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none of us - especially me - forgot about that girl properly. Like I said, she was different. A little more awful, a little more inexplicable. Without understanding why, she haunted us all in our own ways, whoever she was.
    That was about five months ago, and those five months had been a blur: an emotional downhill roll in which I'd gathered speed until I couldn't even make out the scenery. Looking back now, it was tempting to see everything as starting with that dead girl. She got Sean first. It just took a bit more time for her to get me too.
    A month after Sean vanished, the affair I'd had with Lucy was over and I'd split with Rachel and moved into my new flat. A month after that and I wasn't going into work. I didn't officially quit, in that I never handed in my badge or gun, but Rosh and Lucy were aware I wasn't coming back and informed the necessary people. Nobody knew exactly where I was, but I don't think anyone looked that hard. I could live with it.
    I lied when I said I left because the job wasn't good enough. That was certainly a factor - and after Sean disappeared there were no more night-time excursions to take the edge off the monotony. But it's not the whole story. The real truth is that I left because I couldn't work with Lucy anymore. We were good friends, and I hoped we always would be, but she didn't want our relationship to go on any longer and I'd realised too late that, despite everything, she was all I wanted. I was hurt and upset and sad, and it was breaking her heart to see me every day and know that it was her fault. So I left. I emailed her and said goodbye and that I'd always be her friend but I needed some time alone to get over these dumb feelings I had. I didn't know how long it would take, but I never guessed that four months on they'd be as strong as ever, with a bad case of cabin fever on top of it all.
    Money? I had savings, and it's probably best not to enquire too much about that. Let's just say that you don't whack that many criminals without picking up some financial compensation along the way, and that last guy, Halloran, set the four of us up quite nicely. Most of my share was squirrelled away in bank accounts held in fake names. For example, the rent on my flat was paid by someone else on behalf of someone else. I paid for my shopping with a third person's credit card.
    In the circumstances, how Sean had found me was something of a mystery: a neat trick I wished I could manage myself.
    When I saw him again, I'd have to ask him the secret.

    Chapter Three
    By the middle of the morning, I was fairly sure that I hadn't shot anyone the previous night - or not deliberately anyway. Technically, if you fire a bullet straight up in the air it will reach its zenith, fall down and, wind resistance aside, by the time it hits the earth again it'll be travelling as fast as when it left the barrel. So I might have killed someone by accident or possibly clipped an innocent bird, but these were outside chances and I figured I shouldn't worry. Instead, I drank consecutive cups of coffee, felt sorry for myself and tried to put it out of my head. We all do stupid things when we're drunk and the important thing is to learn.
    I opened the blinds in the kitchen and watched the outside world. It was approaching Summer but today was a miserable day: shitty, rainy and overcast. My concentration drifted for a while, unfocused, but after I'd had enough caffeine to feel properly alive I went back through to the bedroom and turned my attention to the papers that Sean had sent to me.
    First, the envelope. The only mark on it was my name, scrawled on the front in blue biro. No return address on the back, and no indication of where it had come from. The envelope itself was generic. Next, I looked at the papers that had been inside. The alltoo-familiar picture of the girl's corpse had been printed on the station's colour laserjet, and since it was old and battered I presumed that it had once been part of Sean's