‘It was years ago,’ says Roisin, desperately. ‘Daddy thought he was under the ground. That he was gone. It was only a few months ago that he came back – like some demon, something undead. He sent Daddy an Oracle card. Death. Daddy came home one day to find his brother’s hand nailed to the caravan door with the card on the palm. He’s got enemies, has Daddy. Thought it was the Heldens. But the same fecking thing had happened there. It were a tongue. Can you believe that?’ Roisin swallows, and the action seems to pain her. ‘His son’s tongue, nailed to the doorframe – Death card right in the centre. And he started coming for us. For both families. Daddy didn’t know for certain who was doing it until one of our boys got away. Described him – the way his face was all hollowed in down one side – missing half his scalp where Daddy took the blade to him …’

‘And Daddy did that because he killed your aunt?’ asks Pharaoh, softly.

‘He got my aunt, but he came for me,’ says Roisin. She chews at her lips. Sips the water. ‘And now he’s here. Here, and he’s got Fin, and he hurt Lilah, and I know he’s going to keep killing and killing until there’s only me left, and then he’ll really take his time. I’m the one who did it, you see. I’m the one who told Daddy that it was him who killed Eva-Jayne.’

Pharaoh squeezes her own forearms, a chill creeping into her flesh. ‘And that’s not true?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Roisin, quietly. ‘I was in Scunthorpe hiding away from bad men. And then I see a stranger butchering my auntie, and I run, and I just get away, and I go to what I think is a safe place, and they drug me, and the next thing I’m waking up and there’s this bastard fighting Aector – it was like watching Satan beat on my own guardian angel, and I rammed the van into him. Made a mess of him. I didn’t even think about any of it. I just knew he was the bad man who’d done those terrible things, and that God had sent me my own protector, and he was bleeding. And after that I was too in love to think about any of it. He was dead, I was sure of it. Then Daddy had to tell me the truth – about what happened, about what he’d done – about what was coming for us. I’ve been so scared, Trish. Scared and guilty and desperate …’

Pharaoh screws up her face, trying to keep her feelings from showing in her expression. Inside, her guts are churning. There’s prickly heat upon her skin and ice water in her bones. She has to keep forcing herself to do this right – to get the information she needs, and to keep Roisin talking.

‘There have been other murders, Roisin,’ says Pharaoh, gently. ‘Other clairvoyants. Palmists. Fortune tellers. This morning, that’s where we were. We were looking at the body of a woman who’d been butchered on her own kitchen carpet. A crystal, hammered right through her heart. And my best sergeant fled the scene because of something he learned, or saw. And now your boy is missing, and …’ She stops. Locks her teeth. Glares at Roisin with eyes that flash with absolute fury. ‘And you took your daughter to Sophia’s house. You put my daughter in danger …’