I’d persisted in the pursuit of death because I had been persuaded by my soldier-scientist father that it mattered who pulled the trigger. And so it also mattered to me – if not to Frank – that even if what I’d become was a killer, at least I wasn’t a murderer. But the reality was that Doc was dead because – and only because – I’d gone to him; and gone to him in the full knowledge it might kill him. I may as well have pulled the trigger myself. If that wasn’t murder, what was?

Worse still, the consequence of his death could be another fatality as unconscionable as it seemed inescapable: if Doc had been killed somehow because of his connection to me, then there was every possibility that Rachel Levy could follow her father to the grave. No loose ends. God knew I’d tied off enough myself. Arkhangel didn’t just read like a message: it felt like a death warrant.

If she died, I would lose the last person who knew me when I was Mac Ghill’ean, and not McLean. I thought of Frank and of the tide of blood we had loosed upon our enemies. His enemies. And suddenly, for the first time in a long time, it felt like who I’d been mattered more than what I’d become. Doc had said Rachel was in London. Stop running and start thinking.

Stay.

Find her.

Save her.

I checked myself. I could dress it up all I liked, but a killer wasn’t what I had become; it was what I had chosen to be. I screwed up my eyes. The fact was, I hadn’t pulled the trigger on Doc. Someone else had. I was sorry, but there it was: a single tragedy written in the unending roll call of the dead. Rachel: a woman whose face I tried not to remember, and could hardly recall when I did; a woman whose name I struggled to speak out loud. Aged forty-two, and I was still acting like a cunt-struck teenager.

No.

Fuck her.

And fuck Frank and his circular firing squad.

I stepped up towards the open carriage door and stopped there, one foot on the platform and the other foot on the train.

And yet Frank might still keep faith. Maybe he had never lost it.

You made a choice, I told myself. You’re still a soldier. So wait for orders. And then follow them.