‘A spy,’ she repeated.

Jamie nodded.

All the anger Kelly Larkin had felt a couple of minutes ago disappeared. She smoothed the legs of her trouser suit, stood up and turned to face Jamie. He looked so ridiculous there, semi-naked in her bedroom.

‘And your dad was in the SAS?’ she asked. ‘And your mum died of cancer?’

Jamie nodded.

‘And you thought that if I believed all that it would make it okay for you to steal money from my purse?’

Jamie’s lips parted slightly, but he didn’t say anything.

Kelly walked up to him as coolly as she was able. She came to a halt right in front of him.

She smiled.

And then, with all the force she could muster, she slapped him hard round the side of the face.

‘Ow!’ he shouted, but she was already talking over him, her voice a low, menacing hiss.

‘Get out of my house, Jamie Spillane,’ she spat. ‘And don’t come back. I’ve had enough of you, your sponging and your stupid, insulting lies. I never, ever want to see you again. You’ve got five minutes.’

With that, she turned her back on him, walked out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. She locked herself in and listened at the door, waiting to hear the sound of her ex-boyfriend leaving the flat.

Sam floored it home. He barely saw anyone else on the road, not because there weren’t any cars, but because he was blind to them. He blocked out the angry sound of horns as he cut up the other road users; he ignored red lights and pedestrian crossings. After his encounter with Jack Whitely outside the CO’s office, Sam had walked straight out of the Kremlin and left the base as quickly as possible. He didn’t stop and speak to anyone. He just had to get out of there. And now, as he sped round the roads of Hereford, there was one thought in his mind. Get home. Get away from everyone else. Then you can try to work out what the hell is going on.

Coming to a halt outside his flat, Sam parked badly, one wheel on the pavement, the back of the car jutting out into the road. He didn’t care. He just leapt from the vehicle, ran into the house and – for some reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on – locked himself inside. He drew several deep breaths before going into the kitchen and opening one of the cupboards. It was empty apart from a half-drunk bottle of Scotch. He poured himself a glass and downed it in one, before pouring another and waiting for the alcohol to do its work on his nervous system.

Jacob had changed. There was no doubt about that. He looked older, more weather-beaten. It probably wasn’t so surprising that Mac hadn’t recognised him. Sam’s brother had just been one of a number of faces and the photos were of poor quality. He sipped at his whisky, closed his eyes and tried to get his thoughts straight. It made no sense. Why would the Regiment be sending out a troop to kill a bunch of British citizens; why would they be eliminating one of their own?

As that thought crossed his mind, he stopped. He gently placed his drink on the kitchen worktop and closed his eyes. Sam thought back to the previous day. He was in his father’s room. The old man had said something. What was it? Sam’s brow furrowed as he tried to remember the exact words.

You know what those bastards are like. Jacob was an embarrassment to them. We both know how easy it is to get rid of people who are an embarrassment.

He shook his head. His father’s words were nothing, just grief-induced paranoia, the delusions of an old man with time on his hands coming up with reasons to explain his favourite son’s absence.

Weren’t they?

‘Damn it!’ he shouted, kicking the kitchen unit so that it rattled. Sam downed the Scotch, then started prowling around the flat like a caged animal. He needed answers, but there was nowhere he could get them – if Sam alerted anyone to what was going on, there was no doubt about what would happen. He’d be pulled from the op and a team of trained SAS killers would fly to Kazakhstan to eliminate his brother, without Sam being able to do anything about it.

Morning passed into afternoon. The effects of the alcohol wore off, leaving only an uncomfortable, nagging sensation in the pit of Sam’s stomach. His phone rang several times; he ignored it.

Afternoon melted into evening. Sam felt like a prisoner in his own home, as though even stepping over the threshold would somehow reveal his suspicions to everyone, like an escaping convict walking into the beam of a searchlight. As the light outside began to fail, so it grew darker in his bare front room. He sat on the old sofa and allowed the gloom to surround him. From where he sat he could see out into the road. His badly parked Audi was just outside; occasional passers-by sauntered across his field of vision.

Evening became night. The streetlamps flickered on outside. Still Sam didn’t move. He had no idea what time it was and he didn’t bother to check. Before long he was sitting in darkness.

By the time he noticed the figure on the other side of the street, Sam couldn’t have said how long it had been there. It was faceless, the head covered with a hood, the kind worn by kids. If this was a kid, though, it was an unusually tall, stocky one. He stood leaning against a lamppost; and although Sam could not see his face, he had the sudden, unnerving sensation that this person was looking straight through the window of the flat and into Sam’s front room.

The unnerving sensation that he was some shadowy sentinel, keeping watch.

Sam froze.

The figure was in the light; Sam was in the dark. Chances were this guy couldn’t see him. Slowly, he slid down the sofa on his back and on to the floor. On all fours he crawled out of the front room and into the corridor. It was very dark in his flat, he used the tried and tested Blade method of not looking directly at objects, but looking around them, using his periphery vision, which is better attuned to seeing in the dark. He made his way confidently to the bathroom without switching on any lights. Once in there, he fumbled towards the toilet. Sam lifted the lid of the cistern and carefully groped inside.

The handgun was there, a fully loaded Beretta 92 9 mm, carefully perched on the mechanical intestines of the cistern. He picked it up gingerly to stop it from falling into the water; but once it was in his hand, he gripped it firmly.

He felt a whole lot better with the reassuring weight of a weapon in his fist.

Chances were it was just some guy waiting for his girlfriend, or his dealer, or who just happened to be standing outside Sam’s house. But there was no doubt that Sam felt a cold, bristling uncertainty, a kind of sixth sense that experience had taught him never to ignore. He checked the weapon quickly before leaving the bathroom and walking back down the corridor, the shallow, steady sound of his breath the only noise in his ears.

He stopped at the door to the front room, pressed his back against the wall and, squinting his eyes slightly, peered across the room and out of the window. Sam gripped the weapon a little bit more firmly when he realised the figure under the lamppost was no longer there.

Out of the blue, a motorbike roared down the street. It made Sam start momentarily, but more than that it messed with his hearing, which had been carefully tuned to the quiet. The noise of the motor took a while to fade; only when it had finally disappeared could Sam readjust his ears to the thick silence of his flat.

But silence wasn’t what he heard.

It was faint, but it was there: the sound of footsteps. They were brisk and they were getting louder.

Sam felt his jaw setting solid. The handgun was pointed out in front of him now as he backed up and headed towards the front door.