The Likeness

13

I had known, from the moment Sam said he was planning chats with his three potential vandals, that there would be consequences. If Mr. Baby-killers was in there, he wouldn’t be one bit happy about being questioned by the cops, he would blame the whole thing on us, and there wasn’t a chance in hell he would let it lie. What I missed was how fast the strike would come, and how straight. I felt so safe in that house, I had forgotten that that in itself should have been my warning.

It took him just one day. We were in the sitting room, Saturday night, not long before midnight. Abby and I had been doing our nails with Lexie’s silver nail polish, sitting on the hearth rug, and were waving them around to dry them; Rafe and Daniel were balancing out the estrogen surge by cleaning Uncle Simon’s Webley. It had been soaking in a casserole dish of solvent for two days, out on the patio, and Rafe had decided it was good to go. He and Daniel had turned the table into their armory zone-tool kit, kitchen towels, rags—and were happily cleaning the gun with old toothbrushes: Daniel was going at the crust of dirt on the grips, while Rafe tackled the actual gun. Justin was stretched out on the sofa, muttering at his thesis notes and eating cold popcorn out of a bowl beside him. Someone had put Purcell on the record player, a peaceful overture in a minor key. The room smelled of solvent and rust, a tough, reassuring, familiar smell.

“You know,” Rafe said, putting down his toothbrush and examining the gun, “I think it’s actually in pretty good shape, under all the crap. There’s a decent chance it’ll work.” He reached across the table for the ammo box, slid a couple of bullets into place and clicked the cylinder home. “Russian roulette, anyone?”

“Don’t,” said Justin, with a shudder. “That’s horrible.”

“Here,” Daniel said, holding his hand out for the gun. “Don’t play with it.”

“I’m joking, for God’s sake,” Rafe said, passing it across. “I’m just checking that everything works. Tomorrow morning I’ll take it out on the patio and get us a rabbit for dinner.”

“No,” I said, snapping upright and glaring at him. “I like the rabbits. Leave them alone.”

“Why? All they do is make more rabbits and shite all over the lawn. The little bastards would be a lot more use in a lovely fricassee, or a nice tasty stew—”

“You’re disgusting. Didn’t you ever see Watership Down?”

“You can’t stick your fingers in your ears or you’ll ruin your manicure. I could cook you a bunny au vin that would—”

“You’re going to hell, you know that?”

“Oh, chill out, Lex, it’s not like he’ll do it,” said Abby, blowing on a thumbnail. “The rabbits come out around dawn. At dawn, Rafe doesn’t even count as alive.”

“I don’t see anything disgusting about shooting animals,” Daniel said, carefully breaking the gun open, “provided you eat what you kill. We’re predators, after all. In an ideal world, I’d love us to be completely self-sufficient-living off what we could grow and hunt, dependent on no one. In reality, of course, that’s unlikely to happen, and in any case I wouldn’t want to start with the rabbits. I’ve become fond of them. They go with the house.”

“See?” I said to Rafe.

“See what? Stop being such a baby. How many times have I seen you stuff your face with steak, or—”

I was on my feet and into a shooter’s brace, my hand grabbing at where my gun should have been, before I understood that I had heard a crash. There was a big jagged rock sitting on the hearth rug beside me and Abby, as if it had been there all along, surrounded by bright flecks of glass like ice crystals. Abby’s mouth was open in a startled little O and a wide cold wind swept in through the broken window, swelling the curtains.

Then Rafe sprang out of his chair and threw himself towards the kitchen. I was half a pace behind him, with Justin’s panicky wail—“Lexie, your stitches!”—in my ears. Somewhere Daniel was calling something, but I swung through the French doors after Rafe and as he leaped off the patio, hair flying, I heard the gate clang at the bottom of the garden.

The gate was still swinging crazily when we flung ourselves through it. In the lane Rafe froze, head up, one hand going back to clamp around my wrist: “Shhh.”

We listened, not breathing. I felt something loom up behind me and spun round, but it was Daniel, swift and silent as a big cat on the grass.

Wind in leaves; then off to our right, towards Glenskehy and not far away, the tiny crack of a twig.

The last of the light from the house vanished behind us and we were flying down the lane in darkness, leaves whipping under my fingers as I reached out a hand to the hedge to guide myself, a sudden burst of running feet up ahead and a harsh triumphant shout from Rafe beside me. They were fast, Rafe and Daniel, faster than I would have believed. Our breathing savage as a hunting pack’s in my ears, the hard beat of our feet and my pulse like war drums speeding me on; the moon waxed and waned as clouds skimmed past and I caught a glimpse of something black, only twenty or thirty yards ahead of us, hunched and grotesque in the strange white light and running hard. For a flash I saw Frank leaning over his desk, hands pressing his headphones on tighter, and I thought at him hard as a punch Don’t you dare, don’t you dare send in your goons, this is ours.

We swung round a kink in the lane, grabbing at the hedge for balance, and skidded to a stop at a crossroads. In the moonlight the little lanes stretched out in every direction, bare and equivocal, giving away nothing; piles of stones huddled in the fields like spellbound watchers.

“Where’s he gone?” Rafe’s voice was a cracking whisper; he whirled around, casting about like a hunting dog. “Where’s the bastard gone?”

“He can’t have got out of sight this fast,” Daniel murmured. “He’s nearby. He’s gone to ground.”

“Shit!” Rafe hissed. “Shit, that little fuck, that vile little—God, I’ll kill him—”

The moon was slipping away again; the guys were barely shadows on either side of me, and fading fast. “Torch?” I whispered, stretching to get my mouth close by Daniel’s ear, and saw the quick shake of his head against the sky.

Whoever this man was, he knew the hillsides like he knew his own hands. He could hide here all night if he wanted to, slip from cover to cover the way centuries of his rebel ancestors had done before him, nothing but narrow eyes watching among the leaves and then gone.

But he was cracking. That rock through the window straight at us, when he had to know we would come after him: his control was slipping, eroding to dust under Sam’s questioning and the constant hard rub of his own rage. He could hide forever if he wanted to, but that right there was the catch: he didn’t want to, not really.

Every detective, in all the world, knows that this is our best weapon: your heart’s desire. Now that thumbscrews and red-hot pincers are off the menu, there’s no way we can force anyone to confess to murder, lead us to the body, give up a loved one or rat out a crime lord, but still people do it all the time. They do it because there’s something they want more than safety: a clear conscience, a chance to brag, an end to the tension, a fresh start, you name it and we’ll find it. If we can just figure out what you want—secretly, hidden so deep you may never have glimpsed it yourself—and dangle it in front of you, you’ll give us anything we ask for in exchange.

This guy was fed up to the back teeth of hiding on his own territory, skulking about with spray paint and rocks like a bratty teenager looking for attention. What he really wanted was a chance to kick some ass.

“Oh my God, he’s hiding,” I said, light and clear and amused into the wide waiting night, in my best snobby city-girl accent. Both of the guys grabbed me at the same time, but I grabbed them back and pinched, hard. “How pathetic is that? Such a big tough guy at a distance, but the second we get up close and personal, he’s under some hedge shaking like a scared little bunny.”

Daniel’s hand loosened on my arm and I heard him exhale, a tiny ghost of a laugh—he was barely even panting. “And why not?” he said. “He may not have the guts to stand and fight, but at least he has enough intelligence to know when he’s out of his depth.”

I squeezed whatever bit of Rafe was nearest—if anything could flush this guy out of cover, it would be that lazy English sneer—and heard his fast, savage catch of breath as the penny dropped. “I doubt there’s any intelligence involved,” he drawled. “Too much sheep in the bloodline. He’s probably forgotten all about us and wandered off to rejoin the flock.”

A rustle, too faint and too quickly cut off to pinpoint; then nothing.

“Here, kitty,” I crooned. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty…” and let it trail off into a giggle.

“In my great-grandfather’s day,” Daniel said coolly, “we knew how to deal with peasants who got above themselves. A touch of the horsewhip, and they learned their place.”

“Where your great-grandfather went wrong was letting them spawn at will,” Rafe told him. “You’re supposed to keep their breeding under control, the way you would with any other farm animal.”

That rustle again, louder; then a tiny, distinct click, like one pebble hitting another, very close by.

“We had uses for them,” Daniel said. His voice had a vague, abstracted note, the same note it got when he was concentrating on a book and someone asked him a question.

“Well, yes,” Rafe said, “but look what you ended up with. Reverse evolution. The shallow end of the gene pool. Hordes of drooling, half-witted, neck-less, inbred—”

Something exploded out of the hedge, only a few yards away, shot past me so close that I felt the wind on my arms, and crashed into Rafe like a cannon-ball. He went down with a grunt and a hideous thud that shook the ground. For a split second I heard scuffling noises, wild rasping breath, the nasty smack of a fist hitting home; then I dived in.

We went over in a tangled heap, hard earth under my shoulder, Rafe gasping for air, someone’s hair in my mouth and an arm twisting like steel cable out of my grip. The guy smelled like wet leaves and he was strong and he fought dirty, fingers groping for my eyes, feet jackknifing up and scrabbling to dig into my stomach. I hit out, heard a burst of breath and felt his hand fall away from my face. Then something slammed into us from the side, hard as a freight train: Daniel.

The weight of him sent all four of us rolling into bushes, branches clawing at my neck, breath hot on my cheek and somewhere the fast merciless rhythm of blows connecting with something soft, over and over. It was a vicious, nasty, messy fight, arms and legs everywhere, bony things jabbing, horrible muffled sounds like feral dogs worrying at a kill. It was three to one and we were every bit as furious as he was, but the dark gave this guy one advantage. We had no way of knowing who we were aiming at; he didn’t have to care, any blow that hit home was a good one. And he was using it, slippery and corkscrewing, tumbling the heap of us over and over on the ground, no way to get our bearings, I was dizzy and breathless and hitting frantically into thin air. A body thumped onto me and I lashed backwards with my elbow, heard a bark of pain that could have come from Rafe.

Then those fingers went for my eyes again. I felt out, found a roughstubbled jaw, got an arm free and punched with my whole body behind it. Something smashed into my ribs, hard, but it didn’t hurt; nothing hurt, this guy could have ripped me wide open and I would never have felt it, all I wanted was to hit him and keep on hitting. A small cool voice far at the back of my head warned, You could kill him, the three of you could kill him like this, but I didn’t care. My chest was a great burst of blinding white and I saw the final reckless arch of Lexie’s throat, I saw the sweet glow of the sitting room defiled with that jagged spray of glass, I saw Rob’s face cold and shuttered and I could have kept on punching forever, I wanted this guy’s blood filling my mouth, I wanted to feel his face explode into pulp and splinters under my fist and just keep going.

He twisted like a cat and my knuckles hit dirt and rock, I couldn’t find him. I grabbed in the dark, caught someone’s shirt and heard it rip as he shouldered me away. There was a desperate, heaving scramble, pebbles flying; a dull sick thud like a boot hitting flesh, a furious animal snarl; then running footsteps, fast and irregular, fading.

“Where—” Someone got a fistful of my hair; I beat the arm away and felt wildly for that face, that rough battered jawline, found cloth and hot skin and then nothing. “Get off—” A grunt of effort, a weight coming off my back; then, sudden and sharp as an explosion, silence.

“Where—”

The moon came out from behind the clouds and we stared at each other: wild-eyed, dirty, panting. For a second I barely recognized the others. Rafe scrambling to his feet with his teeth bared and blood shining dark under his nose, Daniel’s hair falling in his face and streaks of mud or blood like war paint across his cheeks: their eyes were black holes in the tricky white light and they looked like lethal strangers, ghost warriors from the last stand of some lost and savage tribe. “Where is he?” Rafe whispered, a low dangerous breath.

Nothing moved; just a coy little breeze flirting through the hawthorn. Daniel and Rafe were crouched like fighters, hands half curled and ready, and I realized I was too. In that moment I think we could have attacked each other.

Then the moon went in again. Something seemed to leach out of the air, some thrumming too high to hear. All of a sudden my muscles felt like they were turning to water, draining away into the earth; if I hadn’t grabbed a handful of hedge I would have fallen over. There was a long ragged breath, like a sob, from one of the guys.

Footsteps pounded up the lane behind us—we all jumped—and skidded to a stop a few feet away. “Daniel?” Justin whispered, breathless and nervous. “Lexie?”

“We’re over here,” I said. I was shaking all over, violently as a seizure; my heart was clattering so high in my throat that for a second I thought I was going to throw up. Somewhere beside me, Rafe retched, doubled over coughing and then spat: “Dirt everywhere—”

“Oh my God. Are you all right? What happened? Did you get him?”

“We caught him,” Daniel said, on a deep hard gasp, “but none of us could see a thing, and he got away in the confusion. There’s no point in going after him; by now he’s halfway to Glenskehy.”

“God. Did he hurt you? Lexie! Are your stitches—”

Justin was on the verge of panicking. “I’m totally fine,” I said, good and loud to make sure the mike could hear me. My ribs were starting to hurt like hell, but I couldn’t risk anyone wanting to look. “Just my hands are killing me. I got a few punches in.”

“I think one of them hit me, you little cow,” Rafe said. His voice had a giddy, light-headed note. “I hope your hand swells up and turns blue.”

“I’ll hit you again if you’re not careful,” I told him. I felt along my ribs: my hand was trembling so hard I couldn’t be sure, but I didn’t think anything was broken. “Justin, you should’ve heard Daniel. He was brilliant.”

“Oh, Jesus, yes,” said Rafe, starting to laugh. “A touch of the horsewhip? Where the hell did that come from?”

“Horsewhip?” Justin asked wildly. “What horsewhip? Who had a horsewhip?”

Rafe and I were both laughing too hard to answer. “Oh, God,” I managed. “ ‘In my great-grandfather’s day…’ ”

“ ‘When the peasants knew their place…’ ”

“What peasants? What are you talking about?”

“It all made perfect sense at the time,” said Daniel. “Where’s Abby?”

“She stayed at the gate, in case he came back and—Oh God, you don’t think he did, do you?”

“I doubt it very much,” Daniel said. There was the edge of a laugh ready to burst through his voice, too. Adrenaline: we were all crackling with it. “I think he’s had enough for one night. Is everyone all right?”

“No thanks to Little Miss Spitfire,” said Rafe, trying to pull my hair and getting me in the ear instead.

“I’m fine,” I said, batting Rafe’s hand away. Justin, in the background, was still murmuring, “Oh my God, oh my God…”

“Good,” Daniel said. “Then let’s go home.”

There was no sign of Abby at the back gate; nothing but the hawthorn trees shivering and the lazy, haunted creak of the gate in that small cool breeze. Justin was starting to hyperventilate when Daniel called into the darkness, “Abby, it’s us,” and she materialized out of the shadows, a white oval and a swish of skirt and a streak of bronze. She was holding the poker, in both hands.

“Did you get him?” she whispered, a low fierce hiss. “Did you get him?”

“My God, I’m surrounded by warrior women,” Rafe said. “Remind me never to piss you two off.” His voice sounded muffled, as if he was holding his nose.

“Joan of Arc and Boadicea,” Daniel said, smiling; I felt his hand rest on my shoulder for a second and saw the other one stretch out to Abby’s hair. “Fighting to defend their home. We got him; only temporarily, but I think we made our point clear.”

“I wanted to bring him back and have him stuffed and mounted over the fireplace,” I said, trying to dust muck off my jeans with my wrists, “but he got away.”

“The little fucker,” said Abby. She blew out a long, hard breath and lowered the poker. “I was actually hoping he’d come back.”

“Let’s get inside,” said Justin, glancing over his shoulder.

“What did he throw, anyway?” Rafe wanted to know. “I didn’t even look.”

“A rock,” said Abby. “And there’s something taped to it.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus in heaven,” Justin said, horrified, the second we got into the kitchen. “Look at the state of you three.”

“Wow,” said Abby, eyebrows going up. “I’m impressed. I’d love to see the one that got away.”

We looked just about as bad as I’d expected: shaking and skittery-eyed, covered in dirt and scrapes, great dramatic smears of blood in weird places. Daniel was leaning heavily on one leg and his shirt was ripped half off, a sleeve hanging loose. One knee was torn out of Rafe’s trousers, I could see glossy red through the hole, and he was going to have a beauty of a shiner in the morning.

“Those cuts,” said Justin. “They’ll have to be disinfected; God only knows what you’d pick up from those lanes. The dirt of them, cows and sheep and all manner of—”

“In a minute,” Daniel said, pushing his hair out of his eyes. He came up holding a twig, gave it a bemused look and laid it carefully on the kitchen counter. “Before we start on anything else, I think we need to see what’s on that rock.”

It was a folded piece of paper, the lined kind, torn out of a kid’s school notebook. “Wait,” Daniel said—Rafe and I had both moved forwards. He found two pens on the table, picked his way delicately through the broken glass to the rock, and used the pens to pull the paper free.

“Now,” Justin said briskly, bustling in with a bowl of water in one hand and a cloth in the other, “let’s see the damage. Ladies first. Lexie, you said your hands?”

“Hang on,” I said. Daniel had carried the piece of paper over to the table and was unfolding it carefully, still using the butts of the pens.

“Oh,” Justin said. “Oh.”

We moved in around Daniel, shoulder to shoulder. His face was bleeding—either a fist or the rim of his glasses had split his cheekbone open—but he didn’t seem to have noticed.

The note was printed in furious block capitals, so hard that in places the pen had dug right through the paper. WE WILL BURN YOU OUT.

There was a second of absolute silence.

“Oh my God,” Rafe said. He collapsed backwards onto the sofa and burst out laughing. “Brilliant. Actual torch-bearing villagers. How cool is that?”

Justin clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “Foolishness,” he said. All his composure had come back now that he was in the house, with the four of us safely around him and something useful to do. “Lexie, your hands.”

I held them out to him. They were a mess, covered with dirt and blood, knuckles split open and half my nails broken down to the quick—so much for my pretty silver manicure. Justin drew in his breath with a little hiss. “Good heavens, what did you do to the poor man? Not that he didn’t deserve it. Come here, where I can see.” He steered me into Abby’s armchair, under the pole lamp, and knelt on the floor beside me. The bowl gave off a cloud of steam and disinfectant, a warm reassuring smell.

“Do we call the cops?” Abby asked Daniel.

“God, no,” said Rafe, dabbing at his nose and checking his fingers for blood. “Are you mad? They’ll just give us the same old spiel: ‘Thanks for reporting it, there’s not a chance in hell we’ll ever catch the perpetrator, get a dog, bye.’ This time they might even arrest us—one look and you can tell we’ve been in a fight. You think Laurel and Hardy will care who started it? Justin, can I have that cloth for a second?”

“In a minute.” Justin was pressing the damp cloth against my knuckles, so gently I could barely feel it. “Does that sting?” I shook my head.

“I’ll bleed on the sofa,” Rafe threatened.

“You will not. Tip your head back and wait.”

“Actually,” Daniel said, still frowning thoughtfully at the note, “I think calling the police might not be a bad idea, at this point.”

Rafe sat up fast, forgetting all about his nose. “Daniel. Are you serious? They’re petrified of those apes down in the village. They’d do anything to get on Glenskehy’s good side, and arresting us for assault would definitely do that.”

“Well, I wasn’t thinking of the local police,” Daniel said. “Hardly. I meant Mackey or O’Neill—I’m not sure which would be better. What do you think?” he asked Abby.

“Daniel,” Justin said. His hand had stopped moving on mine and that high, panicky note was seeping back into his voice. “Don’t. I don’t want—They’ve been leaving us alone, since Lexie got back—”

Daniel gave Justin a long, inquisitive look over his glasses. “They have, yes,” he said. “But I seriously doubt that means they’ve dropped the investigation. I’m sure they’re putting a considerable amount of energy into looking for a suspect, I think they would be very interested to hear about this one, and I think we have an obligation to tell them, whether it’s convenient for us or not.”

“I just want to go back to normal.” Justin’s voice was almost a wail.

“Yes, well, so do we all,” Daniel said, a little testily. He winced, kneaded at his thigh muscle, winced again. “And the sooner all this is over and someone’s charged, the sooner we can do exactly that. I’m sure Lexie, for example, would feel a lot better if this man were in custody. Wouldn’t you, Lex?”

“Fuck custody, I’d feel a lot better if the little bastard hadn’t got away so fast,” I said. “I was having fun.” Rafe grinned and leaned over to high-five my free hand.

“Regardless of the Lexie thing,” Abby said, “this is a threat. I don’t know about you, Justin, but I don’t particularly want to be burned out.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, he won’t do it,” Rafe said. “Arson takes a certain level of organizational ability. He’d blow himself up long before he got anywhere near us.”

“You want to bet the house on that?”

The mood in the room had turned. The tight-knit, giddy exhilaration was gone, evaporated with a vicious sizzle like water hitting a hot stove; no one was having fun any more.

“I’d rather bet on this guy’s stupidity than on the cops’ brainpower. We need them like we need a hole in the head. If the moron comes back—and he won’t, not after tonight—we sort him out ourselves.”

“Because so far,” Abby said tautly, “we’ve been doing such a brilliant job of dealing with our own problems by ourselves.” She whipped the popcorn bowl off the floor with a tight, angry movement and squatted down to collect the glass.

“No, leave it; the police will want to see it all in situ,” Daniel said, dropping heavily into an armchair. “Ouch.” He grimaced, fished Uncle Simon’s revolver out of his back pocket and put it on the coffee table.

Justin’s hand froze in midair. Abby, straightening up fast, almost fell backwards.

If it had been anyone else I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. But Daniel: something cold as seawater surged over my whole body, whipped the breath out of me. It was like seeing your father drunk or your mother in hysterics: that freefall in your stomach, cables snapping as the elevator gets ready to plummet hundreds of sheer stories, unstoppable, already gone.

“You cannot be serious,” Rafe said. He was on the edge of another fit of laughter.

“What the hell,” Abby inquired, very quietly, “did you think you were going to do with that?”

“Really,” Daniel said, giving the gun a faintly puzzled glance, “I’m not sure. I picked it up purely by instinct. Once we were out there, of course, it was much too dark and too chaotic to do anything sensible with it at all. It would have been dangerous.”

“Heaven forbid,” said Rafe.

“Would you have used it?” Abby demanded. She was staring at Daniel, her eyes huge, and holding the bowl like she was going to throw it.

“I’m not sure,” Daniel said. “I had some vague idea of threatening him with it to prevent him from escaping, but I suppose one never really knows what one is capable of until the situation presents itself.”

That click, in the dark lane.

“Oh God,” Justin whispered, a tremulous breath. “What a mess.”

“Not nearly as much of a mess as it could’ve been,” Rafe pointed out cheerfully. “Blood-and-guts-wise, that is.” He pulled off one of his shoes and shook a trickle of dirt and pebbles onto the floor. Not even Justin looked.

“Shut up,” Abby snapped. “You shut up. This isn’t a fucking joke. This is getting way out of hand. Daniel—”

“It’s all right, Abby,” Daniel said. “Really. Everything’s under control.”

Rafe collapsed back on the sofa and started to laugh again. There was a spiky, brittle edge to it, too near hysteria. “And you say this isn’t a fucking joke?” he asked Abby. “Under control. Is that really the phrase you want, Daniel? Would you really, really say that this situation is under control?”

“I already have,” Daniel said. His eyes on Rafe were watchful and very cold.

Abby slammed the bowl down on the table, popcorn scattering. “That’s bollocks. Rafe’s being a prick but he’s right, Daniel. This is not under control any more. Someone could have got killed. The three of you running around in the dark chasing some psycho arsonist—”

“And when we got back,” Daniel pointed out, “you were holding the poker.”

“That’s not the same thing at all. That was in case he came back; I didn’t go looking for trouble. And what if he had managed to get that thing off you? Then what?”

Any second now someone was going to say the word “gun.” As soon as Frank or Sam found out that Uncle Simon’s revolver had evolved from a quaint little heirloom into Daniel’s weapon of choice, we were into a whole new zone, one involving an Emergency Response Unit team on standby with bulletproof vests and rifles. The thought made my stomach twist. “Doesn’t anyone want to hear what I think?” I demanded, thumping the arm of my chair.

Abby whipped around and stared at me as if she had forgotten I was there. “Why not,” she said heavily, after a moment. “God.” She dropped down on the floor, among the shards of glass, and clasped her hands around the back of her neck.

“I think we definitely tell the cops,” I said. “This time they might actually get the guy. Before, they never had anything to go on, but now all they’ll have to do is find the one who looks like he’s been through a meat grinder.”

“In this place,” Rafe said, “that might not narrow it down very much.”

“Excellent point,” Daniel told me. “I hadn’t thought of that. It would also be useful in a preemptive capacity, in case this man decides to accuse us of assault—which I think is unlikely, but you never know. So we’re agreed? There’s not really much point in dragging the detectives out here at this hour, but we call them in the morning?”

Justin had gone back to cleaning my hand, but his face was drawn and closed. “Anything to get this over with,” he said tightly.

“I think you’re bloody insane,” Rafe said, “but then, I’ve thought that for a while now. And anyway, it doesn’t really matter what I think, does it? You’re going to do exactly what you want to, either way.”

Daniel ignored that. “Mackey or O’Neill?”

“Mackey,” Abby said, without looking up from the floor.

“Interesting,” Daniel said, finding his cigarettes. “My first instinct would have been O’Neill, especially as he’s the one who seems to have been exploring our relationship with Glenskehy, but you may be right. Does anyone have a light?”

“Can I make a suggestion?” Rafe asked sweetly. “When we’re having our little chats with your cop friends, it might be an idea to leave that out.” He nodded at the gun.

“Well, of course,” said Daniel absently. He was still looking around for a lighter; I found Abby’s, on the table beside me, and threw it to him. “It doesn’t actually come into the story at all, anyway; there’s no reason to mention it. I’ll put it away.”

“You do that,” Abby said tonelessly, to the floor. “And then we can all just pretend it never happened.”

Nobody answered. Justin finished cleaning my hands and wrapped Band-Aids around the split knuckles, carefully aligning the edges. Rafe swung his legs off the sofa, went into the kitchen and came back with a handful of wet paper towels, gave his nose a perfunctory scrub and tossed the towels into the fireplace. Abby didn’t move. Daniel smoked meditatively, blood drying on his cheek and his eyes focused on something in the middle distance.

The wind picked up, swirled in the eaves and sent a high wail down the chimney, banked around and came rushing through the sitting room like a long cold ghost train. Daniel put out his cigarette, went upstairs—footsteps overhead, a long scraping noise, a thump—and came back with a scarred, jagged-edged piece of wood, maybe part of an old headboard. Abby held it for him while he hammered it into place over the broken window, the hammer blows echoing harshly through the house and outwards into the night.