He heard movement behind him, as if the old lady was sitting up, and some deep-seated instinct caused him to turn round.

He just had half a second to process the fact that she was sitting completely upright, holding the missing gun two-handed and pointing it directly at his upper body, before she pulled the trigger.

Only the fact that he was already reacting and diving to one side saved his life, but the bullet still caught him somewhere in the midriff with a ferocious jolt, as if someone was driving a baseball bat into his ribs, and he fell backwards against an armchair, already aiming his own weapon and pulling the trigger before he even had a chance to think about it.

Scope’s shot was a lucky one. It caught the old lady in the mouth, sending a fine cloud of blood over the sofa behind her. At the same time, her gun discharged, the bullet ricocheting off the floor and disappearing somewhere behind Scope, and then it slipped from her fingers and her head tilted back until it came to rest on one of the sofa cushions, leaving her staring upwards at the ceiling.

For a full minute, Scope didn’t move. He’d killed a number of times before, not just in the heat of battle, but also in cold blood, when he’d been avenging the death of his daughter. He’d never, however, shot an old woman, and he was having difficulty coming to terms with what he’d just done. It was surreal. Here was an elderly local woman in a print floral dress, her face battered and bruised as if she’d been the victim of a brutal crime herself, and then, just like that, she’d tried to kill him.

She’d come close, too. He put his hand on his shirt where he’d been hit and felt the wetness of the blood, before finding the exit wound on the left-hand side of his upper back, just below the shoulder blade. It had left a big hole in his jacket, and he was bleeding heavily. Slowly, taking a deep breath, he stood up, flinching from the pain. It felt as if a couple of ribs had been broken, but thankfully he could still move, although God knew what his insides were looking like. Often it was impossible to tell the seriousness of a gunshot injury for some time after it had been inflicted.

Still clutching the gun, he staggered into the hallway, spotting a telephone on a chest of drawers next to the staircase. He lifted the receiver and, after only the briefest hesitation, dialled 999, trying hard not to think about the fact that he’d killed five people that night, and that apart from Jess and Casey, who were still far from safe themselves, there was no one out there who could say whether or not he was one of the good guys.

Fifty-two

IGNORING THE MOANS from the back of the Land Rover, Amanda checked the phone she’d taken from Jess and saw that at last they had a signal, even if it was just two bars.

Slowing the car down, she glanced over her shoulder at Jess, who was tied up in the back, her mouth covered with a filthy rag to stop her crying out. It hadn’t been hard to overpower her, especially as Jess was in a weakened state anyway. Luckily for Amanda, whoever owned this old Land Rover Defender had left some interesting bits and pieces in it, including an array of tools, a couple of very new Stanley knives and, best of all, some duct tape. It was almost as if he was planning a kidnap himself.

Jess’s eyes were open but they weren’t really focusing on anything, and it was obvious she was in no state to free herself.

Amanda turned back to the road and punched a number she knew by heart into the phone.

It was answered on the third ring. ‘Where the hell are you?’ demanded her lover. ‘I got here more than an hour ago and you haven’t been answering your phone.’ He sounded worried, which pleased her. She liked to feel she had power over him.

‘It’s a long story,’ she said wearily.

‘Tell me.’

So she gave him a brief rundown of everything that had happened since she’d left her house at four p.m. that afternoon for her walk.

‘God Almighty,’ he said incredulously when she’d finished. ‘Are you serious?’

‘I’m afraid so. I don’t know how the people chasing me found out about George and Ivana, but the fact is they did.’

‘I found out on the way up here that the police found The Disciple’s body yesterday night, and it showed signs of severe torture. I also heard that Ivana Hanzha’s old man may be some kind of gangster,’ he continued, sounding stressed. ‘This could be a real problem. He could be after us for years. Do they know about me?’

Typical, thought Amanda. After all this time together, he was still more interested in trying to save his own skin than caring about what happened to her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Your secret’s still safe.’

‘What do we do now?’

‘I don’t think these people will risk coming after me again. Not after all this. My feeling is that whoever’s responsible will let it go. Then, we’ve just got to keep our heads down, and when the inheritance money comes through, we’ll take off abroad somewhere a long way away.’ Or I will, thought Amanda, because she was beginning to conclude that he was more trouble than he was worth. And, in the end, even after everything that had happened between them, she could never trust him entirely. ‘In the meantime, we’ve got a problem.’

‘Christ. What now?’

‘One of the girls I escaped with – the older one, Jess. She knows about us. I’ve got her trussed up in the back of the car now.’

‘Why don’t you just kill her and dump the body? You don’t want to be caught with her, do you?’

‘I can’t. I’ve got no gloves, and my DNA’ll be all over the place. You should know the problems of DNA after your fuck-up back at home.’

‘Does anyone know she’s with you?’ he asked, ignoring the jibe.

‘The guy who rescued us at the farm. He saw us leave together. We’re in his car now. But the last time I saw him, he was in a fight with two of the gunmen, so it’s possible he’s dead.’

There was a long pause while he thought this through.

‘Look, I’ve got an idea,’ said Amanda. ‘She’s injured. She got hit by a bullet. I’ll just say she collapsed, and that I couldn’t get her into the car, so I made her comfortable then went off to get help. No one’ll ever suspect anything, even if they can’t find her. They’ll think some other gunman came and took her. All we have to do is make sure she disappears. You’re at my place now, are you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Good. Stay put. I’ll drop her off with you, then drive to Tayleigh Police Station, and tell them all about what happened to me. I’m going the back route and avoiding Tayleigh, so I might be about half an hour.’

‘How old’s she?’ he asked, an undercurrent of interest in his voice.

Amanda had a flash of contempt for him then, knowing he was never going to grow out of his twisted habits. ‘Seventeen, and very pretty,’ she said coolly. ‘Looks a bit like Jessica Ennis. You’ll like her.’

Fifty-three

Today 22.41

MIKE BOLT PARKED the hire car on the road outside Amanda Rowan’s cottage, and he and Mo Khan got out. A full police cordon had been set up over an area of close to ten square miles on the other side of the river, where the shootings were alleged to have occurred, but the village of Sprey, where Amanda rented her cottage, wasn’t part of it, and DI Sally Miles had reluctantly given the two of them permission to come here in an effort to locate her.

So far, there was no proof that Amanda was involved. In fact, so far there was no proof that a series of shootings had even occurred. There’d been a second 999 call half an hour earlier from a farm three miles northeast of Tayleigh, reporting further shootings, including possible fatalities. But the caller had already been identified as the same individual who’d made the first 999 call from a house two and a half miles away, and since there’d been no other calls, there was still a great deal of confusion about what, if anything, was happening.