Social workers. People bad mouth them all the time, but the truth is that most of their detractors wouldn’t even drive through the neighbourhoods they have to work in. Not all social workers are saints of course. Far from it. But many do their best, and some even make a difference.

I like to think that my Lola did. She certainly gave enough of herself to the job. Too much of herself, in fact. That’s why we finally broke up. It’s nice when your girlfriend has a vocation and all, but if she doesn’t have anything left for you after she’s done saving the world for the day then what’s the point ?

Towards the end I got so sick of her blocking me that I started snooping through her client recordings when she was at work. The city required all of her meetings to be recorded, both electronically and on paper, and that all such recordings be signed and checked off by the line manager, and also randomly scrutinized by . . . well, like I say. Who the hell would be a social worker ?

They were a predictably damaged and pathetic bunch, Lola’s clients. Junkies, weirdos, creeps, losers. They were what most people would have called the dregs of society. Most people, but not Lola. To her they weren’t dregs to be scorned but casualties to be helped.

I really miss her sometimes.

Anyway, that’s how I found little Joshua Heyes. He was the son of one of Lola’s clients. He was twelve, although he looked about half that, and what made me stop and rerun the recording of him was his twitch.

His mom’s case file said that he’d seen all kinds of specialists, and that they’d all agreed that his twitch had no physical cause. It was psychosomatic and, trust me on this, if you’d seen his mom’s case file that wouldn’t have surprised you any more than it surprised me.

But it wasn’t the case file that kept me rewinding and rewatching twelve year old Joshua Heyes. It was the six years I’d spent in the marines. In particular, it was one piece of training that is damn near obsolete but that the Royal Navy, hidebound bastards that they are, make guys like me learn until it is as much a part of us as our bones.

So I sat and I watched . Then I grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and started copying down what I was seeing. I don’t know why. Maybe just to nail it down, prove to myself that it was real. Considering the implications, I needed to be sure.

It was after midnight when I slipped into Ms Heyes‘ flat and found the boyfriend. He was doing just what I’d known he’d be doing, the fucking subhuman. He didn’t see it coming, but Joshua did. His eyes widened even further as I slipped the wire around the boyfriend’s neck and pulled him off the kid. Those eyes, they didn’t look grateful or scared or even relieved. All they did was twitch.

I worked quickly, bundling the body into the sheet I’d brought. I knew Mom wouldn’t find us. I’d read her case file. Tonight, as every night, she was doped up to the eyeballs in the next room, just as dead to the world as her cooling Romeo. Well, not that he'd been just her Romeo, of course.

I watched Joshua pull his clothes back on and wished I could kill the same man twice. I couldn’t, though. All I could do was make sure that I didn’t get caught.

‘Good luck, mate,’ I told him and patted him on one narrow shoulder. For the first time I realised that the twitch had gone. I wasn’t surprised. Message sent, message received. Over and out. I tried to think of something to say.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said as I slung the body over my shoulder and turned to go. ‘You’re never alone.’

I felt it then, a brush of something that wasn't there. There wasn’t much power in it. It wasn’t like those poltergeists who can throw a man out of a window, or whack him with an iron, or even just twist his ankle out from beneath him on the stairs. No, this one wasn’t much of anything. All it had the strength to do was to pull on a nerve for long enough to semaphore a message in morse out into the world.

I winked at Isaac and let myself out into the night.