Reggie still kept her clothes in her old bedroom and it was the same story there, all her stuff tossed on the floor. There was a smell of something nasty in here too and Reggie couldn't bring herself to look too closely at her clothes. In the kitchen everything had been pulled out of the cupboards, the fridge gaped open, food scattered everywhere. Cutlery was flung around, plates and cups smashed. Milk had been poured on the floor, a bottle of tomato sauce had been thrown against the wall and had left a great arterial spray of red.

In the shower room, which was just a hall cupboard that had been tiled and plumbed, the walls had been spray-painted rather ineptly with the words, 'Your dead.' Reggie felt bile rising up, making her feel nauseous. You cant hide from us. Who was 'us'? Who were these people who didn't know how to use an apostrophe? They must be looking for Billy. Billy knew a lot of ungrammatical people.

She gave a little cry, a small wounded animal. This was her home, this was Mum's home, and it was wrecked. Desecrated. It wasn't as if it was much to begin with but it was all Reggie had.

Then a hand gave her a hefty shove and she went sprawling into the shower, pulling down the curtain as she flailed. An unfortunate few frames of Psycho played in her mind. She banged her forehead when she fell and she wanted to cry.

Two men. Youngish, thuggish. One ginger-haired, one a bleached blond, his face pitted with old acne scars like orange peel. She hadn't seen either of them before. The blond one was holding a sawtoothed knife that looked as if it could slice open a shark. Reggie could see a scrap of Mum's pink broderie-anglaise downie cover attached to one of the teeth. Her insides melted. She was worried she would wet herself, or worse. I'm not a child, she'd said to the policemen last night but it wasn't true.

She thought of her mother laid out on the side of the pool in her unflattering orange lycra costume. Reggie didn't want to be found dead, sprawled in an undignified heap in the shower in Ms MacDonald's horrible clothes. She didn't even have any underwear on. She could feel the pulse beating uncomfortably hard in her neck. Were they going to kill her? Rape her? Both? Worse? She could think ofworse, it involved the knife and time. She had to do something, say something. She had read that it was important that you talk to an attacker, get him to see you as a person, not just an object. Reggie's mouth was dry as if she'd been eating sandpaper and forming words was a real effort. She wanted to say, 'Don't kill me, I haven't lived yet: but instead she whispered, 'Billy's not here. I haven't seen him for ages. Honestly.'

The men exchanged a puzzled look. Ginger said, 'Who's Billy? We're looking for a guy called Reggie.'

'Never heard of him. Sweartogod.'

*

Unbelievably, the men made to leave. 'We'll be back,' the blond one said. Then the other, carroty one said, 'Got a present for you: and pulled a book from his pocket -unmistakably a Loeb classic -and tossed it to her like a grenade. She didn't even attempt to catch it, imagined it exploding in her hands, didn't believe it could only contain something as harmless as words. She heard Ms MacDonald's voice in her head saying, 'Words are the most powerful weapons we have.' Hardly. Words couldn't save you from a huge express train bearing down on you at full speed. (Help!) Couldn't save you from neds bearing gifts. (No thanks.)

'Hasta la vista, baby,' Ginger said and they both left. They were idiots. Idiots with Loeb classics.

She picked up the Loeb, a green one, that had flopped open, face down in the shower tray, like a grounded bird. The first volume of the Iliad. How was that a message? She picked the book up and read the faded pencil inscription on the flyleaf, Moira MacDonald, Girton College, 1971. Funny to think ofMs MacDonald being young. Funny to think of her being dead. Even funnier to think of one of her missing Loebs being in the hands of Billy's enemies.

Trojan horses had surprising insides and so did Ms MacDonald's Iliad. When Reggie opened the pages she found it had been the subject of razor-sharp surgery, its heart cut out in a neat square. A casket for something. A casket and a grave. A perfect hiding place. For what?

Reggie thought they had gone but then the blond one suddenly stuck his head back round the door. Reggie screamed.

'Forgot to say: he said, laughing at the horror on her face. 'Don't go to the police about this wee visit or, guess what?' He made the shape of a gun with his finger and thumb and pointed it at her. Then he left again.

Reggie surprised herself by suddenly vomiting up all her toast into the toilet. It took her a while to stop shivering, she felt as if she was going down with flu but she supposed it was just horror.

She stumbled down the tenement stairs, drenched in cold sweat and her heart hammering. She barged back into Mr Hussain's shop.

'All right?' Mr Hussain asked and she mumbled, 'No, halfleft,' which was a poor joke of Billy's when he was small. He wasn't funny, even then. Should she tell Mr Hussain? What would happen? He would make her a cup of sugary tea in the back of the shop and then he would phone the police and then the men would come back and shoot her with an imaginary gun? Kill her with words? They looked exactly like the types who had real guns. They looked exactly like Billy.

'Got to dash, Mr H. I'm gonna miss my bus.'

If only she had Sadie with her, Reggie thought as she walked as fast as she could to the bus stop. People thought twice about messing with you if you had a big dog by your side. 'It's like the parting of the Red Sea when you're out with Sadie,' Dr Hunter said once, fondling the big dog's ears. 'I always feel safe with her.' Did Dr Hunter need to feel safe? Why? Something to do with her history?

Had they really been looking for her? Made a mistake about her gender (a guy called Reggie)? Why? She had done nothing apart from being Billy's sister. Maybe that was enough. She tried phoning her brother and got a 'the person you are trying to reach is not available' message. She dialled Dr Hunter's number but it rang and rang without answer. Your dead. Without the apostrophe it implied something else, the dead that belonged to Reggie. There were enough of them.

The thing was, when Mr Hunter was speaking to her on the phone Reggie had heard Sadie bark in the background. When she wasn't at work Dr Hunter took Sadie with her everywhere, why would she leave her behind?

'Her aunt's allergic.'

'Aunt Agnes?'

'Yes.'

'Can't Dr Hunter give her something for it? Antihistamine or something? Why isn't she answering her phone, Mr Hunter?' 'Leave Jo alone, Reggie. This is a bad time for her. It's enough the past coming back to haunt her without you hounding her. OK?' 'But-'

'You know what, Reggie?' Mr Hunter said.

'What?'

'Just leave it. I've got a lot on my mind right now.'

'Me too, Mr H. Me too.'

Missing in Action A LONG TIME AGO, A LONG, LONG TIME AGO, WHEN THE WORLD WAS much younger and so was Jackson, he had his blood group tattooed on his chest, just above his heart. A soldier's trick so that when you are shot or blown up the medics can treat you as quickly as possible. Other guys he was in the army with had extended their skin-ink collections, adding on women and bulldogs and Union Jacks and, yes, indeed, the word 'Mother', but Jackson had never been a fan of the tattooist's art, had even promised his daughter a thousand pounds in cash if she made it to twenty-one without feeling the need to decorate her skin with a butterfly or a dolphin or the Chinese character for 'happiness'. Jackson himself had stuck with the one practical, lower-case message -'Blood Type A Positive', until now no more than a faded blue souvenir of another life. 'A Positive' -a nice common kind of blood shared by roughly 35 per cent of the population. Plenty of donors. And he'd needed them apparently, every precious ounce of red blood having been replaced courtesy of a band of blood brothers and sisters who had stopped him being erased from his own life.