The little red man went green. A hatchback lurched to a halt, the bmtch-bmtch-bmtch of driving bass thumping out through the closed windows.

‘So get him banged up for something. Don’t just sit about and wait for the scar-faced fat scumbag to turn up on the doorstep with a machete and a power drill.’

Logan wandered across the road, taking his time, getting the evil eye from the hatchback’s acne-ridden boy-racer driver. ‘I’m not killing him, and I’m not fitting him up either.’

A scrunching noise – probably Samantha putting her hand over the mouthpiece – then a muffled conversation.

He nipped across the other side of the road, weaving his way between cars and trucks waiting at the roundabout. ‘Look, I’m going to have to go. I’ll give you a call later, OK? It’s—’

And she was back. ‘Listen, these bones of yours – the ones outside the caravan – your historian said they were for protection, right? What if they’re not there to protect you? What if they’re there to protect whoever made them? ’

‘And that helps because. . .? ’

‘Remember, in the book, the Vodun bokor sticks one in Rowan’s pack, so she won’t track him down? ’

Onto Justice Street, where a pair of bulky tower blocks loomed over the surrounding granite buildings, dark windows glinting in a stray beam of struggling sunshine.

‘Sorry, but I don’t—’

‘God, how slow can you be? Think about it: when did you get the first knot of bones? Before Roy Forman was burned, right? Maybe even before she tortured the other guy? ’

He stopped. ‘She’d planned it all out. She knew I was looking for her, because I’d been to her house. So. . .’ A frown. ‘She tracked me down, followed me home. . .’ Something cold caressed the back of his neck.

Logan spun around, his free hand clenched into a fist.

No one there.

A thin drizzle drifted down from the clay-coloured sky, misting the windscreens of parked cars, painting an anaemic rainbow in that one slice of sunlight.

‘Don’t be such a big girl. The bone knots are to protect her from you. She’s scared of you. You’re like a witch-finder finder.’

‘Ah, right. . .’ Jumping at his own shadow, like an idiot.

‘You’re welcome. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get tarted up for my new physical therapist. He’s a bit hunky.’ And Samantha was gone.

She was right: Agnes Garfield wasn’t a criminal mastermind, or the next Hannibal Lecter, she was just an eighteen-year-old girl with mental health problems who wasn’t taking her medication any more.

The poor girl was more scared of him than he was of her.

A warm breath escapes her lips, curling white in the light of the open chest freezer. Shiny packages wrapped in tinfoil, so many precious things. . .