His eyes flicked to the kitchen door he’d emerged from.

‘So you know what your real pressure point is, Raker?’

I stood motionless, trying to figure out where this was going.

‘It’s freedom,’ he said. ‘It’s the independence your job gives you, the latitude it has, the way finding these missing people fixes you and repairs you, filling the gaps left behind by your wife. I get it, I do. Closing cases, getting people answers, it’s liberating. It gives you a sense of immunity; nothing touches it.’

He rocked forward again, as if he was about to come towards me, but instead he turned on his heel and retreated, heading past the sofa, towards the kitchen door.

What the hell is he doing?

He stopped there, in the shadows of the stairs.

‘Your real pressure point,’ he said quietly, ‘it’s not your daughter, much as I’m sure you must love her. I’m not even certain it’s the idea of losing your life. I look at the things you’ve done in the past, and I believe you made your peace with death a long time ago. I’m not saying you aren’t frightened by it – we all are at the end, especially when we actually have to face it down – but sticking a gun in your mouth, threatening to pull the trigger, that’s never going to work, is it? If that was a viable option, you’d have stopped looking for missing people a long time ago, because – from what I’ve read – you’ve had plenty of guns pointed at you plenty of times.’

He looked into the blackness of the kitchen.

‘No, it’s the thought of being contained, that’s what you’re truly frightened of. It’s the thought of all of this coming to an end, of never feeling that immunity again.’

He eyed me, feeding on my confusion.

And then he vanished into the kitchen.

Immediately, I came around the sofa to the table, slowing my footsteps in case it was a trick. The closer I got, the more I could hear: a back door opening and shutting, movement, furniture shifting around.

A soft moan.

He re-emerged, dragging something.

The shotgun was in one hand; his other was clamped on to the back of a shirt collar. It was another man, blindfolded. As Mills hauled him out of the blackness of the kitchen, the man made a wordless noise like a wounded animal. I could see blood on his clothes, understood now how it had ended up on Mills’s knuckles – and then Mills released his grip and the man rolled, slumping sideways.