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her pinch that Yank tourist's pocketbook. He hadn't shopped her to the cops. He'd told her that soon money wouldn't matter. Soon the toffs in their posh cars and posh clubs, the skinny little birds who'd slagged her off for her clothes, the pillocks at school who teased her and then used her body—all of them would be consumed by the fires of Armageddon whilst she would be taken up to heaven alongside Robin himself, if only she believed.
    Ellen crawled from the bed. Her bare feet slipped on the newspaper cuttings scattered across the linoleum—rallies, revivals, marches, pilgrimages—explosions, massacres, assassinations.
    The green cloak billowed round Robin's body even though the room was close and still. She slipped beneath it and wrapped her arms around his ribs. Slender ribs, strong as stone.
    He wrapped her in the cloak. His body was cold as death and she shivered. But she held on. His beard tickled her ear. His icy lips traced a path along her jaw until they found hers. His tongue, tasting of wine and flowers, slipped inside her mouth like a snake, probing, pushing, pursuing until she was bent backward against the basin. His right hand moved up her body beneath the T-shirt and his left pressed the crockery spear against her temple. It pricked, and she felt the blood run down into her hair. “Are you baptized in the one true faith?” he murmured.
    "Yes."
    His thumb smeared the warm blood across her forehead. “Are you bathed in the blood of the ram?"
    "Yes, oh yes. Please, Robin, love me."
    His eyes glinted green as gemstones. In one movement he spun her about, threw her down on the bed, and fell on her. Ellen clutched at him, cloak and all. She didn't like this part, but then, she wasn't any good at it, or so the sods at school told her. It didn't matter. Robin had chosen her, alone of all her sex.
    She gasped in pain and ecstasy both as he drove himself into her. He was cold, and hard, like iron. But when he was inside her she wasn't empty any more. Better cold than nothingness. Better pain now, and in the future the ultimate reward.
    From the corners of her eyes she saw the posters covering the stains on the wallpaper whirling like confetti, film actors and rock stars and prints of works by old foreigners Calum had given her—Nativity, Crucifixion, Rolling Stones. Robin's voice was soft and subtle in her ear, “I am the way and the life. Who believes in me shall never die."
    Outside a bus bleated. The sunlight faded. Robin's body crushed her against the bed, again and again. “Love me,” she whimpered.
    The gold stitches on the green cloak shone like a bonfire. In the glory of gold and green the room disappeared and Ellen Sparrow glimpsed the light eternal. But as yet it was beyond her grasp. “Love me. Please, love me."
    Robin laughed. In spite of her clenched jaw she smiled. She'd made him happy. That was worth any pain.

Chapter Four
    Mick was sure three days had passed since he'd talked to his dad. But it was only Monday afternoon. The clouds had thinned and a smeary quarter moon slid down the western sky into the murk of the city. A whiff of peat smoke filtered into the office.
    At first the telephone had gone and gone again—the local police, the English police, a dispatcher in Carlisle asking questions but giving no answers. Calum and his car had vanished into thin air.
    Now the telephone huddled sullenly, the shoulders of its receiver hunched. When Mick switched on the desk lamp he felt like a copper having a go at a prisoner. He'd already had a go at everyone at the mill. Calum's secretary, Amy, rang everyone he'd ever done business with. No one had seen him since his meeting in Birmingham on the Friday.
    Nothing vanishes into thin air , Mick told himself.
    In the filing cabinet he found a map of Scotland. Spreading it across the desk, he scanned every inch of the A68 and the A7. The roads ran south from Edinburgh, past Lauder and Stow, until they joined at Melrose. From there the A7 went on past