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that I did wrong on this last case. None of this will matter.
    They can call it a break, some recovery time, whatever. They can dress it up with their official term of sabbatical and suggest that this was a mutual arrangement, but it is enforced.
    I’m out. For now.
    Whoever it is that wants me out of the way has succeeded, if only for a while.
    Damage has been done.
    Doubt has been cast.
    Now I have time, to regroup, reflect. Unofficially confined to my home. I’m like Eames. A prisoner. Nothing but time. But I am different to him. I have hope and a purpose, a chance. I must find my sister.
    Stupidly, I don’t think about Eames. I haven’t for some time. And that means he has me exactly where he wants me.

NOW …

Eames
    November 2009
    Crowthorne, Berkshire
    When Detective Inspector January David spills red wine on the kitchen counter as he pours another large glass for himself, it is a reminder of his wife’s blood dripping into the Perspex coffin I hung her above on that theatre stage.
    When I turned Audrey David into Girl 4.
    He is going to see it all again soon.
    They sent the tall orderly in again to deliver my post and bring me some water. They are trying to create a routine, making sure things happen at the same time each day, and that the people in my life are limited. Perhaps I may offer a glimpse of my humanity to this overgrown guard.
    A male and female doctor watch through the small window as he enters, alert yet casual. They are poised with a pen and clipboard. I force out a smile to the man holding my liquid and letters. The doctors notice and make a note. I smile to myself in my mind. It’s all too easy.
    I expect a minimum of one letter from God. You’d think He had more important things to do. There will be female nudity within this pile of paper, though I have my share of male admirers. I sense the hopelessness and horniness, the hatred and the holiness seeping out of every licked envelope flap.
    I feign more delight at my delivery but there is a tedium to this constant anodyne correspondence that I wish to be free from.
    And then I see it. The long brown envelope with my name written in silver marker pen. It’s here. But I do not draw attention to it. I open a different letter first while the doctors continue their scrutiny in this aquarium of insanity. A polaroid of an American woman, blonde, athletic, wearing just a cowboy hat and denim shorts, falls out of the folded wrapper.
    The guard backs out of the room, never turning himself away from me, and I nod at him in fake thanks. He is nothing to me. He is the damp skirting board. He is a bloated gall bladder. He is half-naked cowgirl.
    And now he is gone. So are the health professionals .
    I open the letter with the silver writing. There is no picture inside, no page of condescending prose, no lock of human hair or promise of forgiveness. But there is enough to tell me this is what I have been waiting for. And it is beautiful.
    Kerry Ross.
    She is my Girl 8.

January
    November 2009
    Hampstead, London
    The room is dark. Darker than anywhere else. Nothingness for miles. For eternity, it seems. But that doesn’t bother him. He doesn’t need light to move around this place. He knows it. He’s comfortable here.
    He belongs.
    There’s dust. A thick layer below the foreboding lack of air that suffocates the people he brings here. But not him. He’s unaffected. This is where he waits, with his single chair and his blindfold and his off-key music.
    He waits.
    For me.
    I’ve been here before.
    In the kitchen I pour myself a large glass of Malbec but pull the bottle away too quickly, dripping a broken claret path between the stem and the label. I lick away the spillage from my forefinger after rubbing it around the glass and up the bottle neck.
    And, still, he waits.
    His large menacing frame floating around the gloaming of his torture room. He dances from left foot to right, shifting the particles beneath him, silently kicking around the deathly