Danny turned to the last page of the folder. It was a note addressed to him directly. He skimmed it but nothing was going in, not anymore. He threw the whole folder aside. The slap as it hit the ground this time barely registered, like the room had suddenly filled with water to deaden the sound. The man had become still too and now stared straight at Danny.

‘You know who I am, don’t you?’ Danny said. ‘Callie … She’s my daughter. I should be angry.’ Danny had to stop, to swallow hard a couple of times and lubricate his throat to continue. ‘For a moment I thought it was going to come, but I just can’t feel anything. I haven’t for a while. It’s like Callie took that ability with her, the moment she slumped over on that bench it was gone. If she doesn’t wake up I don’t think I will either. But the one thing I can feel is scared. I’m terrified every single day. And then I feel guilty, it’s crushing, like I only want her to wake up for me, for my sake. And you know what, that’s true, because I want us, I want the family that I had … my family.’ He swallowed again. ‘It was everything. But now it’s like one of the limbs has gone numb and we’re just waiting for it to come back so we can move again. But she might not come back. Not like she was, not ever. So we might have to find a way to move on without her and I’m so terrified that we won’t. That I won’t. But maybe that’s what this is.’ Danny took a step forward and, through the numbness, he felt the butt of the weapon bump him in the chest. He moved his right hand in to take up the slack in the trigger, revelling again in the feeling of the metal pushing back. ‘Maybe this is how we move on.’

The man made a sound again, the loudest yet, a guttural moan from the back of his throat – begging.

Danny pulled the trigger.

Chapter 5

Thursday

6.30 a.m. Cold, fresh. An electric-blue sky merging with a frigid blue ocean. Gentle, lapping waves pushing clacking pebbles, the call of a gull and the smell of its prey. An assault on each of the senses but Danny Evans was numb to it all.