"And with me," Sam said, not turning around from the sink. Frank, squatting on the floor and squinting at some dial on his receiver, didn't even bother to throw me a mocking look.

Sam finished the washing up and started drying things too thoroughly. I sorted the Lexie material into some kind of order--that high-wire final-exam feeling, taking your hands off your notes at last, If I don't know it now--stacked it in bundles and packed it into plastic bags, to leave in Frank's car. "And that," Frank said, unplugging the speakers with a flourish, "should do it. Are we good to go?"

"Ready when you are," I said, picking up the plastic bags. Frank swept up his equipment one-armed, grabbed my case and headed for the door.

"I'll take that," Sam said brusquely. "You've enough to carry," and he took the case from Frank's hand and headed down the stairs, the wheels hitting each step with a hard dull thump.

On the landing Frank turned and looked back over his shoulder, waiting for me. My hand was on the door handle when for a split second out of nowhere I was terrified, blue-blazing terrified, fear dropping straight through me like a jagged black stone falling fast. I'd felt this before, in the limbo instants before I moved out of my aunt's house, lost my virginity, took my oath as a police officer: those instants when the irrevocable thing you wanted so much suddenly turns real and solid, inches away and speeding at you, a bottomless river rising and no way back once it's crossed. I had to catch myself back from crying out like a little kid drowning in terror, I don't want to do this any more.

All you can do with that moment is bite down and wait for it to be over. The thought of what Frank would have to say, if I actually pulled out now, helped a lot. I took one more look around my flat--lights off, water heater off, bins emptied, window locked; the room was already closing in on itself, silence seeping into the spaces where we had been, drifting up like dust in the corners. Then I shut the door.

5

The drive down to Glenskehy took almost an hour, even with no traffic and Frank driving, and it should have been excruciating. Sam slumped miserably in the back seat, next to the gadgetry; Frank helped the atmosphere by turning up 98FM nice and loud and bopping along, whistling and nodding his head and beating time on the steering wheel. I barely even noticed either of them. It was a gorgeous afternoon, sunny and crisp, I was out of my flat for the first time in a full week, and I had the window rolled all the way down and wind streaking through my hair. That hard black stone of fear had dissolved the second Frank started the car, turned into something sweet and lemon-colored and wildly intoxicating.