For six years, Brookhollow said the bricklayer's son ran away to dig holes in the desert.Today he came home owning the desert, and found men breaking his father's arm.Tannery Row was the last street standing in the old quarter. Everything around it had already fallen to Hatherley Developments: the chapel, the corner bakery and the narrow houses where tannery workers had raised their children for a hundred years. Billboards along the river showed what was coming next, a district of glass towers called Riverglass, with smiling couples on balconies where washing lines used to hang. Hatherley had bought out every family on the row or frightened them into leaving, every family except one.Ivan Whelan had laid every brick of number nine with his own hands, thirty-one years ago, while his wife passed him mortar with their first child on the way. He refused to sign in spring. He refused again in summer, when the polite letters became men at the door. This afternoon, the men had stopped knoc

Zane didn't sleep much in Brookhollow. Two days after he came home, he was sitting at the kitchen window before sunrise, a cup of tea going cold in his hands, when he heard the motorbike.It came down Tannery Row with its engine low and stopped at the gate. The rider wore black from boots to helmet, the visor dark as a beetle's back. They swung off the bike, carried a bag of groceries and a white envelope up the path and set both on the step. Upstairs, a floorboard creaked as Rosa got out of bed. By the time she reached the door, the bike was already turning out of the street. She picked up the bag the way she might lift a sleeping child and stood on the step, looking at the empty road.Zane was out the back before it reached the corner.The hire car Kwame had arranged was parked two streets away, a grey saloon nobody would remember. He kept well back, letting the single red taillight pull him through the sleeping town. The bike crossed the river on the old iron bridge and began to cl

By Monday morning, half of Tannery Row's old neighbours had found a reason to walk past number nine. They came back from the streets across town where Hatherley money had moved them, old women in headscarves and men Ivan had once laid bricks beside, pretending to admire the bunting while they craned for a look at the man the jeweller had bowed to. Rosa had given up shooing them and made a pot of tea instead. Three of them were crowded into her kitchen when the police cars pulled up.Superintendent Mortlake didn't knock. He came through the open door with two uniformed officers behind him, a thick man in a brown raincoat, heavier than Zane remembered and greyer around the jaw. He looked at the teacups and the neighbours and the man sitting at the head of the table, and he smiled as if all of it had been arranged for his benefit."Zane Whelan," he said. "I'm arresting you for the manslaughter of three men on the site of Larch Tower."One of the women by the stove made a small sound and

Archie Jarvis was twelve years old, and his heart had been failing for half of his life.For six years, the Hatherleys had paid for his care at the Linwood Clinic, a private place on the edge of town with carpeted corridors and nurses who knew every child by name. The bills went straight to Hatherley House. Nothing was ever written down about why, and nothing ever needed to be. As long as Dougie Jarvis kept his story straight, his son kept his bed.On Thursday morning, the woman in the billing office called him in and told him, kindly and with real regret, that the account had been closed overnight. Archie could stay until the end of the week. After that, the clinic would need to discuss other arrangements.Dougie's phone rang before he reached the car. It was Rowland Hatherley, and he sounded like a man who hadn't slept."You've heard, then," Rowland said. "Don't panic. It's temporary. The thing is, Dougie, your statement's a bit thin now that he's out on bail. I think if you sat wit

The fire started a little after three in the morning, at the back of the house, where someone had poured a line of petrol along the foot of the wall and thrown a match.Zane woke to the smell before the sound. He was on his feet and on the landing before he understood why, and by then the back of the house was roaring. Smoke rolled up the stairwell thick and yellow. Somewhere below, glass burst in the heat."Out!" he shouted. "Everybody out, now!"His mother's door was the nearest. Rosa was sitting up in bed, coughing, groping for her glasses on the nightstand. Zane didn't wait for her to find them. He lifted her off the mattress in her nightdress, wrapped the blanket round her and carried her down through the smoke with her face pressed into his shoulder. The heat at the bottom of the stairs was like an open kiln. He kicked the front door wide and set her down on the pavement, then turned straight back.Maren and Kwame were already halfway down the stairs with Ivan between them. Kwam