‘If that’s what you want. Likely to be a waste of time, though. Girl’s probably had a fall-out with a parent and been dragged into a vehicle to take her home. The vast majority of these turn out to be false alarms.’

‘You see, that’s the problem with statistics. We rely on them to convince ourselves that we don’t need to rush, that everything will turn out fine. Which in my experience is exactly when things turn out more fucked than you could ever have imagined.’

‘Positive motivational talks not your thing, then,’ Baarda muttered.

‘Positive motivation is overrated.’ Connie reclined her seat and closed her eyes. ‘The only trigger human beings really respond to is abject frigging fear.’

Chapter Ten

Another of his teeth had fallen out that morning. Fergus had inspected it at length. It was a lower left molar, now in an egg cup on top of the microwave. He’d tried to recall when he’d last visited the dentist and couldn’t. There had been so many medical appointments over such a protracted period that at some point he’d simply switched off from it all, attending those he could in a blur of travel – wait – answer questions – look away from the needle – wait – travel. The timeline of it all was meaningless. He wondered if he’d had toothache before the offending pearl had seen fit to desert him, but there was pain so often that he’d probably just beta-blocked it out. No doubt he was calcium deficient along with everything else. His gums bled all the time. He wasn’t retaining iron. There was nothing he could do to stop the rot.

The disease was consuming him exponentially. He’d thought he had months, recently reviewed that time estimate and had concluded he should make that weeks instead. Now, he knew, he had just days left. If that was all, he had to move fast. No more watching, no more waiting, just forward momentum. Which was why Meggy Russell was currently in the boot of his car and kicking up a storm.

She wasn’t what he’d expected. At twelve, she was supposed to have been unprepared for him. Scared, and easy to threaten. Pliable. In fact, sweet little Meggy, who liked to go to the park alone and sit watching the clouds go by, often with a book in hand, apparently immune from the addiction offered by a mobile phone, had turned out to be a hellcat.