It had to be someone who knew Fallan had resurfaced. More than that, it had to be someone who knew about the red mid-nineties Civic, and not only knew about it yesterday, but had the wherewithal to quickly locate and steal another one. Finally, it also had to be someone who knew she had been to see Fallan, who knew that she was aware not only of what he was driving, but of what he was capable.

Sunderland’s single, cautious, defensive word echoed in her head.

‘Us.’

Who was it that had told her about Glen Fallan in the first place, and thereby thrown a rogue piece into the puzzle so that she couldn’t make any of it fit? Someone with a lot of hidden connections with organised crime in this city, someone who had wise old heads like Fletcher wondering at what point the line between gaining somebody’s trust and being in somebody’s pocket started to blur.

Detective Superintendent Douglas Abercorn.

Listening to Fear

Jasmine turned over in bed and looked at the clock, its green LED lights reporting that it was twenty past two. Her heart was thumping in her chest, her body energised and alert, and it was only this sudden start that even told her she’d been asleep. It couldn’t have been for long either, perhaps the descent into an unconscious state being what precipitated her regression to the events outside the map shop.

She felt like she’d dreamed about it only for a split second before coming to; the memory of external sounds and images only a faint echo. It was the internal sensations that had truly jolted her, as though her mind and body were working through feelings and responses that had been deferred at the time by other survival mechanisms.

Prior to that, she had lain awake and frustrated, tossing and turning as the hours drew on and sleep did not come despite her exhaustion and the familiarity of her own bed. Part of it must have been down to the shooting, so many mental and physical systems suddenly supercharged and then only slowly coming down again. Her brain, for one thing, seemed in no state to rest, but nor was it proving any use at analysing any of the things that had been thrown at it. There were just too many of them, and she was too tired – and her brain too skittish – to concentrate on any single problem, jumping randomly from one to the next. It was like trying to sleep while someone was changing channels on a radio.

Two questions in particular kept prompting her for answers that she couldn’t give.