Behind her, Casey could hear the faint rustling of leaves. Something was moving.

Very, very slowly she turned round, terrified of what she might see.

And had to stifle a gasp.

It was a baby deer, and it was standing next to a tree just a few feet away, looking over at her with big, dark eyes.

For just a couple of seconds, Casey forgot all her terror as she stared in wonder at it, amazed that it didn’t run off. She’d only ever seen deer in Richmond Park and they always seemed to be a long way away, but this one was so close she could almost lean over and touch it.

And then the horrible man let out a sharp, hacking cough and the deer tensed, then bolted, scattering dead leaves.

Casey looked back quickly, just in time to see the horrible man swing round fast, eyes narrowing as he pulled the trigger on his big gun.

Behind her, she heard the deer fall. Then she squeezed her eyes shut as she heard his footsteps coming towards her.

Sayenko lowered the gun, and walked over to the bush, peering over into the darkness. The deer – one of those small, rat-like ones you get in this country – bucked a couple of times on the ground, then lay still. Sayenko cleared his throat and spat a lump of phlegm against a nearby tree. He’d thought it was the little brat he’d been chasing, and was immediately disappointed. It annoyed him that he was out here running round after her when what he should have done was shoot her the moment he’d seen her. As far as he was concerned, there was no point in letting any of them live, especially when they’d seen their faces, but Keogh had yelled at him to take the brat alive. No doubt he wanted to use her as a hostage to try to get the others out into the open, but now she’d escaped and was beyond the reach of any of them. Like everything else today, it had been a fuck-up, and that was the fault of this idiot, Keogh.

Sayenko didn’t like having to work with anyone he didn’t know and trust, and with good reason. This whole thing should have been easy. Three of them with guns, and all they had to do was grab an unarmed girl in the middle of nowhere, jab her with a needle, then chuck her in the trunk of a car and drive away. Sayenko knew if he’d been there, rather than keeping watch in the village, it would have been a different story. Once in Moscow, he and two other gunmen had grabbed a journalist out of her car at some traffic lights in the middle of rush hour, shot dead her two bodyguards, and still got out of there without any problem. Yet the three men he’d been working with today had failed completely, and now here he was, running around these woods, trying to find someone who was surely long gone by now.

Sayenko decided he wasn’t going to carry on this chase any longer. He’d go back and find the others, which wasn’t going to be easy, as the satellite phone they’d given him didn’t have their numbers programmed in. But he’d worry about that in a minute. First, he needed a piss.

He glanced round briefly just to check that he was definitely alone before placing the gun carefully on the ground (he remembered only too well the story of a guy in the army who’d tried to take a leak with a pistol in his hand and who’d shot off the end of his cock when it had gone off by mistake).

Then, with a deep satisfied breath, he unzipped his trousers, relaxing for the first time that night.

Casey was holding her breath. She couldn’t believe that the horrible thin man was standing on the other side of the bush, almost right above her. She could see his boots underneath it, no more than three feet away, could hear his harsh breathing. She could see the gun on the ground too.

She knew he was going to pee. She’d heard him unzip his flies. His wee was going to land on her too if she lay where she was, which would be absolutely disgusting.

She had a chance to run while the gun was out of reach. And she knew she was going to have to do it too, because if she stayed where she was, she was going to have to breathe soon – and then he’d hear her for sure.

Almost without thinking about it, she leapt to her feet, seeing the shock on the horrible man’s face, then she turned and bolted into the darkness, knowing she was running for her life, that one mistake and she’d end up like that poor deer.

Sayenko leapt backwards with a startled growl. He couldn’t believe he’d almost been standing on the little blonde brat without knowing it, and for a couple of seconds he didn’t even react.

But then his training kicked in and – with an angry roar – he charged through the bush. He was quick over short distances, and with his long legs he gained on her rapidly, then reached out with one arm, yanking her backwards by the collar of her jacket and throwing her roughly to the ground, before slamming his knee into her back, enjoying the terrified sound she made as he picked her up.

Thirty-eight

‘I CAN’T BELIEVE he killed my dogs,’ said MacLean, staring down at the two dead Dobermans at his feet, his pudgy face dark with rage. ‘I spent months training them. What a fucking waste.’

‘Who the hell was he, though?’ said Keogh, thinking that right now dead dogs were the least of his problems. ‘He just came out of nowhere.’

MacLean leaned down and inspected one of the dogs with a gloved hand. ‘He shot this one in the neck, and he had a silencer on his gun.’

‘He must have used Mehdi’s gun, which is why I can’t get hold of Mehdi. Do you think he’s police?’

‘No way. If the police were involved, there wouldn’t just be one man, and he’d have shouted a warning before pulling the trigger. There are all kinds of rules about that sort of thing. You of all people should know that.’

Keogh ignored the jibe. ‘Did you get a look at him?’

MacLean shook his head. ‘He was too far away, and he didn’t fire back when I was chasing him down the path.’

‘Maybe he’s trying to conserve his bullets.’

‘Or maybe he’s run out of them.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ said Keogh, looking about him. The forest was dark and silent, the only sound the wind rustling through the leaves.

‘We need to get hold of Sayenko,’ growled MacLean. ‘Why’d you send him after the wee bairn? It’s just wasting time, and I’m telling you we don’t have an awful lot of that left. With all the shooting, sooner or later someone’s going to dial 999, and then we’re going to be caught out here. And I’m not going to have that. Understand?’

‘All right, all right,’ said Keogh, trying to stay calm. ‘I thought Sayenko could grab the girl as a hostage, but I wasn’t banking on some unknown gunman shooting at us.’ For the first time he seriously considered abandoning the op, getting in his car, and driving as far away from here as possible. He had money stashed away. He could head to Europe or Asia and lie low for a while. But he dismissed the thought almost immediately. The boss would track him down and exact revenge. ‘We can still salvage this,’ he said. ‘We’ll get hold of Sayenko, then we’ll go after the other two. Where do you reckon they’re going to head for now?’

‘They’ll go the same route they were always going to go. Out of the woods up to the road, then I reckon they’ll cross country, go over the hills, and double back through the valley. I doubt if they’ll try going to Tayleigh by road but, if they do, we’ve got Ma watching the road now, so we’ll know about it.’

‘So we’re going to have to chase them across country? How exposed is it out there? Will we be able to locate them easily enough?’ Keogh didn’t like the hint of desperation he recognized in his own voice.

MacLean put down his shotgun and took the Ordnance Survey map out from inside his jacket. ‘Shine a light over here, can you?’

The light in Keogh’s torch had been shot out by the mystery gunman, but he still had a mini-Maglite attached to his key ring and he shone it onto the map.