Stan was awake now, whimpering in the darkness. I let him out of his cage and he padded after me as I returned to Scout’s bedroom. He was up on her bed with one silent bound and she automatically reached out to scratch behind his ears. The dog stemmed her crying in a way I could not. But it didn’t stop completely and I felt the flutter of panic that her tears always made me feel. I was afraid that if she started crying then she would never stop.

‘Why are you crying, Scout?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

We both knew but neither of us had the words, neither of us knew where to begin. There was a hole in my daughter’s life and no matter how much I loved her, no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to fill it. The thought clawed at my heart and made me feel like weeping too.

‘Don’t go,’ she said.

I smiled in the darkness.

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

Neither was Stan, who had curled up by her side, seeking the warmth, and I decided to leave him there. Soon they were both sleeping, Scout grasping the dog like a hot-water bottle, the dog letting her.

I looked at Scout’s alarm clock. It was far too early to get up and far too late to go back to bed.

I knew that I would not sleep now. So I sat on the side of Scout’s bed, watching my child and her dog, and I let the night crawl by as I had done so many nights before. But watching my daughter sleep made the small dark hours seem very different tonight. They did not feel wasted.

Chapter 10

10

BOB THE BUTCHER had aged thirty years overnight.

His new photograph showed a much older man, the cockiness of youth and the rakish hat both gone, a black pipe stuck into his set mouth in place of the cigarette. In the new photograph Robert Oppenheimer stared straight at the camera, his hair thinning now, his eyes huge and full of a terrible knowledge that had not been there before.

The destroyer of worlds.

The large screen on Mallory’s wall showed Bob the Butcher’s timeline but we stared at our laptops as Gane read the new message.

‘The rich have known sin,’ he said. ‘And this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘Kill all pigs. #killallpigs.’

I had already chased down the quote.

‘What Oppenheimer actually said was “the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose”.’ I looked over at Gane. ‘Not the rich, the physicists.’

He nodded briefly. Then cursed.