40

Fixing his eyes on the three tower blocks in the Plain beyond the shops, he walked down Strawberry Hill’s main drag. It wasn’t real walking. It was floating. To his right were small modern flats and maisonettes, to his left older brick terrace houses three storeys tall, sub-divided now into apartments. They were there, but he didn’t really see them. Somehow his sense of time had gone to hell. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning. Light dampness cooling the air. Peaceful. There was a hush cushioned on the soft buzz from the nearby ring road, and Garvie drifted past the shut-up shops, the steepling outline of the Polski church, the launderettes and nails-and-beauty salons, smoking thoughtfully. He was no longer thinking about Damon or Joel Watkins. He was thinking only about Amy Roecastle.

He felt wildly distracted and at the same time, impossibly, deeply at peace.

In a daze he walked half a mile without realizing it, and when his phone buzzed he was surprised to find himself in Five Mile already, at the corner of Pollard Way and Bulwarks Lane.

He looked at his phone. Amy. Perhaps, like him, she couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened.

‘Hey,’ he said softly.

There was a silence, then he heard her scream his name at the top of her lungs. It nearly broke his eardrum. ‘He’s here!’ she screamed. ‘He’s after me!’

There was the brief harsh sound of ragged panting, then the phone went dead.