The rain was softening again, a thin fog drifting in over the garden’s branches. A streetlamp threw a halo of pink light into the weather, but the façade of the corner house seemed to shrink back from it into the folds of night. Every window was shuttered. No light shone through the gaps, no sign of light or life at all.

“What …?”

“Wait for it,” said Harper.

Then there it was. As the two watched through the windscreen, through the broad, clear arcs left by the ticking wipers. A white spot appeared through the slats of an upstairs shutter. It lengthened to a white line, angled off. It was gone. Then it appeared again, moving. Glaring for an instant at the point where the shutters joined. Then it vanished.

“A torch,” said Bernard.

“Yes,” Harper said.

A few moments later, it went on again—on and off at a window lower down. Whoever held the flashlight was descending through the house.

“Why would he be using a torch?” said Bernard.

“Exactly my point,” said Harper Albright.

She had her Borsalino resting on her lap. She lifted it now, put it on, pulled it low on her brow. She clutched her stick, her eyes alive behind her spectacles. She watched, her nerves electric. She did not stir.

The light flickered again; the outer edge of its nimbus touched the slats of a shutter on the ground floor.

“He’s coming out,” Bernard said softly.

Thirty seconds went by like an hour. They watched. The wipers ticked.

Then the door to the corner house came open, closed. There was an obscure movement in the recessed entryway. Harper could hear her pulse in her ears, could hear Bernard breathing beside her.

A hunched, stocky figure emerged from the recess, stepped out onto the pavement. He stood. Looked left and right along the deserted street. The rain dampened the slash of his tawny hair. The lamplight glinted in his pink, piggy eyes; it drew his features out of the shadows.

It was the scarred man.

“Turn off the wipers,” Harper hissed. “Quickly.”

Bernard did, and the windscreen misted over. The Morris’s engine popped and hummed.

The scarred man stepped to a hulking black car parked at the curb. He pulled the door open, ducked inside.

“He’ll see us if he comes this way,” Bernard said.

“Shh. No. Maybe not. He’s in a hurry.”

The black car started up, moved out into the street, came towards them. Harper heard Bernard’s breathing stop. Her own breathing stopped. They sat absolutely still.

The black car roared, accelerated swiftly. Swiftly, it was past them. Out of the square.

Harper threw open her door. She was in the street in a second, heading for the house.

“I’ll go after him,” Bernard shouted, and he threw the car into gear.