The church inside was basic, but he presumed it was the same God, not a more basic version with less influence, that would be a blow. It was a Missionary Church painted creamy white with benches, a central aisle with brass chandeliers, three running up the centre hanging over the green and cream tiled floor. Quite ordinary, thought Ever, a spectacularly ordinary place to be praying about a very extraordinary event.

A once in a lifetime, life-ending event.

He felt the need for a drink and said his goodbye to God, wondering if it would be his last goodbye inside a church.

When he returned tomorrow would Lomita be alive? Should he go back?

What had he made Lomita do?

What had Lomita done to him?

He didn’t care.

Have a diazepam.

He took a right out of the church and walked down the opposite side of the road to a bar called the Retro Bar. It was one flight up, hulked above a respectable, touristy restaurant called the Tropicana. The Retro Bar advertised television. Bare wood on the floors, and a little higher up on the benches: same wood, in fact, and the same wood on the table. Same tree?

He ordered guacamole, totopos, beer and tequila – Patrón Silver: taking him back to the comparatively innocent days at Gil Turner’s before he met the woman who changed his world.

Televisions.

There were four televisions around the bar playing sports. He asked if one could be put to the news on an American channel; it was only him and five other people; this was not an outlandish request.

He was afforded his own television and sat watching the news on the Fox channel which was starting its predictable roll. All blonde, the women, all handsome with parted hair, the men, all Republican, and all aliens. Humiens.

He had to face the music, so to speak, beyond Lana Del Rey.

The main story was the assassination, as they called it, of one of the world’s most celebrated art collectors, leaving the legacy of his gallery behind, having been tragically taken from this world in a motiveless killing, and so it went on. There were respects paid by the great and the questionable: his wife, tearful, ran an interview about the purposelessness of it all.

Even as someone who was once fixated on the death of this man, Ever couldn’t disagree; there was a definite pointlessness to the event; once again he was covered in the slime of guilt, this time with the additional coating of being pursued.

Not by a pale blue hand, but by the world.

For justice.

But he hadn’t been carrying a gun.

He had not been intending to kill Mr Lorken.

There were no leads, no witnesses, no motive. Ever found it difficult to analyse his feelings, watching this outpouring of grief and concern and recognition of injustice. He experimented with a few different emotional concepts.