Cassie walked out and murmured “Got it” into her lapel mic. She was to walk now to the location of the unmarked van parked on the shoulder on a residential road behind the casino, where Spere would swipe the magstripe through a data reader. At the same moment, “Pete Lupertans” was being driven into the fields. She walked past the valet’s podium and crossed the driveway that led into the first of the parking lots at the front of the Five Nations Casino. There was a woman in a uniform standing on the other side of the driveway, talking into a radio. She stepped forward and blocked Jenner’s path.

“Madam, my name is Commander Ileanna LeJeune,” she said. “I’m afraid you’re under arrest.”

Thurlow drove in silence, keeping his focus on the road in front of him, as Wingate went over in his mind the features of his own plan. Willan had supplied Greene with another fifty-four hundred dollars, which Wingate had in an inside pocket of his jacket.

He didn’t care about the money. There were two innocent women in that place, kidnap and torture victims, trapped underground, and his only goal was to get them out alive. The three men (they were all men) Greene was planning on sending in after him were to take any and all parties they found in the casino, including the bettors themselves, and cart them off, but by the time the raid was two minutes in progress, he was pretty sure hell would have broken out in the other parts of the site. This meant getting out of that room, where he’d have the first chance to neutralize at least Gene. He had no weapon on him at all, though, just his wits and his training. It had been a long time since Wingate had taken a man down with his bare hands, but as he’d learned before, righteous anger tends to focus a person. He had no doubt he could put Gene down in a matter of seconds. He viewed his own actions in advance, in the training room of his imagination, and he saw himself coming out to ask for something – some rope, some whiskey, something credible – and before Gene could react to the request, Wingate would deliver a single fingertip stab to the throat, followed by a knee in the balls. Simple, direct, effective. Then he’d have the weapon before Gene could either react or notify any of the other casino employees. Especially Ronnie. He wanted to stay clear of Ronnie. Then Cherry would show him the door to where the other girl was being kept. There would be two more heavily armed officers with him by this point.

All of their energies were now dedicated to busting the brothel in the fields. The murder that had touched off the whole case was back-burnered now, the first salvo in a crime the dimensions of which they could never have imagined until they’d seen it for themselves. He was more or less in a state of rooted terror. He could think, but he was actively in fear of his life now. It was amazing to him that this Kitty, on nothing but her will and her wits, had gotten out of here. And then done what she’d done. This was a dangerous person, a desperate person. It had not been admitted openly, but her transit from prime suspect to victim during the past week made their attitude toward her own mission sympathetic, if not exactly collegial. If Henry Wiest and Terry Brennan had encountered Kitty the way it seemed they must have, then whoever was next on the girl’s list was low priority at this point. If she found what she was looking for, she’d vanish and be of no further concern to them. Or, Wingate had to admit, at least of no further concern to him. If David had survived the beating that had killed him, Wingate imagined not one of his colleagues would have spent much time investigating the mysterious revenges David might then have enacted. Not that he was that kind of person. Wingate was that kind of person. Or at least he’d become it.

Thurlow arrived at the grove at 4:45, and the black Mercedes stood guard as Wingate got out the back of the cab. It was a pleasant August late afternoon.

“He’s there,” said Spere, tracking a small, hollow blue triangle on a screen in the remote van. Hazel watched the symbol move forward at walking speed now and then stop at where the metal door was with its card reader. She imagined the door in its concrete footing and saw a pale grey square with a heavy plate in it, something like the hole Alice went through to get to Wonderland. That, too, had been a tale of innocence full of strange perversions, but they were harmless ones. She remembered reading those books to Emilia and Martha when they’d been girls, and like all children who had heard those stories, the thrill and magic of hidden worlds had animated their imaginations thereafter. Hazel doubted, were she ever to have grandchildren, that she would read those books now. Especially after learning, some years after the girls had grown up, what kind of man Lewis Carroll had been.

“Where are Willan’s guys?” she asked Greene. Willan had insisted on supplying Toronto SWAT-trained men for the raid. They’d arrived in Mayfair the night before.

“They’re in place.”

“I have to give them the signal,” said Spere. “I have to run the card Jenner’s bringing first. If I can’t trip the door remotely, then I have Dortmeyer ready to run it out.”

“Who’s Dortmeyer?”

“One of mine.”

“I’m going in myself if you can’t trip it from here.”

Greene put his hand on her wrist. “I have strict orders to keep you under my wing,” he said.

“Is that the word Willan used? Or did he say thumb?”

Greene smiled at her. “Just sit tight. There’s a plan.”

She checked her watch. On foot, it was supposed to take Jenner ten minutes to get to the van. She had one more minute.

The triangle was moving again. Spere said, “He’s in. He’s at a depth of five feet. Eight. Ten.” It stopped. This was the second door. A moment later, the symbol that represented him moved forward a millimetre on Spere’s screen.

“She should be here,” Hazel said, and she stepped past the two men to the front seat of the van, where a black and white screen showed four small squares of real estate on all four sides of the van. She looked at the upper right-hand corner, which showed the view to the rear, where Cassie Jenner should already have been visible. “I don’t see her at all,” she said.

“Take it easy,” said Greene. “James is moving around freely inside the casino now. Give her another couple of minutes.”

Hazel kept her eyes trained on the view out of the back. They were parked down Church Bay Road behind the casino, pulled off to the side. The outside of the van had been painted with the name Wilson and Son Surveying. There were even two men standing in the woods beyond with a compass and theodolite. They’d been Willan’s idea.

Wingate was now moving in a straight line again. Howard Spere was working on the screen in front of him, clicking squares on a grid that overlaid the satellite image of the fields between the Ninth and Tenth Lines. It looked like a rudimentary computer game now, with glowing red squares marking where the triangle had been. According to the grid, Wingate had travelled now to a depth of five metres, and he was about a hundred metres southeast of the entrance in the grove. Now the pathway curved and he descended another eight feet. The signal was still strong.

It was 4:50. Jenner was three minutes late now. “I’m calling her,” Hazel said. She got her cell out and dialled her constable. Jenner answered her phone after two rings, but it wasn’t Jenner’s voice.

“Who is this?” it said.

“Who is this? Where’s Cassandra Jenner?”

“Who’s Cassandra Jenner?”

Hazel tried to hide the alarm in her voice. Greene and Spere were staring at her. “I must have the wrong number.” She hung up. “Fuck.”

“What is it?”

“She’s compromised,” Hazel said. “We have to get Wingate out of there.”

Before they could stop her, she’d thrown the road-side door of the van open.