She raised her piece of railing, took another step forward and Mike Bryant stood up from his side of the car, Nemex in hand.

‘I’m not bluffing,’ he said mildly and shot her three times in the chest and stomach.

Boom, boom, boom.

The sound of the gun in the quiet street. Echoes off houses.

Chris saw and heard it in fragments.

The woman, kicked back two metres before she dropped. The railing, out of her hand and flying, clattering and rolling across the camber of the street into the gutter.

The other jacker, hands raised, placatory, backing away.

Face implacable, Bryant put the next three shots into him.

Boom, boom, boom.

He reeled and spun like a marionette, crashed into the wall and slid down it, leaving gouts of blood on the brickwork.

‘Mike—‘

The sound of pounding feet.

The final member of the gang, summoned by the gunshots, sprinting across the street towards the fallen bodies. He seemed oblivious to the two men in suits. He hit the ground on his knees next to the woman, disbelieving.

‘Molly! Molly!’

Chris looked across at Bryant. ‘Mike, let’s—‘

Bryant made a sideways hushing gesture with his free hand and lowered his aim.

Boom, boom.

The kneeling boy jolted as if electrocuted, and then keeled slowly over on the woman on the ground. Blood ran out over the street and trickled down to join the crowbar in the gutter.

The echoes rolled away into the predawn gloom like reluctant applause.

They drove back to the checkpoint in silence, Chris wrapped in numb disbelief. The guard let them through with a cursory glance. If he smelled the cordite from Mike’s gun, he said nothing. Bryant waved him a cheerful goodnight and accelerated the big car away into the well-lit canyons of the financial district. He was humming quietly to himself.

He glanced across at Chris as they were approaching the Shorn block.

‘You want to sleep over at my place? Plenty of space.’

The thought of the hour-long drive back home was abruptly unbearable. Chris mustered a dried-out voice.

‘Yeah. Thanks.’

‘Good.’ Bryant speeded up and cornered west.

Chris watched the towering blocks begin to thin out around them. As the BMW picked up the main feeder lane for the London orbital, he turned slightly in his seat to face Bryant.

‘You didn’t have to kill them all, Mike.’

‘Yeah, I did.’ There was no animosity in Bryant’s voice. ‘What else was I supposed to do. Fire warning shots? This symbolism of combat shit you talk about doesn’t work with people like that. They’re gangwit scum, Chris. They don’t know how to lose gracefully.’

‘They’d already lost. And they were kids. They would have run away.’ ‘Yeah, yeah. Until the next time. Look, Chris. People like that, civilised rules don’t apply. Violence is the only thing they understand.’ Outside the hurrying car, the sky was brightening in the east. Chris’s head was beginning to ache.

Chris awoke with the horrified conviction that he had been unfaithful to Carla. Liz Linshaw was sitting up in bed beside him, buttering a piece of toast and wiping the knife casually on the sheets.

‘Breakfast in bed,’ she was saying authoritatively, ‘is so sexy.’

Chris looked down at the stains she was making and felt a hot lump of mingled guilt and sadness swelling in the base of his throat. There was no way he could hide this from Carla.

He opened his eyes with a jolt. Daylight strained through chintz curtains just above his head. For a moment the chintz hammered home the dream - Carla hated the stuff with a passion. He really had gone home with Liz Linshaw, then. He turned on his side with the blockage of unshed tears still jammed in his throat and—

He was in a single bed.

He propped himself up, confused. Matching chintz quilt and pillowcase, massive hangover. Close behind this sensory surge, the events of the previous evening crashed in on him. The street. The jackers. Bryant’s gun in the quiet night. The relief made him forget the pain in his head for a couple of moments. Liz Linshaw was a dream.

He hauled up his wrist and looked at his watch which he had evidently been in no state to remove the previous night. Quarter past twelve. He spotted his clothes hanging on the door of the tiny guest room and groped his way out of bed towards them. The door was open a crack -beyond, he could hear kitchen sounds. The smell of coffee and toast wafted under his nose.

He dressed hurriedly, stuffed his tie in his jacket pocket and picked up his shoes. Outside the guest room, a white-painted corridor hung with innocuous landscapes led to a wide, curving staircase. Halfway down, he met a woman coming up. Auburn hair, light eyes. He made the match with Michael’s wallet photo. Suki.

Suki had a cup of coffee, complete with saucer, in her hand and there was a tolerant smile on her perfectly made-up face.

‘Good morning. It’s Chris, isn’t it? I’m Suki.’ She offered one slim, gold-braceleted arm. ‘Nice to meet you at last. I was just bringing you this up. Michael said you’d want to be woken. He’s in the kitchen, talking to work, I think.’

Chris took the coffee, balancing it awkwardly in his free hand. His head was beginning to pulse alarmingly.

‘Thanks, uh. Thanks.’

Suki’s smile brightened. Chris had the disturbing impression that his hands and face could have been painted with blood and she would have smiled the same way.

‘Had fun last night, did you?’ she asked maternally.

‘Uh, something like that. Would you excuse me?’

He slipped past her and found his way down into the kitchen. It was a large, comfortable room with wooden furniture, and tall windows along one wall letting in the sun. The scrubbed wooden table was laid for three and covered with an assortment of edible breakfast items. At the far end a two-year-old child sat in a high chair, belabouring a plate of unidentifiable sludge with a plastic spoon. Over by the window, and well out of splash range, Mike Bryant watched her with a tender expression on his face and drank coffee out of a mug. There was a mobile pinned between his ear and shoulder and he appeared to be listening intently. He nodded and waved as Chris came in.

‘They certainly were. What, you think I imagined it? Who says that? Right, get him on the line.’

Bryant cupped a hand over the phone.

‘Chris, call your wife at work. She’s been screaming down the Shorn switchboard since eight this morning. You sleep well?’

He pointed at a videophone hung on the wall near the door. Chris put down his coffee, picked the phone up and dialled from memory. He waved at Ariana, who regarded him in silence for a moment and then grinned and started bashing her breakfast again. Bryant went back to his conversation.

‘Yes, this is Michael Bryant. No I’m not, I’m at home, which is where I’m likely to stay until you can promise a little more safety on the streets. I don’t care, we don’t pay you people to stand around scratching your balls. We were less than three, don’t shout me down detective, three klicks inside the cordon. Yes, you’re fucking right I shot them.’

The screen in front of Chris lit up with a grimy, gum-chewing face.

‘Yeah, Mel’s AutoFix.’ He caught sight of Chris. ‘Need a tow?’

‘No,’ Chris cleared his throat. ‘Could I speak to Carla Nyquist please.’

‘Sure. Be a moment.’

Behind him, Bryant went on with his tirade. ‘They were just about to take me and my colleague to pieces with machetes. What? Well, I’m not surprised. Probably got scavenged by someone last night. Listen, there were five of them to two of us. Hardcore gangwits. Now if I can’t claim that as self defence then—‘

Carla appeared, knuckling grease across her nose. There was a fairly obvious scowl under the black marks. ‘What happened to you, then?’