Lilah’s voice.

Lilah’s scream.

And a black, leathery glove upon his mouth, forcing him into the earth, prey to be devoured by the thing that yanks him down and down into the dark.

TWENTY-THREE

Lilah McAvoy is standing on the doorstep, shivering as if pulled from the sea. There is blood on both knees. Dirt on her face. A livid red patch on one cheek. One hand, a crimson glove, dripping red onto the carpet.

‘Lilah?’ Her voice a prayer.

‘A man,’ says Lilah.

‘What man, Lilah? What man …?’ Roisin stops herself. Looks into the empty spaces behind and beside her daughter. ‘Where’s Fin …?’

Lilah raises her hand. Nailed to her palm is an Oracle card; its cheerful colours already saturated with blood.

‘He took him,’ says Lilah.

She looks at her hand. Smiles, as if the whole thing is rather silly.

Then the tears come.

She falls in on herself, tears and snot and blood.

In her head, Mammy’s screams: loud enough to wake the dead.

TWENTY-FOUR

McAvoy, heading west, stamping on the accelerator as if grinding his boot on a scorpion. He’s ignored every red light and speed camera, tyres screaming around the curve of road where the road through Hull becomes the road out of it: the abandoned warehouses and crumbling docks passing in a blur of grey and brown.

‘Pick up,’ he’s hissing, teeth gritted, phone wedged between his shoulder and cheek. ‘Roisin, pick up the phone …’

The ringtone taunts him, as it has these last, god-awful miles. He’s tried consoling himself with simple explanations. She’s taken the kids to school; got chatting in the playground; popped in to the shops and left her phone in the car. None has done him any good. He cannot drag himself from the visions that plague him: paranoid imaginings of his wife taken, hurt, tortured, maimed. Cannot stop himself from thinking of her damp eyes; blood running in prison bars down her teeth as she opens her mouth and screams for help that will not come.

He ends the call. Pulls into the outside lane and overtakes a lorry; the driver taking the time to call him a ‘fucking headcase’ and lean heavily on the horn. He slaloms through the traffic. Faces flash past the window, mouths open, angry eyes; the rain on the glass turning the other motorists into hazy, half finished things: wax effigies left too close to the heat.

On the passenger seat, the phone trills. Pharaoh, again. He’s ignored her last three calls. He needs to keep the line open for Roisin.

Swings the car left, roaring up the slip road that leads off the dual carriageway and towards the car showrooms and offices and supermarkets that cluster together on the edge of Hassle. Left again, down the side road that follows the line of the river. Fewer cars here. He stamps on the accelerator. Makes a decision without even acknowledging it.

‘Trish …’ he says, breathlessly, the phone hot against his ear.