A bus stop. He jogged a short distance and joined the queue. It didn’t matter where he went as long as it took him out of here.

His thumb made a bloody mark on the ticket. He pushed it deep into his pocket and made contact with her severed fingers.

The bus rumbled away. He took long slow breaths, trying to calm himself.

Somebody upstairs began singing the national anthem again. The bus sped up. His heart jolted. Slowly his breathing returned to normal.

Staring at his own reflection in the filthy window, he rolled her still-warm little finger between his own. As panic receded, elation took its place. He grinned at his dark reflection, sharing his triumph with the only one who could understand.

39

The door opens both ways…

Blue Öyster Cult, “Out of the Darkness”

“Look at this,” said Elin on Monday morning, standing aghast in front of the television with a bowl of granola in her hands. “Can you believe it!”

Strike had just entered the kitchen, freshly washed and dressed, after their usual Sunday night rendezvous. The spotless cream and white space was full of stainless steel surfaces and subdued lighting, like a space age operating theater. A plasma TV hung on the wall behind the table. President Obama was on screen, standing at a podium, talking.

“They’ve killed Osama bin Laden!” said Elin.

“Bloody hell,” said Strike, stopping dead to read the tickertape running across the bottom of the screen.

Clean clothes and a shave had made little difference to his hangdog look of exhaustion. The hours he was putting in trying to catch a glimpse of Laing or Whittaker were beginning to take their painful toll: his eyes were bloodshot and his skin was tinged with gray.

He crossed to the coffee maker, poured himself a mugful and gulped it down. He had almost fallen asleep on top of Elin last night, and counted it among the week’s few small achievements that he had finished that job, at least. Now he leaned against the steel-topped island, watching the immaculate President and envying him from his soul. He, at least, had got his man.

The known details of bin Laden’s death gave Elin and Strike something to talk about while she was dropping him off at the Tube.

“I wonder how sure they were it was him,” she said, pulling up outside the station, “before they went in.”

Strike had been wondering that, too. Bin Laden had been physically distinctive, of course: well over six feet tall… and Strike’s thoughts drifted back to Brockbank, Laing and Whittaker, until Elin recalled them.

“I’ve got work drinks on Wednesday, if you fancy it.” She sounded slightly self-conscious. “Duncan and I have nearly agreed everything. I’m sick of sneaking around.”

“Sorry, no can do,” he said. “Not with all these surveillance jobs on, I told you.”

He had to pretend to her that the pursuit of Brockbank, Laing and Whittaker were paid jobs, because she would never have understood his so far fruitless persistence otherwise.