Sam sat in the chair by his bed, hands placed rigidly on the arm-rests, like an unwilling visitor to a sick-room. In one hand, he was clutching a full glass of whisky, with ice that had long-since melted into condensation under his palms. In the other, he was holding the unopened letter that he'd salvaged from the street outside the mortuary the night before.

He'd been sitting like this since lunchtime. It had got dark around him, but he hadn't bothered to light the lamps or draw the curtains. 

They had tried to tell him that no-one was dead, that the prisoners had all been re-captured, that the mayor was most apologetic. It meant nothing to him. It didn't even really matter whether Alice Darwin was dead or alive. What mattered was that he had abandoned her. And for Oxford reasons.

However he tried to dress them up, they were Oxford reasons. He loved Lily. He wanted to hear some parting benediction from her, some hint that she might have forgiven him. But he was well aware that he only felt this way–or, at any rate, had only begun to feel this way–because she was a genius. He was no better than those deluded dons, cradling a broken Stradivarius in his arms, and not giving a damn about the human casualties.

This was partly why he hadn't dared to open the letter. Oh, not for fear that it might contain a stream of invectives, or a slur on his manhood, or even inferior prose. But for the fear that she would forgive him, he would feel better, he would receive the benediction he had abandoned Alice Darwin to get. He didn't deserve that.

So he sat in the chair in his bedroom, stock still, filled with an anger so ponderous it barely let him breathe. And he didn't open the letter. Ignorance was the most punishing state a policeman could find himself in, so he wanted to prolong it as long as he could. Perhaps forever.

This was one of the reasons why he made no move to throttle Jack when the bastard climbed in through his window. Sam didn't even turn his head to look at him.

He didn't have a gun or a truncheon any longer. He'd handed everything in to the duty-officer when he resigned that morning. But he had kept the Bone Inspector's post-mortem report on Miss Syal's body. He didn't know why. Jack had won, after all. Sam had no plans to fight him–no plans at all, besides leaving the city as soon as he could.

But the mystery of Ellini's body was the only thing Jack didn't know, the only advantage Sam had. Even if he planned to sit in his chair, leaden and immobile with anger, for the rest of his life, there would be something fractionally satisfying in denying Jack total knowledge. Especially if that knowledge might make him happy.

Now his eyes flicked unconsciously towards the report, which he'd left, nestled in its cardboard folder, on the dresser. He was sure Jack had seen it – Jack's eyes raked over everything. Still, the first thing he remarked on was not the report, but the letter.

"You haven't opened it."

With some reluctance, Sam allowed himself to look at Jack. He was tense, shaky, but brightly cheerful, as though he was trying to be nice, but was not at all sure he had it in him. Still, he was calmer than Sam had seen him since Ellini's death. And, when you saw how miserable he was–how bitterly amused at his own misery–and how he was trying, through it all, to make Sam feel better, it was hard to hate him. Hard, but not impossible.

"I can understand that," said Jack, sitting down, in the absence of any invitation to do so. He perched on the side of the bed, by the open but empty packing-case Sam had thrown on there that morning. 

"One last letter. It's almost as though she's still alive, isn't it? She has something to say, and you don't know what it is. That's the problem with dead people. They stop being able to surprise you. You can remember them, but that's all you. You can't reproduce whatever it was that made them so refreshingly different, even with the most fertile imagination. You end up idealizing them. Even now, I'm pretty sure I'm remembering her with bigger breasts than she actually had–although I could understand if that was something I was doing unconsciously, just to spite myself."

"Get out," said Sam tonelessly.

Jack ignored this. He stretched out his feet, licked his lips, and said, "I wouldn't open it at all, ever. I mean, what is it exactly that you don't know? Are you wondering if she hated you? Of course she hated you. She was about to die. People aren't at their best when they're about to die. That's why I get impatient with last words and death-bed confessions. As if your final moments are the accumulation of a lifetime's wisdom, rather than a stretch of sweaty, embarrassing pain. If you want to know whether she could have forgiven you, look to the things she said when she was alive."

"Get out," said Sam again. He was quite content to repeat it, at regular intervals, for the rest of his life, like a clock chiming the hour. 

Jack plunged his hands into his pockets, looking at the rug with mild, good-humoured misery.

"I've brought you a way to kill me," he said at last. "I thought you'd like that."

"I don't like anything."

Jack smiled at the floor. "No kidding." He indicated the open packing-case, and went on, "Where will you go?"

"London."

"Manda would probably go with you, if you asked her to."

A flicker of expression passed over Sam's stony face, although even he couldn't have said what it was. Perhaps it was incredulity. After everything Jack had done to him, surely–surely–he wouldn't have the effrontery to offer him romantic advice now?

Jack waved a hand, perhaps sensing that he'd gone too far. "Actually, she'll be very busy here. She's helping me to look after the other Charlotte Greys. She, um–she said to tell you that I'll be doing something constructive with my insanity from now on, so there's no reason not to let bygones be bygones."

Sam snorted derisively, and Jack couldn't help smiling. "Yeah. Even I thought she was being naïve there." 

He was twisting his fingers, with a motion that was half-absentminded and half-vicious. "Anyway, Ellini–" his breath caught in his throat slightly when he said her name, "–wrote a letter to one of the escaped slave-girls two days before she died, telling them who they could go to for help, in case anything happened to her."

He sped over that last bit, as though he was aware of what a horrible understatement it was to say that 'something had happened to her'.

"She singled out me and Manda – only the poor girl went to Manda first, of course, not having had the best of experience with males." He gave his fingers another half-conscious twist. "Which brings me to the woman who has the power to kill me."

He reached into his pocket and unfolded a pencil-sketch of a round, rosy face, grinning with an energy that was almost indecent. Whatever it was that had made her smile like that, it wouldn't have been suitable for delicate ears.

"It's a bit technical to go into, but it turns out that I've been cursed with immortality, and there's only one person in the world who can kill me. There are no photographs of her, but my new friend–the ex-Charlotte Grey–is an artist, so she gave me this. I understand there's a whole, horrific gallery in her parlour, showing the slave-girls being whipped and worked to death by their captors. Apparently, she wanted to bring along some of the more evocative pieces to show me, but Manda stepped in."

He leaned closer to Sam and whispered, "Not the first time she's saved my life. She's very puzzling, that one. This is the second friend she's lost to the idiocy of men, and yet she's still being kind to them. Let's face it, Sammie, neither of us deserve her."

"Anyway," he said, holding up the sketch again, after Sam had treated him to another few minutes of stony silence. "This lovely, smiling lady is my executioner. Well-covered for a Grim Reaper, isn't she? But I suppose everyone's death comes in a different shape. Her name's Mathilde Marron."

"Chestnut?" said Sam, with another snort.

"I suppose so, but it's a misleading name, because, whatever her original hair-colour might have been, she's white-blonde now, just like the rest of them. Emma says she's big. Six foot at least. Had to go through most of the caverns bent double. She's fire-proof too. That's her demonic symptom. But Ellini trusted her above everyone else–even above Manda–so I know she's special."

He held out the sketch, but Sam wouldn't take it, so he got up and laid it, face-down, on the dresser.

"Find me this girl, Sam. I'm going to look for her myself, in the fire-mines, but I have a feeling she's already out. She's too clever to be left behind. And, if she's out, she must be in London. That's where people go to disappear." He placed a hand on the dresser, as if to steady himself. "Bring her to me, and you can have Oxford back. I don't want it. I just–"

His voice thickened, and he looked away, blinking. "Anyway, I'll look after the place while you're gone.

"I'm not coming back," said Sam.

"I bet that's what Burgess thought when he pushed you out of that window. And he must have thought it again when he hurled you against the martyr's memorial. And he must have really thought it when he sank his teeth into your throat. But I'm smarter than him. I'll be waiting."

Jack turned back to the dresser, his hand hovering close to the folder which contained the post-mortem report. He must have known what it was, but he didn't pick it up.

"There's nothing...worse...is there? I mean, it's difficult to imagine how it could be worse, but at this point, nothing would surprise me. She wasn't–pregnant, or–or dying a slow, painful death anyway?"

"Why don't you open it up and see for yourself?" said Sam. Perhaps this was cruel, but it couldn't be crueller than what Jack had done to him.

Jack kept his gaze fixed on the wooden surface of the dresser, as though even the blank, cardboard cover of the report was too provocative for his eyes.

"Are there pictures in there?"

"Sketches," said Sam, with a shrug that made his bones creak. "No photographs. The police photographer didn't show up for work."

Jack looked up at him. "I'll find out eventually, you know."

"I'm telling you, you can find out now. Open it up. You've been on a battlefield–you've seen internal organs before."

There was a light, hysterical chuckle in the back of Jack's throat. His hand twitched and withdrew. He passed his other hand over his eyes–because, apparently, the one that had been hovering close to the folder was tainted.

"All right," he said. "You win."

"Oh," said Sam, with a gesture that took in the letter, the packing-case, and, outside the window, the charred and still-smoking city. "So this is what winning looks like. I always wondered."