We had our pizza, Jackie headed off to show Gavin some love, and Holly begged me into taking her to the Christmas ice rink in Ballsbridge. Holly skates like a fairy and I skate like a gorilla with neurological issues, which of course is a bonus for her because she gets to laugh at me when I smack into walls. By the time I dropped her back at Olivia’s, both of us were happily exhausted and a little high on all those tinned Christmas carols, and both of us were in a much better mood. The sight of us on the doorstep, sweaty and messy and grinning, even wrung a reluctant smile out of Liv. I headed into town and had a couple of pints with the lads, I went home—Twin Peaks had never looked prettier—and took out a few nests of zombies on the Xbox, and I went to sleep loving the thought of a nice ordinary day’s work so much that I thought I just might start off the next morning by snogging my office door.

I was right to enjoy the normal world while I had it. Deep down, even while I was shaking my fist at the sky and vowing never to darken the cobbles of that hellhole again, I must have known the Place was going to take that as a challenge. It hadn’t given me permission to leave the building, and it was going to come looking for me.

It was coming up to lunchtime on Monday, and I had just finished introducing my boy with the drug-dealer situation to his brand-new granny, when my office phone rang.

“Mackey,” I said.

Brian, our squad admin, said, “Personal call for you. Do you want to take it? I wouldn’t have hassled you, only it sounds . . . well. Urgent. To say the least.”

Kevin again; it had to be. Still a clingy little bastard, after all this time: one day of tagging along after me and he thought he was my new bestest buddy, or my sidekick, or God only knew what. The sooner that got nipped in the bud, the better. “What the hell,” I said, rubbing the spot between my eyebrows that had suddenly started to throb. “Put him through.”

“Her,” Brian said, “and she’s not a happy camper. I just thought I’d warn you.”

It was Jackie and she was crying hard. “Francis, thank God, please, you’ve got to come—I don’t understand, I don’t know what happened, please . . .”

Her voice dissolved into a wail, a high thin sound way beyond anything like embarrassment or control. Something cold tightened at the back of my neck. “Jackie!” I snapped. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”