Silver said he would never rest until he had found Jonny. For some reason, in the cause of being absolutely straightforward and aboveboard, I suppose, he felt that, having told the police what had happened, he was duty-bound to tell Jonny he had done so. It was quite late at night when we made our way to Holloway. I insisted on going with him. But Jonny wasn’t there and his van wasn’t parked outside. A woman who came out of one of the rooms and spoke to us as we were going down the stairs said he had told her two days before that he was leaving. We walked up the street, turned left, and walked down the next street, looking in vain for the white van. It seemed that Jonny really had gone. I said I hoped that didn’t mean the police wouldn’t find him. Silver looked miserable.

“You know how people always say finding a murderer won’t bring the dead person back? I feel a bit like that about Jonny. Finding him and sending him to jail won’t mend Wim’s leg and I don’t suppose it will stop him mugging someone next time or bashing him with an ax, do you?”

“No,” I said, “but I want him caught.”

“He wanted revenge and now you do. Revenge doesn’t help.”

“Doesn’t it? Knowing Jonny’s being punished may help Wim a bit when he realizes he’ll never go on the roofs again, when he knows Jonny did that to him to take away the great passion of his life.”

Silver shrugged. “He knows already. When I hear that expression ‘a fate worse than death’—well, you don’t hear it anymore but you read it in books—I’ve always thought it was a bit of a joke. I mean, what’s worse than death? Now I’m not so sure.”

Andrew and Alison came back into my mind and I was on the verge of voicing my doubts about the rightness of what we were doing. I had the words ready to utter. “Are you certain we’re doing the right thing, getting them to Australia? Making sure they keep Jason? Because if there’s a doubt...” But even in my mind I left the sentence unfinished. I suppose I felt Silver and I were disagreeing too much. I was afraid of reopening a gulf between us. Besides, we were tired, Silver looked tired out, having had only about three hours’ sleep the night before.