Northaven was a surreal experience for Jack. There were pubs named after him. Not just him, but memorable incidents in his life. At the first corner, the stagecoach passed an ale-house called The Lieutenant-governor's Fork. And then there was Cantonment Walk, the Parish of Joel Parish, and a bright, expensive-looking goldsmiths called The Rani's Jewels.

But most unsettlingly, there was the statue. Jack caught sight of it from the coach-window, and then ducked out of sight, as though looking at it for too long would identify him as one of the men on that pedestal, immortalized in bronze.

In a way, it was a good likeness. They hadn't made him taller than he really was, a mistake which most people – even tailors who had actually measured him – seemed to make. And he was smiling, which he had probably done a lot in those days. His head and shoulders were dusted with snow, which gave him a silvery, distinguished look.

He wondered if she'd seen it – if she had looked up at his face and felt a little nostalgic? Or perhaps she had shrunk back in horror or given the pedestal a kick. He had no idea what to expect. He'd take anything. Just let her be alive and whole and not gazing dreamily into the piano-player's eyes.

The town itself was typically Northern: steep streets, grey houses, glimpses of moorland from every vantage point. And yet, here and there, notes of India turned up. In the town square, he saw men smoking hookahs and cheroots. On one street corner, a man at a barrow was ladling hot, spiced chai into chipped glasses. The musical instruments were a cacophonous mess, but there were definitely sitars and tablas among them.

The thud of Indian drums and the play of Indian spices in his nostrils made his heart pound. Perhaps it was also pounding because it had to work hard to pump an insufficient amount of blood around his body. But it was mostly the thought of India, and how happy he'd been in India, and whether he could ever have that happiness again. 

He told himself it was stupid. He didn't know anything about her now. Was she horribly injured – horribly angry – horribly married? She had a million reasons to hate him. And yet, in the Indian room, she had been... tolerant. All he needed was her tolerance. All he needed was for her to be patient while he looked at her for half an hour and tried to work out what to do next.

He wondered whether anyone would recognize him from India. Or from the statue. It seemed unfeasible that they wouldn't, and yet he walked through street after street of happily oblivious new-breeds, none of whom gave him a second look. Perhaps he didn't look like Jack Cade anymore. Jack Cade was louche and bouncy and under-dressed, but he was frail and thin and wearing a neck-tie to hide the scars.

He stood around the outer edges of the dancefloor which took up the whole of the town square, and looked up at the inn they called The Birdcage. Instead of a pub sign, it had an ornate, gilded cage hanging up, filled with budgies. They were bright as candlewicks in the dusk, and they fluttered about so violently that the cage rocked back and forth without a breeze.

After a few moments staring hungrily up at the windows, he moved towards the front door. A carriage had just drawn up, and in the ensuing chaos of porters and packing-cases, he was able to stroll in unnoticed and get a look at the register. A Dr and Mrs Strood had checked in on Friday night and been given separate bedrooms. Always a good sign. She was in the attic room, but since the key labelled 'Attic' was hanging up behind the desk, he didn't bother climbing the stairs.

He went out again, spotted the telegraph office on the other side of the square, and picked his way through the dancers towards it. He couldn't remember if Simonelli still worked there. He had tried to keep track of every contact who might prove useful, but somehow Simonelli's details had slipped away from him. Still, at least he was easy to recognize. A gigantic Italian with reams of superfluous body hair would be unlikely to melt into the crowd – even a Northaven crowd.

He entered in a whirl of snow-flakes, with one of those horrible shop-bells clattering away above the door. But thank god, the room was empty, apart from him and the man he was seeking. You couldn't mistake him. He still had all that wiry black hair, creeping out like spider-legs from under his cuffs and collar.

When he recognized Jack, he ducked under the counter and came towards him in a kind of crouching scuttle, as though he'd been expecting him – no, as though he was late.

"You got my telegram?" said Simonelli, reaching out to pat the front of Jack's coat in a motion that was half-deferential and half-agitated. "No, of course you didn't. You couldn't have got here so fast. But perhaps you know already?"

Jack wasn't alarmed yet. Italians were very tactile people, and quite often grabbed you by the coat. He was probably just talking about the fact that Ellini was alive. Quite a few of the colonists had seen the Sahiba. If Simonelli had read about her death in the papers, and then recognized her here, seven months later, of course he would be agitated – of course he would send Jack a telegram. There was no need to panic. He had only just found out she was alive – she couldn't already be dead.

"Santo cielo, I hope you know," said Simonelli. "I don't have the English to explain it."

"Explain what?"

"The dead have risen! Your pretty Sahiba-"

"Where is she?" said Jack, catching Simonelli's agitation at last.

"But not just her," said Simonelli. "The – beh, come si dice? The sea monster – the big octopus."

"What?"

"Madre de dio, I don't remember the word! Leviathan? Big octopus!" he repeated, waving his hands at Jack's bemused expression.

Jack seized a handful of Simonelli's shirt-front. He wanted to point out that Northaven was fifty miles from the sea, that a big octopus would have stood out even in a town like this. But the man's panic was catching. "Where?" he hissed. "How can you say that and not say where?"

"They walked past me a moment ago-"

"A big octopus walked past? On tentacles or legs?"

"No," said Simonelli, wiping the sweat from his brow. "They call him the big octopus – he's not actually a-"

"Where?" Jack repeated.

"Take this," said Simonelli, drawing out a small revolver and slipping it into Jack's pocket. "This street, or the next one – heading for the school at the top of the hill-"

But the bell over the door was already clattering. Jack was already skidding over the snowy cobbles. He had to catch hold of a window-ledge at the end of the street to keep himself upright as he rounded the corner. He was still clutching it when he saw the steps, and the figures.

It was a flight of rock-cut steps, leading up to a big set of gates. There was a gas-lantern hanging up there, and its light streamed over the figures, casting long shadows onto the steps behind them, like overthrown enemies, all twisted and stretched-out and prone.

At first, he only saw the silhouettes – well-dressed silhouettes, of a woman in a tight bustle dress, and a man with a well-cut jacket, top hat, and cane. Both their faces were in shadow. The woman was standing a few steps up from the man, and had turned away from the light to look back at him. And the man was looking up at her, so his face was pointed the other way.

Oddly enough, it was Robin he recognized first – Robin who couldn't possibly be there, Robin who had died years ago from a bullet in the back. She was harder to recognize, even though she was the one he'd been seeking, and it was her silhouette that filled his dreams. She was dressed too fashionably, walking too confidently. You could believe her shadow really was an overthrown enemy, stretched out at her feet.

She had learned how to lift her eyes up from the ground, and they were fixed on Robin Crake.

The shockwaves of that thought were still rebounding through him when Robin mounted another step, bringing his face level with Ellini's. He leaned forwards, and she – she didn't shrink away. 

It was like a kick to the stomach. It knocked Jack back into the snow. The cold rushed up from the ground and shuddered through him like an electric charge – just cold, for now. Just desolation.

At no point did he think it couldn't be real. Of course it was real. It was Robin. He existed for this kind of thing. He took what he could get. He descended like carrion on the wreckage of other people's lives and picked the bones clean.

And coldly, mechanically, as though it was just a matter of cogs turning and levers clicking into place, he thought about what all this meant.

Robin and Ellini were lovers. They really were this time. While he had been in hell, these two had been dressed in their finest, kissing each other out in the open, as if no-one else existed in the world. 

At some point, Jack got up. He didn't remember doing it, but he remembered glancing back at the depressions left by his head and shoulders in the snow. They were before his eyes as he rounded the corner and followed Robin into the town square. Ellini had slipped into the darkness beyond the gates, so there was nothing to distract him from his fury – no passing stab of tenderness to cool him down.

He followed Robin through the crowd of dancers in the square, who all seemed to be moving in slow-motion now. Even the sparks they stamped up from the cobbles were slow and heavy and dim. But all the time, he could see those depressions in the snow before his eyes. A snow-angel where he had lain – a symbol of what had been done to him. 

He had never thought about it before, but it stood to reason that snow angels were fallen angels. They were a snap-shot of that moment when you hit the ground and knew there was no way up again. You had been hurled out of heaven and had to make do as best you could below. It was a cold moment, the one captured by those outlines in the snow.

But it gave way to hotter moments. The fallen angels used that rage to torment sinners, and this was precisely what Jack intended to do. The depressions in the snow weren't just a reminder of what had been done to him, but of what he was now. There was no hope. He had been trying to tell himself that – Ellini had been trying to tell him that in the Indian room, when he had asked her if she was alive and she had said, "You'll wish I wasn't." He just hadn't been able to accept it before he'd seen Robin's face. But Robin was the universal symbol for no hope. And if there was no hope, then the least he could do was take that bastard with him.

He walked on. Robin wasn't the type to skirt the edges of things. He cut right through the dance as if he owned the new-breeds and the cobbles they were dancing on. And Jack followed, stumbling and stalking by turns, as the anger made him clumsy and then purposeful. He never lifted his eyes from Robin's back, but amazingly, no-one walked into him. Perhaps they sensed his anger and wisely kept away.

The bitterness was overflowing like a shaving-cup with too much foam, frothing and flopping over the sides. He hated them – he hated them. While he had been dying for her – literally dying for her – Robin had had his hands all over her. Robin had feasted while he'd starved. Was this why she had left her girls – had let Sergei and Danvers and Manda believe she was dead? Because she'd been too busy flirting with Robin to think about anything else? Was this why she had been happier, stronger, more confident when she had met him in the Indian room? Had Robin been doing all that to her? What hadn't Robin been doing to her? 

Jack's fingers closed around the gun Simonelli had given him. He was aware of a few half-formed thoughts fluttering round his head – telling him that he was out in the open, there would be hundreds of witnesses, Ellini would be angry.

That was probably the one that swung it, in the end.

He drew out the gun and took careful aim. In his head, the dance was a slow-moving puzzle that had to be worked through. He saw the bullet coasting over that man's shoulder, into the gap left by that woman swinging to her right, through the gust of flames thrown up by that fire-breather, and into the fabric of that well-fitting coat. Right between the shoulder-blades. A bullet in the back like he was supposed to have had three years ago. Reality springing back into shape.

And then he fired.

It was amazing how quickly things changed. He had been expecting screams – the bunching and rising of crowds as people swarmed onto each other's backs to get away. But there was no panic. The crowd had already been aware of him, perhaps. Every dancer had been watching him out of the corner of their eyes, without breaking stride, without doing anything to give him away. 

And now that the shot had been fired, they closed in. It was almost eerie, the way they moved with one intent – the way they grabbed Robin's recumbent form, hauled him up, and oiled him over to Jack.

When Jack was face-to-face with Robin, who was being held upright between two men and was still vaguely conscious, a knife was pressed into his hand, handle-first, and a man to his left said, very quietly:

"You want 'im dead, he's dead. You want his head on your mantelpiece, you'll get it. We remember you. This is your town."

Jack was still gasping with anger – his head was still pounding – but the strangeness of this speech woke him up.

He looked at Robin, whose face was red and wet from where he'd smacked into the cobbles. He walked round him, and the crowd shuffled up to make room. There was no blood. Jack could see a singed hole in the back of his coat, but nothing on his shirt. It was as though the bullet had got that far, and no further.

Robin raised his head a little, between the two men holding his arms, and gave Jack a lop-sided smile. "Golden boy. Long time, no see."

Jack dropped the knife and punched him. There was a satisfying crunch, and his body went limp between his captors. His head lolled, and his nose dribbled blood all over that mysteriously intact shirt.

Jack looked for Simonelli, and found him towering, head and shoulders above the crowd, a few feet away. He was the only one who looked nervous. The others had a creepy mixture of confidence and devotion on their faces, as though this couldn't possibly be wrong, because Jack Cade was doing it.

"Kraken," said Jack brightly. "The word you were looking for was 'Kraken'."

Simonelli gave a queasy kind of nod. Without any shuffling or stumbling, the crowd pushed him forward to Jack's side. "What – uh – what do you want us to do with him?" he asked.

Jack could barely hear him over the pounding in his ears, but he was just conscious enough to know that he wanted answers, and he would be unlikely to get them from Ellini. Robin would give him answers, because they would hurt. You couldn't trust Robin, but you could always trust Robin to be Robin.

"I want a quiet place to interrogate him," said Jack. "And, after an hour or so, I want someone to take a note to that nice Mrs Strood staying at The Birdcage."