She pulls away and looks at him. He nods encouragement. He has shed his coat already and is kicking off his shoes. He is going to go off the bridge into the water, she thinks.

‘No!’ she says.

‘Stay here.’

The policewoman has seen him. She is heading his way. ‘Sir!’

‘It’s all right,’ he says, yanking at his shirt. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘Alex, no!’

She can hear the policewoman calling for back-up.

From the water comes a surge and then a rumble. There is a tremendous pain in her ear followed by a muffled roar. A sickening yellow light fills her field of view and for a moment she cannot breathe. She reaches up and scrabbles to wipe away the searing, sticky hail raining down on her face. She scrambles about for a purchase on something but it is like trying to find a shadow in the dark. Her chest aches now, lungs feel that they might explode. There are no more thoughts. There is nothing.

Chapter 53

Cullen

Cullen has been waiting for this moment. For hours now he has watched the comings and goings on the boat from an abandoned graffiti-strewn shed on the quayside which, judging from the smell, some of the people in the encampment have been using as a toilet. But no matter. He was nauseous anyway. Adrenaline does that to a man.

Killing Amanda felt nothing like killing Natasha. The Smith girl will be next. Could murder be growing on him?

He waits for the harbourside to settle into its night-time routine, the gulls sail off to wherever it is they pass the night, the water birds find safe moorings on the pontoons, the brazier at the homeless encampment softens to a glow, the encampment’s inhabitants retreat to their tents to get shelter from the rain.

It has been years since he has felt this alive. Come to think of it, this is the most alive he has ever felt since he was a child. Which is not to say that his death wish has gone away. On the contrary, it leers over him like a great dark cloud waiting to disgorge its contents. That’s a good part of the feeling of aliveness.

The only important thing about death, he thinks, is that you have to choose it before it chooses you. The only good death is the one you control. He is not afraid. He believes in the purity of death. The sanctity of release. When his time comes, soon now, he will thumb his nose at life and go gentle into the good night and for a few seconds or microseconds he will be happy.