Larissa shook her head. “Upstate New York,” she said. “I built something there, on the banks of the Hudson River, a community for vampires. We called it Haven.”

“Like Valhalla?” said Matt.

“Exactly like that,” said Larissa, and gave him a small smile. “For vampires who didn’t want to hurt anyone, and were willing to swear an oath that they wouldn’t. That’s where I was, until the day before yesterday.”

“What did Valentin have to do with it?” asked Jamie.

“Didn’t he tell you?” asked Larissa.

“No,” said Jamie. “He’s always refused to tell anyone what you and he talked about the night you left.”

Larissa nodded. “I asked him not to tell anyone where I was going,” she said. “I just sort of assumed he wouldn’t keep his word.”

“So he did know where you were?”

“Of course,” said Larissa. “Haven is built on an estate that belongs to him.”

“Why did he help you?” asked Matt. “It doesn’t seem like something he’d do.”

Larissa shrugged. “I don’t know. He didn’t ask for anything in return. I suppose he probably enjoyed the thought of damaging the Department, and I’m absolutely sure he loved refusing to tell you where I was.”

Jamie stared at her, and said nothing.

“Would you ever have come back?” asked Matt. He knew this was extremely dangerous ground, but he wanted as many cards on the table as possible. “If it wasn’t for Dracula, would you be here?”

Larissa looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head. “No,” she said. “Haven is my home.”

Jamie winced, but nodded; he had clearly expected nothing else. Matt’s heart went out to him, but he did not regret asking the question; it was better for everyone to know where they stood.

A deafening rattle of noise broke the silence, as the console of every Operator in the canteen beeped in unison. The room was suddenly full of movement as men and women, including the three friends sitting at the table in the corner, reached as one for their belts.

FROM: Turner, Major Paul (NS303, 36-A)

TO: Active_Roster

ALL/MANDATOR­Y_BRIEFING/­PRIORITY_­LEVEL_1/­OR/1230

Matt checked his watch as a cold ball of unease settled into his stomach.

Twelve thirty, he thought. Ninety minutes from now.

Jamie set his console down on the table and smiled at his friends.

“What did I tell you?” he said. “This is it. It’s time.”

Julian Carpenter folded the letter, slid it into an envelope, and sealed it shut. He placed it carefully in the inside pocket of his black holdall, set the bag on the floor beside his green duffel, and walked out of the kitchen of his mother’s cottage.

He stopped in the narrow hallway, breathing in the familiar smell of the old house; it went right to the heart of him, to the place where nostalgia and loss and regret gathered, and he let the sensations mingle, savouring them for what he was sure would be the last time. He hoped he was wrong; despite the painful unravelling of his life over the last few years, he had no wish to die. But he did have to be realistic, and what he was about to do was unquestionably fraught with risk; he was consoling himself with the hope that – if the worst was to happen – the letter he had just written would go some way to explaining why he had hurt the people he loved so badly.

Julian stepped into the lounge and did a slow circuit of the room, turning off the electricity outlets and drawing the curtains. He had hated being confined in this place – a prison that was comfortable and familiar was somehow far worse than a concrete box in the bowels of the Loop – but as he made his final preparations to leave it, he nonetheless felt a small, bitter stab of sadness. His family had spent happy days and weeks in the old cottage, and there had been a time when he had believed there would be many more to come. But such a prospect was now long dead, and the reality was very different.

His wife was beyond his reach, his son had made it very clear that he never wanted to see him again, and his only other friend in the world, the one to whom he owed more than anyone else, had also cut ties with him. He had received an email a week after his ill-fated reunion with Jamie, containing three short sentences. It had been sent from an address he didn’t recognise, but there had been absolutely no doubt from whom it had come.

I did what you asked, even though I knew it would cost me dearly. Consider the oath I swore paid in full.

Do not contact me again.

He couldn’t blame Frankenstein for his decision.

Julian had known that if the monster did him the favour that he had requested, if he brought his son to see him, it would expose his part in the deception the two of them had perpetrated, and he had known that the fallout, particularly from Jamie, would likely be awful. He had known, and he had asked Frankenstein anyway, playing on the monster’s loyalty, and on the oath he had sworn to protect the Carpenter family. He had not been surprised by the email, and the cold, painful rebuke it contained; he knew he deserved it.

Julian strode back into the kitchen, hefted the bags on to his shoulders, and headed for the front door. Through its frosted glass, he could see the blurred silhouette of Ben waiting for him; the teenager, who lived half a mile down the road towards Caister, was on time, which was at least something. He stepped through the door, locked it behind him, and walked down the path.

“Morning, Ben,” he said. “All right?”

The teenager grunted.

“Great,” said Julian. “You understand what I need you to do?”

Another grunt.

“You’re sure?”

Ben rolled his eyes and nodded.

“OK,” he said. He rolled up his sleeve, pulled the elastic band with the locator chip tied to it off his wrist, and held it out. Ben reached for it, and Julian gripped his hand tightly.

“Eight hours,” he said. “At least. Stay in the countryside, away from anywhere there might be a CCTV camera. Got it?”

Ben stared at him, his expression one of insolent boredom. “Got it.”

“Good,” said Julian. He released the teenager’s hand and fished a fifty-pound note out of his pocket. “Here you go.”

Ben took the money, snapped the elastic band on to his wrist, and turned away without a word. He strolled down the path, through the gate, and set off along the dirt road towards the fields, the same route that Julian ran every morning. He watched until the teenager was out of sight, then walked out of the garden, and turned towards the village, where the Ford he had bought the year before, the one that, unlike his mother’s old Mercedes, was not equipped with a tracking device, was waiting for him.

Ten minutes later he was driving south, his past shrinking into the distance behind him.

The sun was high overhead as Julian turned down a small road marked by a sign that showed the outline of a white aeroplane against a red background.

The airfield appeared to be an airfield in name alone. There were no permanent buildings, just a row of mobile trailers facing a runway of heavily rolled grass and a large tarpaulin suspended over a line of light aeroplanes. A car was parked next to the trailers, a dirty red Peugeot, and a plane on the runway with its engine idling; both presumably belonged to the man he was here to meet, a man he had only spoken to once on a burner mobile phone.

He parked next to the Peugeot and checked his watch. Four hours and thirteen minutes had passed since he had given his locator chip to Ben and, providing the teenager followed his instructions, it would be almost four more hours until he dropped the elastic band through the letterbox of Julian’s mother’s cottage. He was not wholly confident that Ben would walk for the eight hours that had been agreed; it had been pretty obvious that Julian was not coming back any time soon, and he would not be surprised if the teenager had got bored and quit, confident that he would not be made to answer for doing so. But if that was the case, there was nothing Julian could do about it now. He would have to rely on Blacklight having more important things to do right now than checking on his movements.