‘What do you mean, yes sir, you bloody buffoon? What do you want?’

The man mumbled something incoherent.

‘Something wrong with your tongue as well as your head? What is it?’

The response once again was unintelligible.

‘What? What? Bloody idiot! What?’

‘One moment, Ucho,’ said Father. He smiled at the man. ‘Do you have something to report?’

The man nodded vigorously, still shooting scared looks at Ucho.

‘What is it?’ said Father.

‘We found something, sir.’

‘What?’ shouted Ucho.

‘We found something, si—’

‘I heard you the first time, you fool! Spit it out! What did you find?’

The man nudged his companion, who pulled a brown paper bag from his pocket and passed it to him. Scoggins in turn passed it to Ucho who took it suspiciously and peered inside. ‘What’s this—oh!’

His voice faltered suddenly. When he looked up from the bag, his eyes still flashed angrily, but it was a different kind of fury—menacing, focused.

‘So that’s it, then,’ he said. His voice was soft, but there was something about it, something that made you think of the calm before the storm about to break. He turned to look at the two men. ‘Good job. Dismissed.’

Expressions of worry melting into relief, the men left, much quicker than the last time.

‘Here! Come back!’ Ucho shouted after them.

The men reappeared, their faces uncertain again. Ucho gestured towards the body on the floor. ‘Take this with you,’ he said curtly.

They hastened to obey. He waited for them to leave, before looking round at Albert and the others. ‘That’s it, then,’ he said. ‘Now we know who did it.’

‘What’s in the bag?’ asked June sharply.

‘Proof. That no matter how smart you think you are, there’s always something that nails you.’

‘What?’

He passed the bag to her. She opened it, looked in and her face fell. Solemnly, she reached in and pulled out a long, silver knife with a carved brown handle, the blade stained with dried blood. For some reason, seeing it made Albert feel a strange thrill, as if the glinting metal itself were speaking out to them, daring them to ask it of the horrors it had wrought. And there was something oddly familiar about it too, as if this weren’t the first time he was seeing it.

‘This is not good, Ucho,’ said Father, his face shadowed in worry.

The commander stood tall, his face proud and strong. ‘Leave it to me, Father. I will take care of this.’

Albert looked from Ucho to June to Father to Colby, roiling waves of doubt and worry coursing through his stomach. And he couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that, somehow, he knew what they knew, what it was making them all look so anxious. ‘What’s going on? Whose knife is that?’

It was Father who answered, and for the first time since Albert had met him, he sounded old. ‘Marcus’s.’