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‘She’s fine. Her lungs needed time to get back to normal as she’d inhaled some smoke, and she had some superficial burns on her hands from dragging you out, but she’s already been discharged. Her mother came to take her back down south but she refused.’

‘No, it doesn’t make sense. The roof had collapsed and the fire was raging, Steph. No way could someone make it up the stairs without serious breathing apparatus and protective equipment.’

‘She’s not stupid, Poe. Unlike you she didn’t dive in with no thought of a plan.’

‘So how . . .?’

‘She googled what to do.’

‘You are joking!’

‘She was calm enough to spend a moment searching what to do. She found a page that told her to cover herself in something damp. She didn’t have the recommended wet blanket so she improvised and ended up using—’

‘Mud,’ Poe said. She’d smeared herself in wet mud. So, there hadn’t been a golem monster; it had been Bradshaw. He could feel his eyes welling but he didn’t want to cry in front of Flynn. He thought of Bradshaw, thin and short-sighted, bewildered by the new world she was experiencing. He remembered her sitting in the lounge at Shap Wells when those drunken arseholes had been messing with her. She’d shown courage then. Poe might have seen them off, but they’d been behaving like they had because she’d refused to do what they wanted. It had been the first real indication that underneath her awkwardness was something special.

‘How can I ever thank her?’

A noise outside made them both turn to look. Bradshaw stood in the doorway. She was smiling shyly. She gave Poe a little wave. There were bandages on her hands and her eyes were smoke-tinged red. She was wearing the cargo trousers, but this time, instead of her usual film or superhero T-shirt, she was wearing the one he’d bought for her in Kendal. The one that said ‘Nerd Power’. When she saw where he was looking she gave him a double thumbs-up.

‘Hello, Poe,’ she said. ‘How are you feeling?’

The tears began rolling down his face and before long he was openly crying. There was a rawness to it. His sobs were for more than Bradshaw and her bravery; they were for Reid, and they were for Poe’s own failure to see proper justice done.

Flynn quietly got up and left.

Bradshaw sat down on the chair beside the bed. She waited for him to stop crying.

‘Sorry,’ he said, wiping his eyes.

‘That’s OK, Poe,’ she said. ‘DI Stephanie Flynn has told me what Kylian Reid said to you. It is very sad and I feel sorry for him.’

‘I do too, Tilly.’

Something occurred to him. Something he’d said after he’d chased away those thugs in the bar. ‘Tilly,’ he said, ‘tell me you didn’t run into that burning building because I told you it was your turn to rescue me?’

She stared at him with that penetrating gaze, the one that ordinarily made him feel so uncomfortable. This time he held it.

‘Is that what you think, Poe?’

‘Honestly, Tilly? I don’t know what I think. My best friend turned out to be a serial killer, I’m not feeling too clever at the moment.’

‘But you are clever, Poe! Look at all the things you worked out.’

‘We worked out, Tilly.’

‘We worked out then. And no, Poe, I didn’t follow you up there because of what you said at the bar. You were being flippant then because you felt awkward. You do that sometimes.’

‘I do?’

‘Yes, Poe, you do.’

‘Then . . .’

‘I told you,’ she said. ‘You’re my friend.’

There wasn’t a lot left to say after that.

An hour later Flynn looked in on them. They were both fast asleep.