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quiet!”
    Lightning split the sky again, turning night briefly to ghost-white day. Below, under the bare persimmon tree, stood the boy. His pale triangular face stared up at Oscar, as it had for the past three years. On Gray Wednesday, everyone on earth suddenly found himself with aghost at his side. Many people became haunted by someone they knew: a dead father, a dead grandmother, a creditor, a friend, an enemy. Neve got her mother. Mrs. Tambassis got a lecherous uncle. Sabine got her baby sister, dead thirty years; Jon got a cousin killed by meningitis. Oscar was haunted by a stranger: this boy he didn’t recognize. Under the black, skeletal branches, rain passed through the dead boy as if he were smoke. The boy shuffled shyly, as if unwilling to advance or unable to retreat. After a moment, he tentatively raised a hand as if in greeting.
    Lightning flashed again, and Oscar could see the pits where the boy’s eyes should be—like finger holes poked into wet, dark sand. Lidless and shifting and worming.
    “Go to hell,” Oscar whispered.
    The boy’s hand wavered.
    “Go to hell,” Oscar repeated, and closed the window. He pulled down the shade and took his bathwater off the stove.

Chapter 2
    Three years earlier
    S abine was blocking the hallway.
    “Tell me you’re not serious,” she said.
    In his mind, Oscar was already sliding past her, out to the car, racing along city streets to the alley.
    “Yeah, I am,” he said, gently taking her forearm. “I have to go. We can talk later—”
    She slapped his hand away, and he blinked. She’d never hit him before. It was like reaching into a box of cereal and pulling out a wasp. Her usually pretty face was pulled as tight as a balloon over a fist.
    “You want me to cancel the weekend,” she said. The word “cancel” made her snarl.
    “I have to go, Sab.”
    “No!” She slammed her hand against the wall, and the prints hanging there rattled in their frames. “You always have to go. You always have something.”
    He didn’t have time for this. He took hold of her arm again. “Jon’s waiting for me.”
    “ I’m waiting for you!” She grabbed his arm hard and rose on her toes, yelling into his face, “I’m always waiting! Waiting for this shift to end so we can eat a cold dinner, or that surveillance to end so we can have a civilized fucking Saturday together, or some other fucking investigation to finish so we can have a holiday!”
    Sabine was the chief financial officer of a charitable trust whose board included some of the state’s most notorious prima donnas—a former Olympian, a dance doyen, a Man Booker winner, several media-hungry entrepreneurs. She had to deal weekly with their fits of pique and bizarre demands, yet Oscar had never heard her lose hertemper. Nothing like this. “It’s one weekend, Sab. We’re just postponing.”
    “It’s ‘tomorrow syndrome,’ Oscar. It never comes! This weekend was the one we postponed a month ago—and that one was postponed from fucking April!” She spat the last word out.
    He knew she was right, but it didn’t stop the burners under the nasty brew in his gut turning up to full.
    “It’s my job, Sabine. You knew when we—”
    “When we started going out blah-de-blah, I don’t care! It’s not a job, it’s a life! It’s our life, and it sucks! You’re either at work or you’re writing a work report or you’re home and making calls about work. Why do you need to work this hard? Look at you.”
    He gritted his teeth. “I’m trying to get—”
    “You’re getting fat! You’ve got no time to exercise, you’ve always got a cold. I can’t remember the last time you got me off; Christ knows what you’re doing for yourself.”
    He glanced at his watch. It was five to nine. He was due to meet Jon and the new informant at nine. She saw him check the time.
    “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” She sagged away from him, shaking her head.
    “It’s Haig, Sabine.”
    “Haig, fucking Haig, fucking Haig!