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“That would be a real shame. Entertaining but a real shame.”
    The thief sat back into the armchair and crossed his legs, apparently unaffected. “Don’t worry yourself. I’ll be ready,” he growled, fixing Greere with an unblinking stare from his muddy-brown eyes.
    Greere stared back at the other man as if he was somehow fascinated by the weasel’s grimy, age-lined face and tobacco-stained smile. “Be sure that you are,” he purred, whilst unconsciously and unnecessarily pushing his fringe to one side with his hand.
    Ellard scowled quietly at them both.
    ~~~~~
     
    London
     
    And so, finally, I’m back. Back here in the land of the living. The lucky one.
    But I wish I wasn’t.
    Mum is here, and so are the doctors that I’d heard and half-seen earlier.
    They’re all very kind but it really doesn’t help.
    The pain is excruciating. I have multiple fractures, apparently. Arms, legs, one shoulder, fingers, a couple of toes, ribs, the list goes on... Seemingly, the pain would be worse but the jarring to my spine has damaged the nerve transmissions to my brain. The pain I am experiencing is much less than would normally be the case.
    Lucky me.
    They say the ability to feel will be affected forever. I reckon that’s good. I feel like I need to be numbed physically. It will match how numb I feel emotionally.
    They keep talking to me but I don’t respond – other than gentle nods or shakes of my head. The metal shard that hit me during the explosion cut into my vocal cords – they say it was a miracle that it didn’t take my head off, but I disagree with them on that. So, on top of the painkilling drugs, I’m being pumped with steroids too. They say that I should recover speech, eventually, though my voice will sound different when I do.
    It doesn’t matter though. I haven’t got anything to say.
    My beloved Iuli and my daughter Elizabeth are both gone.
    Mum was crying when she told me. I could see her reliving Dad’s passing all over again. I knew she understood the agony of what she was having to tell me, that she had real empathy, that she wanted to try to give me strength. But I was beyond comfort by the end of her first sobbed sentence, then beyond help and, in the end, beyond caring.
    The van that I saw was packed with explosives. Home made from a concoction of surprisingly common components, all of which are readily available to those who want to use them for their intended purpose and also to those who would rather do dreadful things to people.
    It was a suicide bomber. Some random lunatic who chose to dispatch himself down into the pit of Hell’s damnation whilst no doubt waiting placidly for the miraculous appearance of a host of long-dreamed-of vestal virgins who would, according to the usual insidious indoctrinations, throw themselves mindlessly at him and suck endlessly on his no doubt inadequate and stunted cock. Personally, I hope he’s found himself in the midst of my preferred version of the afterlife. I hope he’s discovered that Hell is a very different reality. I really hope he’s screaming in agony in a fiery pit of eternal torture. Because, if he is, I know exactly how he feels...
    ~~~~~
    Back in England, Greere had a lot to think about. One more significant, decisive, action might be enough to get him the Major’s desk. To get him the top job. With his skills, this new team, his contacts and his cunning, this latest incident might just provide what he wanted most of all: to displace Sentinel.
    What a long journey it had been. All the way from those initially gruesome, but later surprisingly pleasurable, buggerings in that lonely, dusty dormitory at Prep School. Travelling over each and every continent, armed to the teeth, free to kill or be killed. Living on the very edge of existence, able to take and then get rid of any wanton men or boys he’d wanted, almost at will. It had all been so easy when you live a life that doesn’t really belong to you. When you live a life in the