Most of the buildings in Northaven were new. The town had been built, almost from scratch, around the ruins of an abandoned village on the Yorkshire moors. In some quarters, the paint was still tacky to the touch, and the scaffolding was heaped up like an unlit bonfire, ready to be carted away. 

The warehouse on Cantonment walk must have been part of the abandoned village. Jack would have suspected it was an old barn, but for its improbable height. It was four storeys of rickety wood, missing floorboards, exposed beams, and timber propped up around the walls to no particular purpose. And yet the place had called to Jack. He had seen possibilities in its decrepitude – ways to terrify and intimidate.

He had tied Robin's unconscious body to a chair on the top floor of the warehouse, under the exposed beams of the roof. Up here, the floorboards had rotted away to form a jagged-edged hole three feet across. Jack had positioned Robin's chair right on the edge of it, but facing away. He wouldn't be able to see the abyss yawning just behind him, but he would sense it – from the currents of air, the prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck. If he leaned back – or if Jack pushed him ever-so-lightly – he would crash through three floors of rotten timber and endure death by a thousand splinters. Robin wasn't afraid of physical pain, but he was certainly afraid of disfiguring injury.

At least, that was what Jack had thought, before he'd taken the man's shirt off.

He had wanted to inspect the shirt – find out what special properties it had that would stop the passage of a bullet – so he had removed Robin's jacket and fancy waistcoat. 

The notches in his flesh were purple with cold, and at first Jack had thought they were part of an elaborate tattoo. But then he held the candle closer – without caring whether the flame burned him – and saw that they were meticulous knife-cuts.

They had the look of self-inflicted wounds. They were tidy and regular, not too deep, but deep enough. They looked as though they had been put there to be felt in the darkness, so he could count with his fingers, the way you did with rosary beads. But there were dozens – perhaps hundreds – like the scratches a prisoner might make on his cell wall to count the days of his imprisonment.

Jack didn't want to look at those scars, but he didn't want to put a bulletproof shirt back on Robin either, so he buttoned the waistcoat and jacket over his bare chest, and kept the shirt for closer inspection.

It seemed to be ordinary linen – not even very well-made, because the stitches were larger and more haphazard than the kind you saw on machine-sewn garments. But he couldn't tear it, or pierce it with a knife. Perhaps it was bespelled. Perhaps Myrrha had given it to him – although the idea that Myrrha would give him something so plain and badly-sewn was almost unthinkable.

After a while, he set it aside, his head swimming, because it reminded him of his unpiercable skin when he'd been wearing the bracelet.

He had to compose himself, he knew that. Robin, when he woke up, would be watching for a reaction from him. Robin would smirk if he flinched, would look triumphant every time Jack punched him.

But it wasn't easy. Perhaps it was Simonelli's warning about the giant octopus that had put the image in Jack's head, but he felt as though there was a huge sea-monster thrashing about in his stomach, its many-suckered tentacles furling and unfurling, slapping at the surface of the waves.

He was very angry – with Robin and Ellini. It was starting to dawn on him that he'd been kept alive all these months just to be tortured – that Ellini had given him his memories back, slapped that shackle round his wrist, and then forgotten about him, while she went gallivanting about the countryside with Robin, learning to dress fashionably and walk with her head up. 

Of course, she had been angry with him. And you could argue that he deserved a lot of it. Maybe she hadn't known how much it would hurt him to believe he'd killed her? But then, if she hadn't known, why would she have put the bracelet on him? She must have known he'd be in danger of killing himself, or she wouldn't have made him unkillable. But if she hated him enough to torture him like that, why would she have cared if he killed himself? 

It was an impossible puzzle. Just like Ellini. It made his head hurt to think about it. 

Robin came round slowly. Jack got the feeling he was awake long before he opened his eyes. His head became less droopy, and his hands twisted idly at the ropes binding him to the chair, as if he was testing them.

He wouldn't find much to work with there. Jack knew you had to tie up someone like Robin extremely tightly – tight enough to cut off the blood-flow to his extremities, which was, in any case, a very appealing idea.

He had meant to wait until Robin opened his eyes before speaking, but found that he was too impatient. He sat down, positioning himself very carefully on the other end of the boards supporting Robin's chair, so that if he shifted his weight slightly, the chair would teeter. Then he said, as if it was nothing more than an idle thought, "Why didn't you die?"

Robin didn't open his eyes, but he still radiated smugness. "You mean why didn't I die three years ago, or why didn't I die just now when you shot me?"

"Oh, I know the last one," said Jack. He stood up – to the sound of ominous creaking – and held up the shirt. Robin opened his eyes a crack to look at it. "This is bulletproof. Turns away blades too. A gift from Myrrha, was it?"

For the first time since waking, Robin looked something other than smug. What was that expression? Confusion? Wistfulness? God, how could wistfulness stand to be on a face as brazen as Robin's?

"No," he said. "Not from Myrrha..."

Now he was awake, Jack could see that he looked older. There were lines around his eyes and on his forehead – the kind of wrinkles that, in other people, might have been evidence of regrets or worries or deep, agonised thought.

"Why didn't you die?" Jack repeated.

"I don't know," said Robin, recovering his cheer. "I was dead, I think. But I don't remember anything about it, except being called down to that woman's office to answer questions for her new book." His voice hardened. "I suppose Myrrha lent out my soul for research purposes. I think she could preserve my body and keep my spirit from departing, but not restore me to life. That's beyond her magic."

"So what did it, then?"

"I don't know. It happened just after you stabbed Ellini through the chest. Suppose I awoke from sheer delight?"

Jack flexed his fingers, but gave no other sign that he was itching to punch the bastard.

Robin tilted his head and smiled up at him. It was a slow, dark, spreading smile, accumulating bit-by-bit, like an oil-spill. "Is that really what you wanted to ask me, golden boy?"

"It's a start."

"Don't you want to know about Ellini? How long we've been lovers? What we do? How many times a night?"

"I know you're not lovers," said Jack, in the steadiest voice he could muster. "You wouldn't have let me find out about it on my own if you were. You wouldn't have been able to bear seven months of not taunting me."

He had not known this – at any rate, not when he'd raised the gun to shoot him. The idea had come down to him later, on a slender thread of hope, like a spider descending from the ceiling. 

"Besides," he went on, "she never really liked you. You held her captive and exploited her self-hatred to make her think she cared for you, but it's not a mistake she'd make twice – especially after she found out what real love was like."

Robin shook his head solemnly. "Oh, golden boy. All this perspicacity now, when it can't possibly do you any good..."

"Well, it can't do you any good either."

Robin shrugged. "At the start of all this, I would have agreed with you. But she really hates you. Who knows what she'd do to make you mad?"

Jack felt a lurch in his stomach, as if he'd just fallen through the missing floorboards. He wanted to say that he didn't care if she hated him. He hated her. But he found that hating her didn't alter the way he felt about her sleeping with Robin. He seized a fistful of the bastard's jacket and let the chair tilt back over the hole behind him.

"If I let you go, you fall through three floors of rotten wood, and are no good to anybody," Jack breathed. "And, unlike those pathetic notches on your chest, I doubt this fall will spare your face."

Robin shrugged again, but the frown-lines around his eyes deepened, as if they were accumulating shadows. He leaned forward, either to shift his weight onto the front of the chair or to screen his scarred chest from view.

"What are they for, anyway?" Jack asked, lowering the chair back onto solid planking. "Did you run out of space on your knife?"

"Call it an insurance policy. If I lost the knife, I'd never know how many men I'd killed."

"Couldn't you just remember?"

"I could lose my memories as easily as I could lose the knife," said Robin. "You know that better than anyone."

Jack felt a chill of anger at that. It raised goose-bumps all along his arms. So Robin knew what had been done to him. But of course he would. It was brainlessly naïve to think he wouldn't have found out everything he could. More interesting – and potentially less stupid – was the thought that Robin was afraid of the same thing happening to him.

"Anyway, what about you?" Robin went on. "You look like Frankenstein's monster, only made up of the body-parts of just one corpse."

Jack looked down, and realized that he'd lost his neck-tie somewhere in the village. His shirt was gaping, revealing all the little lines of stitches. They were healing well, but he still looked like a patchwork quilt of a man.

"I'd been looking forward to you coming for such a long time," said Robin lazily. "I didn't realize I'd have to deal with a talking corpse."

"You knew I was coming?" said Jack. And it was only after he'd said it that he realized what a stupid question it was. Of course Robin would have had someone watching him. "Then why weren't you looking out for me? Why were you walking around with her out in the open as if-?"

"As if I wanted you to see us together?" Robin prompted. "Penny finally dropped, has it, golden boy?"

"You wanted me to shoot you in the back?"

"Oh, I didn't think you'd be stupid enough to do that. The fact that you were almost stupid enough is quite delightful. She would have felt sorry for you otherwise, you see."

"I don't care what she feels."

Robin looked up at the ceiling and cleared his throat. "Just as you say, golden boy. But kidnapping me, tying me to a chair and then sending her a ransom note, well... that's exactly the sort of thing she'd expect from the man who stabbed her through the chest." The dark, oil-slick smile came back. "Incidentally, that was masterfully done. I've seen the wound. A fraction to the left and she would have died instantly, a fraction to the right and the pain wouldn't have been so excruciating. That's the way it always goes, isn't it, golden boy? I teach you the techniques, but you're the one who turns them into art."

Jack grabbed hold of the chair-back with one hand and punched him with the other, letting him rock backwards a little, letting him feel how close he was to the edge. It did nothing to remove his smile, but it reddened it a bit.

"So you wanted me to...?"

"Do this, essentially." said Robin. There was a smear of blood on his teeth. "I knew you wouldn't disappoint me."

"It's a bit of a masochistic plan, isn't it?"

"This is the new me, golden boy. Masochism's my middle name."

"I think it's still conniving bastard," said Jack, shaking some life back into his fist. "Goes much better with 'Crake'."

"It must really burn you," Robin whispered, "to know that you've made exactly the same mistake you made in Lucknow. You saw me and didn't bother to look any further. It's almost as if you can't help making mistakes with this woman. As if we've finally found something you're not good at."

"Did you ask her how good I was?" Jack demanded.

He said it without really meaning anything by it. In fact, he said it half-neurotically, as if he suspected they spent their evenings discussing his ineptitude as a lover. But Robin looked so instantly annoyed that his heart lifted. Perhaps he hadn't asked – perhaps she hadn't said – but he had his suspicions, and they were making him purple with rage. 

"Anyway," said Jack, lowering Robin's chair onto solid ground once more, "I can't believe you're talking to me about making mistakes with her. I didn't murder her family, throw her over the back of my horse and ride off into the night like Don-bloody-Juan."

"And yet she hates you more than she's ever hated me," said Robin, in a voice that wasn't quite triumphant. "Make of that what you will."

He was silent for a moment, chewing his bleeding lip. "You know what I hate about you, golden boy? You were so close to being me. We have the same talents, the same proclivities-"

"We do not have the same pro-"

"Up until a certain point," said Robin, ignoring the interruption, "you were right on course to be me – a more successful me, if you can really apply the term 'success' to that kind of thing. And then-" His shoulders drooped. "You missed. I was there when you missed. It's my fault you missed. It may turn out that, in my whole life, you're the only person I've managed to save. And you're the only one I wish I hadn't." He studied Jack's face for a moment, and said, "I don't suppose that makes much sense to you."

"No, but it's a different tone to your usual bullshit. Is this the line you took with Ellini? You wish you'd saved all those people? You know, it's quite easy to save someone when you're the one threatening them. I would say it's easier than anything else. You just don't pull the trigger."

"How easy was that for you in the town square just now?"

Jack was silent, feeling that perhaps he had walked into that one. It wasn't enough for Robin, though. Nothing ever was.

"I didn't inflict my company on her, you know," he said. "She came to me for help. How does that feel, golden boy? Think how desperate you must have made her, that she came to me for help."

"What kind of help?" said Jack, keeping his face carefully blank.

"She asked me to teach her how to fight. So we started having lessons after-hours at the Lambeth Gymnasium – lessons which, incidentally, she attended in her underwear, and proved so adept at that, the other week, I saw her fight naked with three other wet, naked women after they'd been bathing together in a pool."

Jack tried to ignore this, although he suspected it would come back to him later, with pictures. "Why did she want you to teach her how to fight? So she could come after me?"

Robin shook his head again. "Oh golden boy, you're so self-centred. She never wanted to see you again. If she was willing to fake her own death to get away from you, why would she ruin all that hard work just to hurt you? Especially when she could hurt you far more effectively by staying away."

"Was that the plan all along?" said Jack. "Did she know-?"

"What it would do to you to think she was dead? Interesting question. I didn't ask her, if that's what you mean. But she's a clever little thing, golden boy. If she didn't know, it's because she didn't care.

He stopped and listened to the creaking. Robin had always been the first to hear enemies approaching. His tingling, twitchy paranoia made him hyper-sensitive to that kind of thing. But this noise wasn't necessarily a person. Each floor of the warehouse was a music-box in its own right, as the wind whistled through the stones, and the ancient timbers shifted and settled. But there was perhaps an extra sound – too regular to be the wind – as of light, measured footsteps.

And then she came into sight, climbing the ladder that led up to the attic-floor. It couldn't have been anyone else, even though he could only see the top of a head at the moment, because nothing – not even the despair he'd felt for the past seven months – was as black as her soft black hair.

It was pinned back very neatly, but the rest of her, he saw as she emerged, was not neat. There were scratches on her arms and face, and the side of her head was cut. Blood draped down in a line from her ear to her collarbone, like a long, red, dangly earring.

She was wearing her Charlotte Grey dress – the helter-skelter of black ribbons, the corset that left her shoulders bare. Jack wondered if that outfit was like armour for her. But if it was, it definitely hadn't been doing its job. 

For a moment, he forgot about the creature thrashing around in his stomach and stared at her. She was staring at him, too, with something like the same look. He saw her eyes run over the lines of stitching on his neck and chest – the angry, red-raw skin. There was a strange moment, where they shared a look that combined amazement, concern, and profound annoyance, as if to say, 'What the hell have you been doing to yourself while I've been away?'

But then Robin coughed, and the spell was broken. Ellini's look of composure snapped back into place. She raised her head slightly, as if she couldn't imagine what he wanted with her and was waiting politely to be enlightened. Jack clenched his fists.