‘I’m not staying here, Raker. There’s no way I’m sitting on my hands for the next forty-eight hours staring at the walls. Even if the sum total of my contribution to this case is locking myself in that hotel room and going through paperwork for you, it’s better than staying in a house that no one lives in, in the middle of nowhere. I can’t do that any more.’ He paused, squeezing his eyes shut, his fingers going to the wound I’d dressed. ‘Look,’ he said, his voice quieter, more contained, ‘I spent a long time living on my own in Devon. You know that. I’ve barely had contact with anyone but you. I’ve had no life, just this secret. I know you’re looking out for me, I know what you told me on the way up here in the car this morning about Annabel, about how we’ve still got that arsehole McCaskell on our tail, I know the risks. I do. I understand them. But what you’ve got to understand is that these past two days have been better than any of the days I’ve had over the past three and a half years. So don’t make me do this, okay? Please don’t leave me here.’

I looked at him and then back out of the window again, annoyed, sympathetic, conflicted. The sun had disappeared completely now, cloud knitted together in the sky, the light greyer and more sombre. My gaze drifted from the car, up to the main gate of the village, the legs on the Black Gale sign rocking in their bed as the wind picked up.

And then I realized it wasn’t the legs that were moving.

It was a person, coming out from behind it.

There was somebody else here.

Caraca

1985

Los Angeles | Tuesday 23 July

‘My name’s Detective Kader. I’m with the Sheriff’s Department.’

Jo held up her badge.

The manager of the Star Inn was a Latino man in his late forties with a week’s beard growth and a pot belly. He looked from her photograph to her face, then back to the photograph. ‘We don’t get so many lady police detectives coming in here.’

He said lady like he was trying to come on to her.

‘Well, this is what we look like,’ Jo replied. A scarred walnut counter lay between her and the manager, and in a room out the back she could see a couch malformed by age and a TV playing old reruns of I Love Lucy. The guy had dragged in a fan from somewhere and set it up where he’d been sitting, and it was on so hard it was gradually blowing a half-eaten jelly doughnut across a plate.

‘The a/c’s broke,’ he said, seeing where her eyes were at.

‘Ever thought about getting it fixed?’

He shrugged. ‘Yeah, when I win the state lottery.’