There was a hollow clunk and the man took two big steps backwards. His hand shot to his head. He stumbled, then lost his balance and fell backwards, onto the floor, his head smacking hard on the ground.

It took John a few seconds to piece together what had happened. The man was very still. Eddie stood over him, his fingers curled tightly around a loose brick. He must have found it on the floor, must have picked it up, must have—

‘What the fuck did you do?’ John hissed.

‘He was going to tell,’ Eddie muttered. ‘You heard him. He was going to tell.’

The man’s limbs jerked once. He made a gurgling sound. A rough triangle shape was missing from his forehead. A narrow line of blood seeped from it, cutting a vertical stripe from forehead to chin.

‘I had to,’ Eddie kept saying. ‘He was going to tell. I had to. He was going to tell. I had to…’

‘Jesus, Eddie,’ John said. ‘What have you done?’

‘I had—’

‘We need to help him.’

As Eddie began to pace, cry and curse, John went to the man. He was still alive, he thought, but there was a lot of blood and it kept coming. It wasn’t just a seep now. It guzzled from the wound in his head in shallow bursts, keeping in time with his heartbeat.

‘He’s still alive,’ John said.

‘Come on, we have to go.’

‘We need to help him.’

‘We have to get out of here, John. Now!’

Eddie yanked at John’s arm, but John refused to move. He couldn’t move. All he could do was watch the light fade from the man’s eyes.

Eddie dropped the brick and ran. His hurried footsteps echoed around the terminal. Then there was only John and the dying man. And he was dying. His chest rose once, then fell. The blood streaming down his face slowed to a stop. John stared at the blood. It didn’t look like one whole thing, John thought, but hundreds of tiny things.

‘Like caterpillars,’ he muttered. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen … This wasn’t supposed to

happen that way,’ Eddie said.

Abby sat in stunned, broken silence. Her first thought was: I wish I didn’t believe them. Her second was one of self-preservation. She didn’t wish that David Stemple hadn’t met his end, only that it hadn’t been at the hands of her own son. She wished it had been John. Why couldn’t it have been John?