‘No,’ says Teague, shaking his head. ‘No, you sent him. He killed Eva-Jayne, he would have done the same to my daughter. He shouldn’t have lived, not after what was done to him. He was more broken bones than whole ones when my man found him, found Ro, found her husband more dead than alive. Scared the almighty shite out of him when he sat up. I swear, my Jonjo still can’t fecking talk about it without turning white. Zipped him into the body bag, almost up past the nose, and then the fecker sits up. Half his face stoved in and he sits up like his alarm’s just gone off. I didn’t think he’d survive. Getting him across the water, getting him home, even as your family and mine were breaking bread and toasting the future … he should have died. He just wouldn’t.’

‘And we didn’t ask the right questions because it spared us settling his bill,’ says Helden, rubbing his jaw, closing his eyes. ‘Swallowed every word you said. And all the while you had him. Tortured him. Year after year …’

‘And you’d have been merciful, would you? If he’d come for your daughter, you’d have put a bullet in him?’

Danior Teague doesn’t reply at first. Sucks his cheek. Picks at something trapped between his canines. ‘He won’t stop, cousin,’ he says, quietly. ‘Not ever. What he’s endured, what you put him through … to survive that, to emerge, to heal … and then come for all we hold dear …’

Papa Teague feels his energy sag. Looks at the slash hook in his hand and feels pitiable. He feels his age, suddenly. Doesn’t want to skulk and hide and fight for his life. Wants to play with his grandchildren and tell old stories and settle in to being a grand old has-been. Until a month ago, he hadn’t thought about Cromwell in years. The visits to the farm had become less frequent; the supplies less plentiful; the rage less fierce. Eventually, without ever making a decision, he simply stopped going to the farm. The wagon would have caved in years before, he was certain about that. The earth had chewed him up and swallowed him down. He had endured Hell beyond imagining. Justice had been done.

Then the killings began.

The Heldens and Teagues have lost daughters and sons. Distant relatives, family outliers, countryfolk with even a whiff of connection to the two clans – all have become targets for a killer who seems to emerge from the air and who disappears again when the carnage is done. Danior’s own son was the first to escape. He fed back a description of the demon that had come for him. And though the years had leeched the colour from his skin and turned his features into those of something long-dead, there had been enough familiarity about his methods, his singularity of purpose, to remind both families of the killer they had both employed against the other in years gone by. Papa Teague had driven out to the farm. Had found the patch of earth where he had buried his foe. Had dug down, into rotten timber and buckled iron wheels, through food wrappers and bloodstained bandages. He’d excavated half the damn field. Didn’t find a body. Not a bone. And he’d had no choice but to tell his kin that for six long years he had exacted a father’s revenge on the man who came for his child. It doesn’t matter that the Heldens still deny complicity. The monster is free, and he is out to end the bloodline of the man who locked him up, along with the family who did nothing to help him.