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switching of points to get back on the same track. ‘Actually, yes. She doesn’t think that anything we do will give him any useful sight. And that he’d be a lot safer without his eyes.’
    Deacon flinched. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been expecting this moment. They’d talked about it regularly over the past months. At the beginning it had seemed only a horrid possibility; more recently it had started to look inevitable. Still when it came it landed like a fist in the belly. ‘What did you tell her?’

    â€˜I told her I wanted him to be safe.’
    Deacon nodded slowly. It was the only possible answer: in all their talks, neither of them had come up with an alternative. Still he felt that, as Jonathan’s father, she might have included him in the final decision. Partly for his benefit, but partly for hers. ‘When?’
    â€˜As soon as it can be arranged.’ She poured hot water into the coffee mugs, handed him one.
    â€˜Will he …?’ He wasn’t sure how to put this. ‘Will he miss them?’
    Brodie shook her head, the black corkscrew curls brushing her shoulders. ‘Anne doesn’t think so. She thinks he can tell the difference between light and darkness. She doesn’t think he can see objects.’
    He breathed the steam coming off the coffee. ‘There really isn’t any choice, is there?’
    â€˜No,’ Brodie said. ‘Not unless we’re prepared to risk losing him.’
    Deacon looked around the little office, suddenly puzzled. ‘So where is he? And why are you here?’
    â€˜Daniel took him for a walk on the front. There’s something else I need to tell you about.’ She related her encounter in the hospital car park with the man who was careful not to threaten her.
    Deacon didn’t leap to his feet and start throwing crockery. He went massively still. His lips tightened, pale with fury. His voice was a vicious whisper. ‘Did he lay a finger on you? Or on Jonathan?’
    â€˜No,’ Brodie said quickly. ‘And he never looked like he might. He wasn’t there to hurt us, or even to frighten us – he
was there to send a message. To you. I wasn’t inclined to oblige him, but Daniel felt you needed to know and I could see he was right.’
    â€˜Daniel did.’ Twelve months ago that would have come out a lot angrier. Now he was almost reconciled to the fact that she talked things through with Daniel the way she might with a sister before telling her partner what she’d decided. He still didn’t like it, but he knew it wasn’t going to change, and at last he seemed to realise it posed no threat to their relationship. But that didn’t stop it being very peculiar, and at heart Jack Deacon was a deeply conventional man.
    â€˜He didn’t want Loomis ambushing you with it. He was afraid’ – she kept her face straight – ‘you might overreact.’
    â€˜Whatever would make him think that?’ said Deacon through clenched teeth.
    â€˜Beats me,’ said Brodie ingenuously. ‘You wouldn’t be so stupid as to compromise an important investigation by decking the suspect in a public place, would you? Not when that was so obviously what he wanted you to do.’
    â€˜No-o-o,’ agreed Deacon slowly. ‘What would I do instead?’
    Brodie grinned. The danger point was past. If Loomis stopped him in the street as he left here and asked him the time, Deacon would – well no, not tell him, he was never that kind of policeman, but at least not shove his watch somewhere the beeps would be seriously muffled. ‘Oh, something much cleverer than that. You’d get him into court. Because you’d know that after that he wouldn’t
be in a position to hurt anyone.’
    â€˜Yes.’ Deacon mulled it over. ‘I expect that’s what I’d do. I might have to keep Charlie Voss on a tight leash,