Two more men were inside: one was knelt beside the tub with a camera, taking pictures; Dan Chen was watching from the opposite corner. The bathroom was gloomy, the faucets speckled brown with a mix of mould and rust, the walls slick with trails of water. Chen stepped away from the wall and moved towards Jo.

‘What’s up, Kader?’

‘How’s it going, Danny?’ She looked at the tub. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Just let us finish up and it’s all yours.’

She nodded, her eyes still on the tub.

‘Landa said he took one to the head?’

‘Yeah, looks like it,’ Chen said. ‘But he was put in here afterwards.’

The tub had been filled up. The man was face down, his buttocks, his shoulders and the rear of his skull the only parts of him that weren’t submerged. Something weird had happened to the water, though: it was slightly misted, as if the victim had been washing with soap, and there was a thin, almost creamy substance floating on the surface. Jo wondered if that was the reason why the scene smelled so bad. Dead bodies never smelled good, and decomposition was a stench you never got used to, but there was something different about this one.

The camera flashed again, and then again.

‘What’s that on the surface, Danny?’

‘Fat,’ Chen replied.

‘Fat? You mean, from the body?’

‘Exactly.’

Jo frowned. ‘How come it’s leached away like that?’

‘Because it’s not water he’s in,’ Chen said. ‘It’s acid.’

11

At 2 a.m., I woke with a jolt.

I’d been dreaming, my head full of images of moorland, an endless ocean of crests and plunges, the fields absolutely empty except for the silhouettes of nine people. They moved slowly in a line, almost shuffling, one following the other, and yet they always stayed just out of reach, even when I was running; and then, when the sun came up and the night flickered out like a candle, everyone simply vanished.

I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. It had been a long time since I’d dreamed, a longer time since I’d had one as forceful and vivid, so I felt almost disorientated, my heart thumping in my ears, sweat at the arc of my hairline and all the way down my back, as if I’d woken with a fever. Eventually, though, I felt my body begin to relax, the tension easing out of my bones, and once it did, I hauled myself on to my feet, poured a glass of water and stood at the window watching the rain fall across the emptiness of the car park.