Tom Harcourt did not actually see the accident. He was just the first attending officer. Somehow though every detail had become grained in his memory, like etched glass, and he could recite almost perfectly the minutiae of the incident report; he knew the speed of the car, the rough moisture level on the road, the extent and critical of Swan's injuries. There was no incident report for later events.  
 
Details. Approximately 8.45. An overcast Tuesday morning. Mr James Swan had been crossing Lazenby Street near its junction with Moore Road to reach the Spar convenience store run by a Mr Amin. As he reached the middle of the road, a car driven by Mr John Shaw, a teacher at Livingstone Primary School, lost control and hit Swan. The impact caught him inside his right thigh, tore his leg upwards fracturing his pelvis, dislocating his hip and driving a shard of headlight into his quadriceps.

In Mr Shaw's statement he claimed to be travelling at only slightly more than the thirty miles per hour limit. Forensic investigation of the scene suggests this to be underestimated by about ten miles per hour. Mr Shaw's travelling companion, his fiancée and colleague, Miss Catherine Day, confirmed Mr Shaw's statement. Eyewitness accounts indicate the possibility that Mr Shaw had been distracted by an ongoing argument with Miss Day and had crossed onto the opposite side of the highway. He was unaware that Mr Swan was on the road. Mr Shaw was tried for reckless driving, but the judge could do no more than strongly reprimand him due to lack of firm evidence.
 
More details. Mr James Swan was taken to Ashton General Hospital. Emergency surgery was believed to have been life saving as the fractured pelvis caused massive internal bleeding. After a three-week stay, Mr Swan left but faced a further twelve months physiotherapy. His doctor told Harcourt that Swan was lucky to be alive, and very fortunate to be walking.
 
Final details. 18^th September 2004, approximately thirteen months after the incident. Mr John Shaw died at the age of twenty-nine, only six weeks after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. This was considered highly unusual given his age. He was buried in the same grave as his son who died tragically two months previously, only minutes old, after failing to recover from being asphyxiated when his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. Mrs Shaw (nee Day) was placed on compassionate leave. 
 
Harcourt had kept a folder on his desk since the accident containing the official report and his own jotted notes. The matter was formally closed; strictly there was no criminal case since the trial, let alone one that would involve DI Harcourt, Fraud Squad. Yet something was needling at him, something about what he had seen when he got to the accident that he could not leave behind.
 
He habitually turned the police radio on when he was driving to work, and that day he heard the message that there had been an accident, a potential fatality on Lazenby Street. It was two streets away. When he got to the accident Harcourt immediately recognised the injured, seemingly broken man. It was James Swan, local low-life also known as Jimmy the Switch. Usual type, poor upbringing, several parents, juvenile problems, some jail-time. The nick-name came from Swan's first criminal role as switch-man, the second in the pick-pockets' chain, the man who passes the stolen goods from the pick-pocket to the runner in almost the same instant as they are lifted. Harcourt had seen it done, and in some ways he was impressed. They could have gone on stage.
 
Had Harcourt been a fast track, uphisownarse, student copper he would have called Swan a recidivist. He had been involved in his last conviction, a failed attempt to rip-off a bookies by crudely providing false information to a bookie who was laying off bets. The Switch served thirteen months.
                       
The rest of the scene was also familiar. Dark blue car, Ford, diagonal on the carriageway, wheels facing across the road where the driver panicked and turned to the right while braking. Front offside wing dented, glass on the road.  A couple, obviously from the car - from his grey face, Harcourt put the man as the driver. Onlookers standing talking, pointing.           

The ambulance came, and treated the injured Swan by the side of the road. They cocooned his bottom half in an orange inflated support, and lifted him gently onto a gurney. Swan was almost unconscious by this time. Harcourt offered his assistance. They told him the casualty needed to be stabilised, and would then have to be taken to hospital urgently. He said he would make sure the traffic was cleared for them. Uniformed officers had arrived by then, and
Harcourt merely checked they were in control. After he was sure the traffic allowed the ambulance, he showed his warrant card to the man he thought was the driver. He could see the anguish on the man's face.    

"Now, Mr," - the man told him, almost inaudibly - "right, Mr Shaw, don't worry. I'm not going to ask you any questions myself. I just wanted to say that my colleagues in traffic will be here soon. They'll want to ask you some questions, and you might have to. The gentleman you hit's probably got a broken hip, but he'll be okay, they reckon."
 
The change on the man's - the driver's? - face was dramatic. It changed as quickly as a rain cloud passes on a sunny day.
 
"Oh, thank you officer," he enthused. "What can I do now? I've got to tell work. Cat, can you do that? Like Inspector Harcourt says, I'll have to talk to the Traffic police." The woman, who still looked ashen; she was listening, but not hearing. She simply stared at the injured man. Harcourt looked back at him as well, saw the knitted blanket draped over him like a blood-red funeral drape. He wondered whether he was going to die.
 
Though Swan was awake he did not look to have any real idea of his situation. Then, Harcourt saw him struggle, thrashing his cover to the ground. A medic picked it up. Swan half sat up, resting on his elbows. Another medic put one hand on his chest, and said something quietly. Swan slapped his arm out of the way violently, wincing in pain as he rocked to one side. He looked closed to passing out again, but stayed partly upright. Harcourt was watching as Swan looked right across at him and, nodding greasily, mouthed, "I know you". He flicked his gaze to the driver.
 
"You. Mate," he practically shouted, his agitation nearly making him fall from the bed. "You will die. I will see to it. The Switch will make you die. Ha-ha, Jimmy'll get you. You'll see." Harcourt watched fascinated as Swan began to cackle, then stopped as the pain overcame him and he was forced to lie back down. The medic put the blanket back on him and laid a more firm hand on his chest.
 
"Please stay still sir, " said the ambulance man. "We need to get you in the ambulance and to hospital."
 
As they wheeled Swan carefully away, the trolley passed by the policeman and the couple. Harcourt saw the loathing and intent on Swan's face. The cold pain in that look, the hate in his eyes. More details. He seemed to wish the whole world down on Shaw's head in just that brief moment. Then he pointed one grubby finger at Shaw and smiled menace.
 
At the funeral, as he had walked away from the lowered casket, solemnly nodding to Shaw's widow, he thought he had seen Swan. He was a slight figure, walking with a stick through the gates of the graveyard to share a cigarette with the drivers of the cortege, his collar up around his ears against the autumn cold. Harcourt was about to go to him when the Vicar stopped him. He was forced to answer some questions about how the investigation had gone, and how Harcourt's daughter was coping with at secondary school. He missed Swan.
 
It had eaten away at him, Swan's vehemence and his prophetic words, and then to show his face at the funeral. His copper's instinct told him to follow it up, but he put it off. Gradually the nagging voice in his head became less insistent though. The folders were still on his desk, but he had not opened them for days. Four weeks after the funeral the clamouring started afresh when Mrs Shaw rang and asked if they could speak. He went, unofficially, to her home.
 
"I saw him you know, at John's funeral," she had told Harcourt. "That little bastard. He was at John's funeral, can you believe it. The fucker."
 
"I know, I tried to speak to him, but he was gone before I got chance." He waited for her to speak again. He felt guilty using interrogation techniques, but there was something more here and he wanted to know what it was.
 
"Lucky you. I saw him in the street as well, just last week. It was like he ran into me on purpose. He did exactly the same as he did to John. I couldn't believe it, he came up to me outside Boots, not saying anything. Just smiling all creepy. I told him to fuck off obviously, but he just held his hands up to me and smiled. I didn't know what to do, I was all messed up wasn't I? I thought about screaming, but the bastard said something and I didn't."
 
Harcourt sat forward slightly. He could feel the prickles of sweat on his top lip. He gestured for her to carry on.
 
"He said to me 'You will die'. And he tapped me on the forehead. Just here." She reached across to Harcourt and touched his brow. Her fingernail left a slight imprint. "Fucking weird but scary."
 
"He was just trying to get to you, that's all. It means nothing."
 
"Yeah, you reckon so," she said angrily. "Well what do you know?" He had to admit, not much. He was not the one to tell her anything, he had few answers for her. In fact he had more questions. Then he realised something she had said.
 
"You said he did the same thing to John?" he asked. "What do you mean?"
 
"The finger, on my forehead. He did the same to John. A couple of days before John was diagnosed." Her voice wavered slightly, and Harcourt could see she was fighting hard. "Now do you get it? I am fucking scared."
 
He had nothing to say but ineffective platitudes.

Now he contemplated his hand curled round the black glass of his untouched drink. The hand that held his daughter's when she was scared of the monsters at nursery; that felt her hot brow when she was ill; that held his wife's weeping head to his own chest at the same daughter's funeral. If there was a why for the why not, it was this hand. It was not going to avenge his daughter, but some other hand could.
 
He looked at the Switch's finger pointing directly at his forehead and thought it entirely possible it could kill him. He had tried to think of a reason not to do get it done. Of course, he knew it was immoral, and probably illegal, and on the whole it was a ludicrous idea that a small time crook like Swan could make people die as easily as blowing out a match. The idea should not have entered his thoughts at all. Worst of all, not a thing he did would make a lie of the fact that his daughter was dead.

Why then had he sought Swan and asked him to do it? Why else? Sick revenge on the poor driver of the bus that had knocked her from her bike as she blindly swerved across the road to get to her friends, the driver who had no chance when the bike careened in front of him, the orange and blue front of the bus catching the handlebars, twisting them round to shatter the skull of his daughter, leaving a surprisingly small amount of blood, pinkish on the blue-green road, the first thing Harcourt had seen as he came to help with the accident. 
 
After his daughter's funeral, he loosened his only black tie, found balled in the wardrobe, thrown it there after the last funeral. Of course, that was business, another brother from the scum fraternity. This was personal. That night, his wife's suddenly peaceful body next to him, Harcourt had talked over and over in his head, convincing himself there was no way. He was police, the law; his calling was to help, and he still held true to it, unlike many of his contemporaries. Could he mete out justice just because it suited him? It would be abandoning his life and work for what was surely a matter only of vengeance. Even contemplating the idea gnawed at his soul.  As three o'clock darkness started to fade into morning, he had fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.
 
When he woke at six, his first thought had been Jimmy the Switch. After that, the phone call was easy. 
 
"Swan, listen, this is Harcourt. No, don't hang up, hear me out. I've got a proposition for you..." 
 
Five hours later he dropped five thousand pounds in a Tesco bag into a skip on Waterton Lane. ‘Stupid, just fucking stupid' he thought to himself, even as he let it fall onto a bag half full of solidified plaster. All he had was the word of a man know as Jimmy the Switch that he would be there, and he was dropping five grand into a fucking rubbish bin.
 
Jimmy Swan had been good to his word though. Four weeks later, he sat at the same table, contempt reeking from him. The great and the good come to grovel before him, James Swan. He did not move towards his own pale drink, content to let Harcourt speak. Harcourt was still looking at his hand, knucklebones showing through paper-white skin as he gripped the glass. The liquid oozed over and around his fingers as the hand trembled slightly. 
 
He looked at Swan.

"I know what you did. I can't prove a thing, but I know you did it, " he looked for a reaction, a tell that would let him know he was right. It was not there. "But what I don't know is how you did it. The guy is dead. I don't know how it can be. Tell me"
 
"Simple really. I wanted him dead, I tells him so and tap his head. And he dies." As he said it Swan stared at Harcourt as if inviting a sneering comment. There was none, which Harcourt thought had disappointed Swan.  
 
"Let me show you something constable." Swan reached into his pocket. As he did he said, "When you got in touch, I dug out some photographs. Keepsakes really, to kind of remind me of the way things are, you know, what I can do when I put my mind to it."
 
He laid the photos on the table, three altogether. One of them got sucked down onto spilled beer. Harcourt could not make out who or what was on them in the gloom. Swan pushed one of them closer, and Harcourt saw it was Catherine Shaw, with her arms round another man.
 
"Didn't take her long did it?" sneered Swan. "Hooked up with a doctor three weeks after the funeral. Do you know what happened then, constable?"
 
"No, no I don't." For some reason Harcourt felt guilty about this.
 
"Don't surprise me. People like you, you step on other people's lives, with your lies. And her, fuck her too, she ended up with Dr Hilary there, boyfriend not even cold. Makes you sick."
 
"So, what happened to her then Jimmy, tell me." Despite himself, Harcourt was curious.
 
"Oh, nothing much. Just a small lump. Then a huge fucking growth. Then she died. Sad, sad story. Took a week or two. Just like her fucking dead husband. Call it a bonus for you if you like. Buy one get one free, heh, heh."
 
Harcourt stared at Swan, trying to work out whether this was the real story or not. The answer was indelibly marked in Swan's eyes. Harcourt had seen it before, killer blankness, as if they saw the same world, but it was in muted colours, the life gone from it. Usually it meant a life was gone.
 
"Oh yeah, constable. She died all right...Nice funeral too. Didn't want to upset the relatives ‘n all that, so I waited until she was underground before I, er, paid my respects."
 
Harcourt felt the room get tighter around him, the gloom seemed to deepen.
 
"What? She died?" Too many questions came in to his head. He looked at Swan, unable to hide his anguish. Swan returned the gaze impassively. "You put a curse on her, didn't you? You sick fuck, you went to her funeral too.
 
"Is that why you wanted to see me? To tell me this?" Harcourt continued. "I thought we had a deal, I gave you cash for the driver. That was it. No more."
 
Swan shook his head incredulously. "You really don't get it, do you? I won't be doing your little errand for you, you stupid fuck. Why would I want to do that? You screwed me over big time. It's you I want, Inspector Harcourt."
 
"You took the money." Harcourt could not believe his own gullibility.
 
"Course I took the fucking money," Jimmy laughed. "So what, who you gonna call? I tell you, Cliff Richard's got no worries. Who gives a toss what happens to that scrawny little scrote? He's probably completely fucked by it anyway, killed a little girl. All I want is you, comprende?"  He tapped his own forehead with his finger.
 
Harcourt blazed at Swan. So that was the reason Swan had taken the money, to set this up. "You...fuck you, Swan, I gave you five grand. Now you tell me this. Fuckin' joker."
 
"No. Not a joke. Not even close. You see, I want you. First off all you get me sent down, then you let that bastard teacher get away with nearly killing me and leaving me crippled. Then you phone. Could not believe me luck, thought I'd won the lottery.
 
"So, here we are, two old pals," he went on. "And one of those old pals can give something to the other one. If he wants it that is. Do you want it constable, do you want Jimmy's way out?"   
 
Harcourt sat silently. He looked down at the beaten copper top of the table. It did not take him long to understand that Swan was offering him an exit, an escape. It was tempting, but he did not even have to think about it.  
 
"I've lost my daughter, my wife's becoming a pill-head, and I can't do my job. Christ I've come into a shit-hole like this to get someone killed. Don't you think that would be helping me out?"
 
Swan chuckled and shook his head. "Ah, Constable Harcourt, you're right as usual. Of course it would be helping you out, and why would I want to do that, eh? I want you to suffer, don't I? Like I've suffered. Any way, speaking of which, have a look."
 
He pushed one of the other photographs towards Harcourt. It showed a man with a young girl.
 
"This is...and..."
 
Swan reached over to the photo. With one dirty finger he tapped Gillian Harcourt on the forehead, letting the bitten end rest on the image. She stayed, caught forever looking up, smiling right at her father's face. Harcourt did nothing for a couple of seconds then went for Swan.
 
"You shit, I'll fucking..." he didn't finish. Jimmy the Switch slammed the table into Harcourt's thighs, knocking him off balance on to the grubby red plastic seating. Then he was round the table and had a knife digging into the soft flesh below Harcourt's ear.
 
"Don't really need this though do I? That would be too quick and perhaps I'd go down for it this time. So, what do you reckon Mr Harcourt, shall we do it my way or what? I can do this, and watch you suffer, and then die. How about that, eh? We all win then." 
 
Harcourt did not respond. He simply moved his left hand, to rest on the photograph. He could only see Gillian. The spilled black drink obscured his own image. He thought about the times his family had laughed and played together. And cried as well, as his wife worried him to leave the force, to get a safe job. His head slumped, digging the point of the knife in further, bringing a run of blood to his neck.
 
"Steady, mate. You'll do yourself a mischief," Swan smirked. "Now. You know. It was you what killed your own daughter. So, what do you say, shall we finish this?" 
 
Harcourt looked up at him, his face filled with hate, sorrow, resignation. Almost imperceptibly he nodded. "Do it, you little fuck."
 
Swan lowered the knife and placed it on the table, next to the photograph. Then he lifted his hand and made a fist, bringing his index finger out to point directly at Harcourt's forehead. He held it about an inch away, wavering slightly. He stared straight into the other man's eyes.
 
"Nah, don't think so," he said. "You'd be better off dead wouldn't you? Not much revenge in that now, is there mate?"
 
He lowered his hand, picked up his knife and, nodding to the barman, he left.