‘Completely rat-arsed. I’ve been drinking all day.’

They got back to the beach house. He fumbled with his key, dropped it and searched drunkenly around on the sandy doorstep, muttering curses. ‘Here it is,’ he slurred.

Esmeralda tried the handle. ‘It’s open anyway,’ she laughed. The door swung ajar. She walked inside and he followed, holding onto her arm. He flipped on the light and let go of her as they entered. Let her move away from him until she was at arm’s length.

Then he delivered a ridge-hand strike to the side of her neck and she crumpled to the floor without a sound.

It was a blow designed to stun, not to kill. He kneeled quickly over her inert body and ripped open her fallen handbag. Feeling inside, his fingers touched cool steel. He quickly pulled the pistol out. It was more or less what he’d expected it to be from its weight when he’d picked up the handbag at the taverna. A Beretta 92F semi-automatic. The hefty 9mm was cocked and locked. He flipped off the safety.

At the other end of the room, the door through to the kitchen burst open. Ben had expected that too. He fired a rapid double-tap and the Beretta bucked against his palm.

The intruder ran right into it. The bullets struck him in the chest and he crashed back against the side of the door, his gun flying out of his hand and spinning away across the floorboards. He slumped down and lay still, chin on his chest, blood on his lips.

Ben’s ears were ringing from the gunfire. He checked the front door. The beach was still empty. The walls of the house would have muffled the shots enough to prevent them carrying too clearly all the way to the taverna. He strode quickly back into the room and locked the door.

The woman was beginning to stir, groaning and clutching her neck. He stepped over her and picked up the dead intruder’s pistol. It was the same model of 9mm Beretta, but with a long sound suppressor screwed to the barrel. With his left hand he pulled the slide back far enough to expose the breech and reveal the shiny brass of the cartridge inside. He looked down at the intruder on the floor. The guy was fair-haired and youngish, maybe thirty, good-looking. Ben remembered what Nikos had told Charlie about the couple at Zoë Bradbury’s party that night. A fair-haired guy, same age, and a woman who could have passed for a Greek.

He shoved the unsilenced gun in his belt and pointed the other at the woman’s head. It was a much more useful weapon for indoor work. ‘Get up,’ he said.

She coughed and raised herself slowly onto her knees and elbows, brushed the hair away from her face and turned to look at him. There was a very different look in those dark eyes now.

‘I saw you in the town earlier,’ he said. ‘I saw you in San Rocco Square and again while I was looking in the shop windows. I saw you before you even started following me today. I made sure you could see me the whole time, so that I could watch you.’

She rose up into a crouch, tensed, one hand spread out on the floor in front of her, looking up at him with tight lips. Where the thick black hair was brushed away from her forehead, he could see a vein pulsing.

‘You weren’t following me,’ he said. ‘You were being led. I chose a busy taxi rank so that you wouldn’t lose me. You and your friend here jumped in the next cab, and I watched you all the way over here. I made it easy for you. I even pretended to be drunk. You walked right into it.’

Her eyes were empty. He could see she was measuring distances, working out moves, calculating odds. She was someone trained. ‘You’re pretty good,’ he said. ‘That was a great cover story, about your sister. But you’re not good enough to get out of this. Talk to me, Esmeralda. Don’t think I wouldn’t shoot you.’

She said nothing.

‘Zoë Bradbury. Where is she?’

She didn’t reply.

‘Who bombed the café?’ he asked. ‘Was it to kill Charlie?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

He fired. She screamed and drew her hand away from the floor.

‘You’re fine,’ he said. ‘I aimed between your fingers. Next time I’ll take one off. Let’s start again. Zoë Bradbury. Where is she?’

‘Gone,’ she whispered.

‘Co-operation. That’s good. Gone where?’

She hesitated.

‘Pick a finger,’ he said. ‘Maybe one you don’t use much. Hold out your hand. That way I won’t hit anything else by mistake.’

‘She’s not in Greece any longer.’

‘Then where is she?’

‘You’ll kill me anyway,’ she said. ‘Why should I tell you?’

‘I’m not like you,’ he replied. ‘I know the kind of treatment you had in mind for me tonight if I didn’t answer your questions. But I’m not a senseless killer. If you tell me where she is, what’s going on, and who you are, you won’t be harmed. I’ll put you where nobody can find you. When I find Zoë safe and well, I’ll come back and maybe I’ll let you walk free. It’s your choice. But understand that if you don’t tell me, you’re dead. Right here, right now. No more finger games.’ He aimed the pistol at her forehead.

‘Who the hell are you?’ The Spanish accent was less pronounced now. She sounded distinctly American.

‘Nobody. Last chance. Where is she?’

The woman heaved a sigh. ‘She’s been taken to the US. Five days ago.’

‘Good. We’re getting somewhere. Where exactly in the US, why and by whom?’

‘I don’t know everything,’ she said. ‘I just do what I’m told to do.’

‘Who tells you? Give me names.’

‘I don’t have any names to give.’

‘What’s yours?’

‘Kaplan. Marisa Kaplan.’

He watched her eyes and believed her. He pointed back at the fair-haired man on the floor. ‘What was his?’

‘Hudson.’

‘Why are you here, Marisa? Who planted the bomb?’

Then the room was filled with noise. Ben felt the shockwave of a bullet pass close to his ear. A wall-light shattered. He whirled round and fell back simultaneously, returning fire. The Beretta kicked in his hands. The fair-haired guy was half-raised on one elbow, and the gun in his bloody fist was a small backup revolver. It fired again. The second shot went through the cuff of Ben’s shirt.

Ben fired back. Saw the bullet strike. Fired again. The guy’s eye disappeared and his head dropped to the floor. There was blood up the wall behind him.

Then there was silence again. Ben clambered to his feet and checked himself. He wasn’t hit. But the intruder was definitely dead this time. Ben kicked the.357 Magnum snubby backup piece away across the floor.

He heard a tiny sound behind him. He turned. The woman called Kaplan was sitting up, staring at her stomach. The blood was spreading fast over her cream dress. She clutched at the wound that her partner’s stray shot had punched into her gut, trying to tear the cloth to get to it. Her mouth opened and closed. Then she slumped backwards and died.

Creating corpses was much quicker and easier work than disposing of them afterwards. Ben found some heavy-duty plastic garbage sacks in the kitchen of the beach house. Stepping over the pools of blood on the tiles, he tore two sacks off the roll, opened them out and spread them on the floor in the passage near the front door.

He took Kaplan by the wrists and dragged her. Her head hung down, eyes still open, her hair trailing in the slick of blood on the tiles. He dumped her corpse on top of one of the garbage sacks, walked back across the room to Hudson’s body, bent down and grabbed his ankles. Hudson was much heavier and much more bloody. His right eye socket and cheekbone were smashed by the impact of the 9mm bullet from his partner’s gun. Ben dragged him over the tiles and left him lying next to Kaplan.

He crouched over them and frisked them carefully. No papers, no personal items of any kind. Hudson had a phone in his back pocket. He found Kaplan’s in her handbag. With a phone in each hand he redialled the last call she’d made, and Hudson’s phone vibrated in his other hand. He checked through their call records. The two phones had been used only to call each other.