Under the covers, he wraps himself around me until every one of his limbs is intertwined through mine and I lie there, stroking his hair, wondering what Duval had intended with his warning. What had he been doing on the road so late in the evening and what is it that he’s hiding? I’m beginning to understand that the south-west of America is a place grand enough to swallow the dreams of all kinds of people. Nature lovers, loners, drifters, man haters, dream chasers. There are those running to a better life, those escaping a bad one. There are philosophers looking for the romance of another culture, or wanderers satisfying their thirst for adventure. There are some who come to escape the cold and others who come to die – and then, I guess, there are the real fugitives, the unruly and the lawless, who see in this vast empty land a place where they can disappear forever. Perhaps Duval is one of these, perhaps he’s simply an arsehole, or maybe he’s just being unwittingly woven into the complicated fantasy that I am starting to impose on this place – but whoever he turns out to be, I resolve to watch myself very carefully indeed around him.

It’s around four a.m. when a coyote cuts loose with a long howling session from somewhere nearby. We both wake and in the utter blackness of the room, the final vestiges of Jack’s bravado evaporate.

‘Skinwalkers,’ he moans and buries his sweaty head in the crook of my arm. ‘You know,’ he whispers, ‘I told Winfred I was afraid of nothing, but the truth is I’m afraid of everything.’

‘Snap,’ I tell him.

12

Tucson is a strange and soulless city. It appears to be modelled on a grid system of sorts so it’s easy enough getting in, but getting out is another matter entirely. The streets are so devoid of individuality or even discernible street names that there’s no way of telling one from the other. I’m lost. And I’ve been lost for some time now. If this map is to be believed I’m supposed to be in the centre of town but I’m driving alongside nothing except seedy commercial buildings, tyre-shredding businesses, warehouses all battened up and deserted. It’s mid-afternoon on a Friday, yet the place is as quiet as a mausoleum.