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the fields that you could have reached out and touched them. There was that moment where you hoped the pilot knew what he was doing, then the runway appeared from nowhere and we touched down, the reverse thrusters bringing us to a virtual standstill.
    We taxied past a line of small private propeller planes and pulled into a hangar that had been built away from the other buildings. Like the Gulfstream, the hangar was painted white and had no markings to indicate who owned it. The only other vehicles inside the hangar were a helicopter and a black police cruiser covered in Dayton Sheriff’s Department markings. The Gulfstream rolled to a halt beside the car, and the jets idled then died.
    It was almost three in the afternoon. The journey from Charleston to Eagle Creek had taken exactly two hours. I could picture those white numbers counting down to zero against that pitch-black background: 09:06:34.
    At the door we said thanks and bye to the pilot and flight attendant, then climbed down the steps. The heat hit me straight away. It was like getting off a plane in the tropics. It smelled the same, too. Kerosene and sun-baked vegetation.
    I got into the passenger seat of the police cruiser. Taylor squashed himself behind the wheel. The partition had been removed and his seat was racked back as far as it would go, but he still looked like he was squeezing himself into a toy car. My suitcase and laptop bag went onto the back seat and Taylor started the engine.
    ‘Sue,’ I said. ‘You’re the boy called Sue.’
    ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
    ‘It’s a Johnny Cash song.’
    ‘My parents are more into Motown.’
    ‘How about Marvin, then? Like Marvin Gaye. Marvin Taylor? Yeah I can see that. It’s got a nice ring to it.’
    Taylor laughed. We pulled out of the hangar and the sound of the engine changed from a muted throb to a distant growl. Bright sunshine flooded the car and I put on my sunglasses.
    ‘You might as well quit now, Winter. You’re not going to get it.’
    ‘And that sounds like a challenge.’
    ‘Not a challenge, a fact.’
    ‘And you’re prepared to put your money where your mouth is? How about fifty bucks?’
    ‘Fifty? Let’s make it really interesting. How about two hundred?’
    ‘You sure you can afford to lose that on a rookie’s salary?’
    Taylor let loose with a deep belly laugh. ‘No way am I going to lose this one.’
    ‘Okay, here’s the deal. If I don’t find out what your first name is by the time I leave, then I’ll happily pay you two hundred bucks.’
    I reached across and we shook, Taylor’s gentle hand swallowing mine.
    ‘You might as well pay up now, Winter. Save yourself the trouble.’
    I smiled and settled back in my seat, the sun blazing through the windshield warming my skin. ‘Funnily enough, I was just about to say the exact same thing to you.’

6
    Five minutes after leaving the airfield we hit Main Street. We came in from the south and kept to the speed limit all the way. The first structure I saw was a church, and the first billboard had a large poster proclaiming that JESUS DIED FOR YOU! WOULD YOU DIE FOR HIM? in four-foot-high blood-red letters.
    Get this far into the Southern badlands and poverty was rife. Small towns were dying. That’s a fact. It’s like a plague had hit. Abandoned, ruined buildings littered the landscape, and boarded-up shops were the rule rather than the exception. Most of the houses were rundown with dirt yards and rusty chicken-wire fencing.
    That wasn’t the case in Eagle Creek. There was bright, shiny paintwork wherever you looked, and every single window sparkled. The road was so smooth it could have been resurfaced a week ago.
    The park in the town centre was surrounded by buildings that shimmered in the afternoon heat. Large, important-looking grey and white monuments as opposed to the squat two-storey structures on the rest of Main Street. The courthouse, the mayor’s office, the library.
    The Eagle Creek Police