I looked him squarely in the eyes. I knew what he was thinking. I used to work for the detective branch in an official capacity, under Coldwood’s tutelage: consulting exorcist, by appointment, with all the privileges a civilian informant gets from the boys in blue. Then twice in the last two years I’d been the main suspect in a murder investigation, and Gary had had to bend over so far backwards to keep me out of jail that he could have won a limbo competition in Queenstown, Jamaica. It reflected badly on his judgement that I kept landing up to my neck in shit.

‘I know the drill,’ I said.

‘Yeah, I’m sure you do.’ He gave up the point. ‘Give me a shout when you’re done.’

He left at last, and I was alone with the body. I circled the broken table and stared down at her sombrely, feeling compromised and shamed in some indefinable way by her vulnerability, her violation.

But I had a job to do, and Gary would already be looking at his watch. ‘Meter’s running,’ as he liked to say, still searching for that Hollywood tough-guy persona that always eluded him because he could never quite bring himself to be a big enough bastard.

In the lining of the Russian army greatcoat which is my work uniform there’s a sewn-in pocket just big enough to house my tin whistle within easy reach of my left hand. I put my hand in now and drew it out. Putting it to my lips I played a few random notes as place-holders for a tune that didn’t exist yet.

The room darkened around me. The world of flesh and blood and words and meanings went away.

Exorcism is a peculiar way to earn a living. The pay is shit, the hours are appalling, there’s no career structure and the work itself can shade from same old same old to lethally dangerous inside of a heartbeat. But I’ll say this for it: it’s a vocation. To do it at all, you’ve got to be born to it.

It’s got nothing to do with religious faith. If it did, I’d be out of a job because, despite my Catholic upbringing, me and God haven’t been on speaking terms since I was six. It’s just an extra sense, or maybe an extra set of senses. An exorcist knows when the dead are around, and he can reach out and touch them in various ways: specifically, he can bind them and he can banish them.