Out of habit, he hit the next site on his bookmarks bar.

The WAE homepage was its standard tedious self – but for one black-outlined box containing a snippet of news.

The WAE family is sad to announce the death of one of its engineers. Recent recruit Annette Lim, 25, was an asset to the company with a promising future and will be sorely missed by friends and colleagues at our Irving, Tx, plant.

Vaguely interested, Tom Googled Annette Lim and sat up straight in his seat, wincing at the jab of pain from his balls, but suddenly very far from self-pity.

From Irving Online:

AP – A 25-year-old woman was found dead Friday at the WAE plant in Irving, Texas.

Irving City Police Detective Ronaldo Suarez said engineer Annette Lim had extensive head injuries and was already deceased when paramedics arrived at the plant, which makes airplane parts, most notably the engines for Boeing 737s.

Det. Suarez added: ‘We have a weapon and we have a suspect in custody. He is a Chinese-American male who works as a security guard at the WAE plant. He was arrested at the scene and is currently under police guard in hospital.

Tom’s eyes dropped to the photo of Annette Lim. No wonder the site had run it – she was a babe. Had been a babe. Oh, what the hell – for all the interaction Tom was going to have with her, Annette Lim was still a babe and now would be for ever. He had always been in favour of leaving a good-looking corpse.

He drummed his fingers on the desk, staring at Annette Lim.

WAE. His gut told him there was a connection although he couldn’t yet see it.

He got up and stood awkwardly at the doorway to his bedroom, resting his right leg, and listened to Ness breathe gently.

He looked at the luminous dial on his alarm clock: 04:27.

By 04:35 Tom was in a cab on his way to LAX.

*

Unlike Tom Patrick, Halo Jackson had some friends. And when his cell phone rang at five thirty, waking Vee despite the speed of his reaction, Halo seriously thought that, unless one of those friends was in dire need, he would have to kill the caller.

He was somehow unsurprised to hear Tom Patrick’s voice.

‘Halo?’

‘Yes! What?’ Halo muttered, as angrily and as quietly as he could.

‘Can you get me that cheap ticket to Irving?’

‘It’s half past five in the morning!’

‘Sorry,’ said Tom, not sounding it. ‘So, can you get me a ticket or not?’

‘Now?’

‘Yes.’

‘No!’

Halo wished his cell was an old-fashioned phone so he could slam it down on Tom instead of just digging his thumb unsatisfyingly into the red disconnect key.

‘Who was that?’ Vee rolled into his side.

‘Tom Patrick.’

Vee’s silence reminded him of why they knew Tom Patrick – and that reminded him that he was in bed with the widow of his best friend.

‘About Chris?’ Vee had remembered it too.

Halo was about to say, ‘No,’ when the penny dropped. The sudden jolt out of sleep had left him without awareness of anything but his own name and the warmth of Vee’s smooth thigh alongside his. Now he also remembered the 737 crash yesterday: 737 engines were made by WAE. In Irving, Texas.

‘Shit,’ he said, and groped for his cell phone again in the darkness.

26

CHUCK ZHONG’S PARENTS visited him every day, even though he wished they wouldn’t. His tentative grasp on their native language and their confusion and dismay over what he was supposed to have done were added burdens he could really have lived without right now.

At the arraignment they’d sat clutching each other’s hands with identical looks of baffled incomprehension on their faces – like someone had ordered a number 562 at the Lucky Eight.

He knew they wanted him to look at them, wanted him to tell them what was happening. But he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t meet their eyes; couldn’t explain. He could barely comprehend that he had killed Annette Lim. It seemed so far-fetched. Not like something he would – could – ever do.

Every time he thought about it, he would get to the point where he had picked up the swimming trophy and swung it at her face, and laugh. Just laugh. It couldn’t be real, could it? That he had hit her – ‘multiple times’, they called it – then looped his belt around his own neck and tried to hang himself from the doorknob.

Laughable.

Someone told him that Nicholas Nicholas had resuscitated him, which explained the faint taste of lotus-seed buns that Chuck had had on his lips when he had finally come back to full consciousness in the emergency room.

It had added to the surreal feeling of utter disbelief.

But as the days passed, the nightmare remained unbroken by a new morning, and Chuck started to realize that his life was effectively over. Quite possibly literally over, given Texas’s jab-happy attitude to lethal injection. It was a terrible dark heaviness that left him cold and sweaty and fluttery with panic at regular intervals. He tried not to think about it but it was everywhere, all the time.

In hospital he’d been questioned by the grossly fat Detective Suarez, who was smart and had a knack of unsettling Chuck, even while Chuck feigned memory-loss, PTSD and – as a last resort – sleep.

‘You a virgin?’ barked Suarez.

‘No!’ It was the first question he’d answered truthfully since Suarez, who had arrived. Damn him!

‘Anyone vouch for that?’

Chuck blushed and gave him Verity’s name. Suarez looked at him with barely disguised amusement, as if the thought of someone like Chuck screwing someone named Verity only proved his virginity point for him. Chuck felt a flash of anger. He wanted to tell Suarez just exactly how and when he’d had sex with Verity Stringer; that she’d made the first move on him; that they’d once done it in the baseball dugout after he’d taken a catch in the outfield that had made him wish time could stand still; that he’d broken up with her – admittedly getting in just under the wire, but still.

Fuck this fat Mex.

‘But you were hot for that girl Annette, right?’

‘No. I need a doctor. Can you call a doctor? I don’t feel so good.’

Suarez ignored that. ‘Gimme a break. I’ve seen pictures. Man, she was even a hot corpse. You were hot for her and she brushed you off.’