‘Shut up!’ Graham screamed, running at Patrick, who sidestepped, leaving a leg trailing so Graham tripped and fell hard to the floor. As he pushed himself up, Patrick moved past him towards the door, drawing Graham farther away from Mervyn. The PR man was out of sight now, around the edge of the model railway, but Patrick could hear him sobbing.

‘I bet all that stuff on her Facebook page was true. About how she liked shagging dogs . . .’

Graham threw himself at Patrick, his face twisted with fury, and Patrick braced himself, ready to fight. But then Graham stopped.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I know what you’re doing.’

He smiled like he was oh so clever and pulled another match from the box, turning to walk back towards Mervyn.

He struck the match.

The flame shot up his petrol-soaked arm. Patrick jumped away from him and Graham screamed, pulling open his jacket, popping the buttons and throwing it to the floor just as the flames rippled across the entire garment, consuming it. Patrick held his breath, convinced the fire would spread, that he and Graham had left a trail of petrol droplets across the floor. But the jacket blazed in isolation, for the moment at least. Patrick looked around frantically and spotted a bottle of mineral water on the model railway’s control panel. Snatching it up, he doused the remaining flames.

Graham was making a terrible noise, breaths coming quick and shallow. He held up his arm, his face contorted with agony. The fire had eaten through the sleeve before he’d torn off the jacket and his arm was black and pink. Patrick could smell burning meat.

‘Help me. Please.’

Patrick grabbed hold of Graham’s other arm and yanked him towards the exit, pulling him out into the open air. But Graham broke free. Patrick chased after him, but realising Graham was heading towards the fish pond, he slowed to a walk.

There was a part of Patrick, a dark part, that wished Graham Burns’s whole body had been wet with petrol, not just his arm, that the flames had engulfed him. That Graham had died in unspeakable pain, his punishment for what he’d done, the torture he’d inflicted on those girls, the lives he’d ended prematurely, including Wendy’s.

Especially Wendy’s.

Instead, Graham would go to prison, or a secure hospital, the kind of place they sent the criminally insane, and he would probably spend the rest of his life there, living and breathing, fed and looked after. Graham talked about justice, but the justice he believed in was an eye for an eye. Not justice, but vengeance.

We’re better than that, Patrick thought as he strode after Graham, watched him plunge his arm into the cold water of the carp pond, up to the elbow. Graham lay still on his front, his arm hanging in the water, his cheek against the concrete. His face appeared to glisten with tears, but perhaps it was only water from the pond.

Patrick took out his phone and called Carmella.

‘We’ve got him,’ he said. ‘I need back-up and an ambulance.’ He sniffed the arm of his jacket, could feel the petrol soaking through to his skin. ‘And a change of clothes.’

He sat on the damp lawn, realising he ought to go back and release Mervyn, but he wasn’t going to let Graham out of his sight this time. He took his e-cigarette out of his jacket pocket and took a long drag, watching Graham and feeling thankful that he didn’t smoke real cigarettes anymore.

Epilogue

It was the third encore, ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, and Patrick sneaked a look at his wife, standing beside him, mouthing the words along with the singer on stage. She looked about eighteen, with her long hair tied back and minimal make-up, the heat and excitement giving her cheeks a pink flush.

‘My God,’ he shouted in her ear. ‘I haven’t seen you smile like that for years!’

In reply, she slipped an arm around his waist and hugged him. He’d almost forgotten how much of a Cure fan she was too, how that was the first thing that had bonded them all those years ago when they met.

It had been in the function room of a pub down by the river in Hammersmith, a mutual friend’s thirtieth birthday party. Pat had turned up not knowing anyone except the birthday girl’s fiancé, and he’d been on the verge of going home again when suddenly ‘Just Like Heaven’ came on over the PA and Gill, sitting at a table nearby with a bunch of mates, had started to sing along, her lips moving in perfect synch with every syllable and phrase.

Patrick hadn’t wanted to go home again after that. And when he did, eventually, it was with Gill on his arm, and they’d been almost inseparable from that point on. Until . . .

Well, no need to think about that. Not tonight, he thought, with Bonnie safe on a sleepover with his mum and dad, a nice three-pint beer buzz on, his wife’s arm around his waist and his idol, Robert Smith, on stage.

It had been a tough month, one of the toughest, especially Wendy’s funeral last week. Patrick and Suzanne had driven up to Wolverhampton together to represent the MIT, their faces rigid with the effort of not displaying the emotion they felt, surrounded by Wendy’s weeping family and friends. It seemed unthinkable that Wendy was no longer on the planet, her chirpy presence and eager voice gone forever – particularly because Pat felt so responsible. Suzanne had been great – quietly supportive, surreptitiously putting a hand on his arm during the funeral when she felt that he was about to lose it – and he had been grateful to her.

He’d been anxious about spending so much time with her that day, just the two of them, but the gravitas of the situation had instantly and utterly expunged any hint of romance. Suzanne had been warm and kind, but, to both their unspoken surprise, there hadn’t been a trace of flirtation or any of their prior longing glances. Perhaps Wendy’s death was the stopper that had crammed that particular genie firmly back in its bottle before it escaped altogether.

It was a relief. Patrick hadn’t realised how much added pressure it had been putting on him, the possibility of something happening between him and Suzanne, and the inevitable nightmarish ramifications of it. Keep it simple, stupid, he muttered to himself. That would be his mantra from now on. ‘Simple’ was the simplicity of the family unit, the absence of choice, the embrace of commitment. Him and Gill and Bonnie; that was all that mattered.

At least that’s what he’d thought until Suzanne texted him halfway through the gig. He pulled out his phone and surreptitiously read the message:

HOPE YOU’RE LOVING THE GIG. YOU DESERVE A BIT OF FUN! MISS YOU. SX

 

Miss you? He deleted the text without replying, but he could not delete the feeling that it left inside his head and in his heart. She had never said anything so overt to him before, and he felt a flash of anger at her choosing to do so now.

He would still ‘keep it simple’, he decided – but those few words on his phone’s screen made him aware of how difficult it would continue to be. You couldn’t just switch off your feelings for someone, no matter what the circumstances were.

He tried to look at the positives. At least he still had a family, a career, his life – unlike Wendy, who had nothing and who’d been killed for nothing.

Patrick felt again the sting of how senseless her death had been. DI Strong’s team, working with the Global Sounds IT department, had traced a deleted conversation between Wendy and Graham, posing as a user called Mockingjay365. Graham had clearly been worried that Wendy had found out something that would get him arrested, but in reality Wendy’s theory didn’t exist. Graham had had no reason, even following his own twisted logic, to kill her.

It was a sickening waste. And Patrick would always feel partially responsible.