Her voice, when she finds it, comes out in a rasp. “Police?”

“I managed to trace the blog.”

“What blog?”

Enfield looks at her closely. “Maybe we should talk to DCI Jordan. Adam’s probably already with her. Why don’t you come with me? I can give you a lift.”

She wants to tell him to stop calling the sarge Adam. It’s Tyler. Or Detective Sergeant Tyler. But not Adam. No one calls him Adam. There’s something about this guy that’s off, the way he thinks about everything so carefully before he says it.

He gestures toward the gate as though inviting her to go ahead of him.

Rabbani starts to speak, to tell him she’ll make her own way to the station, but suddenly her throat is on fire again and she’s coughing and rasping and doubling over.

He puts his massive hand on her back. “You look like you need to sit down. Look, my car’s just over here.”

She wants to struggle, to push his help away, but she realizes that would be ridiculous, so she lets him guide her toward the car. He smiles at her as the coughing fit begins to subside, and then he has the door open for her and she can’t think of a valid reason not to get in.

—

Edna is refusing to pass on; she has joined Lily’s mother in the woodchip on the walls. It’s worse than when she was alive; at least Lily could escape then.

Lily has been making arrangements. She has had to contact all manner of people by telephone—solicitors, florists, the funeral parlor. It feels almost as though she’s organizing a big party, and she supposes that is exactly what this is, in a way. Not that Edna would appreciate the description.

She went early into the village this morning to try to avoid the sympathy of friends and neighbors, but in fact it was all rather novel. The fire at the church has everybody talking. She had whole conversations with people she was previously only on nodding terms with, most of which began with the offering of condolences but then continued on much further than they normally would have done. Had she heard about the church? The poor vicar! The work of an arsonist, the police are saying. Isn’t it coming to something? This would never have been allowed to happen in the old days.