The investigation was complicated by the fact that Macy and Parker had dated briefly. They hadn’t managed to get it together – circumstances and timing as much as anything – but there were no hard feelings, so now, as well as being the official point of contact between various branches of law enforcement and state government, Macy was also the unofficial mediator between some of those same agencies and one of the most problematical private investigators in the state, if not the entire country.

Macy and the detectives asked the Fulcis and Dave Evans a few more questions about what they’d witnessed, and clarified the series of events that had led from Dave spotting the first of the Serbians entering the lot on the CCTV to Paulie lobbing a bear head, before telling them they could go. Parker, she asked to stay.

‘So you’re telling me you have no idea why a pair of Serbian hitmen would decide to place a bomb in the wheel well of your car?’ she said.

‘I haven’t annoyed any Serbians,’ said Parker, ‘not that I know of.’

He was a man of slightly above average height and build, with graying hair and eyes that veered between blue and green, depending on the light. He was easy to dismiss at first glance, Macy thought. If you looked harder, though, the lines of grief on his face became more pronounced, and his sense of coiled energy, even violence, grew more perceptible. He had killed; some were deaths of which the police were aware, but others, she felt sure, remained unknown to them. Macy had also taken lives, and the memory of it still troubled her. She did not know if Parker was tormented by a great deal of what he had done. She suspected that, as in the words of the Confiteor, he was haunted more by all he had failed to do.

There were those who felt Parker should be behind bars, including half-a-dozen district attorneys and at least three state attorneys general. That he was not was a matter of frustration, but Parker had luck on his side and some influential protectors both inside and outside the law. Yet he also had a strangeness to him, an element of the preternatural. Even his aftershave smelled of incense.

‘Maybe you upset someone who hired the Serbians to take you out?’ said one of the other detectives, in a tone of voice that suggested such a course of action would have been entirely understandable, even forgivable. His name was Furnish, and he and Parker had crossed paths before. Parker didn’t think highly of him, and the feeling was entirely mutual.

‘I could make a list,’ said Parker, ‘but who has that kind of time?’

‘This is serious,’ said Macy. ‘With the nails and pellets thrown into the mix, that bomb was designed for maximum damage.’

Parker stared at her and spread his arms, as if to ask what more he could offer.