"So those fuckers this morning, what was their story?" If her cursing bothered Dalby, he gave no sign of it. His face remained impassive.

"Well, to state the obvious, they came for you. But why, we're not certain yet. Mister Richardson, the lone survivor, has only just begun the initial stages of what shall probably be a very long debrief at Salisbury. We're having to go lightly for now because of his injuries."

There was no tone of reproach in his voice that Caitlin could make out. Dalby was simply stating a fact. And if Richardson was being held at Salisbury, that explained why they were heading west rather than back toward the capital.

"But you've identified them. That must be leading us somewhere."

"It could be leading us down a garden path for all we know, Ms. Monroe. Richardson had a record as an armed robber, quite heavy stuff. He had served time for firearms offenses, grievous bodily harm, and his charge sheet ran to six pages. The Met almost had him for witness tampering a few years ago, but, well… the witnesses disappeared."

"I see," Caitlin said as Dalby accelerated past the army trucks. The day was dark with storm clouds now, with bruised gray thunderheads building up over the horizon in front of them, leaching the color from the fields and forests on either side of the M4. Blurs of people working in their market gardens began to gather up their implements and return to their homes. Caitlin watched for the ones who did no such thing, half expecting to see a sniper rifle or someone holding the cell phone that would set off a roadside bomb. When she glanced at Dalby, he showed no obvious effort at scanning the roadway.

"So you've run his associates both in and out of prison?" she asked.

"Yes. We've had some interesting names popping up, too, but one in particular rang some bells, given your case history. He did a stretch in Wormwood Scrubs for a shotgun stickup on a betting shop in Liverpool back before the Disappearance, and he fell in with a Hizb-ut-Tahrir group there."

Caitlin's ears pricked up immediately.

"Were they the genuine article or just a bunch of beardy shitheads?" she asked

"Oh, the genuine article," Dalby said. "Prayed five times a day, proselytized throughout the nick, did a lot of conversions among the young lads from the subcontinent. Governor quite liked having them there, he said. Insisted they calmed things down."

"Splendid," Caitlin said. "How nice for the governor."

"Indeed."

Rain began spotting the windshield, and Dalby flicked on the wipers.

"Well, Richardson didn't strike me as one of the Prophet's nutters," Caitlin said. "Looked more like a gangbanger really, more Rasta than anything."

"Protective coloration." Dalby shrugged. "Since the French Intifada, foreign Johnnies in caftans haven't been entirely welcome in our green and pleasant land, have they?"

"No."

Caitlin was glad to have missed most of the mass deportation period while in the hospital. It had been pretty fucking ugly by all accounts. It had started simply enough with a curfew in some of the areas most affected by post-Wave rioting, but when that failed to calm the situation, when the riots spun out of all control, the government began arresting thousands of people on a secret "watch list" it had maintained since the Twin Towers attack all the way back in 2001. Ancient history, thought Caitlin, whose own agency had helped maintain that list. When France imploded, it was a matter of almost no moment to move from preventive detention to outright expulsion, even of second- and third-generation citizens, most of whom were forcibly relocated to one of Britain's fourteen remaining overseas territories and barred from returning to the newly promulgated "metropolitan area"-Greater Britain and Northern Ireland, in not so many words.

Most of the territorial administrators, such as the military commander of the British base on Cyprus, a major relocation hub, had simply moved them on again, at gunpoint if necessary.

"So what's the current thinking?" she asked. "Richardson was a sleeper, a stay-behind? Or his jailhouse conversion was just a convenience while he was inside?"

Dalby eased back on the gas as the downpour grew heavier, exhibiting the first hint of emotion since she'd met him. If she didn't know better, she could have sworn that he was disappointed. He flicked the wipers to a faster setting and turned on his headlights, although the road remained largely empty.

"We have no preconceived ideas," he said, hunching slightly over the wheel. "But we very much like this Hizb connection as an explanation for why he'd be looking for you-and how he came to get his hands on a couple of prestige motors, a book of petrol coupons, and the small arsenal they were carrying. There is no common or garden-variety criminal angle to this as far as we can tell. But Richardson and his crew taking on a contract job for Hizb ut-Tahrir? That all clicks together very nicely."

"Well, not really," she protested. "I can't imagine the Hizb have much of a network left here since the deportations. Who would have handled Richardson for them?"

"A cutout?" Dalby suggested. "They don't need a full beard to issue the orders. Just someone reliable to pass them along and run the logistics. There's still plenty of villains about, and pickings have been very thin for them the last few years what with all the extra security and rationing and so on. One of the advantages for Hizb in having been so active in the prison system is the number of contacts it gave them with handy infidels, like Richardson's crew."

"None of them flagged as converts?" she asked.

"No. But they'd all done time in prisons with a Hizb presence. Richardson would not have had to sell them a line about doing God's work. All he had to do was tell them he had a paying job. And this job did pay well. Once we had confirmed IDs, the Met raided the last known addresses of the four men you killed, well, three of the four. For one we had no known address. They found envelopes with two and half thousand in euros at two of the flats. At the third, they found a party in progress. Seems young Ed McConaughy's girlfriend couldn't wait for him to get home."

"McConaughy?"

"The nasty little carrot top. I believe you shot him in the face."

"Oh, him. So, two and a half up front. And two and a half at the back end? Plus a bonus for Richardson, an executive fee for running the show?"

"Certainly. Plus the equipment, the cars and guns and so on. And travel passes. They were valid, so that involved a payoff somewhere along the line. We'll know more about that when Special Branch gets back to us. All in all, though, Ms. Monroe, somebody spent a pretty penny to send these villains after you."

Caitlin stared out her window. The rain was heavy enough now to have obscured visibility beyond about fifty yards. The world outside the car had been reduced to formless gray and green shadows.

"So why, if you're going to all that trouble…"

"Do you send a bunch of bloody amateurs like these?" Dalby finished for her.

Caitlin nodded. It made no sense. There had to be better crews around than Richardson's. Professional hitters who could have taken her out from a hilltop with a long barrel. Snatch teams that could have disappeared her from the face of the earth without a trace. Yet somebody had sent a bunch of half-wits and morons who'd been incapable of catching her husband on his bicycle.

And, with the exception of Richardson, their putative leader, they were all dead. Almost as if that was the point of the exercise.