They left Anna Lassiter glaring at them furiously, like the jackals they were.

*   *   *

Costain and Ross went back to their cars in the bright afternoon sunlight, and Ross felt as if she wanted to die. ‘We’re not going to be able to find whoever stole it,’ she said, aware of how tiny her voice sounded now. ‘We don’t have enough evidence. We don’t have enough contacts in that world.’

‘There are the fingerprints. You never know.’

She had to lean on her car. She didn’t feel like going anywhere or doing anything. She was starting to see the edges of grief, doubled for her, unfolding infinitely around her. ‘Why are you so hopeful?’

‘I’m … not. I suppose…’ He rested on the car beside her. ‘I suppose I just have to keep going. For Jimmy.’

‘Right. Keep going.’ She made herself say it, but she didn’t feel it.

They went back to Costain’s place, took some more meth, fucked. Ross took what pleasure she could from it. She found no happiness. She was thinking about her father and Jimmy in Hell.

Then the phone rang.

Chapter Twenty-Two

TWENTY-TWO

Kev Sefton had stood at the door of the Portakabin watching Costain’s car roar off down the road. He felt, in that moment, too angry to breathe.

What was he supposed to do? Carry on on his own? What could he do?

Nothing. He was meaningless and had now been utterly deserted. Was all this happening to him because he’d taken a life? He’d felt wrong ever since. Was that why Brutus was still rejecting him, why his source and … patron, he supposed, wasn’t allowing him access? He had no idea how Brutus felt about death. Or about anything, really.

He sat down on the floor. He let his head drop back against the wall. He felt desperately that he wanted to fall asleep, but he couldn’t let that happen. He felt a dream welling up in his head, making strange sense of his thoughts, and fought it off. He wouldn’t close his eyes.

He closed his eyes. He was on the verge of sleep. He was on the verge of giving in. ‘Help,’ he said, with no power in his voice.

Something moved over the Portakabin. The light against his eyes changed. He heard a distant sound. Distant music. Dance music. It was like a hand on his face. It was an echo of the joy that he and Brutus had shared in a kiss. Dance music that took him back to happier times.

The music offered him a way forward. A terrible way.