Just then, my head jolted back. Pain rang through my face like it was a tuning fork. A starburst of colour cleared to reveal Marion inches from me, her raging bloodshot eyes locked onto mine. I screamed but the vacuum devoured the sound whole. My senses twitched and flinched, sensing that, this time, she’d come to do me real harm.

I felt her cool flesh against mine as she clasped my right hand. Slowly, she brought it up towards her. She then pressed it, palm-down, on the arm of the sofa. She leaned on it with all her might. My hand tried to fight back, shaking and quivering against her domination.

Her free left hand pinched my little finger and pulled it apart from the other restrained digits. Something glinted in the palm of her hand. I realised what it was, winced and swooned.

As the sharpened metal object – a steel ruler, if I wasn’t mistaken – bore down on that lonely little finger on my right hand, my brain clicked into survival mode. I diverted every ounce of my being into that hand to fight her grip. But it felt limp, useless, dead.

I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t move at all. My eyes fixed upon that descending metal. Without even a nanosecond’s hesitation, the blade pierced the skin, just below the top knuckle. My insides convulsed.

I felt an instant circuit of scalding white heat from that finger to my brain. She struggled to contain my stricken hand’s sudden, frenzied twitching. Then calmly, efficiently, she sliced through my finger’s soft exterior flesh, sending nails of fire bolting through me.

Now the ruler was bending, under pressure, scraping up against the bone and tendons. I wasn’t expecting it to bend. It slipped, slicing the skin down the front of the finger. The digit disappeared in blood: not spurting blood like in the movies, just endless, welling blood. My head lolled, bloodless.

‘Why are you doing this?’ my mind pleaded.

The blade tried again. Real pressure this time. It bent. It slipped under the weight, this time up into the knuckle. I was burning alive now. I wanted my brain to shut down, to cease feeling.

My finger was minced: a small hunk of gristle with threads of blue running through it. Just bone and red mulch, all puddling blood. The ruler’s sharp tip came in again. Glinting. Determined. It was forced down, full-pelt, on the digit’s bone.

Now she set about sawing at the bloody lump. My vision rapidly flickered, as if struggling to comprehend the full horror. Finally, my brain went into shutdown.

My eyes snapped on again, seeing a tiny red lump, wretched, alone, on the arm of that sofa. Everything spun, lurched through black. White exploded, filling my vision, firing me at supersonic speed through more white.

Then I was looking down at myself asleep on the couch, jabbering in tongues, Fintan perched on the edge of the sofa, taking snaps with a tiny stills camera. I could hear the shutter. I could smell the weed. I felt no terror, no pain: just high, ecstatic, free.

‘Whatcha doing, Donal?’ I asked myself, inspecting my floating, unbutchered hand.

‘Just hanging,’ I replied.

I realised I could tilt side-to-side. I willed myself forward through the air and floated on cue, in control, my brain now a jet pack. I thought about performing a Red Arrows-style full roll, when I got distracted by a loud bang downstairs, followed by another, and another.

I laughed in the face of the door and glided through the wall to the landing. Marion’s body lay there, lifeless, just as I had seen her that night. The rhythmic banging continued – boom, boom, boom – as a chill rustled my face. I turned to see the open landing window.

I looked towards the banging at the bottom of the stairs. The flat door crashed shut, over and over. What was I not getting about that fucking door? I floated down, determined to stop the banging, to close that door once and for all.

At the foot of the stairs I reached out, but the door passed straight through my arm, again and again, boom, boom. I turned and looked up the stairs. Marion’s eyes stared directly into mine: bloodshot, betrayed, accusing. I floated up towards those eyes and made my vow: whatever it was on that door, I’d find it.

I snapped back inside my body to find myself sitting cold, calm and sweat-soaked on the couch. Mercifully, my little finger appeared to be intact and the banging had stopped. All I could hear were the crunching metal clicks of Fintan’s camera.

‘Tell me what just happened?’ he demanded.

I looked around at the closed sitting room door, wild spatters of whisky all over my shirt and jeans, the couch, the carpet.

I told him everything, from the impromptu finger amputation to the flat door’s ghosting back and forth through my outstretched arm.

‘What is she trying to say?’

‘Well she’s clearly telling me that the pared-down ruler we found in the Foster family’s garage is the murder weapon.’

‘Why did she cut off your finger?’

‘When she first came to me, she kept slamming my sitting room door, over and over. I thought she must be leading me to a clue on a door. I assumed that clue must be her killer’s fingerprint.’

‘And what do you think now?’

‘Well I think she just let me know in the most graphic way possible that I shouldn’t be looking for a fingerprint, I should be looking for some other sort of clue to do with the door.’

‘What could that be?’

‘I haven’t the foggiest. Hey, you didn’t say you were bringing a camera?’

‘Are you kidding? I take this with me everywhere. You never know, do you? I’ll get them developed tomorrow, should give us a right laugh.’

‘What was I doing?’

‘You were growling and sort of gurning with your teeth clamped together, like a horse on a motorbike.’

I desperately needed to pee and got to my feet. My head sprung stars as I stumbled into the bathroom.

My water-splashed pale face inspected itself in the mirror. Spidery red cracks had turned the whites of my eyes into low-grade marble. They looked lifeless, jaundiced: two decades older than me. When I blinked, my mother’s eyes stared back. I shivered, then batted the image away and returned to the couch.

‘Lilian was right about one thing. Once I came out of my body, I felt sensational.’

‘Did you consciously decide to come out or go back into your body?’

‘No to both. And I won’t sleep at all now unless I get another drink. There’s that all-night off-licence near Clapham Junction. I’m starving too.’

‘Thing is, Donal, I’m not actually an insomniac or an alky. I’m going to grab a taxi home. You should go home too,’ he said.

‘Okay.’

We strolled silently through the sultry night, London’s buried hum soothing our frazzled nerves.

‘Safe home,’ Fintan said, hopping into a cab. I watched until the car turned the corner, then walked back towards Sangora.

Chapter 36

Sangora Road, South London

Sunday, August 18, 1991; 09:00

A slamming door jolted my eyes open to dazzling sunlight. I sat up, recognised the sitting room of 21 Sangora Road and my own naked body.

I could hear people coming up the stairs, chatting. I jumped up to grab my clothes but could see only fried chicken-themed carnage: greasy cardboard boxes, half-eaten drummers, a corn-on-the-cob. Beyond that: joint butts, beer can ashtrays, splattered whisky and red wine, but no fucking clothes. The chatting got to the door just as I spotted my boxers near the window. I hurdled the puddles of filth to reach them, then realised I wasn’t going to make it.

The door opened slowly, almost ceremoniously. I stood in the middle of the room, both hands over my knackers.

‘It’s surprisingly spacious …’ said a voice. The estate agent saw me, dropped her clipboard and emitted a horror movie scream. Her two would-be tenants stared for an age, frozen in shock, then wordlessly ran away.