The worst thing about being a soldier in Oxford was how unnecessary you were. It didn't look as though a war had ever touched this place. The only weapons you saw were in glass cases, and labelled with mysterious words like: 'Dual-edged Jian, Ninth Dynasty.' 

You didn't see scuffles or skirmishes on the streets of Oxford; instead, there were lectures and regattas and garden parties – everything bathed in sunlight or gaslight or, worst of all, the new electric lights, which stripped everything bare of shadows and hiding-places and enticing little mysteries. There was no darkness, no exhilaration, no need to use your body at all, unless you were rowing in one of those bloody regattas. 

This world was the exact opposite of everything Jack had loved in India.

And for the first few months, he'd been so homesick that only regular supplies of whisky and laudanum had been able to convince him he wasn't drowning. 

He told himself it wasn't that he missed Ellini – and, as a statement, this was probably true, so far as it went. He had never really spent enough time with her for her company to become habit. No, what he missed about her was having something to hope for – something to look forward to. 

The letters were the first, worst sign that his attitude towards her was softening. Before Delhi, he had sewn them up in the lining of his coat – together with the black arrow which was supposedly the weapon destined to destroy him – because... well, because they were both vulnerabilities, and Jack liked to keep his vulnerabilities close. He wanted the power to destroy himself to be solely in his own hands – but, in the case of Ellini's letters, these were entirely the wrong hands.

It hadn't taken many drunken, lonely nights in Oxford before he'd had to rip the coat open and read her letters again. They almost had as dramatic an effect on him as the first time he'd read them. They made him lie sleepless all night in a fever of longing, which was extremely painful, but nevertheless – because it contained her, and nothing else did – sort of addictive.

The next morning, he would sew the letters back into his coat, swearing to leave them where they were – if only because the lining was starting to shrink from the sheer number of times it had been torn open and sewn up again. The threads were like nasty wads of scar tissue. He would sometimes find himself reaching into his coat and running his finger down the scar of stitching, as though it was an old wound that ached in the damp Oxford evenings.

It was hard to blame her really, when you thought about it. Of course, he was extremely angry with her, but mostly, the anger focused on Robin, who had poured poison into her ears – who had brought her so low that she thought she belonged with the abusive bastard who'd killed her family.

That had been it, he was sure. She had gone with him because she hated herself. He couldn't think about her wanting Robin – preferring Robin. That belonged to the whole gallery of things he couldn't picture.

What he was obliged to picture – at least five times a day – were the good moments. He couldn't stop, even though it was like driving an arrow deeper and deeper into his chest every time. He recreated her in fervid detail – the little line at the centre of her ribcage, the gorgeous, all-enveloping darkness of her hair.

It wasn't so bad really – in fact, most of the time, it was treacherously good. But you couldn't give into it too often, or you'd turn into a complete automaton – a memory machine.

So, whenever he couldn't get hold of the best distractions – opiates – he used his interest in people and his restless intelligence to drive the images from his mind. Sometimes, he would sit on the edge of his seat in the early mornings, while sobriety crept inexorably back and sharpened the edges of every object in his vision, quizzing Danvers or Sergei about their lives – about parents, past lovers – anything that could distract him from the endless, endless wanting.

It worked well. He wasn't after perfection – just some measure of autonomy – something that made him think he was still him.

And there were things he liked about his new retirement home. He always relished the experience of being in a new city. It was like being inside some complex mechanism, where you could see all the moving parts and watch the way they whirred and clicked and fitted together.

Except, with Oxford, there were crucial pieces missing, he was sure. Where did all the fear, bitterness and malice go? Some of it went into the academic feuds, and the wry, witty humiliation of the slower students – that was obvious. But it wasn't enough. He couldn't understand why there weren't scuffles or riots or murders. He couldn't understand why the apprentices studied botany instead of brawling. 

He liked his parole officer too. It was good to have a yard-stick of anger to measure yourself against. If you kept an eye on Sam, with the intention of being as un-like him as possible – of smiling when he frowned, and laughing when he shouted – then at least you didn't look like an angry person, even if you were smouldering beneath the surface.

Besides, he felt obscurely that Sam was taking care of all the anger for him. He was propping it up, like Atlas with the sky, leaving Jack free to skulk around beneath it. Occasionally, he would look up and give a low whistle, deeply impressed by the thunder-clouds that were hovering just a few inches above his head. Sometimes he would even think of slapping Sam on the back, and saying, "Rather you than me, mate". But, on the whole, he ignored it.

Besides, there was less anger now he knew that Robin was dead – although there was obviously a lot of disappointment.

It could have been so good. He could have been killed by a vengeful brother of one of the girls he'd ruined. Or he could have died in a dramatically appropriate way – perhaps with every woman he had ever hurt filing in and slapping him round the face one-by-one until his skull eroded. Or he could have been stabbed with that beloved, long-handled knife of his, and carved one final notch into it in his death-throes.

But then, perhaps it was a good thing that Robin's death hadn't been too dramatic. Where you got dramatic deaths, you got conspiracy theories, or rumours of a possible resurrection. It really was the ending that everyone remembered. Being shot in the back over an unpaid bill would hopefully convince people that Robin had been a sad, sordid bully, rather than a dashing criminal mastermind.

***

On his third month in Oxford, Jack had been wandering round the city as usual, getting to know his tediously beautiful prison cell, when he had walked past an old church that was echoing to the sound of convulsive sobbing.

Fellow feeling had drawn him inside. When you feel like weeping but can't, it's comforting to see somebody else doing it for you.

This was the first time he had ever seen a service of mourning – the black-veiled figures standing in tiered rows before the congregation like a choir, weeping and wringing their hands, as the priest read out a remembrance sermon.

There were people – a lot of people – sitting in the pews, watching the spectacle with expressions of dry-eyed longing. He could even make out Sam – his shoulders looming at least a foot higher than those of the rest of the crowd – watching the chief mourner. Oh, the way he watched the chief mourner was a revelation that Jack would cherish for years to come.

He was still Sam, so he was still frowning and guarded and fuming – still glaring out from beneath his eyebrows as though the world had recently called his mother a whore. But he was watching the service – and the plump, freckly mourner in particular – as though she was doing something he couldn't, something pointless but crucial at the same time.

And he thought: oh, so that's how it works. He felt as though he'd been taking a machine apart, piece by piece, and now he was finally holding the crucial component that made it go. And it was all the more satisfying because it answered the one question that had been puzzling him more than any other.

This was how the city's inhabitants could spend their days playing croquet, eating sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and generally being civilized in the sunshine. Because this place was here, right at the centre – black and gothic and irrational – collecting all the city's dark, primitive energy like a drain.

It seemed to Jack as he thought this that he could already see the church burning in his mind's eye. 

If this one building fell, all the others would follow. It would be like a grand architectural line of dominoes.

He didn't know why he thought it. He had no particular plans to act on it. It was just another way of staying sane, he supposed. 

If he thought, in his head, about how Oxford's pleasant, gilded bubble could – in theory – be burst, he'd never feel the need to actually burst it. 

It could just be a thought experiment. Just something to keep him from rusting away into insignificance. How else was he supposed to endure retirement when he wasn't tired?

***

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