“We’re going back to my place,” Donald confided. “For a nice little chat.”

Fear in the boy’s face now. Fear of the locked room, the men who came in pairs, the hard conversations and the silence after. Or was it just fear of Donald himself, of the rage that had squatted on his shoulder since the day he watched Ellen descend into the pit?

“It’s all right,” Donald said, to himself as much as to the boy. “It’s all right. Nothing bad’s going to happen. We just need to ask you some questions. Just a few… ”

Beneath him, the boy flexed his strong young body up in a powerful curve, then collapsed and tried to roll sideways and outwards and free. Donald could hold onto either his captive or his own temper. A sharp blink of anger, and then he felt pain in his hand and saw the boy bent double over a handful of red spittle and small white bones and knew which he had chosen.

“Shit,” said Donald, almost to himself, and hauled the boy to his feet. The boy wailed and gasped through a gappy red grimace. The rage was still there but he had control of it now, he could tell his hand to stay by his side and it would obey.

“Please,” said the boy. “Please. Fuck. Please.”

Again those dark eyes pleading. Again that reminder of Alicia. Or was it Ellen, the way she’d looked at him from the hospital bed? He was too old for this game. He had to get out while he still could, before he did something he could never put right.

“I think you’d better go,” he told the boy.

“I’m quitting,” he repeated, staring at the spot on the wall just to the left of Harry’s left ear.

Harry sighed, and picked absent-mindedly at the edge of his desk, and in that moment of hesitation Donald knew he’d made the right choice.

“Where are we going?” Alicia asked. It was the seventeenth time she had asked since they set off.

“To live by the sea, sweetheart,” he told her.

“Really? It’s not just a story?”

“It’s not just a story.”

“No, really,” said Donald into the silence. “Please don’t try and talk me out of it.”

“Oh come on, Donald, I didn’t mean… ”

“It’s all right.” Donald shrugged. “It’s time.”

“You don’t have to. Take a few days. Give it some thought.”

“I’ve given it some thought.”

“You were the best, Donald. You still could be. Could be in my place one day.”

“You see,” said Donald, “I’m not who I used to be.”

“Look, that night at The Croc. Those kids are like Olympians. No-one could catch them. They’re just made differently.”

“I caught him,” said Donald.

“You what?”

“And then I let him go.” Harry stared at him. “Things have changed. I’m a liability to you now.”

The decision settled over them both like fog.

“You all right for money?” asked Harry.

“I’ve got enough put by.”