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the Hangman's Noose, his favourite pub on the front. That would be just the ticket on a night like this. He gave a shiver, part from cold and part in greedy expectation of his pint.
    And then a hand gripped his shoulder.
    Marcus froze, an image of the statue coming to life filled his mind. The muscles in his legs loosened. He thought he might collapse but the hand remained on his shoulder.
    Slowly, he turned around.
    There was a man standing next to the statue, his arm outstretched, gripping Marcus's shoulder tightly. The man was wearing a black balaclava and only his eyes, dark against a pale skin, could be seen.
    Marcus didn't need to see any more of the man's face, he knew instantly who he was: he was judgement. Marcus felt his knees begin to buckle. Toby had adopted a submissive position sprawled by Marcus's feet on the wet sand, ears back and whimpering.
    ‘What do you want?’ Marcus managed to splutter.
    The man had something in his hand and he was teasing it back and forth. Marcus, an ex-soldier, recognised it for what it was: a ligature made of black leather.
    Marcus crossed himself. ‘I'm so sorry.’
    The man asked Marcus a question.

CHAPTER 5
    For Erasmus, home was an apartment in the rather grandly named Atlantic Way complex. Part of a development that had originally been built for aspiring young professionals, a mix of new build apartments and regulation town houses built on the site of an old cotton warehouse as part of the process of Capital of Culture gentrification prior to the crash. Post-crash the tide had started to come the other way and now the complex was on the outer rim of what was considered acceptable housing for the middle classes who had moved into the city from the surrounding suburbs. It stood like a Roman fort at the edge of the city, abutting the neighboring ‘problem’ estate of the Dingle with its black bricked terraces, survivors of slum clearances, and sixties tower blocks.
    Built quickly and running to seed even quicker, the apartments were originally intended to be the first apartment for a class of young professionals that simply didn't exist post-crash. Now the complex was for the lonely and those whose relationships had broken down: the last apartment.
    At weekends there was a seemingly never-ending procession of deliveries from the IKEA store. When he thought of his new home Erasmus thought of broken people putting together flatpack furniture.
    Erasmus’ apartment didn't suffer from this surfeit of Swedish pine. It didn't suffer from a surfeit of furniture full stop. There were two bedrooms, his, which contained a bed, some clothes rails and lots of books scattered on the floor, and Abby's which he had painted pink and filled with cushions, a large bed and some of her favourite toys liberated from Miranda's house. The living/dining area had an old couch and a small TV. Erasmus refused to buy anything that suggested permanence. This was not his life, not yet.
    He plugged his mobile phone into a charger and it blinked into life. He had three new messages.
    The first message was from Miranda asking him how Abby's ‘show and tell’ class had gone. As soon as he heard the message he shut his eyes and cursed Dan, Jenna and most of all, himself. How could he have forgotten?
    The second message was from Miranda and was more strident and urgent and eventually pleading that her appointment schedule meant she couldn't get to the school without letting down her patients and he had promised Abby and her that he would be there.
    On the third message her tone had changed. She told him that she had ducked out of her meeting, handing over her work to a junior colleague and gone to Abby's class, and thanked Erasmus ‘for his kind fucking assistance’.
    Erasmus clicked off his messages and as soon as he did so his phone began to ring. He recognised the tone immediately as one that Abby had downloaded as her identifying tone on his phone. It was a sickly saccharine pop song version of the