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towards the front door of the building and they exited together, walking down the steps and towards his car. Margaret’s resolve was ebbing, her shoulders slumped, head lowered, her movements slow and deliberate.
    Kane pulled his car keys out of his jacket pocket, triggered the central locking and opened the passenger door for her. She stopped, her hand on the edge of the door, and looked back at the police station. She looked at him, her face saddened, and then she eased herself into the car. He had never seen her look so old.
    When he closed the door and walked around the front of the car, he noticed a slip of paper tucked under one of the windscreen wipers. He hesitated before picking it up and unfolding it, looking around as he did so.
    It was a hand-scrawled note: I said no police .
    There was nobody around, nobody that looked to be following him or watching him. He took a deep breath, scrunched the paper into a ball and stuffed it in his pocket.
    In his car, when he got behind the wheel, Margaret said, ‘What was that?’ There was no real interest in her voice.
    Kane started the ignition, checked his mirrors. ‘ Just one of those stupid flyers,’ he lied. ‘Ten percent off something or other.’ When he pulled away from the roadside, the skin on his hands stretched tight over his knuckles as he gripped the steering wheel. His chest was still aching.
    * * *
     
    A light rain spat at the funeral party as they gathered around a newly dug grave, indolently watching the young Father Mitchell as he led them in prayer. Margaret, in her black trouser suit, strengthened perhaps by the arrival of David late last night, sympathetically squeezed Kane’s arm before she placed a white carnation on top of the coffin. White for purity, Kane thought.
    ‘Eternal rest,’ Father Mitchell prayed, ‘grant unto Ryan, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.’
    Reading from the Order of Service, the gathered people replied, ‘May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace. Amen.’
    Only a few of Ryan’s friends turned out. Some of them Kane recognised, but there were others, people he had never seen before. He wondered if they knew about Ryan’s addiction, wondered if they were in on it, if they supplied him. More to the point, he wondered if any of them knew about the phone calls he had been receiving. Or the biblical calling card.
    He loosened the tie around his neck, his face feeling flushed in the rain. When the funeral was over and people were leaving, they shook his hand or gave him a gentle hug, accompanied by words of condolences.
    John, the only drag queen Kane and Ryan really knew, who called herself Daphne Do-More when it suited, was a completely different person today, the only time Kane had ever seen him in a suit and without the face paint. His stubble must have been a couple of days old. Everyone hides behind a mask. It was Wilde who’d said you only see someone’s true self when you give them a mask.
    Kane wasn’t so sure.
    Margaret resembled a pillar, brave-faced and strong. Kane imagined she was tearing herself up inside, but outwardly, she gave nothing away.
    She approached him and pointed to a group of Ryan’s friends who were clambering into a car. ‘They’re going to a pub. One that they say Ryan used to go to.’
    He looked away from her. He was crying. David, grey-haired and upright, stepped away to give them a moment, his hands behind his back like an army general. Kane’s words were gritty when he spoke. ‘They’re going to get drunk in his memory?’
    Margaret touched his shoulder. ‘They’re going to toast him. He’d like that.’
    ‘I think he’d prefer to be alive.’
    ‘We’d all prefer it if he was alive.’
    Kane turned away from her. He clenched his teeth and his eyes, his hands knuckling his temples. ‘It’s not f-fair,’ he said, his voice pathetic, ripped through with sobs. Margaret Bernhard took him in her arms and said the truest thing