He smelled the burning a second too late and quickly pulled the blackened toast from beneath the grill. He tossed it on to a plate and finished the piece he was eating while he waited for it to cool.

It had done the trick, that stuff about the scalpel. It had scared him. He’d seen the colour go out of the cocky bastard’s face, drain away just like that and he hadn’t said a great deal since.

He sat and chewed his toast and thought about other things he could do.

If just watching him was this exciting, he wondered how it would feel to take things a step or two further…

He couldn’t be sure how it would go down with whoever was running things, him doing anything he hadn’t been specifically told to do. He would be careful, obviously. He knew that the prisoner had to be kept alive.

It would all be over soon enough anyway.

If everything went according to plan – whatever the plan was – he’d be out of the house by the end of the day. So, it couldn’t really hurt if, between now and then, he used a bit of initiative, could it? Beyond the job he’d been given – to watch the prisoner, to keep him fed and watered until the time came – he didn’t know any of the details, none of them did. But there was always a chance it might actually help, doing a tiny bit more damage.

Something creative.

He picked up a slice of the burned toast and used the knife to scrape away the charcoal.

Maybe he’d see how things were when he went into the bedroom to clear the stuff away. See if there were any more smartarse digs about who was in charge, about how he got on with girls, all that.

He scraped harder, watched the flakes and puffs of black dust drift into the sink, and imagined the knife working at a shin, or on the back of a hand.

Yeah, he’d see if the man on the bed had anything else to say to him, and decide then.

FIFTY-THREE

‘I can’t sleep.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘I think it’s because I’m too excited.’

‘What the hell have you got to be excited about?’

‘Well, I know this isn’t exactly the lap of luxury, but it’s still the first night I’ve spent in ten years that isn’t behind bars. The first room I’ve slept in that doesn’t have a lock on the door.’

‘Make the most of it.’

‘Oh, I intend to. Bed’s pretty nice, actually, not too soft. What about yours?’

‘Make the most of it, because it’s strictly a one-night deal.’

‘Oh I know. Stroke of luck and all that.’

‘Not for me.’

‘Any news on Huw’s father, by the way?’

‘Like you give a toss.’

‘Just wondered if it was anything serious. You didn’t say.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘There’s no point blaming yourself for any of this, you know.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘What can you do? I mean, you can’t control the weather, can you? Mind you, you can see why we Brits love to talk about the bloody weather so much, can’t you? I mean, it’s one of the few things in the world that’s still unpredictable these days, isn’t it? That keeps things interesting. See, we like to think that we can control our lives, that we’re on top of everything with all our technology, but it’s only really the trivial things we’ve got any sort of handle on or say in. No amount of flashy gadgets or apps are any good when it comes to shit like the weather. You think you’ve got it covered, don’t you? You check all the forecasts or whatever and then bang, it surprises you. Lets you know who’s boss. Same thing with illness or accidents or what have you. Same thing with death…’

‘You going to keep talking shit all night?’

‘Take murder for a kick-off.’

‘I’ll gag you if I have to, you know that, right?’

‘I bet you’d love to.’

‘These are special circumstances. I can do whatever I want, if I think the situation merits it.’

‘It’s the same as the weather, that’s all I’m saying, Tom. Murder is. You know it’s coming, because it always has, but you don’t know what and exactly when and basically there’s sod all you can do about it. You know better than most why most murders happen. People kill each other because they’ve had one glass too many or because they fancy someone they shouldn’t. Because they’re greedy or getting their own back or because someone looked at their other half the wrong way in the pub. They snap one day after too many years being bullied or belittled or passed over. Ordinary, dull, stupid reasons. So, you know why murders happen, but it doesn’t make it any easier to stop them happening, does it? Harder, if anything. I mean, yes, it might make the killers a bit easier to catch, but those same reasons for doing it in the first place are going to be there year after year, century after century. Making more work for priests and gravediggers and people like you.’

‘You’ve clearly got far too much time to think.’

‘And whose fault is that?’

‘Maybe you should be spending a bit more of it doing things. Making yourself useful.’

‘What, you think I should be getting busy in the prison workshop? You think I need a hobby?’

‘Why not?’

‘You wouldn’t let me have a spoon. You really think the Fletchers of this world want to let me loose with power tools? Now… in terms of weather, your ordinary murderers, your drunks and jealous husbands and skint smackheads… they’re just like… drizzle, or whatever. They’re everyday, much-as-we-expected. They’re bog-standard. No challenge at all for someone like you, am I right?’

‘You think it’s a game?’

‘Far from it. I’m just saying, not exactly taxing, is it? When the wife who’s been having an affair is lying on the kitchen floor with her brains bashed in and her old man’s done a runner. When the arsehole who likes to knock his girlfriend around gets a bread knife stuck in his chest while he’s asleep and there’s a blood-soaked nightie in the washing basket. Even a copper like that retard you’ve stuck in the chapel could crack cases like that, right? That’s just normal weather conditions. But then there’s the freak stuff that you can never see coming. The tsunamis and the tornados. The deadly weather.’

‘And that’s killers like you, is it? The special ones. That what you’re saying?’

‘I’m saying… not run of the mill.’

‘You’re every bit as ordinary. Every bit as stupid.’

‘You know that’s not true.’

‘You’re a bog-standard nutter who makes a splash and gets ideas above his station.’

‘A splash?’

‘A few books and TV documentaries and thinks he’s way more important than he actually is.’

‘Karim could never have caught me though, could he?’

‘How the hell should I know?’

‘Course you know. You know it’s the likes of me that get your blood jumping. Same as those idiots that get off being in the middle of hurricanes, the ones that go looking for them.’

‘I need to get some sleep…’

‘Come on, be honest, just for once. If you had a choice between solving a hundred ordinary murders… catching a hundred examples of drizzle on two legs, or one of me, what would you choose?’

‘This is stupid.’

‘Admit it, Tom, you’re a storm-chaser.’

‘Go to fucking sleep.’

‘I told you —’

‘Try.’

Thorne closed his eyes, but they were quickly open again. Wide and unblinking. Watching the cobwebs dance in slow motion just below the ceiling and struggling suddenly to hear the sea above the roaring of his blood.

Asking himself a question that Nicklin had already answered.

What the hell have you got to be excited about?

FIFTY-FOUR

It might have been an hour later, or perhaps it was two, and Thorne was listening to the low rattle and wheeze of Nicklin snoring, when he heard footsteps on the landing. He sat up and swung his feet to the floor just as Fletcher appeared, putting on his jacket, in the bedroom doorway.

‘Batchelor needs the toilet.’