I’ve never been to many funerals, though God knows I’ve been involved often enough in what causes them. When someone bites it in my line of work it tends not to get advertised, either because no one wants the publicity, because there isn’t enough left to bury, or both. It had been a long time since I’d been to one, and I hadn’t really known what to expect. Few had shown up. Either Will’s lifestyle had left him without many friends, or they just hadn’t wanted to come. Those who had were either young—his age—or sixty or more.

You’d think there’d be something more dramatic about the passing of someone from this world to the next, but I guess by the time the funeral comes it’s all done. All that’s left is to go through with the ritual. So I stood alone and watched, and the priest read through the ceremony and the guests listened in silence, until eventually it was done and the small crowd began to disperse, people splitting up in twos and threes. Maybe it was my imagination but they seemed to move a little more briskly as they walked away, as if they were returning to the world of the living and leaving their brush with death behind. None came in my direction, for which I was glad. I stayed in the shadows and let them pass by in the sun, going back to their lives.

There was one person, though, whom I couldn’t hide from. I’d seen him in the crowd, standing next to a girl I didn’t recognise, and I knew he’d seen me. It was what he did, after all. I didn’t make a move towards him and as the crowd broke up I expected him to disappear, but instead he said something to the girl and walked towards me. He stopped just outside the shade of the tree, as if afraid to come out of the light.

Lee looked very different from when I’d first seen him. It had been less than ten days since we’d first met on the roof of my flat and he’d aged harshly in that brief time. There was a haunted look in his eyes now, and in his funeral clothes he looked less youthful, more careworn. It’s one thing to see someone forced to grow up; it’s something else to make it happen. Lee didn’t speak at first and neither did I. We looked at each other for a while. “Why are you here?” Lee said at last.

“Not for you, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“You killed them,” Lee said. I expected him to be angry but he just sounded bitter and tired. “Those two might have done it but you were the one who set it up.”

“You shouldn’t have tried to kill me first.”