‘It’s not irrelevant bullshit, Katie. Daniel wrote that word for a reason. It was stuck on a photograph.’

‘What photograph?’

‘The photograph of a body. Someone who was murdered twenty years ago. The body had the mark of that thing that your husband wears round its neck. Like it had been burned onto the skin.’

Katie’s eyes widened. Craig sighed and gazed into the middle distance at nothing in particular.

‘So if you need therapy, you should have chosen something a bit lighter. How about the common grazing rights of the fifteenth-century plains Indian?’

‘Craig.’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘You’re a policeman. Make sense of this.’

He shrugged, his hands out like a surrender. ‘Your husband’s a shaman with an iska … iksa … amulet round his neck that keeps away a bad thing called the Trickster. How’d I do?’

She took her spectacles off and held her forehead in her hand. Her face made him regret the frivolity of his tone. He cursed himself that he was forgetting the circumstances of their conversation. Katie Hunt was looking at him with an expression of utter and total defeat.

‘He’s not a shaman, Craig. He’s a man who likes skiing and bowling, eats celery with a cheese dip while he watches ice hockey on TV and dreams of having a big shiny pick-up with chrome roll bars. He gets on with his quiet simple life and he loves …’ She started to cry, softly. ‘… he loves his family more than anything in the world.’

Craig put out a hand out and touched her arm. She snatched it away with a grunt. She sniffed back her tears. ‘I’m falling for some cop shit here aren’t I? You’re making me believe that you genuinely want to know about this stuff and really you just want to know something else.’

‘Like what? They’ve asked you everything already.’

She was gulping and swallowing, trying to control herself. ‘I don’t know. I’ve watched Columbo. I know the nice cop is the one who gets the stuff he wants by pretending to be interested in pottery or architecture or shit.’

It was Craig McGee’s turn to look defeated. His voice was small. ‘No. I’m not pretending anything. I’m clutching at straws. You want some truth?’

Katie wiped her nose, scrutinized his face and made a tiny nod. ‘The stuff there, that fax? If I make the connections that it automatically suggests to me, join up the myths with the facts, it changes everything.’

‘Like what?’

‘Everything. My whole life. Everything I believe in and everything I know to be true. Nothing will make sense any more, do you understand?’

‘No.’

‘This cup might not be a cup any more. That window might not look onto your yard any more. The sun might not necessarily rise in two hours.’