She ate lunch with her brother Walter and let loose a tirade against the mayor. ‘Byron Lym has no interest in the unfortunate people of this world,’ she said, speaking quickly and breathlessly. Boiling fury and exasperated irritation bordering on despair made her burst out: ‘He is selfish and corrupt and bad for the town.’

Walter served the macaroni cheese and Patience sat without eating, fuming.

Byron Lym had won every election in Piper City for fifteen years. The margin was narrow, but on election day, the Republican vote always seemed to win out: there were enough people in Piper City who didn’t seem to mind Byron Lym stealing their taxes and spending them on himself, as long as he kept them low.

‘It’s wrong, Walter,’ she declared, ‘the way that man manages to hold onto those votes. It’s like a greedy child with a handful of sticky candies and it shouldn’t be allowed when there’s not one ounce of goodness in him, not one single solitary drop.’

Walter raised his eyebrows and looked at his sister with his mild smile. ‘No light of God, sister?’

Patience threw her napkin at him across the table. ‘Don’t tease me Walter. Doubtless it is there in some dark silk-lined pocket of his embroidered waistcoat but if it is he keeps it well hidden.’

When they’d finished eating she asked her brother to please excuse her, she was going out for some air and for an hour Walter could hear her out on the porch glider, rocking furiously back and forth, the rusty rings creaking and tugging in the porch roof as if they might pull the whole thing down at any moment.

In his cell, Pike sat with the rope cutting into his wrists, the chain grinding against his hips every time he shifted himself in the chair. He looked around at the bare brick walls and the thick bars, at Knapp reading his newspaper or hunched over his skillet or dragging the twigs of his old broom across the office floor.

He closed his eyes and sat listening to the rustle of the aspen trees outside, and from time to time he turned his head and looked out through the tiny window at the maroon peaks of the mountains.

Eleven o’clock had come and gone, then twelve and the woman in the grey dress with the lopsided nose had not appeared. Three o’clock, four, still no sign, and Galen Pike discovered that he missed her.