She posted the VHS into the video recorder and pressed play. The remote had been lost in time.

‘Do you want to watch it on fast forward?’ she said.

‘Just let it roll,’ I said.

I recognised the playing fields of Potter’s Field. The tree line, the stone cottage, the endless expanse of green churned to mud down the centre of the pitches. Only the haircuts of the boys were different.

It was easy to spot Hugo Buck. Big, proud, confident. A good-looking bully. Calling for the ball. Exhorting his friends. Arguing with the referee. After twenty minutes he scored a try and preened before the camera, his big grin in our faces. I heard the laughter of the cameraman as he said ‘Played, Bucko!’ and it sounded like Ben King.

Five minutes later it happened.

The ball was kicked deep into the Harrow half. The Potter’s Field First XV flew after it, Buck in the vanguard. A Harrow defender caught the ball, fumbled, dropped it, picked it up again. Voices screamed with excitement. The defender made to kick the ball just as Buck reached him.

Buck hurled himself at the Harrow defender.

The Harrow defender lashed wildly at the ball.

Buck beat it down.

And the point of the Harrow defender’s right boot speared into Buck’s left eye.

He screamed.

The game stopped. Players and pupils and teachers gathered around the boy on the ground.

He was silent now. But the teachers were shouting for an ambulance. The cameraman kept filming. And just before the tape stopped he went on to the pitch and looked over the shoulders of the boys and men gathered around Hugo Buck.

His eye was a ruined pulp.

The footage abruptly ended on that last bloody image.

‘So,’ Wren said, ‘Hugo Buck lost his eye playing rugby.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘James Sutcliffe told us he was hurt by a girl, didn’t he?’

I paused, considered.

‘Is that what he told us? Sutcliffe was doped up to the eyeballs for years. He was doped up when he was at school. He was doped up on the day he died. James Sutcliffe was a poor little rich boy who spent his entire life on medication.’

‘Come on, Wolfe. You’re the one who said Hugo Buck’s wife was lying. You’re the one who held Buck’s fake eye in your hand. But she wasn’t lying, was she?’

I stared at the frozen image on the screen.

We went back up to MIR-1. Suddenly the suite was heaving with people. Swire and Mallory. Cho and Dr Stephen. Gane and Whitestone. Faces were flushed with the fever of a chase that was nearing its end.

‘What’s happening?’ I said.

‘We’ve got Bob,’ Gane said.

Chapter 24

24

BEHIND THE JOHN Lennon glasses, Mallory’s eyes were burning with quiet rage.