Priest pulled off the motorway a few miles further on and found himself leading her into a service station cafe beside a small arcade glimmering with flashing lights and pitchy sound bites. They stood in the queue with a couple of thinly filled sandwiches in wrappers on a tray. Priest watched as a black cat leapt from one gambler to another. He closed his eyes, but he could still see the flashing lights at the back of his eyelids. When he opened them, the cat was gone.

Shit, I shouldn’t be driving.

He could feel the onset of a turn creeping up on him. The ghosts are closing in on me. He remembered the first time it had happened. He was in the park on a summer’s day, sitting on the grass, fifteen years old, a bottle of whisky by his side, stolen from his father’s study. He could still taste the dreadful first-time burn of the liquid in his throat. People were laughing around him, friends kicking a football, calling out to him to keep goal. But he wasn’t listening. He was staring at his hands. Or at least he was staring at a pair of hands, which appeared to be attached to his arms but were moving independently. He seemed detached from them. All of a sudden, he was nothing more than a shadow, watching as his body lurched up from the grass, staggered a few yards and vomited into a rose bush.

He glanced over at Georgie. She was examining a chocolate bar. Her hair fell over both shoulders, the artificial light accentuated her soft features. She was lost in her own thoughts, unaware of his observation of her.

‘Are you getting that, or not?’ he asked.

‘Hmm?’ She shook herself out of the apparent daydream and offered him another smile, this time with her eyes. It seemed to be her default reaction to him.

‘One chocolate bar isn’t going to hurt, kid.’

Priest took the bar off her and threw it onto the tray. An old couple further up the queue had managed to count out their bill in pennies. Finally, they shuffled a little further up.

‘What happened to her eyes, Charlie?’ she asked. When he looked at her for an explanation she went on to say, ‘I overheard some of the SOCO men talking about her eyes.’

He sighed and scratched the back of his neck. He felt light-headed, like the slightest breeze might be enough to topple him over. ‘Someone took a blowtorch to her face. Burnt her eyes out and most of her face as well and the ears. Then stitched up her mouth.’

‘Before or after they killed her?’

Good question. He recalled that O’Connell had offered no opinion about it. ‘Don’t know. I’ll find out from Rowlinson when the post-mortem is due.’

‘The three wise monkeys,’ Georgie muttered.

He took a moment to register what she had said. ‘What?’