I close my eyes. I question what I’m doing, but not enough to

stop doing it. I send him a text.

I want my daughter back and you’re going to give, her to me.

We’re going to make a trade. Trust me, it’s a trade you’ll be willing to make.

I’m sitting in the digger underneath one of the bluest skies this summer. I’m parked back by the shed. It feels like I’m melting out here. It’s taken me the best part of two hours to do what I figure would have been a twenty-or thirty-minute job for one of the Alderman duo. Nobody came over to investigate the sound.

Cemeteries don’t get a lot of foot traffic in the middle of the week, and I’ve had this area all to myself.

The phone starts to ring. I flip it open.

‘Fuck you,’ he says. ‘You murdered my boy, and you think you

have something to trade?’ His words are slurred, and I realise whatever bar he dragged himself out of to take my daughter away he has crawled back in to.

“I didn’t kill your son.’

‘He’s dead, ain’t he?’

‘Bring back my daughter and we’ll talk about it.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me. I want to make a trade.’

‘Trade? You have nothing that I want.’

‘That’s what I thought at first. Until I started playing your

game. The digger wasn’t that hard to use. I got the hang of it in the end.’

‘Where are you?’ he asks.

‘I’m where you were ten years ago,’ I say, and I hang up.

A few seconds later the phone rings again. I switch it off

There’s a tap outside the shed and I’m thirsty, but I don’t want my lips to touch anything that Sidney Alderman’s lips might have touched. I climb down from the digger and step into the shade.

I start going through the tools. Gardening equipment, mostly,

but some carpentry stuff as well. Could be that twenty years ago and in a different life, Alderman had a hobby. Maybe he and

his son would hang out in the shed and make wooden stools or

birdhouses, and they’d shoot the breeze with small talk about

angles and mitre cuts and joints. There are power tools for every occasion too. I ignore them all and pick up a shovel.

I carry the shovel back to the grave rather than taking the

digger. I rest beneath a tree that shelters me from the sun. I try not to think about the last twenty-four hours that have led me here, then I realise it’s actually the last two years that have done it. I wonder if the man I was back then would ever have thought of pulling the sort of crap he’s able to do now. I hope not, then I figure that if I was going to hope for anything it’d be that the last two years never happened.

That immediately leads me to start thinking about Quentin

James. I have had two lives — the one before meeting James,

and the one after — and I have been two separate people. I guess in a way that makes us similar. There was Sober Quentin and

Drunk Quentin. There was probably a third Quentin too. One

who recognised the change, but one who was kept quiet with

beer and sports TV and mortgage payments. There is a third Tate — one who can’t say no to whatever the hell it is that I’m doing now. I felt so many things when Quentin told me he was sorry,

but pity wasn’t one of them. I don’t feel it now either.

It takes Alderman thirty minutes. The sun is a little lower

but no less hot. The beaten-up SUV comes along the road, the

sun glinting off the windscreen, which is the only clean surface on the vehicle. The vehicle sways left and right as he struggles to control it.

I don’t move. He parks as close as he can get, and when the

door opens he steps out and pauses, looking around for what

I can only guess is me. He doesn’t see me. He has to pass through the section of trees where I’m sitting but still he doesn’t see me.

He approaches the grave slowly, swaying slightly as he walks,

as if the world is dropping away from beneath him with every

footstep. Me, I’d have been running. He reaches it and he stands at the edge and he looks down and he does nothing. Just looks

into the earth and sways, staring, just staring, until finally he climbs in.

I move towards him. The angle increases the closer I get,

allowing me first to see the opposite edge of the grave, then

Alderman’s head, and then the rest of him. He’s in there trying to pry up the edge of his wife’s coffin, but it’s difficult because all of his weight is on the lid. My shadow moves across the casket and he notices it. He looks up, having to twist his body to do it, which is a little awkward for him. He’s straddling the coffin like a horse, except he can’t get his legs over the sides. He’s looking up into the sun and has to hold a hand up to shade his eyes.

‘You fucker,’ he says.

‘Where is she?’

He gets to his feet, and has to reach out to steady himself

against the dark walls. I show him the shovel.

‘You think I’m afraid of you?’ he asks. ‘You think I haven’t

been waiting for something like this?’

I smack him in the side of the face with the shovel — not hard, but hard enough for him to fall back, his legs coming up and his head bouncing into the coffin.

‘Jesus,’ he says, touching his face. He leans to his side and spits out some blood, then wipes his hand across his mouth. ‘Fuck.’

‘Where did you put her?’

‘Fuck you,’ he says. ‘Is my wife in here? Is she, you piece of shit?’

‘She’s there, and unless you want to join her you’re going to

tell me where you put my daughter.’

‘Your daughter? How about you tell me where my son is?

Or have you forgotten? He’s down at the fucking morgue!’ The

words forced from his mouth are surrounded by booze and

spittle. ‘Yeah, he’s getting cut to pieces with fucking bolt cutters and blades, and you know what? You want to know the fucking

punch line? You put him there!’

There’s no point in arguing. No point in telling him over

and over that I did not shoot his son. Casey Horwell has already convinced him otherwise.

‘My daughter. Where is she?’

‘You shot my boy.’

‘Tell me!’

‘You’ll never find her.’

‘Goddamn you,’ I say, and raise the shovel as if I’m about to

hit him again. He flinches away, and I take a step back. ‘Goddamn it,’ I repeat, and I throw the shovel at him. I throw it hard. The shovel head hits him in the shoulder and bounces onto the coffin lid. Alderman falls back and braces himself against the wall. He starts massaging the impact point on his body.

I curl my hands into fists; I’m shaking, and I’m not really sure exactly where this anger is going to take me. The bottom of the abyss is waiting.

Alderman picks up the shovel and uses it to get to his feet.

He reaches for the edge of the grave. I figure he must be drunk, because he puts his hands over the edge as if he thinks he can pull himself out and not have anybody try to stop him. I squeeze my foot down on his fingers. He pulls them back, raking the skin off the back of his hand. He looks up at me as if he’s the victim here, as if he’s done nothing wrong. There is a patch of blood starting to spread on the shoulder of his shirt and now on his hand.

‘The girls, what happened?’

‘What girls?’

‘What girls do you think I’m talking about?’

He shrugs, but he knows. “I had nothing to do with them.

And nor did Bruce.’

‘He buried them. He admitted to that. Did he kill them?’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Or did you kill them?’ I ask.

‘This is bullshit. All you’ve done is kill my son and you don’t even know why’

‘How about you explain it to me?’

‘You’re asking the wrong man.’

‘Who should I be asking?’

‘Who the hell do you think? Your pal Father Julian. Go ask

him all about it.’

‘What does that mean?’