‘Okay,’ Ed agreed. ‘But there’s just one thing.’

‘Oh, yes?’

He reached his hand backwards from the driving-seat, and said, ‘You can give me my gun back, okay?’

‘Your gun?’ queried Peter Kaiser. ‘I don’t have your gun.’

‘You’re trying to tell me you didn’t sneak it out from under my seat when we were driving along?’

‘Of course I didn’t. What are you talking about? Do you want to search me?’

Ed turned around in his seat. ‘What about you, Senator? Do you have it?’

Shearson gave a small, contemptuous shake of his head which clearly implied that he didn’t have time for weapons. His weapon was his political influence.

‘All right,’ said Ed, flicking on his turn signal and drawing into the side of the road. ‘You can drive for a while. Three hours, straight down sixty-six; and don’t stop for anybody or anything, unless you see an abandoned car in good shape that we can send back to the Carlssons.’

Peter Kaiser heaved himself up into the driver’s seat, while Ed squeezed himself into the back seat next to Shearson Jones.

‘I’d appreciate it if you’d resist the temptation to rest your head on my stomach while you sleep,’ said Shearson.

‘I think I can manage that,’ Ed replied, and bundled up a towel to make himself a pillow.

As Peter Kaiser drove the wagon through the night, Ed lay awake, exhausted but unable to sleep. The shock of Dyson Kane’s death on the streets of Tucumcari began to make him tremble, as if someone was shaking him to make him understand something – shaking him and shaking him and refusing to let up.

He dozed for minutes at a time, and dreams danced in front of his eyes like some kind of grotesque carnival. The house at South Burlington, flaring up; Willard Noakes, collapsing into the darkness; and Dyson Kane lying on the roadway, his blood sprayed everywhere, only it wasn’t blood at all, but a pattern cut out of coloured paper, and when Ed walked towards him, Dyson turned his face around towards him and grinned a disturbing, idiot grin…

As dawn began to rise through the Zuni Mountains behind them, they came across an abandoned white Pontiac, one of its doors still open, and its keys still in the ignition. There was no sign of the driver. Young Dave Morton, Olaf Morton’s son, volunteered to drive it back to Tucumcari and pick up the seven people they had left behind.

Ed, pale-faced, unshaved, frowzy with sleep, said, ‘You take care now, do you understand? If anything goes wrong, you come speeding back to join us. We’ll take it slow from here, and wait for you two hours at Lake Havasu. Then we’re going on, whether you’ve caught up with us or not.’