‘What? I thought she came down to be with you.’

‘No,’ Vicki scoffed. ‘She came to collect Dad’s life insurance documents and other paperwork. She’s a very efficient woman, you know - even while dealing with the death of her husband.’

‘I could see that. So, you want some iced tea, or would that constitute harassment?’

‘Well, that would depend on what you’ve spiked it with.’

‘Ah.’ Leighton smiled. ‘Just slices of lemon, I’m afraid.’

‘In that case, I’ll risk it,’ Vicki said, and climbed out of the car.

Leighton went inside to fix her a drink. Vicki sat at the table, and breathed in the sweet smell of the overflowing hanging baskets running along the front of his home. She liked the simplicity of Leighton’s world. He seemed to have found a small, comfortable space for himself - self-contained and safe.

‘Here you go,’ he said, as he placed the glass before her. ‘So, did you have any luck with your computer stuff?’ Leighton asked, as he sat down.

‘Not in terms of a name, but I did find out the Route King website essentially has no address - it’s a stealth parasite page.’

‘Oh, that’s good.’ Leighton nodded sagely. ‘But, how about you tell me that in English.’

‘It basically sat on the genuine site, then opens a pop-up window in response to a certain stimulus’

‘Stimulus?’

‘Yeah, you know, like rolling the cursor over parts of the page, or typing in certain details.’

Leighton thought about this for a moment. A dark thought was forming in his mind.

‘Would something like that be able to screen responses to actually target an individual?’

‘In theory, yes.’ Vicki said, and took a sip from her glass, ‘You think Laurie might have been targeted on purpose?’

‘I don’t know, maybe.’

‘It would be really difficult for a site to target someone on purpose. How would you even know they intended to travel by bus?’

‘Would it be possible to watch all the people entering their information, and then, you choose when to open the window and offer a better deal?’

A shadow fell over Vicki’s face. ‘Yeah, yeah, it would.’

‘Because, by screening the bookings, a killer wouldn’t just have to wait for a random victim to pass by in a dark alleyway; instead, he would know exactly where they would be, and when.’

Leighton sipped his drink, while Vicki looked intently around at the butterflies dancing from flower to flower in the Californian sunlight.

‘That wouldn’t happen, though. I mean, snaring strangers to murder? It couldn’t … probably, not really?’ Vicki said, trying to restore her sense of order.

‘Yet, you believe Laurie has been murdered?’

‘Well, yes, but not … you know. It was probably random.’

‘When I was a kid, my father was a maintenance man in the Kaiser Steel Mill over in Fontana - have you heard of it?

Vicki shook her head.

‘It was one of the biggest in the world, and to a seven-year-old, it was a crazy and exciting old place. Anyway, what I liked best was the nights when my old man would get called out to fix some temperamental motor. He would take me with him - despite my mother’s protests - and sometimes, I’d get to the see the bright spray of sparks, as steel was cut, or molten steel being poured like lava.’

‘Must’ve been a dangerous place.’

‘A few men died there, crushed between rollers or splattered by a bubble of molten metal. But, that’s not why I bring it up.’

‘Okay, then, why do you?’

‘Because one night, my old man got a call from work, saying there was some kind of crap coming down the cooler wash. This was like a slow waterfall of cold water which cooled the freshly pressed rolls of metal. The operator had called because whatever was in the water was making streaks on the metal. Anyway, the wash was fed by a big tank of the water high up in the roof of the mill. I climbed up two sets of ladders with my old man, and we stood on the gantry. He pressed this grimy switch, and a big old motor slowly rolled back the cover from a square vat of water. I remember it looked like a long, black swimming pool. Anyway, he was kneeling down, holding a jam jar in his hand to take a sample with me holding the torch, when I noticed something bulky and alive moving in the water. I told my pop, and he just pulled a face, and told me to hold the light steady.’

‘What was it?’ Vicki’s eyes widened.

‘Well, he dipped his hand back in the water, then he screamed, and fell back on the gantry. His hand was pouring out blood, like a faucet.’ Leighton blew out a breath, remembering the scene. ‘We got down to the medical room, and found his index fingertip had been torn off. The medical officer drove him to the hospital, where he sat through half an hour of surgery, still ended up looking like he’d put it through a mincer.’

‘And where were you?’

‘Sitting in the reception on a wooden bench, watching the hands ticking by on a big Westfield clock.’

‘You must’ve been terrified, were you?’

‘Yeah, well, not as much I was the following morning.’ My father insisted on returning to the mill, and we went back up that ladder in the daylight. His hand was bandaged, and he had iodine streaks along his forearm. Up on top, the cover was still rolled back, almost to the edge, and I could see into most of the tank, except this one dark strip down at the end.

‘For one crazy moment, I believed he was going to pick up the jar and go dipping again. Only this time, he walked past the bloody jam jar and down to the far end of the tank. I hurried after him, and watched as he gripped a huge drainage tap fixed to the end of the tank, and, despite the pain, he turned it. The water sprayed down on to the steel rolls below, not so much like a stream as water cannon.

‘My father sat back on the gantry, and ruffled my hair. He pulled out a cigarette and smoked as we sat and waited. I couldn’t take my eyes of the dark section of the tank. Eventually, the water was low enough that the creature began to panic and thrashed around, before it came out of hiding.’

‘What was it?’

‘A huge, white Pike - fat and blind. And as long as I was tall.’

‘Jeez.’ Vicki’s eyes widened in horror. ‘Did he kill it?’

Leighton chuckled, ‘No, my father wasn’t the killing type. He probably saw enough of that in Korea. He let me get a good look at it, and he explained how it must have been brought up through the water intake from the Mississippi, and grew for years in the darkness - feeding on anything else that came in through the pipe. He turned off the drain tap and the filler valve, topped it back up, then, he hit the switch, and let the cover clatter back into place.’

‘He just left it?’

‘Yep, said it was part of nature, it might still be there - they tore down most of the mill, but some of the buildings are intact. But, Vicki, the reason I mention this is because that creature grew there in the darkness, because no one was looking for it. If anyone had suggested to the hundreds of steel-men in the Kaiser Plant a giant white fish swam above their heads year after year, they would have called them crazy. So, I guess what I’m saying is, if you truly hope to find monsters, you first have to be ready to accept that monsters exist. Then, you won’t be paralysed with terror when you actually do find them.’

Vicki stared into Leighton’s dark brown eyes for a long moment. It was the first time she realised how far she had travelled from the initial shock of thinking Laurie had been murdered to this strange world of darker possibilities.

‘Okay,’ she finally said. ‘What do you really believe is going on?’

‘I believe we could have more than one killer.’

‘What, like a couple?’

‘Yeah, maybe … it’s happened in California before,’ Leighton said unconvincingly, and looked away.

‘But, clearly, you don’t think so. What are you not telling me?’

‘It could be more than just one or two,’ Leighton said, and drained his glass.