He gathers himself. Answers as quietly as he can.

‘Trish?’

Detective Superintendent Patricia Pharaoh, a little drunk and a lot more than half asleep.

‘Hector,’ she grumbles. ‘Are you decent?’

He looks down at himself. Draws the quilt over his nakedness and feels the blush return. Pharaoh is his boss, his best friend, and something between a mother figure and a lost love. She is also the new head of Humberside Police CID.

‘Suspicious death, out at Sunk Island,’ she says, briskly. ‘Get your arse up. You can pick me up in forty-five minutes.’

‘Sunk Island,’ he says, head spinning. ‘Holderness … how suspicious?’

‘Very,’ says Pharaoh. ‘There’s a big spike of blue stone sticking out of her chest cavity and half her face is gone. I’m not getting ahead of myself, but I don’t think she did it to herself.’

McAvoy screws up his eyes. Combs his beard with his fingers. ‘Name?’

‘I’ll brief you en route. All I know is she was a clairvoyant.’

McAvoy’s head fills with static. He can hear nothing but the sudden roar of blood inside his skull. For a moment, the years fall away. He is back in uniform. He’s friendless; afraid of his own shadow, all blushes and good intentions. And he’s on his back, as a man with red-rimmed eyes pushes a curved blade into his face and forces him into the sodden, blood-soaked earth. He is fading. He is fighting for his life, and losing.

He strokes the scar; the white line half hidden by his greying beard. Chews his cheek, and tastes blood.

‘I’ll get it out of my system now,’ says Pharaoh, her voice muffled for a moment as she pulls a garment over her head. She curses, having briefly set fire to her top with the tip of her cigarette. ‘Should I? Just get it out of my system …’

‘Get what?’ he asks, his voice faraway, his thoughts skittish.

‘The clairvoyant … she never saw it coming.’

Neither of them laugh. They both feel a responsibility to treat the dead with respect. Both know that the day will bring pain and suffering to those who have done nothing to deserve it.

‘She’s a clairvoyant?’ asks McAvoy, cautiously.

Please no, he thinks. Not after all these years …

‘She reads cards. Palms. Crystal balls. I bet your Roisin would love her.’

And the whisper in his head becomes a scream.

Out there. Out here.

Now.

Moonlight on brown water, the shimmering ripples flecked with foam.

Beneath the bridge. Just where the pea-green channel marker bobs above the sandbank, and the shadow of the bridge cuts the estuary down the middle.

A shadow. A silhouette in perfect shimmering black.

He watches. Stares at the figure in the window, and drinks her down like ale. He feels a little giddy. Feels energized. He cannot quite believe that this is happening; that the fantasies he dreamed up in the dark are about to be made flesh.

Pretty house, he tells himself. Prettiest in the row. Done well. Done better than she deserves.