It was only a few hours since I’d left Ella Borland’s house in the back of Layfield’s car, but everything looked different now. I felt like I could tear it apart with my bare hands. I stopped the car in front of her yard, jumped out and ran up to her door.

I knocked once. As before, she opened it a little way to peek out, and the second it moved, I barged through. She jumped backwards, screaming. I caught the door as it rebounded on its hinges and slammed it shut. I pointed to one of the easy chairs. ‘Sit down.’

She backed away from me, her eyes wide, taking in the blood and dirt all over my clothes. ‘Before you do anything—’

‘I said, sit.’

She lowered herself slowly into the chair, never taking her eyes off me, ragged breaths coming fast and hard. ‘I’m sorry, I’m—’

‘Where’s my wife?’

She squinted at me, thrown by the question. ‘What?’

‘Tindall threatened my wife and now she’s disappeared.’

She covered her mouth with her hand. The nail on her little finger was chewed to nothing. ‘I don’t know—’

‘Where is she, goddamn you?’

‘I swear, I don’t know anything about that.’

I took Barrett’s gun from my pocket. She threw her hands out in front of her. ‘Wait—’

I pointed it at the floor. ‘Layfield. Tindall. You set me up.’

‘I had no choice. You don’t understand . . .’ She started to sob.

‘Can the tears. Spill.’

She covered her face.

I stood over her, my head pounding. I realised that the clicking sound I could hear was my thumbnail flicking against the hammer.

‘I had to. This town— This godforsaken . . .’ She rubbed the tears away and looked up at me. ‘There are things I haven’t told you. I’m sorry.’ She glanced at the pack of Chesterfields, still on the table. ‘May I?’

There were two left in the pack. I took one and tossed it in her lap. She lit it, taking it from her mouth with trembling fingers. ‘What happened to you?’

‘He tried to kill me. But you knew that already.’

She shook her head violently. ‘No, I swear. I hoped . . .’

‘You hoped what?’

She took a drag of her smoke and exhaled a jagged plume. I could see her chest shaking as it rose and fell. ‘I suppose I hoped he was here to arrest you.’

‘Enough. You made a fool of me once already today. You knew what was going down when you called him here—’

‘I never called him.’

‘He just stopped by? Talk straight—’

‘Mr Tindall sent him. After he saw us together earlier.’

That slowed me down. ‘How did Tindall know who I was?’

‘He owns this town, he knows everything that goes on.’

‘You lured me here. You could have warned me.’

‘How?’ She leapt out of her seat. ‘Layfield was standing right next to me when you called, what else could I do?’ She was leaning in close, inches from my face. She spun away in frustration. ‘After I left you earlier, Pete Swinney called me—’ She saw me blank on the name. ‘He’s one of Mr Tindall’s men. He called right when I got home. He wanted to know what you said and where you went after I left you. I told him I didn’t know, but he didn’t believe me and he said he was sending someone over then, don’t move. I was terrified, I smoked my throat raw – I thought they were coming to kill me. That’s when Layfield came to the door and said I was to draw you out.’

She collapsed back into her seat and flopped her head back, aimed empty eyes at the ceiling.

I took a wooden chair from the table and set it in front of her. I sat down, the gun pressed against my thigh and pointing downward, starting to feel like I was taking my anger out on the wrong person. I looked at her again. ‘What’s Tindall’s interest in me?’

‘It’s because of Jimmy. It’s all because of Jimmy.’

‘Talk. Everything now.’

She shook her head. ‘Please. Please . . .’

I kept staring.

‘Don’t make me do this,’ she said. ‘If you go now, if you run—’

‘They’ve got my wife, I can’t run. Tell me, goddammit.’

She screwed her eyes shut. ‘Jimmy came to me – remember that. If he’d been truthful with me from the beginning, I maybe could have done something more. Just keep that in mind.’

‘What the hell did you do?’

She started in on her story and once she got going, it developed a momentum of its own – a penitent freed by the catharsis of confession. ‘The first time he approached me was in the summer, asking about Jeannie’s murder – he said he’d had a tip we were friends and could help with background for a story he was writing. I was still cut up about it, but I agreed to talk to him because he seemed like he gave a damn. I didn’t understand what he was trying to accomplish because, at the time, I believed the story the way the papers told it – Walter Glover and all that bunk – but I didn’t think anything of it.

‘Jimmy kept coming by, but only at weekends, and I was fond of him. He was just . . . a whirlwind. He never seemed to stop. He knew what I did to get by, and he didn’t care. He was troubled by something – anyone could see that – but he kept that part to himself. As though it was walled off. So I knew better than to ask – and so did he.

‘Then, a few weeks back, he turns up where I’m working out of the blue and says he’s come to town for good. The way he said it, I could tell he thought I’d be delighted. I had a clue he was soft on me, but this was the last thing I would have expected. I mean he was always talking about his work at the newspaper, back in Texarkana.

‘He took that room at Duke’s, and he’d keep coming by to see me – to talk. I saw a different side to him then because his mood depended on how much he’d had to drink. Sometimes he acted like we were courting – he was . . . crazy. Impossible. I got tired of him asking me about Jeannie, but he’d never let it go. He asked me the same questions over and over.

‘Then just after he moved into Duke’s, Pete Swinney showed up at my door. He made me a proposition – if I stuck close to Jimmy, kept them wise to what he got up to, he’d arrange a job for me at the Southern. A dancer—’

‘You were spying on Jimmy? Do I have it straight?’

She flushed red and cast her eyes to the floor, two small piles of ash by her feet where her cigarette had burned away in her hand. ‘I had to. It was a proposition in name only – you don’t turn Mr Tindall down. I didn’t see what harm it could do, it was just telling Pete where Jimmy went and who he spoke to. No great shakes.

‘But then Pete started calling me every day and then it was twice a day, and oftentimes more. He came down so hard, he kept telling me to get closer to Jimmy – “I want every word.” I got suspicious then, because Jimmy was like a dog with a bone when it came to Jeannie and the Prescott girl, and I’m not a fool, there’s no other reason why Mr Tindall would be interested in him. Or me. And I know what they’re capable of.

‘It went on like that for a couple weeks, and I was about ready to crack up because I was more and more certain they were involved in Jeannie’s killing, but there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it. I was scared to death – I could barely answer the telephone. Then one night Jimmy came by and he was mad and he was drunk. I wouldn’t let him in the door. I asked him to leave, but he wouldn’t go – everyone along the street was looking. He started pleading, said he’d made a mistake.’

My skin prickled.

‘He said he’d been by Cole Barrett’s house. He called him every name under the sun. I never saw him like that before – like he could kill someone. I let him in and tried to get him to tell me what had him upset that way, but he climbed inside a bottle and clammed up.’

It chimed with what Barrett had told me – Robinson going to his place and only leaving when Barrett set the dog on him. ‘You reported that back to Tindall?’

‘The next day.’ She was nodding. ‘I had to. Everyone knows Barrett runs bag for Teddy Coughlin. It was going to get back to them anyway.’

I saw it then. Jimmy died thinking his mistake was confronting Barrett; in reality, it was putting his trust in the wrong woman. ‘What was their response to that?’

She looked at the floor. ‘I don’t know. Swinney never said much of anything to what I told him.’

‘Now’s the time to come clean, Ella.’

‘Have you heard a word I said? They never clued me into anything, and it’s not as though I was about to ask.’ She brought her hands to her mouth and clamped her eyes shut, took a breath. ‘But the day after, Jimmy came to me saying he was in danger. He said they’d threatened him and told him to get out of town.’

‘Who had?’ The answer was obvious but I wanted to hear it from her lips.

She was already shaking her head. ‘He didn’t say, but . . .’

‘Doesn’t take a lot of thinking to figure out.’

She looked down, her eyes hooded. ‘Jimmy said he had help coming, someone to finish the job for him if he couldn’t do it himself.’

I felt that hot feeling in my throat again, guilt filling my chest like a spurt of fresh blood. He knew they were going to come for him and he stayed anyway. If I’d have just believed him. If I’d come quicker. If—

‘How in the hell could you look at him with a straight face after that?’

‘How do you think I felt? I could see what was going on. They killed Jeannie.’ Tears streamed from her eyes again. ‘It had to be them. They killed her, and no one cared.’ She doubled over, holding her face.

‘Except Jimmy. And you helped them get away with it.’

She didn’t reply, just sat sobbing in the chair, gasping every time she stopped long enough to draw breath.

I went to the kitchen and found a glass, filled it with water and offered it to her.

She wouldn’t take it. She was muttering words now, into her hands, too quiet to hear.

‘What did you say?’

‘I had no choice. I never had a choice.’

‘You could have told Jimmy what was going on.’

She sat up at that, her face and eyes red, couldn’t look at me. ‘I did tell him. I had to.’

‘Told him when?’

‘Right before the fire.’ She picked up the glass and dropped the stub of her cigarette into it – a hiss, then the water turning dirty grey and a smell of wet ash. She set it back on the floor. ‘He told me he was in love with me.’

Lovesick Jimmy; Lizzie on the money as always. ‘And in return you told him you were spying on him.’

‘No. Not right away.’ She reached for the pack of Chesterfields. I pushed them away and she shot me a look. ‘I told him he was being foolish, but he wouldn’t drop it. He kept on telling me he loved me, and he knew I felt the same. And then he asked me to marry him.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘I blurted it out then – told him I had no feelings for him, that Mr Tindall made me get with him.’ She was all cried out, her voice shredded. ‘I never meant to hurt him, but you can’t blame me for how he was. He wouldn’t listen to reason.’

‘That was the day of the fire, wasn’t it?’

She nodded.

The day Robinson told the barman at the Keystone he wanted to die. I finally got hip – raging bull Jimmy brought to his knees not by lowlifes he was chasing but by the woman who cut his heart out. I wondered if that was what sent him charging out to Barrett’s the second time – and prompted Tindall and Coughlin to decide he had to be silenced for good. ‘That’s why you were scared he took his own life. You knew what you did to him.’

‘I never asked for his affection. I never led him on. I told him to run – begged him. I said that if they’d threatened him like I figured they had, he ought to take it seriously. That’s when he told me that Walter Glover didn’t kill Jeannie. I think he was looking for a way to hurt me.’

I stood up, paced over to the window and back.

‘I never had a choice,’ she said. ‘These men kill women like me without a second thought – you know that to be true. If I’d lied, or if I’d run, or if I’d said no, I’d have wound up the same way as Jeannie and Bess Prescott. That’s why I kept quiet when you showed up – to protect us both. And now it doesn’t matter, because they’ll kill me anyway.’

‘What?’

‘Because of you and Layfield and Jimmy. On account of what I know. Maybe not till after the election, but soon enough for sure.’

I wanted to say something to reassure her, but what she was saying made sense. ‘Why did they kill Runnels and Prescott?’

‘I don’t know.’

I stopped in front of her and said nothing. She looked up at me through her eyebrows. ‘I have no reason to lie to you now.’

I tightened my grip on the gun, but it was for show; I wouldn’t admit it, but my fury was already subsiding. My feelings didn’t run as far as pity, but I could recognise a woman caught in a crossfire.

‘It makes me ill thinking about what I had to do, and the people I’ve helped, but if Jimmy had told me from the start what he suspected about Jeannie, and what he was doing, I might’ve been able to warn him. Or do something different.’ She stood up and made a point of looking me in the eye as she took the last Chesterfield from the pack. ‘I never sought any of this out.’

‘Did Tindall tell you to spy on me too?’

She took the cigarette from her mouth, unlit, and turned away from me.

A tacit admission. It left me unmoved, no surprise any more. I thought about what I needed her to do, and what it would mean. She was right; chances were they’d kill her because she knew about Layfield, and if they thought she was helping me as well, it would only make it more certain. A choice: sacrifice this woman for a shot at saving my wife. It felt like my skull was contracting around my brain.

I stood up and started across the room. ‘I need to use your telephone.’

She nodded without facing me, opening her hand to indicate where it stood.

I asked the operator to place a call to the Journal. It would be futile, and I knew it, but I wanted to exhaust all the other options before making a decision.

Acheson came on the line. ‘Charlie?’

‘Buck, any word?’

‘I spoke to the police. They’re dispatching a car to take a look at your house, on account of the burglary before . . .’

‘You’re sitting on something, what is it?’

He grunted. ‘They said it’s too soon to start searching for her. That she’s an adult, so she could have just taken off somewhere of her own volition. Without a specific threat against her person—’

‘Did you tell them? How much more specific—’

‘I told them and they laughed it off as soon as they heard me say “Arkansas”. They said to leave it a day or two. I played the bad headlines card, but they know it’s a bluff. It’s department policy. And we don’t rate with them, anyhow.’

‘Goddammit.’ I wasn’t sure there was anything the cops could have done, but it smarted anyway. No help anywhere. ‘What about her cousin?’

‘I spoke with her. She . . .’

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing. She’s had no contact in months.’

I blew out a breath.

‘Charlie, what do you want me to do next?’

I glanced at Ella, a dirty taste filming my throat. ‘I’ll take care of it. If you hear anything, call Samuel Masters. Leave word with him.’

‘The Marine guy?’

‘He’s as close to a straight arrow as there is here.’ I gave him the campaign office address to tell the operator. ‘I’ll talk to you.’

I rang off, feeling like I was in quicksand.

‘Do you think she’s still alive?’

I snapped around to look at her.

She was staring at the ceiling, her eyes unfocused. ‘They all talk as though there’s some code – some honour amongst thieves – that makes women untouchable, and yet we always seem to end up in the firing line.’

‘Don’t compare yourself to my wife.’

She lifted her head now. ‘We’re both at the mercy of these men.’

She was right, but she missed her mark by a hair and the indignation came off as false. Just like how she almost made a convincing Hedy Lamarr – but not quite; just like how she’d played aloof to keep me coming back with questions. Under scrutiny, it all showed up as artifice. I fished my wallet from my pocket, coming to the realisation she was forever playing a part. It made my mind up for me. ‘You took the job, though. At the Southern. Dancing.’ I took out what was left of the cash I’d come to give her earlier and set it on the table, holding it in place with my finger. ‘Got a little something for yourself out of it, huh?’

She eyed the money, one arm folded across her stomach and the other holding her cigarette in front of her mouth. ‘What would you have done?’

‘Not that.’ I pushed the bills towards her. ‘All the rest of it I could maybe understand, but no one would have cared whether you went to dance for those men or not.’

‘I’ve been on my own since I was ten years old. I do what I have to just to get by.’

‘You can help me make amends.’

She dropped her cigarette into the glass with the other butt. ‘I have no amends to make.’

‘Then do it for my wife’s sake. You made your choices, she has no part in this.’

She looked at the gun in my hand. ‘At least they have the subtlety not to show their weapons when they threaten me.’

The words stung. I put the gun away, aware now that she wasn’t the only one playing a part she couldn’t carry off. ‘I’m not threatening you. You take this money and you run. Tonight. You can be out of the state before sunrise. All I’m asking is that you deliver a message to Tindall before you go. I won’t force you, it’s your decision.’

‘What’s the message?’

‘That I’ve still got the gun and I’m willing to trade.’

I took my finger off the money. She reached out to take it, tentative, as though it was a trick.

The telephone rang then, cutting the silence like a Tommy gun.

She jumped, whipped around to look at it. She stepped over and answered, then turned her eyes to me, confusion on her face. ‘There’s a man asking for you.’

I went over and took the handset, expecting to hear Acheson’s voice again. I wasn’t even close.

‘So we’re clear from the get-go, this conversation never took place.’

Coughlin.

I was too stunned to say anything smart, words coming on reflex: ‘How the hell did you know I was here?’

‘Not many folks placing calls to Los Angeles right now. We both know the switchboard operators in this town lack discretion.’

‘Where’s my wife?’

‘I’m not a party to that. You won’t believe me, but I swear it’s true. Tindall has contacts in Los Angeles, and he arranged it without my knowledge.’

‘Tell Tindall I want to make a deal. Tell him—’

‘I’m going to say this and hang up, so listen careful: Tindall owns a motel called the Viceroy on the Malvern highway, out near the fairgrounds. He believes it to be a secret, and that’s where he’ll stash Layfield. Remember all he’s done to you when you go there.’ He listed a set of directions. ‘See to this, and I’ll broker a deal with him to spare your wife.’

Then he was gone.

No matter where I ran, they found me.

Ella was staring at me, the money folded tight in her fist. ‘Who was that?’

‘Don’t go to the Southern, forget about the message. Go, now; get as far away from here as you can. Before they catch up with me.’