‘Shut the fuck up,’ hissed Bryant.

The female contingent of the car-jackers levered herself off the hood of the BMW with sinuous grace.

‘Nice car, Mister Zek-tiv,’ she said solemnly. ‘Got the keys?’

Bryant clutched automatically at his pocket. The woman’s eyes flickered to the move and locked on. She nodded in satisfaction.

‘Get off my fucking car!’ Bryant barked.

The remaining four jackers obeyed in unison, arms spread and hands holding their makeshift weapons. Chris glanced sideways at his companion.

‘Bad move, Mike. You carrying?’

Bryant shook his head almost imperceptibly.

‘In the car, remember. You?’

‘Yeah.’ Chris paused, embarrassed. ‘But it’s not loaded.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t like guns.’

‘See, it’s like this.’ The woman’s voice jerked Chris back from the disbelieving expression on Bryant’s face. ‘Either you can give us the keys. And your wallets. And your watches. Or we can take them from you. That’s our best offer.’

She lifted thumb and little finger solemnly to ear and mouth, making a child’s telephone.

‘Sell, sell, sell.’

Bryant muttered something out of the corner of his mouth.

‘What?’ Chris muttered back.

‘I said, back the way we came and fucking run!!!’

Then he was gone, sprinting flat out for the corner they had just rounded. Chris went after him, flailing to stay upright in the Argentine leather shoes. Behind him, the incentive - sounds of yells and booted pursuit. He levelled with Bryant and found, incredibly, that the other man was grinning.

‘All part of a night out in the zones,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Try to keep up.’

Behind them, someone ran a metal wrecking bar along a concrete wall. It made a sound like a gigantic dentist’s drill.

They looked at each other and put on speed.

Three streets away from the Falkland, the neighbourhood plunged from run-down to rotted-through. The houses were suddenly derelict, unglassed windows gaping out at the street and tiny gardens full of rubble and other detritus. Chris, brain abruptly adrenalin-flushed and working, grabbed Bryant and yanked him sideways into one of the gardens. Over piles of junk, scrambling. In past a front door that someone had kicked in long ago. Weeds grew up waist-high in the gap it had left. Beyond, a narrow, darkened hallway ran parallel to a staircase with half the banisters torn out. At the end, a tiled room that breathed stench like a diseased mouth.

Chris leaned cautiously against the staircase and listened to the yells of the car-jackers as they ran past and down an adjacent street.

Bryant was bent over, hands braced on his knees, panting.

‘You mind telling me,’ he managed hoarsely after a while. ‘Why you’re carrying an unloaded gun around with you?’

‘I told you. I don’t like guns. I don’t like Louise Hewitt telling me what to do.’

‘Man, after five days that’s a bad attitude to have. I wouldn’t go telling anybody things like that, if I were you.’

‘Why not? I told you, didn’t I?’

Bryant straightened up and looked hard at him.

‘Anyway, where’s your gun, hotshot?’

‘At least it’s loaded.’

‘Alright, old piece of folk wisdom coming up.’ Chris gulped his breath back under control. ‘A gun in the hand is worth half a fucking million locked in the car.’

‘Yeah, you’re right.’ Bryant’s grin flashed in the gloom. ‘But I wasn’t expecting this kind of trouble. We’re only a couple of klicks inside the zones. Those guys are out of their territory.’

‘You think they know that?’ Chris nodded out towards the street, where voices were coming back. Some of the jacker gang, at least, were retracing their steps. He jabbed an urgent finger upward and Bryant took the creaking stairs into the darkness at the top. Chris slid back along the hallway towards the tiled room and sank into the shadows there. The stench enveloped him. The floor was slimy underfoot. He tried not to breathe.

A moment later two of the jackers were standing where he had just been. Both were armed with long crowbars.

‘I don’t see why we need the keys anyway. Why not just smash the fucking window.’

‘Because, moron, this is a BMW Omega series.’ The other jacker cast a doubtful glance up the stairs. ‘State-of-the-fucking-art corporate jamjar. These mothers have alarms, engine immobilisation locks and a broadcast scream to the nearest retrieval centre. You’d never move it a hundred metres down the fucking street before they got you.’

‘We could still smash it, anyway. Rip it up.’

‘Ruf, you got no fucking ambition, man. If it weren’t for Molly, you’d still be smashing up telephone points and throwing stones at cabs. You got to think bigger than that. Come on. I don’t think they came in here. Too much chance of getting their suits dirty. Let’s—‘

Chris’s foot slipped. Knocked against something that rolled on the tiled floor. Clink of glass. Chris gritted his teeth and inched one hand down to the butt of his empty gun. The two jackers had frozen by the door.

‘Hear that?’ It was the ambitious member of the duo. Chris saw a silhouetted wrecking bar raised in the faint light from the doorway. ‘Okay, Mister Zek-tiv. Game over. Come out, give us your fucking keys, and maybe we’ll leave you some teeth.’

The two jackers advanced down the hall. They were about halfway when Mike Bryant dropped through a gap in the banister rail above. He landed feet first on the head of the gangwit bringing up the rear. The two of them tumbled to the floor. The lead jacker whipped round at the noise and Chris exploded from his hiding place. He punched hard, driving high for the face and low for the guts. The jacker turned back too late. Chris’s high punch broke his nose and then he folded as the solid right hook sank into his midriff. Chris grabbed the gangwit’s shoulders and ran his shaven head sideways into the staircase wall. Up ahead, he saw Bryant reel to his feet and stamp down hard on the other jacker’s unprotected stomach. The gangwit moaned and curled up. Bryant kicked him again, in the head.

‘Mother fucker! Touch my car, you fucking piece of shit!’

Chris laid a hand on his shoulder. Bryant hooked round, face taut.

‘Whoa, it’s all over.’ Chris stood back, hands raised. ‘Game over, Mike. Come on. There’s only three left now. Let’s try for the car again.’

Bryant’s face cleared of its fury.

‘Yeah, good. Let’s do it.’

The street outside was quiet. They checked both ways, then slipped out and loped back towards the Falkland, Bryant navigating. Less than five minutes to relocate the corner pub, and the BMW sat gleaming pristinely under the street lamp as if nothing had happened.

They circled the vehicle warily. Nothing.

Bryant produced his keys and pressed a button. The alarm disarmed with a subdued squawk. He was about to open the door when the shaven-headed woman stepped out of the shadows of a doorway less than five metres away, a piece of iron railing raised in ironic greeting. She put her fingers to her mouth and whistled shrilly. Another jacker, similarly armed, stepped out of another doorway up the street and ambled down to meet them. The woman smiled at Bryant.

‘Thought you’d be back. Now, you want to throw me those keys?’

In the moment that her eyes were fixed on Bryant, Chris produced his empty gun and levelled it at her.

‘Alright, that’s enough,’ he snapped. ‘Back off.’

The other jacker took a step forward and Chris swung the gun to cover him, willing him to believe.

‘You too. Back off, or you’re dead. Michael, get in the car.’

Bryant opened the door. Chris was feeling for the door handle on the other side when the woman spoke.

‘I don’t think that gun’s loaded.’

She took a step forward, followed by her companion. Chris brandished the Nemex.

‘I said, back off.’

‘Nah, you would have shot us by now. You’re bluffing, Mr Zek.’