‘Benjamin,’ Barry said, ‘is this a joke? You do realise that it’s a—’

‘It’s not a joke,’ Ben interrupted, his voice raising out of his control. ‘We’re in a lot of trouble. We need your help. Please, I don’t know what to do. I thought it wasn’t real, but…’

‘Okay, leave it to me. Don’t contact anyone else. Not even the station. Do you understand? I’ll take care of this myself. Did you call anyone before me?’

‘No, you’re the only person I’ve spoken to.’

‘Good, let’s keep it that way.’

‘What do you want us to do?’ Ben asked.

‘Just stay where you are, and don’t contact anyone.’ Barry hung up.

Had he listened to a word Ben told him? The conversation seemed to end just as it had begun. And how did Barry know where he was? He’d never asked for Chloe’s address.

Ben sat on the couch – rigid, remote – staring vacantly at the flames, imagining everything he knew burning around him with the creeper standing atop the ashes. He might as well have just slouched into an electric chair. His life was over, and he would happily pull the lever himself.

The creeper would find his daughter. She would suffer those same eyes. The horror that had knocked Ben to the floor would be unleashed on the innocence of a three-year old; his child – the one human being in his selfish world that he was supposed to take care of.

If only he had told Sparling the truth, he would never have been recruited. Perfect candidates didn’t have kids.

Ben jumped back to his feet, legs wobbling on a floor that seemed to sway beneath them.

‘What are you doing now?’ Chloe asked him, drying her cheeks with the sleeves of her jumper.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied, staring at his phone. ‘I need to tell Jess. I don’t know how but she can keep Aoife safe.’

He dialled her number and roamed back and forth between the table and the fireplace. His eyes kept returning to where he knew the creeper still stood. It couldn’t have known about his daughter. Even the all-knowing Alec Sparling had been ignorant of her birth. He wanted to run, to scream, to shout, but all he could do was wait and listen to that dial tone.

‘Come on, come on. Pick up the phone.’

It rang and it rang, and eventually it stopped.

You have reached the voicemail inbox of…

‘Fuck it,’ he shouted, hanging up, squeezing the phone near to the point of fracture. ‘She never answers! What do I do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Chloe whispered, painfully aware of the one standing outside her window. ‘She still has time.’

‘Still has time?’

‘You have to see him three times. That’s what Sparling told us.’

‘Three times,’ Ben repeated, despairing, ‘and what happens then?’

Chloe spoke through trembling fingers, ‘Uh-oh.’