‘Can you see a woman in her early forties with shoulder-length hair sitting anywhere? She’ll either be on her own or sitting with a man with a grey beard.’

Akhtar scanned the room, forcing himself to concentrate on faces as he slowly approached the queue of people at the counter. He saw two people in the far corner. The woman had her back to him and appeared to be talking intently to the man, who had a deeply troubled expression on his face. ‘Yes, I can see them.’

‘I want you to take a seat as close to the woman as possible.’

‘You don’t want me to say anything to her?’

‘Just do as you’re told. Take a seat … nice and close.’

It was those three words that set off alarm bells. Nice and close.

It hit him then. He was carrying a bomb. He had to be. As soon as he found a seat close to the woman, the gunman would detonate it somehow – Akhtar had seen it done on all those TV shows – killing him, the woman, and everyone around them. And he, Akhtar, would end up getting the blame, because he would have been the one carrying the bomb, heaping even more shame on his family.

He looked over at the woman. She looked totally normal. White, attractive, well bred, with expensive clothes – and he wondered if he was wrong. Whether he was just being paranoid.

And then the woman turned his way and their eyes met, and even from twenty feet away he could see the fear and tension in them. He turned away quickly.

‘Are you sitting down yet?’ demanded the gunman.

‘I’m trying to find a seat. It’s crowded in here.’

‘How close are you?’

It was a bomb. It had to be.

‘Not too far, but she’s sitting near the counter and there are a lot of people in the way.’

‘Get as close as you can.’

The fear was so intense now that Akhtar could hardly walk. If he stayed here, he died. No question. If he put the bomb down and tried to evacuate the place, the man on the end of the phone would detonate it, and he still died, along with everyone else. And if he hung up, he also died. He was completely trapped, and only seconds from death. He had to make a decision.

Joining the end of the queue at the counter, he put the backpack down on the floor then, looking round briefly to check that no one was watching him, he walked towards the coffee shop door, making way for a young student couple coming the other way, trying not to look at their faces, knowing that he could be sentencing them to death.

He reached the door. ‘OK. I’m just about to sit down.’

‘How far away?’

‘Five feet,’ he replied, holding the phone against his jacket to block out the sounds of the street as he stepped outside and immediately broke into a run.

When Martha Crossman caught the Asian man with the backpack staring at her, she thought the worst, but as he turned away and joined the queue she told herself to stop being so foolish. No one knew she was here. And even if they did, they wouldn’t kill her in a public place.

She turned back to Philip Wright. His demeanour had changed since she’d told him about her secret. Beforehand he’d seemed reassuring yet cool, as if he was half-expecting to be wasting his time coming here. Now, the tension cutting across his features matched hers.

‘You’re talking about murder here, Mrs Crossman,’ he told her. ‘You’re going to have to talk to the police immediately. I can’t help you with this.’

‘I don’t want to involve the police yet. Not until I’m absolutely sure that what I’ve discovered is actually what I think it is.’

‘OK,’ he said, nodding slowly. ‘I can understand that. And it’s something I can authenticate very quickly. But I’m going to need to see it.’

She motioned towards the handbag on the seat next to her. ‘It’s in there.’

He frowned. ‘You’ve brought it here with you?’

‘I wanted you to see it as soon as possible. Listen,’ she added, looking round, unable to see the Asian man any longer, ‘I’m feeling a bit claustrophobic. Can we go somewhere quieter and more private? Please?’

He nodded. ‘Of course.’

Martha felt faint, the need to vomit even stronger than it had been when she’d first come in here, and she stood up unsteadily.

He stood up too. ‘Are you OK?’ He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Let’s go to my car. I’m parked up the road.’

She needed no encouragement. The room was spinning, and she could feel the beginnings of a panic attack – the first she’d had in years. With Wright holding on to her she hurried towards the fresh air and salvation.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ said a voice behind them. ‘You haven’t paid for your coffee.’

Martha turned back towards the waitress at just the moment the bomb exploded, the force of the blast caving in the windows and the Plexiglas counter and sending jagged projectiles hurtling through the enclosed space at more than two hundred miles per hour.

The bomb – five kilos of PETN plastic explosive surrounded by the same weight in assorted shrapnel – was designed to rip to shreds everything in its immediate proximity.

Neither Martha nor Philip Wright had time to react, or even understand what was happening. Wright was struck in the left eye by an industrial railway bolt that immediately pierced his brain, killing him near enough instantaneously, while Martha saw a single, all-consuming white flash, heard a roar like a great wave crashing over her, and then a sixteen-inch-by-ten-inch shard of Plexiglas that until a second earlier had been covering the muffin cabinet sliced effortlessly through her neck as if it was butter, taking her head, and her secret, with it.

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Published by Arrow Books in 2013

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Copyright © Simon Kernick, 2012

Simon Kernick has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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ISBN 9780099580225