Jackdaw44: Won’t they? I have photos, remember. You’ll be locked away for a very, very long time. Do you know what they do to people like you in jail?

ICE9: What do you want?

Jackdaw44: I just want you to do one more thing for me and then I’ll leave you alone.

ICE9: I don’t believe you.

Jackdaw44: I’ll write something, a letter. I’ll say we had consensual sex, that I was in love with you, that I started it.

ICE9: I don’t believe you. You’ll come up with something else.

Jackdaw44: I swear. Just one more thing. Something that will always be our little secret. Then we’re over, I promise. It’s not sex.

ICE9: What is it?

Jackdaw44: It’s something you’ve done before. And it might hurt.

Chapter 58

The street is awash with people doing their weekend shopping: students, mothers, fathers, children, shoppers, browsers and dawdlers. They spill out of the shops, congregate in front of windows and fill the pavement, forcing me to step into the road to overtake them.

‘Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.’ I hurry down Queen’s Road, past supermarkets, banks, letting agents and record stores. Pink Hair said Kira was meeting someone in a café, but which one? There are so many.

I dart in and out of each café I find as I follow Queen’s Road all the way down to Bristol Museum. I am vaguely aware of bells chiming above doors as I enter, staff asking if they can help me and customers turning and staring but I ignore them all as I scan every face looking for Kira.

I feel breathless, manic and strangely elated. I am certain that the tattoo somehow holds the answer to Billy’s disappearance.

When I reach Bristol Museum I cross the road and go back up Queen’s Road, checking all the cafés on the other side. My pace slows as I get halfway up and not simply because I am out of breath.

It’s just a tattoo. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s not a clue.

I stop walking and rest a hand against the window of a shop as the adrenalin that propelled me out of the School of Art and down the street is replaced by an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion.

The answer is obvious. Billy got a tattoo he didn’t tell me about – another secret that’s been kept from me. I don’t know why I’m even surprised. He skived off school so many times he could easily have got a tattoo without us knowing. He’s always looked older than he is. He would have blagged being eighteen if the tattoo artist had asked. He was always able to wriggle out of an awkward situation. And not just with me.