The timing was perfect. A horn, just as Mick fired. Distant, muted, so it wasn’t the volume that had made Mick shift his aim a fraction. At a hundred yards, the bullet might have missed Liz by ten feet, but here it ruffled her hair and blasted a hole in the wall two inches from Karl’s head. If she’d been a yard closer to Mick, the bullet wouldn’t have made the wall. She dropped to her knees in shock, which opened a space for Karl to see the suspicion on Mick’s face at the horn. Way out here in the quiet and the dark, all but this place closed for the night, someone had let off a long blast of their horn. Not one of those watch-where-you’re-going blasts a thousand motorists did every day. Longer, harder, something to get someone’s attention, or give a warning. It had put enough shock and suspicion in Mick’s mind to cause the gun to jerk and waste the bullet.

Liz, seething with anger, said: ‘That noise means you’re in big trouble, McDevitt. Thought we came unprepared, did you?’

He had, and he shouldn’t have, that’s what Mick’s face was saying. He backed off, still aiming the gun. Still watching them, except for a moment when, at the bay window, he turned away to haul open a curtain and peer out. Just one second. Not enough time for Karl to do anything.

But in that second, Karl saw lights beyond the window. Headlights. A vehicle turning into the car park, towards the house. His hopes flared and died in the same moment, because it had to be Danny out there; what could he do apart from extend their lives for another few seconds before getting killed himself?

Mick let the curtain drop. He stood with his back to it and grinned at them. ‘My friends are here,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it’s good we didn’t have a quick kill. I couldn’t bring myself to touch that bitch, but my friends can have whatever they want from her. You and I will watch, Seabury.’

Not Danny after all. The plan had been to honk the horn if he saw trouble, not honk to announce his arrival.

‘Sit down, backs against the wall,’ Mick ordered.

Sitting made them more vulnerable, but they had no choice, sitting side by side against the wall behind the desk, with the fallen chair and the dead solicitor in front of them. This close, his lethal throat wound looked much worse. His open eyes seemed to be staring right at their feet, but that, Karl felt, was better than their faces.

‘How do you think you’ll sell this?’ Liz said, her composure on its way back. ‘Are you going to be the hero? You find us dead and claim the glory, maybe make superintendent, write your memoirs, play yourself in a film version?’

Mick laughed. ‘Not this time. I won’t make that mistake again. No bodies. You won’t get a funeral. You’ll get a yellowing missing persons poster.’

Liz’s hand grabbed Karl’s for reassurance. They looked at each other, and in her eyes he read strength. That strong new persona of hers, arisen like a phoenix upon news of the death of her husband. She didn’t want reassurance: she was giving it.

They heard two doors slam outside. Mick’s friends, about to join the party. Karl felt time slipping through his fingers. He shut down an image of Katie and their unborn baby, knowing his fear of losing her would only weaken him.

He heard the front door open. Mick’s guys, just seconds away.

And then the office door opened, and the man called Brad Smithfield entered. With him was another person. Karl had a dizzying sensation. He refused to believe his eyes, but it was real. There, with her arm clutched in Brad’s fist, was Katie.

‘Let her go!’ he yelled, and rose to his feet. Mick fired his gun into the air as a warning, but Karl kept rising. Only when the second bullet tore into the wall beside his head, causing plaster and paint chips to sting his face, did he stop. Or rather, Liz stopped him. She still had his hand, and she tugged him down with surprising ease.

He clutched his stinging eye and felt his heart thudding. A foolish move, trying to save Katie like that. Mick would have blasted him into nothingness. Now, because of Liz, he still had a heartbeat.

Then he saw that Mick’s gun was aiming at Brad.

Brad was frozen. ‘Wow, pal, easy. I’m in your corner, remember.’

The gun tracked back to Karl. But Mick seemed unsure, and the weapon wavered again and settled on a blank wall. Not Karl. Not Brad. Aimed at nothing but equidistant from both men. Half a second from targeting either one. As if he wasn’t sure who was the biggest threat.

‘Where’s the guys?’ Mick said, and his tone confirmed it: suspicion. There was something off-kilter between these two. Karl felt his hopes lifting.

Brad said: ‘Calm down, Mick. Cops chased them away. I was already in the house. Saw them leg it. Went in and got the wife.’ He shook Katie, just to emphasise his point.

‘Glad you made it,’ Mick said, and again there was doubt in his voice.

But any growing feeling Karl might have had about a broken bond between the two men was dispelled when Brad said: ‘So why don’t you have a feel of this one, Mick.’

‘Don’t fucking touch her,’ Karl shouted.

Mick just laughed. And the gun shifted to one side. Karl’s side.

Mick thought for a moment and then said: ‘Give that bitch here.’

Brad took a step forward and thrust Katie towards Mick, who put his hand out to receive her. Karl closed his eyes.