Greenfield looked at the men holding his arms and again tried to grin. “I was out doing rescue work and got burned, so I went to find your father and see how he was. He'd been a good friend of mine, before he married, and—”

“You were not doing rescue work; you were out robbing abandoned houses and stripping dead bodies.”

That silenced him.

“But that wasn't the only time,” I continued, speaking as much to myself, or to Holmes, as to Greenfield. “You were there when Father stopped for the tyre-change, weren't you? In Serra Beach. That's the thing I've been trying to remember the last few days, that I caught a glimpse of you behind the garage, slipping behind that big gum tree at the side. You'd been talking with my father, and when I finished lunch and went to find him and tell him we were ready to go, I saw the two of you, arguing. When my father turned and saw me, his face was red and his fists were clenched—I'd never seen him look like that. You ran off. And I asked him then who you were and he told me you were nobody, that it would upset Mother if I told her I'd seen you, that I should try to forget all about you.

“And so I did. God, did I ever. But you were there that day, and you cut the brake rod and you killed them all. Just like you killed Leah Ginzberg and Mah and Micah Long, four months later.”

At this last pair of names a murmur sprang up, as several of the older residents recognised the Anglicised versions of the murdered couple's names. I walked around the motor until I was standing directly in front of Greenfield, and I wanted to murder him. Then and there, I wanted to gut him and leave him bleeding his life out on the street, for what he had done to six good and loving people. I might even have done so—I was on the very brink of snatching the gun from my pocket or bending for the knife in my boot-top—when something touched my arm. It was the gentlest touch imaginable, the mere brush of a bird's wings in weight, but the faint weight of it settled onto the taut muscles of my forearm and stopped them from moving. I looked down at the delicate old fingers, then into the face of Dr Ming.

“You do not wish to do this,” he said.

I did want to do it, I could almost taste the glory of revenge. And then suddenly I did not. The murderous impulse left me, the hand fell away, and as if by a stage cue, the police arrived, bluff and uncomprehending and requiring a great deal of attention, from all of us, for a very long time.

Epilogue

Epilogue