So here I am, back to the quiet life in Cloisters again. All the craziness seems totally unreal. Could it have actually happened just last week? All that crap in a couple of days when things had been pretty quiet for over a decade, not a single person killed, less than a dozen in the hospital, and a couple of them were faking trauma for legal reasons, then Faber comes along and things go red all over again.

Did any of it happen? I know it did because Connie’s kids are in a foster home instead of watching TV with their mom. It’s not an institution and the McGuffins are good people, and I’m gonna visit every week like I promised, but it’s still a foster home.

What I should have done, looking at it now in retrospect, was to walk into the casino and kick good old Mister Faber so hard in the balls that any mischief-making he was cooking up in his ginger head would have disintegrated along with his favourite executive toys.

But I didn’t do that, since I can’t see into the future and apply it to the past.

So it all went ahead and happened. I sat down and watched Barrett bleed out. I’ve still got blood on my cuff. Or I used to until I burned that shirt and flushed the ashes. It took three flushes. Crappy plumbing.

Ronnie Deacon’s words echo in my mind: People like you and me, Dan, trouble sniffs us out. Maybe you can hide out for a while, maybe even a few years, but eventually someone needs to be saved or someone needs to be killed.

No. It won’t be like that for me. I was Superman for a week, but now I’m just a bald guy with a humdrum job. No more quick thinking, crazy coincidences or lunatic plans.

I feel a little antsy walking into work this afternoon, because today’s the day Mike’s coming to personally collect his payment. Also he says the brakes on the Lexus are whistling a little and I gotta take care of it, which is a crock, cos that Lexus was braking fine when I sent it over.

I look around and the car park is empty but for the aforementioned Lexus and my ghosts. I can hear cars passing on the street and they seem a long way away.

I yank my hat off my head, defiantly revealing my head in public for the first time post-op in some kind of gesture, symbolising I don’t know what. Maybe I’ve turned a corner; maybe there are things more important than a head of hair. Zeb says the bald patch will be gone, and that’s enough for me. No more needles in the scalp.

So that’s no more:

Killing.

Lunatic plans.

Needles in the head.