“Don’t worry. You got at least twenty seconds to get out of its way!” Gareth howled.

Maggie stood in between Jack’s legs, pressing around his nose and cheekbones. He sat with his head back, gripping the arms of their dining chair and desperately trying not to push her away because of the pain he was in. His eyes were blackening and wouldn’t stop watering, and his nose was swollen and wouldn’t stop bleeding.

“I don’t think it’s broken.” Maggie glared down at him as though he was the one who’d done something wrong. “You’ve reported them, right? You can’t let them get away with attacking you. We get so many police come into the ER, and paramedics now as well. It’s disgusting, Jack. You have to take a stand against this sort of violence.”

Jack put his hands on Maggie’s hips, in an attempt to reassure her.

“It was my fault, Mags,” he said.

She misinterpreted his meaning. “Oh, don’t tell me this is down to your newly discovered past! Did you go in all gung-ho, all ‘Harry Rawlins’?”

Jack stood up. “No, I didn’t!” he protested.

She didn’t believe him. “Jack, you don’t belong in that world. You’re a good, kind man—not a gangster. They survive by having no heart, nothing to lose. You . . . You have so much to lose.” Maggie instinctively put her hand to her belly. “Please, Jack, I can’t stand the thought of you putting yourself in danger. You’re not a fighter, you’re a smart man who’s always used words rather than fists. I don’t want you coming home like this ever again, you hear me? No more fights, Jack, please.”

Jack couldn’t stand any more of this.

“I tripped over a stairlift!” Maggie stopped talking. “And I fell down a flight of stairs. Nobody hit me. I’d rather you’d think I’m an idiot than a thug—but if you repeat what I just said to anyone else, I’ll leave you.”

She burst into giggles.

The next morning, Jack looked at his face in the wing mirror of a parked car. His nose was still very painful. Even the breeze blowing in his face made him wince. He called Laura.

“How did you get on with Dougie?” she asked.

“It’s not him. I’m about to go and see Rachel Yarborough—”

Laura laughed. “She’s blind,” she reminded him. “She can’t possibly be our forger.”

Jack corrected her. “She’s got glaucoma. I asked Mags and she said that, if it’s not too far developed, she’d be perfectly capable of close work.”

Within seconds of being inside Rachel’s home, however, it was obvious that her glaucoma was seriously bad. Her furniture was sparse so as not to cause an obstacle course, the décor clean and her TV was like a cinema screen.

“If I have the contrast right up, I can see some things. Not details. Tea?”

Jack declined, not wanting to put her out, but she insisted.

“I’m not useless, Mr. Warr.” As she made the drinks, she talked. “Dougie Marshall, eh? How is the old bastard?”