“No, no,” he said. “An estate is public housing. You call them projects or something like that. Some of them are rough places. This one was one of the worst—it had been ripped apart, was stinking, falling to pieces, completely dangerous in every way. So they moved everyone out and shut it down. They were building a block of fancy new flats in its place. So in I go, jogging through, no problem. Good shortcut home. And then . . . I see the wire. Severed. Live. On the ground. Sending out sparks. And here I was, standing in this lake-sized puddle not ten feet away from it. I saw the thing come off the ground. I saw it lift up and move. And then it bullwhipped into the water, and I felt the first shock hit . . . and then, I saw him. He had long hair and this weird yellow shirt with a big collar, some brown sleeveless jumper over it, bell-bottoms, and these shoes . . . red-and-white ones, with two-inch soles. He was like no one I’d ever seen before, right out of the seventies. He hadn’t been there a second ago, but I could see that he was holding the wire and he was laughing. And then I realized that my legs were shaking. I fell to my knees. He kind of teased the wire over the water, and I was saying, ‘No, no, don’t.’ He just kept laughing. I tried to move, but I fell into the water on my face. After that, I can’t remember. I survived, of course. The whole thing was caught on CCTV, so someone in security saw it all happen. Of course, what they saw was me trespassing and then having some kind of seizure and falling into the water I was standing in. They found the wire when they got there, of course, and realized I’d been electrocuted. I told them about the other kid, but when they looked at the footage, I was alone. And that was the beginning . . .”

Callum looked up at the church spire. The vicar had given up his staring and left us alone.

“Something happened to me in that water,” he said. “Something happened to my legs. Because after that day, I couldn’t run right. I couldn’t kick right. I lost all my nerve. The only thing I could do, play football, was taken from me. But then a few weeks later, a man showed up at my door to ask me if I wanted a job. He already knew everything about me—my family, my football. I needed some convincing it was all real, but then I agreed. First, they sent me off for some training, police stuff mostly. Then I met Stephen. He was in charge. We didn’t get on at first, but he’s all right, Stephen. Once he started training me, it was obvious why they picked him to be in charge.”

“Why?”