The pieces she had seen were fragments. She saw them now. The components of the instrument of her brother’s destruction, the guilty acts and sins that had brought Alex to that place, on that night, she saw them. Her mother’s years and years of sin, her weak hands holding onto him. The way her father risked and denigrated him. Drugs. His own helpless, guileless faith. And that he had no space to live beyond survival. None of these had been the thing to kill him, but they played their part. She saw her own cowardice, her awkward, respectful efforts. The picture shifted and dissolved. Pieces revealed themselves and receded, and then came back to nothing. London. France. Her father’s lies and bank accounts, the names in the notebooks and provincial policemen, sifting through logical truths and family quarrels; bureaucracy, rules, established procedure, evaporated, at the whim of one man’s anarchy. Roaming, mindless, seeking power, he’d seen his little chance and taken it, and all established evil, all efforts at good, were nothing. She saw the pieces. Each one had its share of blame. The whole had been unknowable.

‘I’m blessed,’ he was saying. ‘Blessed. I mean, I didn’t even know the guy. What are the chances?’

She couldn’t answer, or try to please him. She refused to try. He sighed. He tapped the steering wheel. Then without warning, he pulled the car over, and stopped, abruptly, in a lay-by.

It was more frightening, now the car had stopped. She tried not to flinch from him, but he seemed to have forgotten her. He sat with the engine idling, ignoring her. She rested her head on the window as he, totally concentrated, set up the sound system, and scrolled through music. He found some country rock, a thin voice singing something about the flag and coming home.

‘Yeah, it’s cheesy, but it’s good to drive to. Maybe I do miss the States, you know? Greatest country in the world. The greatest. Can’t go back now. Nope. Maybe never. I could tell you about that.’

He pulled out and started off again, onto the narrow ribbon of a road.

She couldn’t see any other cars now. Her mind dipped in and out, like lying down in snow. The pulse throbbed in her bruises. She imagined her blood crowding in, her cells, rallying to heal. She closed her eyes.

She opened them. And then it was twilight, and the pine forests were closer to the car. She licked her lips and dislodged a scab. She could see a gorge to one side, and ribbed, streaky rock dropping away to invisible ravines.

‘Almost there,’ he said. ‘Almost. Jesus. Another campsite. Every place in the whole of this goddamn country. OK, this is good, this is good, right here.’