But something in the gruff, grudging gesture of offering food spoke to Halo of something else going on in Tom Patrick that was masked by his cynicism and prickly shell. Well masked, thought Halo, with a smile.

He sighed and wondered whether a choice was actually necessary. Finding Niño and working with Tom were not mutually exclusive activities. In fact, they were part of the same thing. This Pride of Maine thing.

Halo felt a nudge of guilt at Tom’s bitter words about the Pride of Maine, then almost immediately suppressed it. He owed it to a much older friend to clear his name, and if he had to bully Tom Patrick into helping him do that, then that was what he would do.

*

Tom woke to find Ness standing over him, naked, with the bolt in her hand. She flinched when he opened his eyes, then smiled quietly. ‘Sorry.’

‘’S okay.’

‘I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking. About this.’ She shrugged, dismissing her own interest, and placed the bolt back on the table.

‘Couldn’t sleep, huh?’ He reached out to pull her down to him. The smell of him was still on her; he’d marked her as his territory, and the thought made him hard again. She felt it and closed her hand around him.

‘Don’t want to waste that,’ he mumbled, into her throat.

19

LYLE’S REPLACEMENT WAS a bald man almost as wide as he was tall, which was not very. His name was Nicholas H. Nicholas, and he wouldn’t tell them what the H stood for. Jeff ragged him for a while about it. ‘Humphrey. Harold. Harmony Hairspray.’

Nicholas said nothing and watched the screens.

Jeff rocked back creakily on his swivel chair and pursed his lips. ‘Horatio. Henry. Herbert. It’s Henry, right?’

‘What does this do?’ said Nicholas Nicholas, and Chuck leaned forward.

‘You can toggle between screens, see? Here you got your assembly line, your meeting room, your cafeteria, your engineering section—’

‘Cafeteria open?’

‘Closes at six.’

‘I didn’t bring anything.’

There was a pregnant silence. Chuck had cold pork and peanut dumplings. They sat clammily in an old scratched plastic container in his backpack, waxy and flat, with pinched, corrugated edges, like a box of ears. He knew Jeff brought sandwiches – corned beef usually – with the crusts cut off. They never exchanged food.

But Nicholas didn’t seem to be angling for charity. He sighed.

‘Hobie. Harlan. Harlan Globetrotter.’ Jeff laughed at his own wit, stretching the laugh in the hope someone would join him.

‘There’s a vending machine. Full of shit.’

Nicholas looked perkier at that. ‘So do we get a break?’

‘Jeff has twelve till twelve thirty. I take twelve thirty to one. You have one to one thirty.’ Chuck got up and picked up his flashlight.

‘Where you going?’

‘The rounds.’

‘Chuck likes to make the rounds, right, Chuck?’

Chuck shrugged. Jeff grabbed his own flashlight. ‘I’ll come with you. The new guy’s pissing me off.’

Chuck was surprised. Jeff had never joined him on his rounds before. As far as he knew, Jeff never made rounds.

He glanced at Nicholas but the man simply turned his back on them and toggled between the screens the way Chuck had shown him.

‘It’s okay. I don’t mind doing them. You grab some coffee – and make me some for when I get back.’ He hoped his tone was light and bored but couldn’t tell.

Jeff glanced at him and, for a split second, Chuck thought he saw knowledge in the bigger man’s eyes. Then Jeff stretched, yawned – and flicked on his flashlight. ‘Let’s go.’

Chuck’s palms were clammy and he fought illogical panic. So what? he told himself. So Jeff was making his rounds with him. He could make them again at four a.m. and do what he needed to then. It made no difference. All he had to do was act casual with Jeff. Everything would be okay.

Slowly Chuck’s breathing came back to him and he started to relax.

Jeff shuffled along beside him, his height and slight stoop making him look like a man who was trying to go unnoticed. ‘See the Cowboys lose again?’

‘Yeah. Fuck.’ Chuck hadn’t seen the Cowboys lose, although he was pleased to hear they had. Every redneck in the state seemed to mourn every beating those bozos took. Lumping Jeff with them made it easier for him to handle the man being with him now.

‘Yeah,’ said Jeff. ‘Fucking play-offs.’

Whatever that meant, thought Chuck.

The plant was dark and secretive, and the beams of their flashlights darted about, making barely any impression on the blackness. Chuck never turned on the lights any more when he made his rounds. He preferred to imagine he was a spy, a James Bond hunting down a secret formula, and would be tortured and killed – slowly – if he was discovered. It gave every work night a certain frisson. But he didn’t need that fantasy tonight. Tonight he had all the frisson he needed.

Jeff didn’t seem to mind the dark. Maybe he thought that was the way rounds were made, thought Chuck. The lazy bastard probably hadn’t made rounds since the invention of the electric light-bulb. They walked in silence. Chuck opened the door to Engineering. He knew she wasn’t there – the light was off – but he always hoped. Although he would have been disappointed to find her while he had Jeff in tow. He’d have had to be professional.

‘You see the chick that works here?’ Jeff waved at the girl’s desk.

Chuck nodded briefly.

‘Fucking hot little bitch, in’t she?’

Chuck was surprised and stood still in the doorway while Jeff shouldered past him. ‘You seen this?’ Jeff opened her desk drawer and found a box of tampons. He grinned at Chuck. ‘Whore,’ he said, as though the tampons proved that.

He peeled a bright yellow Post-it note off a pad on her desk and reached up to cover the lens of the CCTV camera with it. Chuck felt disquiet blossom in his belly, like a rain-cloud gathering on the horizon.

‘Why you standing over there, man? Come on in. Take a load off.’ Jeff sank into the girl’s chair and put his work boots on her neat desk. He pulled open another drawer and extracted a pad of white Authorized Release Certificates and dropped it on the desk beside him. Chuck’s heart lurched into his mouth and Jeff grinned at him, his eyes glittering.

‘This is what you came for, right?’ The thick fingers of his big hand played a little drum-roll on the pad. ‘It’s what Lyle used to come for. We used to have another guy before you. Steven. Or Stevie. Whatever. He used to be you, y’know? A fucking suck-ass, making his rounds like a good little security guard. Before that we had Douglas. Ellery J. Douglas. Guy had the biggest biceps I ever seen. And he made the rounds too. Like the skinny little farmer before him. Me and Lyle, well, we used to just laugh it up when those assholes would sigh and pick up their flashlights. Just like you.’

Chuck said nothing. His mind was too numb to formulate any thought other than that Jeff knew. Had always known.

He felt sick.

‘So, anyway, one night before you come Lyle suddenly gets up and picks up his flashlight and announces he’s making the fucking rounds! I mean! Goddamn!’ Jeff showed his teeth at the memory, but Chuck wouldn’t have called it a smile – or anything close.