The child took his hand and led him to the couch. ‘You sit here.’

Vee winked at him. ‘Don’t let her bully you now, Tom.’

Halo followed Vee into the kitchen and Tom sat where he was told. He tried to hear what Halo was saying, but the child held out a tiny cup and saucer to him. ‘Do you want sugar?’

Tom looked into the empty cup and wondered why he was even considering his options. ‘Yeah. Okay.’

She picked up a little china bowl and a mustard spoon and spooned air into his cup. Then she fetched a little jug from the coffee-table. ‘Do you want cream?’

‘No, thanks.’

She frowned. ‘But I have a cream jug.’

‘I don’t take cream.’

To his confusion the kid’s sunny demeanour clouded. She looked forlorn. He felt guilty and irritated at the same time. Ella used to get that look when he’d come in from a long day at work and told her he only had time for a quick bite before going to the Bicycle Club. He’d asked her a million times to come with him but she wouldn’t. Wasn’t interested. Never would be. Not his fault.

‘But the cream’s the best bit!’ Halo came back into the room and put two mugs of coffee down on the table. ‘Can I have some tea, please, Katy? With cream and sugar?’ Katy’s face cleared and she fussed over Halo, carefully handing him a little teacup. Tom sipped his coffee from the mug, but Halo dipped his tiny teacup into his coffee and drank it from there. Katy giggled. ‘Best tea in the world, Katy.’ She snuggled onto the couch between them, totally happy. Tom felt stupid: that was all it took.

Vee came in with a cup of coffee and sat in the La-Z-Boy. A man’s chair. Black leather, remote-control holsters, leg-rest levers. She was lost in it, curling her legs under her like a girl, and resting her coffee on the arm.

There was an uncomfortable silence. Tom wasn’t used to making conversation for the sake of it.

Vee leaned her cheek on her palm and looked at him frankly. ‘Halo tells me you might be able to help us, Tom.’

*

Tom slammed the door of the Mustang, hoping it would somehow break, but it was made of sterner stuff. Halo ignored him and waved at Vee and Katy on the porch as he pulled back round towards Bellflower.

‘You mad at me?’

Tom’s jaw worked but he didn’t trust himself to speak yet.

Halo pulled out into traffic – he was a careful driver. ‘Great girl, ain’t she? We went to Vegas for the weekend and there she was, waiting tables. She and Chris did a bit of flirting and he gave her a twenty-dollar tip. Then we went to the Luxor to lose some money. Halfway through the night he disappears. I soldier on alone, determined to lose my quota, y’know? Finally get to bed around midnight – no Chris. Next morning he comes in to breakfast with her – married! Man! I pulled him aside and says, “Are you goddamned crazy?” I’m, like, “Get it cancelled, man! You don’t even know this girl.” But he wouldn’t. I mean, it was nuts, right?’ Halo glanced at Tom for confirmation that it was nuts, but got nothing. ‘That was a pretty uncomfortable ride home, I can tell you. Kinda like this.’

Tom refused to play.

Halo sighed. ‘I was so down on that girl. We come back to LA, they move in together, and bit by bit I realize she ain’t here to break his heart or his bank. It’s the real thing, you know? Love at first sight. You know?’ Again he glanced at Tom.

A long silence, then Tom frowned, suddenly focusing on the road. ‘Why are we going back this way?’

*

Halo pulled into the Bicycle Club lot, stopped the Mustang in front of Tom’s Buick and waited.

Finally Tom sighed. ‘You see the crash in South Africa?’

Halo looked surprised and shook his head.

‘737. Like yours. But this one came apart in mid-air and fell on an ostrich farm.’

Halo seemed suitably bemused.

‘Did you know they race ostriches out there?’ Halo shook his head again.

‘Yeah. They got little kids as jockeys and everything.’ Halo looked dubious, so he added: ‘Seriously.’

Halo obviously felt he should say something, so he said, ‘Gee.’

‘Looks like maybe it was a blade off.’

That changed the expression on Halo’s face.

‘Are you involved in the investigation?’

‘Hell, no. Just looked at the pictures online. Seems to me like the fuselage split just fore of the wing.’

‘Like the Pride of Maine.’

‘Like the Pride of Maine,’ agreed Tom. ‘It might be nothing.’

Halo nodded slowly. ‘But it’s something.’

Tom shrugged. He wasn’t making any promises – not based on viewing a couple of crash-scene pix on the goddamned Internet. But something in his gut had stirred and bothered him enough that, after he’d got over the ostrich races, he’d continued thinking about what it might be. Like many of his best moments, it had come while he was asleep, nudging him awake at 3.02 a.m. so he could suffer in its grip until dawn. It was a tenuous link. Same kind of plane; the fuselage parting in the same kind of place. But Tom knew that instinct played a bigger part in investigations than anybody ever cared to admit. Sure, it always had to be supported by the evidence, but it was instinct that told him where to look for that evidence; what that evidence might mean when he found it.

If he didn’t trust his instinct, he’d never have mentioned the South African plane.

‘So you’ll help.’

‘Shit.’ Tom was irritated with Halo for trying to make him commit right out in the open like that.

‘You will, right? You said to Vee—’

‘Christ, leave me alone, will you?’ Tom shoved open the door and slammed it behind him. It still didn’t break.

Tom ignored Halo and pulled out his phone, coming round the Mustang to stand by the hood of his own car.

Halo sighed and reached into the glove box; he held up a hose clip. ‘Man, I’m not sure you’d even be any help. You know what brings down a 737 but you can’t fix your own car?’

Tom recognized the clip that had previously held the fuel line to the Buick’s carburettor. ‘Sonofabitch.’ He flipped his phone shut and snatched the clip from Halo.

‘You have my number.’ Halo waved and drove carefully away.

7

TOM FELT THE time had come to talk to Pete LaBello but he didn’t know what to say to him on the phone, so – in a rare piece of forward-thinking – he caught the earliest flight he could to DC.

He hated to fly. Unlike most professionals in the field, familiarity had bred in him not contempt for the mundanity of air travel but a doom-laden feeling that every flight he took shortened the odds of his plane going down.