Everything slows down. For a moment, she is perfectly still.

Then the figure shifts his position.

Turns.

Roisin never sees his face. Just the hammer. The long shard of bluish stone. The gaily-coloured card that the killer holds, firmly, upon her auntie’s lifeless chest.

Her senses come back in a flood.

A hand, bloodied, reaching up, fastening around her wrist.

She yanks backwards; her bracelet tearing, charms falling: a rain of silver into a pool of blood.

And then Roisin Teague is running for her life.

SIX

3.48 a.m.
Sunk Island

Grover hadn’t been exaggerating. Dymphna Lowell’s death was brutal. She lies partway between the living room and the kitchen: her lower half cushioned by carpet – her ruined torso stuck to the linoleum with clotted red-black blood. Her top has been pulled down. A shard of crystal, patterned in shades of blue, pokes out from her mangled ribcage. The beaded necklace with which she has been strangled has sunk into the pulpy flesh at her neck. Her face has been partially denuded of flesh. Fingers too. There are little teeth marks around the orbit of her eye and a great flap of hair and scalp has been yanked loose; flopping over the excised eye like a pirate’s patch.

‘Jesus,’ says Pharaoh, crouching beside her and angling her head. She stares into the mess. Doesn’t let herself look away.

‘Don’t know how much of that the cats did,’ says Grover, from the door. ‘Three of them. Been having more than a nibble.’

‘Bowls are empty, then?’ asks Pharaoh, still squatting low. ‘Water bowls too?’

‘Dry as a bone,’ says Grover, quietly, from his position by the door. ‘Bin’s been knocked over. Everything edible’s been consumed. Litter tray’s empty.’

‘Milk?’

‘Four-pinter. Half full. An inch or two on top.’

‘Fridge?’

‘On its side. Counter.’

‘Dishes?’

‘Breakfast and lunch in the sink, licked clean. Three mugs. Empty pint glass on the drainer. Nothing else.’

‘Through in a jiff.’

McAvoy is standing in the centre of the kitchen, holding himself together. It feels as though there are birds inside his skin: a maelstrom of beating wings and needle-sharp beaks. From where he stands, the bulk of the refrigerator blocks his view of the corpse. He’s grateful. He’s already seen enough of Dymphna Lowell. Has made his promises. He has seen too much death; the ruination of too much flesh. It does not revolt him – just makes him monstrously sad. He tells himself that the thing on the floor is just spoiled meat – that the best part of her, the essence of her, is in whatever place she believed in. Tells himself that his duty is to justice – to those left behind – and not to the dead. But he feels her. Feels the person she was. Can see her fingerprints in the streaks and dust on the TV screen; can hear her laughter in the silly saucy postcards stuck to the side of the microwave with magnetic fruit. He feels an urge to throw open a window – to let her soul billow away across the low, wide landscape and into the unknown.