She pulled herself up mentally. Come on, Stef. This is not about you. It’s about James. We have to save James. Even that thought, formed in the brain, was sheepishly glamorous, though – there was no denying it. They had to save him, and nobody seemed to have made themselves captain, and so she would do it. She would be in charge.

Before she logged herself into Facebook, though, Steffi – glancing back at the bar, to check Emil was oblivious – ducked out of the icon with a little swipe of the finger and brought up his home screen. He had hesitated for long enough to make her think there might be something noteworthy on his phone, something worthwhile for a detective to pry into. Almost immediately her eyes narrowed, then widened again in interest, and she peeped back over her shoulder once more before letting her keen fingers scuttle onto the screen again.

16

LONDON–EDINBURGH TRAIN, 02:52

They were somewhere halfway up the country, and the train had eased up for another of its little breathers, shuddering like a cow in a field as it came to rest. James took the last mouthful of the third beer, wiped his mouth, put the can back neatly with its fallen colleagues in the plastic bag. Three full ones to go, plus a pie, and about eleven biscuits. He could feel the pressure in his bladder; he’d have to go out at some point, unfortunately. More insistent than that, though, was the familiar grumble of his stomach. Not just the stomach; he felt the hunger as he always did, as if every single cell of his body was holding out a pleading hand to him: Come on. Give us something. That gnaw of hunger, his old enemy: it was almost right that he was meeting it one more time. Once more for old times’ sake. It was a feeling that was his, that was authentic; a thing about him that nobody could quite understand. If the last few hours were going to be about memories of what he’d been – and some of that was inevitable, despite his desire not to wallow in it – then you couldn’t really leave out the hunger.

The beer, the pies, the biscuits had seemed like a decent picnic, he’d thought. A good spread. He thought grudgingly of Sally, again. Once in a café she had shouted, ‘I’ve got a craving for some ripe juicy plums!’ so loudly that a couple nearby had asked to be moved and, when this was not possible, left the restaurant altogether. James and Sally had probably been very annoying, they later agreed, but there was a fuzzy happiness in even that admission. Annoying together.