3.55am. Thursday, 9th November
That he was still alive came as a shock. Lying on his back on the hard ground, unable to move, pain everywhere, the house towered above him, flaming from every window.
Smoke belching and billowing from Edwardian brickwork. It wasn’t empty any more, but filled with darkness and Hell’s flames inside and out.
He lost her. She was there and then she was gone. He tried to feel happy about it, retain that satisfaction with himself and his place in the world. Drawing himself in. Praying Honor was still alive. Then he saw her – walking towards him. Unsmiling and lit up by the flames. Relief. Guilt. Knowing that she didn’t want to be there – that she would rather be someplace else, anywhere else but with him.
Deep within him, something shifted and he felt it like another explosion, like blast waves in the aftermath of a bomb, moving away from his core and through him. Like vibrations from immense silver bells pealing out across the countryside. Like there was music in the universe and he could suddenly feel it because he was part of it – feel it in the soul he didn’t think he possessed.
There. In front of him.
Her face.
“North. North.” Calling him. Needing him. Shaking him. “North.”
Shouting. Loudly. His head breaking apart with it.
He opened his eyes.
It wasn’t her. The sensation of loss all over again.
Desolation.
Stella drove with one hand, shaking him with the other. He sat slumped in the front passenger seat, his forehead pressed against the cold window. Every bone in his body hurt. He moved his feet – he might as well know if he’d smashed his spine to dust in the fall. He turned his head as the blue light swept the interior of the car and the first then the second of the fire engines went by.
Jimmy?
Stella’s hand which had been on him went back to the wheel.
Hard core, he heard. Poor bastard.
“You were taking too long. The car’s got a tracker, and I wanted to check you were okay.” She made a tight right. Her half-and-half face set like a death mask. “Jimmy’s dead. You don’t mess around – I’ll give you that.”
She thought he set the house ablaze. Her first instinct was that he killed Jimmy the Sniff for knowing too much or not knowing enough. He opened his mouth to explain, that the Board had found him. Something was wrong. His stomach felt fleshy and raw, a pain at the core of him. His hand wet. His head hurt – daylight flooding him with pain. Jimmy the Sniff’s “North, mate…” his last thought.