He didn't know Sarah very long, but he knew she sewed clothes for her dolls out of scraps of rescued fabric from her own old clothes. She was proud of them. She got frustrated about schoolwork, but liked books of poems and riddles and plays. She scowled at Charlie for being allowed into her father's secret business when she was not. She was the last member of her immediate family left alive. And she's dead, because Arthur Lester went looking for her, and the King used Charlie's own voice to trick him. She's a dead body, magically giving up its secrets. It's fucked up beyond recognition.

And they've known, and hidden it, for more than two months. Arthur says he's sorry, and Charlie just draws in a breath. 'No hard feelings' is a lot easier to say when you're feet from the finish line, and when you're afraid of what the other might revert to without that reassurance.

It's as hard to recognise the pathetically cringing man in front of him now as it was the ferally violent one before. The point is made: Charlie really has been living with strangers.

"Where did it happen?" he asks, and feels like he's reverting too: into a detective staring down a long-time criminal.