched. He stared down at them, at the raw welts scoring the pads of flesh on a parallel with his life lines. If he put his hands together, miming an open book, the weals made a V-shape across them. Their pain was fresh and bright. Closer inspection revealed a pattern in the welts, a series of raised obliques, as though a length of hemp had bitten into his flesh.

There was a knock at the door.

Will stood up. He didn’t want to look to his side. Someone lay there, unmoving. A body, losing heat. But that couldn’t be right. This was a house of warmth and promise. He went to the window and peeked through the curtains. There were people outside.

Sally, there’s someone watching us... Would you mind opening the front door, please, sir?

The voice came to him heavy and full of interference, as though he were a child again, listening to a message from a friend through a Ski yoghurt pot at the end of a piece of string. He went to the door and opened it on a tired policeman in a wet uniform. For a moment he didn’t recognise the man for his scrubbed look and the extra few pounds he was carrying on his jowls and his waistline. But in the moment he recognised him, he recognised too how he had been tricked. Death didn’t work to a timetable. He remembered how de Fleche had put that. Death was sinuous and sly. Death was a Moebius strip, or Ouroboros, the serpent that eats its own tail. This was Sean’s beginning, and Will’s true end.

Sorry to bother you, sir. We’ve had word of a prowler in the area. Have you seen anything? Heard anything?

De Fleche spoke through him as he was about to give the architect to Sean, making a mockery of any belief Will had that he was in control.

I was asleep. Your torches woke me up.

Sean seemed satisfied with that. Will raged against the seal that de Fleche had squeezed between him and the outside. Is there anyone else in the flat that might have heard anything?

Luce, my girlfriend, she’s asleep too. You’d have had to drive your car through the wall to wake her up.

And then the policeman was apologising and backing off, hurrying back through the rain with his partner to a car that was warm.

When they were alone again, de Fleche let the leash out a little and Will struggled against it, battling to be free. The book was just pages and glue but it had more spine than he. It was yesterday’s book. Catriona didn’t exist any more, the book meant nothing.

“I don’t want to be in your pocket,” he said, sounding like a petulant child at a birthday party who had failed at every game.

“Too late,” de Fleche said. “You killed her. How does that make you feel? You and women are a potent combination, aren’t you? Lethal. How many’s that now? You should have some stickers done, slap them on the side of your cockpit. Authorised kills. Will, the Red Baron. The Strangler. Sleep-Stealer. Kids’ll have trouble going to bed knowing you’re on the hoof.”

“You killed her,” Will said.

“Oh go on, don’t be so modest. You passed my test, squadron leader. Ladykiller. You’re in the army now. Go out there and make mayhem. Make lots of what you are. It’s New Year’s Day for you, for all of us. Year Dot. Year Zero. Let’s have a fresh start.”

The door opened and he found himself in another street in a part of the world he didn’t know. There were others there like him, thin men with clothes that hung on their bodies in dire need of a wash. They sweated, these men, and he sweated too, despite the cold. One of them came up to him, scratching the back of his head and looking around him maniacally as if they were in the middle of a column of biting gnats. His hair was a greasy cap stuck to his scalp and his chin had not felt a blade for a week or so. He wouldn’t look at Will, and when he parted his lips to talk, a fist-sized glut of flying beetles buzzed out of his mouth. He didn’t notice them. They might as well have been exhaled smoke; he certainly looked nervous enough to need a cigarette.

“Are you hungry?” the man said. “I’m hungry. Are you hungry? Because, like, I am hungry. Am I hungry? Too right. Too right. How about you? You hungry?”

The other thin men were looking at him with similarly earnest expressions. There was trouble too, in their eyes, as if they couldn’t quite understand how they had come to be in this position. They looked at Will, the newcomer, as if he had brought some instructions with him.

Up ahead, behind a blockade of cars, he could see more people, but these were not like him or the other thin men. They were stouter and wore a better cut of clothes. They were nervous. Some of them held guns or knives. Their children stood behind them, guarded by the legs of their elders. Even at this distance, Will could smell their odious flesh and the alcohol reek of their perfumes and soaps. They smelled of fat and dairy products. They smelled of mouthwash and shoe polish. It made Will’s mouth sour to feel such an alien flavour in his throat. The thin men walked slowly towards the blockade, and all they could think about was how they wanted to make those fat people less glossy, less stench-ridden. Thinner.

GLEAVE WAS DEAD. But it wasn’t his leg injury that had killed him. Appalled, Sean took in the extent of his degeneration. He resembled potatoes that had been left to boil for too long and had collapsed to a watery vichyssoise in the pan. Tufts of hair or nubs of bone emerged – macabre islands – laced with bloody veins, like seams of sauce in raspberry ripple ice cream. His suit had become a poor-quality bag in which to contain him. Sean couldn’t feel satisfied with Gleave’s death. It had not been achieved by his own hand. He felt cheated, ill-organised. Things were passing him by.

The gun in Sean’s hand drew him on. Without it, he might have stayed with Emma until someone forced him to leave her. The ticks from the cooling engine of the lorry were more spaced out now. Water dribbled from the cracked radiator and a sigh eased from its innards, as if the machine were settling into its death.

He remembered little of what Pardoe had said of Cheke, but he remembered what he had said about her improvement. She had already been dangerous, and very fast, that day when Marshall had been killed. How long ago was that? A few weeks? Sean found it hard to nail down time now. So much had happened. His life had seen the kind of upheaval that a man of eighty would never witness. Time became unimportant in those shadows. All it did was tease you with how much more shit you might have to put up with.

The gun felt comfortable in his hand. He edged outside, past the creaking back end of the lorry and the rotting brick teeth at the smashed entrance. Small fires had combusted here, despite the cold and damp. They burned sootily and pumped oilsmoke across fields that were white with frost. Bare branches made stark exclamation marks on their perimeters. The sky was a beautiful blue, paling as it bent to touch the horizon. There were a few icy scratches up there but no clouds. A bird sang a brief, exhilarating snatch of song from the chimney stack. The taxi was parked to the side of the farmhouse, the door open, the keys still in the fascia.

He watched Vernon Lord staggering across the field, pursued, if such leisurely advancement could be described so grandly, by Cheke. The crash had realigned her somewhat: she was dragging her leg behind her and the leg, freed from any immediate control, was finding it hard to concentrate on remaining a leg. From here, it looked like a head, with a baseball cap jammed down over the ears.

There was nothing he could do. He watched until, like a leopard bringing down a deer, Cheke had Vernon underneath her. He screamed, or tried to scream, for as long as it took her to detach his face. Then Vernon withdrew into himself like a surly child. Age piled on to him, denuding his bones, puckering his flesh into a sea of wrinkles and liver spots. Cheke stepped back, aghast. He’d had enough, old Vernon. All the fight was gone from him and time, waiting in the wings, had recognised its cue. It came back to him, with interest, enjoying the feel of meat that it had been cheated of for so long. It wasn’t Cheke that killed Vernon Lord; it was his own greed that did it.

Two deaths, then, that could have gone one way but found another. And Emma, whose murder ought to have been foreseen. Pardoe, the bastard, should have paid out his story just as all that bad rope had been. They should have been warned. Sean wondered how his own end would come. He was tired of the body count and the unnecessary killing. He wouldn’t mind making a little peace with someone, anyone, for a change.

He returned to the barn and gently lifted Emma in his arms and walked around the building to the front of the house. He placed her in the back of the cab, securing her in the seat with the seatbelts. When he turned to get in the driver’s seat, Will was standing three feet away from him, smelling him on the air like a cat at dinner time. Only it wasn’t Will. It was too crude an approximation. Sean felt a flare of anger when he thought of how easily she hoped to fool him. She noticed the reticence in the way he appraised her. Slowly, Will sank from her true face as it emerged.

“I couldn’t take him in,” she said, almost apologetically, her voice coming as easily as if they had been chatting for an hour. “Vernon. I couldn’t take any part of him in. Too dry. No moisture in him at all. He was like something you’d use to start a fire. He’s still out there in the field. Mummified.”

“That’s time for you,” Sean said, carefully. Her eyes were dark and lovely and too intensely fixed upon his own for his liking. She was deeply, horribly beautiful. He was scared to look away and scared to maintain eye contact.

He said, “Your leg, it got better.”

Her hand brushed against her thigh. “Yes,” she said. “It’s a little difficult for me to concentrate sometimes. There’s so much here to distract me.”

“I know how you feel.”

Cheke moved around the bumper of the cab, six feet away from him now. “I’d like to know how you feel,” she said. “I’ve dreamed about you. I never had dreams before, before I came here.” She frowned. “At least, I don’t think I did. I can’t remember. But I dream now. Vivid dreams of you and me. All the different ways it could be.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes. Do you find me attractive, Sean?”

“It’s hard to find somebody attractive when they’ve been spending such a long time trying to get you killed.”

Amusement played on Cheke’s lips for a second as she tried to gauge whether he was toying with her or not. “We’ve moved on from that,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt you. I know what pain is. I wouldn’t want any of that for you.” She took another step closer. “I don’t have anything left to do and there’s nobody left to do it for.”

“Then you’re free.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be free. Maybe you’re the genie who rubbed my lamp for me. I’m indebted to you.”

Sean’s fingers on the keys twisted clockwise a fraction. “Really, you don’t have to. I did nothing.”

“You were the catalyst.” Her lips were carmine and soft. He could see every wrinkle and flaw in the flesh. It was good that she had flaws, this creature who had seemed so perfect. It was good, promising even, that she allowed them to show. “You were the reason they brought me here.”

“Then you have a job to finish.”

“It’s over,” she said. “Gleave promised me that he would help me change enough to be like him, like you. All of you.”

She was within touching distance, if he wanted it. Sean’s fingers loosened then recircled around the butt of the revolver. He said, “You look fine to me. Keep that look. It suits you.”

Cheke spread her arms and looked down at her body. “You think so? This is me, well, most of it. Plus a few modifications.”

“It looks good on you.”

“It would look good on you too,” she said.

“I’m not your type.”

“What is my type?”

Sean said, casually, “Dead.”

She bowed her lips in mock disappointment. “That can be arranged.”

“You’re kidding, of course.”

Now Cheke smiled and Sean was overwhelmed, shocked by the depth of her mouth, the animal slant to it. Her teeth were packed in rows inside it, like a shark’s. “Of course,” she said.

“Then I can go. You won’t mind if I go.”

“A hug, first, to see you off. It’s only fair.”

Sean went immediately to her and drew her into the circle of his arms. He felt her ripple against him, every sensory pimple and pad snuffling into his secret smells. A slight burning, in his gut.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t help it.”

He shot her twice through the heart. She buckled under him and staggered back, scooping up the fluid that was lost to the explosions. She was trying to breathe, but her lung had collapsed; Sean could see it, a deflated, frothy balloon of blood. Will’s face returned, a surprised oval that couldn’t quite complete itself: his mouth belonged to someone else, someone of a different caste that Sean didn’t recognise. While she was trying to rein in the loops and lassos that her body had become, Sean bent and picked up her heart, which was slowly, clumsily rolling back to the magnet of her body. He flung it into the fire.

She made an O of her mouth and blew a gust of air from it, as if she had been lightly punched in the stomach. She looked surprised, as if she had never believed that she could be disposed of so simply, so swiftly. She said, “When we are married–” Then she fell back onto the frozen soil and began to drain into it. Bitterly, he went to watch until there was just a dark outline of her shape discernible in the white.

He went back to the cab, tossed the gun onto the dashboard, and started the engine. Then he turned it off, got into the back with Emma, and held her until her solid, cold flesh began to warm and he could almost believe she might turn in his arms and say hello.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN: KILLENNIUM

YEAR ZERO.

The quiet houses were rebelling. People did not want to die in their beds. They came onto the streets with weapons that could do no harm and fought until the breath was squeezed from their bodies. Large men with powerful muscles folded under the thin men. Everybody folded under the thin men. They were irresistible. In seconds, the ranks of the thin men were bolstered by those that had just been dispatched. Enemy to ally in the beat of a heart, or lack of one.

Will moved on the periphery of the crowd, powerless to prevent the slaughter. He could feel de Fleche in him; he presumed they all did, gathering strength and pace. Rediscovering his appetite for a land he had not seen for twenty years. Tired of death’s environs, he wanted to branch out and have some influence over the living as well as the dead. He was ready to return, Will could feel it. And when he did, all would be lost. Architects made designs and he knew that de Fleche had been busy. He caught a glimpse of some of these blueprints when his eye, jaundiced by the street battles and the insensate dropping of bodies, turned away to look at the sky. He caught sight of vast machines of torture to process the living, of awful dark houses where the doors and the windows were ceaselessly motile to prevent any escape while the minions within went about their business of dismemberment and witchcraft. He understood de Fleche’s motives for the grand plan that he wanted to put into place – revenge fed his ambitions – but he did not know who the targets were. Nobody was to be spared in his search, however. It was this indiscrimination that cut Will to the quick.

“Are you hungry? Jesus, I am absolutely starving.” The man with the itchy scalp and the fidgeting hands had not left him alone. Will couldn’t see how his hunger had prevailed, not after the terrible feast he had gorged upon. The man sucked juices from his fingers and smacked his lips. “I could eat that again,” he said. “So hungry. My stomach thinks my throat’s cut.”

If de Fleche was still near, Will could not feel him. He suspected that he was in the background, assessing his position, biding his time before the balance of power shifted and he could make himself known again. Revenge, he had said, Will recalled vaguely. Revenge against whom?

It didn’t matter, for now. What did matter was the hell that was being raised around him, not six feet from where he stood. Blood was being spilled as generously as red wine from a sot’s glass. The thin men were systematically wasting anything that stood in the way of the food they craved. Hunger tickled Will’s belly too, but not to the extent that he was ready to take life for it. Why was that? What was so different about him that brought on this moralistic stance? He thought of the man he had killed at the caravan site. Was that it? That he had broken the neck of some evil swine and had marked his own card by that action? There was no compulsion to add to the body count here because he had been blooded and could take on a supervisory role? The deferential way in which his colleagues treated him seemed to support that suspicion. And as soon as the seed was sown, he backed off, recoiled from it.

“Well then, are you hungry?” Fidget boy was pointing at a small girl holding a plastic doll with no head. He reached out, for God knows what purpose, and Will stood in his way, clamping a hand around his arm.

“Leave her alone.”

Fidget regarded him uncomprehendingly. His tongue stuck out from between pock-marked lips and ranged dryly around. “Hungry?” he whispered.

A bell rang, a tiny bell jang-jang-janging. Everyone turned to watch as the sit-up-and-beg bicycle wobbled through the throng. The man on the seat flapped his hands at people to get out of the way. His hair flew out behind him in grey streamers. His tongue lolled and dribbled against his cheek. When people recognised de Fleche, they cringed and sank into the shadows.

“Will, this simply won’t do,” he said. His tone was that of a prissy director at an am-dram rehearsal. He rode the bicycle round and around Will, rubbing his chin, while Fidget asked for a croissant, a pot of Müller Rice, shit mate, anything.

De Fleche clenched the brakes and skidded to a halt. He touched the little girl on the forehead with his thumb and she imploded. All that was left of her was a scrap of her skirt and the plastic doll, black, molten, and disfigured.

“Well that was fucking charming,” Will said, and pushed de Fleche off his bike. He was sickened that his ability to be shocked by anything had been closed down, as neatly and as finally as the switch on a life-support machine. A groan rose from the thin men behind him. De Fleche stood up and brushed himself off. He was laughing, but there was something unpleasant about the laugh. An edge.

“I haven’t the time for this, Will. What is it, do you think you’re too precious to be part of this revolution?”

“I don’t want a part of this. I want to be left alone.”

“You signed up.”

“You tricked me. You used Catriona as bait.”

“I did nothing of the sort.” He smiled and clapped Will on the shoulder. Will flinched, thinking of the way the girl had winked out of existence. “Some tatty little book I came across and you went all Bambi-eyed over it. I could have spread you on my toast at that moment. It was all rather sweet.”

Will said again, “You tricked me.”

De Fleche sighed and looked around him. “This is going on all over the shop, you know. Pretty small potatoes for the time being, but there’s some big King Edwards waiting to be pulled out. It’s in these places, Warrington and the like, where the grand changes, the new dawning will come into its own. Not London or Paris or Sydney. Warrington. Landevant. Beecroft. Places I know, but you’d be hard-pushed to find on a map. Out of acorns, and all that flim-flam.”

“Jesus,” Will said, and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes until he saw ideograms of colour dancing there. Not a bad trick, he considered, for a dead man. “Why?” he asked.

“Will, I’m not prepared to build a little campfire and have all you owl-faced cub scouts sit around listening to Uncle Peter telling stories while–”

“You said something about revenge,” Will cut in. “Revenge for what?”

De Fleche nodded, gravely. “Okay,” he said. “All right.” He put a fatherly arm around Will and led him away from the impasse. He said, “Three is the magic number. Three wise men. Three stooges. Three coins in a fountain. Three for the price of two at Boots. The Godfather trilogy. And then there’s me, and a man called Leonard Butterby and a man called Thomas Lousher.” He stopped and turned to Will, brought his other arm up to Will’s shoulder, and massaged them both gently. “I’m telling you this because you have promise. Also, because you have nothing else. Eternity without a bag of marbles to play with is like a Widnes prostitute with a corrugated gob. It sucks bad-style.”

“I don’t want anything to do with you, or your sick fantasies.”

“You will, once your dead brain kicks in. Once the maggots down south have reamed out your Willishness. Once you’ve become a puppet for me, like these other gawps.”

Will could hear something else nagging him above de Fleche’s hubristic spiel. Something clunkingly mechanical approaching from the end of the street where de Fleche himself had appeared.

“I worked with those two men for maybe ten years. They were attracted to me for my natural beauty, my collection of Japanese stamps, and, I suppose, my ability to sniff out the odd Negstream. They were impressed that I could track down ways into this place. They paid me to do research into it. We thought we could make a fortune by using the doorways into different levels of consciousness for all kinds of stuff. Sponsors might want to use it to advertise. Imagine. Go to sleep, we switch on, and people all over the world wake up wanting a bag of KP nuts, or a tub of Ben and Jerry’s. It was naughty, but who was going to stop us? Bollocks to the standards agencies. How are they going to find out? How do you control something that you can’t touch? We were going to talk to film and TV bigwigs. Get people to pay us a subscription so that they could have films shown straight into their heads. Or football matches. Or porn. Or 24/7 news.”

It was a black cab, turning into the street. De Fleche was too caught up in his own reverie to notice.

De Fleche said, “Problem was, I couldn’t get in. Because once you get in, you can’t get out the same way. So we were a bit stuck. But those pricks, they were small-time idiots. They picked up some measly five-figure financial package from a company who were interested in backing them as long as they were guaranteed front-end mentions once the system was up and running. What did they do? Filled their nappies that they had so much money for the sweet shop that they pushed me through a Negstream and fucked off with the dosh.”

“Trapping you in here?”

“Only for the past twenty years. As I say, a Negstream is like a condom. You only use it once. You have to find your own way back. I couldn’t.”

“So what makes you think you can get back now?”

“You know the answer to that, Will. You, the great, white disaster hunter. Chasing tragedy all over the country when you could have done what I’m doing, and create your own. I’ve worked hard to get some influence. It’s here, in front of you, the fruits of all that labour. Enough deaths and I’ll have a Negstream of my own to step through. And then we’ll see what kind of influence I really have. Soon now. So soon that I probably wouldn’t have the time to soft-boil an egg. I can taste it. Life, that is,” he said with a grin, “not the egg.”

“This isn’t just about Lousher and Butterby, is it?”

“I suppose not. Golly, they might even be dead already. This travelling circus of mine know their scent well. It’s just a matter of time for them. But the bigger picture, I never lost sight of the bigger picture like they did. I am a master of dreams and nightmares, hopes and fears. Control. It’s what it’s all about, whether you’re a rat trying to build a nest in a sewer, or a president slapping wrists in the Middle East. I am in control. I am big in control. Do you know, Will, that in some places on this planet, that just about secures god status for me?”

The taxi pulled up about fifty metres down the street. When Sean slipped out of the driver’s side door, Will almost shouted out his name. He had missed him dearly. Emma too. He wanted de Fleche to disappear in a flash of light back to his little laboratory where he could make his alchemy all he liked. Will just wanted his friends back, at least for a few minutes. Just to say thank you, goodbye, remember me. Seeing Sean empowered him. Not yet, he said to his friend. Hang fire, just for a minute. You’ll know when to make your move.

“You’re insane, Peter,” he said. “What are you going to be? A living king with a country of dead subjects? How deeply, utterly satisfying. I won’t be a part of it.”

“Then you’ll be dust. I’ll use your soul for a money bag. I’ll have your eye sockets for pencil holders.”

“You don’t scare me.”

“I will, believe me.”

“Yeah, right. What is it, by the way, that scares you?”

De Fleche smiled at him. He reached out a finger and pressed it against Will’s forehead. He felt a strange buzzing there, not unpleasant, like a time as a child when he had pressed his face against a jar in which he had captured a wasp. Then he stepped away, his face changing, flooding with colour. “Christ, yes,” he said, the words jerking out of him rather than being impelled by his breath. “Christ. Yes!”

He looked down at the dust and moved. Footprints ate into the ground. De Fleche said, “Isn’t that the prettiest thing you ever saw?”

“He asked you a question,” called Sean. To Will, the voice came from somewhere distant and muggy. He watched Sean lift something to his mouth and blow long and hard.

Sean didn’t hear anything, but the effect it had on the thin men was shocking. As one, they howled and scarpered, hands to their ears. Will dropped to the ground and was writhing in the dust, trying to beat from his ears whatever woeful sound Vernon’s whistle had made.

De Fleche ignored Will and turned to stare at Sean. Sean’s breath wavered, but only for an instant. De Fleche wore a fixed, flabbergasted look, the look of a father-to-be who has been pacing around outside the maternity ward waiting to hear if it was a boy or a girl only to be told that it was three of each.

“There’s a noise-abatement policy in these parts, I believe,” he said, his voice raised over a clamour Sean couldn’t detect. The air close to Sean’s left eye was shearing, as though he was looking through a window with a flaw in the glass. “I did not,” continued de Fleche, “wait two decades to come back to this place just to have some scarface twerp fuck it all up for me. Desist. Forthwith. Or I shall smite thee with a big stick.”

The air was rippling now, as unstable as the skin in a pan of boiling milk.

“Who are you going to mess with?” de Fleche asked. “Me? What did I do? Or would you rather mess with the man who killed your girl?”

Sean’s lips faltered on the whistle. The tremor in the air grew still.

“Don’t listen to him, Sean,” Will said, levelly. “Believe him and we’re all finished.”

Sean moved the whistle away. “What’s he talking about?”

“He showed me what happened that night. He fed me into the bedroom where Naomi died. He was in me. He was using me. I couldn’t do anything.”

Sean’s lips had turned white. “You killed her?”

“I didn’t kill her,” Will said, holding out his hands. “De Fleche killed her. But he was in me when he did it.”

Sean said, “What do I do, Will? Who do I believe?”

Will pressed his lips together. He closed his eyes. “He killed her. But the coward he is, he needed someone else to hide behind. A glove puppet. Me. It’s why you couldn’t remember my face. Because you weren’t just looking at my face. You were looking at his too.”

De Fleche said, “Yeah, and if you believe that, then I’ve got a tin of tartan paint I want to sell you.”

Sean returned the whistle to his lips. He blew, harder than before. The ripples returned.

“Hey,” de Fleche said. “Did you hear what I told you? Front-page news. Your killer is sitting in the dirt. Blood on his hands.”

De Fleche was approaching too rapidly to see the change. And when he did notice what was happening, he was too close to Sean to be able to escape the consequences.

The surgeon stepped out of the buckle in the air, clutching his battered leather medical bag, his stained green mask thankfully concealing an area of his face that was too loose, too wet. Sean heard a deep clack of teeth, too deep to be contained by any kind of mouth that he knew. Words came, coated in saliva so mangled by moisture that Sean couldn’t understand them. Instead of asking him to repeat himself, and too fearful to take his eyes off de Fleche, who was transfixed by the new arrival, Sean said, “Harvest all you like.”

He moved away as the surgeon magicked a scalpel with a bloody edge from the air and carved into the space that de Fleche filled. He wished de Fleche’s screams were beyond the capacity of his ears, as the whistle had been, but not as much as the other things he had been wishing for lately.

“Listen,” Will said, standing in front of Sean but looking over his shoulder at whatever awful scene was being played out. “Thanks. But it’s not over yet.”

Sean shook his head. “It is for me. I’m tired. I’ve had enough. Emma. Emma’s dead and I can’t go on any more. I’ve seen too much of this. Too many people down. More than most. More than you’d see in a fucking war.”

“These dead, these leaks. They all need to go home. They need to be sent back home. You’re the only person who can do it.”

“I want nothing to do with those freaks. No offence intended.”

“None taken. Look, Sean, you have to do it. You know it. Deep down you know it.”

Sean sighed. “Not that deep.”

They went over to the taxi and silently took in the small figure slumped across the back seat. Sean said, “Her too?”

Will said, “She isn’t dead.”

Sean stepped away from him and closed his eyes. “Don’t give me some fucking hippy shite about her being alive in my mind, Will, or I swear, I’ll piss on your grave.”

“She isn’t dead.”

Sean looked at him.

Will said it again, and then, “I’m dead. I should know. Look, take that shit out of her mouth.”

Sean did as he was told. There were more of the fibres than he had expected. He thought they had maybe caught in her lips when she was being dragged out of the noose, but he could see that they had been placed there with purpose, a great knot of hemp pressed into her gullet.

“Make sure you get it all out,” Will ordered.

Sean picked fibres from her teeth and from beneath her swollen, purple tongue. Her face was cold, waxen. Her mouth was as stiff as two slugs perished with salt. He lurched away, swearing and kicking out at the car and at Will.

“I’ve had enough,” he yelled. “I can’t take this any more. Nobody should have to... I mean, there’s a limit. It’s unbearable.”

“I know, I know,” Will soothed. “I know, I promise you.”

He waited until Sean had chased the anger and the fear out of his body, and then he said again, “She’s not dead.”

Sean went back and wordlessly finished the job. As soon as her mouth was empty, he slunk away to the shade of a shop front and sat down in the dust and cried into his hands. He didn’t stop. Not even when Emma slowly uncoiled herself from the back seat and, blinking the sunshine out of her eyes, trudged across the road to sit next to him and rest her head against his shoulder.

WHEN HE HEARD Will tell him what he had to do, he couldn’t accept it.

“The rope?” he said. “This rope? It was meant to kill me and Emma. And you’re saying it’s what I need to send the dead back to where they need to be? So we’re both the same kind of animal. I’m walking. I’m breathing fresh air, but I tell you kidder, there’s fuck all beating in the middle of my chest. I go to bed at night not hearing it. My headaches don’t contain a beat. If there’s a rhythm to life, I’ve lost mine.”

Will nodded, pressing the coils back into Sean’s hand. Emma was long gone. She had promised to wait for Sean, but couldn’t go with him. How could he complain?

“I won’t leave you, Sean,” Will said. “I’ll be your eyes and ears from now on. I’ll lead you on. I’m your friend. No matter what state we’re in.”

Sean stared up at him. He was like a little boy, lost, separated from the people who loved him and might protect him from harm.

Will said, “Tie a knot. I’m first.”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT: ROPE

ALL OF HIS horizons seemed the same, of late. Viewed under an ochre smog at dusk, the crenellations of tower blocks provided different backgrounds to the same story. Faded clothes fluttered on balconies. The ghosts of piss clouted him at the thresholds of those lifts that worked. His boots created a brittle symphony from the insect corpses underfoot. It was hard to find any comfort in the routine. His composure was found in the simple succour of his tools. That and the friend in his head.

Maybe the wood, over the years, had been eroded by his grip; that was why the baseball bat felt so comfortable as it was hefted. Ditto the blade, which might as well have been knitted into the flesh of his palm: he had to look into his hand to make sure he had remembered to pick it up. He loosened the buttons on his leather coat and stretched, forcing the tension of three hours on the road out of his spine, which crackled dully, like the sound of a dog gnawing a bone.

The estate reached above him in a series of black blocks against the night, punched through here and there with holes of television light. Only in the dark could these towers look clean, pretty, even. By dawn they would revert to sooty, scorched piggeries growing out of the city’s shit and grime. Lice and rot worming up every wall. Asthma was rife here, beating the national average by a fair whack. There had been a case of TB last year.

He approached the first of the towers, Brook Acre, gently whistling a tune he had heard on the radio that morning and swinging the bat in his fist. Grey net curtains tongued the sky from a dozen open windows. The howls of dogs were a strange, distorted surge of noise through the ginnels and stairwells of the estates. From a pall of cigarette smoke, kids watched him enter the lift and then leave it again in favour of the stairs. Laughter followed him, and couched in that was an insult: “Asshole!” uttered when he had gone beyond the point where he might catch them if he turned back.

“It’s arsehole!” he bellowed. “Arsehole! You’re not Americans! If you’re going to badmouth somebody, do it properly!”

He hated the influx of American influences. It was in the clothes kids wore nowadays; it had changed the pubs and restaurants he frequented; it was television’s primary language. He clenched his jaw when he looked down at the baseball bat. It even coloured his violence.

Whitby lived, after a fashion, on the sixth floor. There was a wife, a daughter, a son. A dog. A mistress for him on the fifth floor who scurried round to polish his knob whenever the wife was stretching pennies at the market. Cosy.

He strode into a poorly lit corridor, boots gritting on glass phials, dry vomit, stripped chicken bones. He caught an old man wanking himself off through his neighbour’s letterbox. A woman with a grubby, greenish bandage around her shin offered to fuck him in return for a quid. A child with diarrhoea had been locked out of his parents’ flat and was sitting in puddles of his own waste, crying silently, exhausted.

“All life is here, hey?” he said to the child as he walked past. “Such colour. Such spirit.”

He reached Whitby’s door and smoothed down his long hair and righted his shirt collars. He reached out a hand for the bell but never got as far as depressing it; he just wanted something to lean against, give him leverage while he kicked the flimsy thing in.

Whitby was in the hall between kitchen and living room, dressed only in a pair of beige Y-fronts. A jam sandwich in one hand, mug of tea in the other. “What the fuck? Who the fucking fuck? Fuck.”

It was all he managed before his sternum caved in under a massive blow from the baseball bat. Blood blackened his chest and piled into his face on his way down, as the internal trauma sought egress. A woman came clattering along the hall from the bathroom, holding a towel to her freshly showered body. Mistress or missus? She was squawking enough for both of them. “Leave him alone, leave him alone,” she crowed, an unpleasant, nasal voice. He lashed out and took her jaw off. She staggered away, clumsily trying to keep her face in place, her hands filling with red, towel dropping to reveal hubbie’s slap marks.

The dog was predictably big and nasty; a German Shepherd. He held out his arm, always padded on jobs like these, and waited until it had hold before slitting its throat with the knife.

“He isn’t here! You should just go away! I’ll give you money!” The daughter now, Honey (what a name for these parts, Jesus!), yelping at him, her big eyes flicking to her choking mother and her senseless father as she held out a blunt letter opener to defend herself. He decked her with a clip from the bat to the top of her head. “Keep your money,” he said.

He found the old man in a sleeping bag in a bedroom filled with cigarette ends and beer cans, soiled underwear, and towers of foil cartons.

“Excellent,” he said, noticing that the man hadn’t tried to make a noise. He regarded Sean calmly with the black, shark’s eyes they all possessed; even held out his arms when he was reached for. He had been waiting for this. Perhaps he had been wishing for it.

The old man didn’t cry when he saw his damaged family. As they left the flat he seemed to sigh with contentment.

“Too right,” growled Sean. “Anything you come to now is a blessing. Consider this a rescue.”

At the car he paused a while to search the horizon. No lights anywhere. Once this place had been a riot of colour and bright windows containing families watching television or eating supper, laughing or fighting, but always together. Now the population had thinned out. Those who had survived had run or tried to protect their dead. Those who were dead were directionless, without anchor. They wheeled around like seagulls playing on thermals, or like a confused compass. When Sean came to call, they pretended they were normal human beings leading normal lives. Normal people, with pieces of them dropping off while he chatted amiably with them in a doorway, the rope coiled around his shoulder burning with intent.

After the man was hanged and the shaved fibres from the rope deposited between his ash-grey lips, Sean dumped the body over a fence separating the rear gardens of a terraced house from a stream which dribbled along at the bottom of a deep gulley. Back in the car, he had barely started the engine before the next one came through to him.

It lives alone, Will said. It’s lost. It’s lonely. It’ll go without a struggle. It needs this. And it’s this way, Sean. Come on...

He powered the car too quickly for an hour and a half until he had reached the outskirts of a conurbation hanging on the edge of Birmingham like a wart on a scarred face.

Make a left here, Sean. Keep going. Just keep going...

There had been months of this. Closed doors, lonely motorways, miles and miles of self-doubt and nausea. He didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. He asked Will once, do the dead breed? and Will had laughed hard and for a long time without answering him.

...keep going...

He knocked at the door this time. He knew he didn’t need to break it down. He waited for an age, but that was okay. He didn’t mind waiting. It gave him something else to do. Something different. He clenched the rope in his fist as he heard footsteps approach the door.

She opened it wide. Late at night, all alone, but what did she have to be frightened of? He gazed at her for a long time.

“I wondered if it might ever happen,” she said.

“I have something I need to do,” he told her.

“I know. I know.”

She didn’t fight him, or plead with him. She even helped him to get the rope over a branch of the ash tree in the garden. He kissed her beforehand because she asked him to, and he would have backed out of it if she hadn’t coaxed him to carry the job through.

As she swung, just before the end, she reached out her hand and he took it. He held it until it closed and shuddered into a fist. Lifting it to his face, Sean pressed his lips against the tiny aperture that her forefinger had made behind the curled thumb, and whispered a message and a promise.

A proposal.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CONRAD A. WILLIAMS was born in Cheshire in 1969. He sold his first short story at the age of eighteen and has gone on to publish around eighty more to a variety of magazines and anthologies. He is the author of three novels, four novellas and a collection of his best short fiction. His book The Unblemished won the International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel. He is also a past recipient of the British Fantasy Award and the Littlewood Arc Prize.

Pilot Paul Roan is in command of a Boeing 777 involved in a near miss. Nerves shot, he opts for a new life running a B&B in a coastal village with his girlfriend, Tamara. Not long after they arrive, Paul is involved in a serious accident.

Emerging six months later from a coma, Paul discovers that Tamara is gone and a child killer is haunting the beaches. The villagers, appalled by Paul’s cheating of death, treat him as a sin-eater. They bring him items to dispose of, secrets far too awful to deal with themselves. At least he has local nurse, Ruth, to look after him. And Amy, a damaged soul with a special gift. She befriends Paul and together they unearth clues that might explain the shocking history of the village, and suggest the murders are anything but.

Meanwhile, Paul begins to suspect there is more to Tamara’s disappeareance than meets the eye...

www.solarisbooks.com

It knows where you live...

Imagine a place where all your nightmares become real. Dark urban streets where crime, debt and violence are not the only things to fear. Picture a housing project that is a gateway to somewhere else; a realm where ghosts and monsters stir hungrily in the shadows. Welcome to the Concrete Grove.

This deprived area is Hailey’s new home, but when an ancient entity notices her, it becomes something much more threatening. She is the only one who can help her mother as she joins in a dangerous dance with loanshark Monty Bright. Only Hailey can see the truth of Tom’s darkest desires as he tries to become part of their family. And only Hailey can lead them all to the heart of the estate where something older than this land stirs and begins to wake...

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Table of Contents

Title

Indicia and Dedication

Also by Conrad Williams

1992

Part One: Unreal City

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Part Two: Softstrip

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Part Three: Ultima Thule

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Part Four: The Sheriff's Picture Frame

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

About the Author

'Loss of Separation' by Conrad Williams

'The Concrete Grove' by Gary McMahon