It was not to be. As she rolled across the gap separating the protective chassis of one vehicle from its neighbor, she finally heard the give-away scrape of cloth against brick, and the gun that was firing real bullets sounded again, close enough this time to leave her ears ringing.

The adaptation of her eyes was set back too, by the sight of the muzzle flash and the vivid spark that soared from the concrete not five centimeters from her face as the bullet struck the ground and ricocheted away.

“Cool it!” screeched a distorted voice, which must have originated from the far side of the lot, although it blended with the gunshot echoes rebounding eerily from the walls.

“Have you got him?” was the only response—a totally unnecessary one, given that the shooter with the dart gun hadn’t fired, as he or she surely would have if Chan had presented a target.

Despite the aftereffects of the echoing shot, Lisa heard her own pursuer drop awkwardly to the ground, presumably using the butt of the gun for temporary support as he or she fell into a prone position no more than a couple of meters away. Lisa knew that she had to get out of the confined space beneath the car if she were to avoid a shot that could hardly miss, so she scrambled forward desperately, not caring about the fact that she would expose herself fully to the shooter with the dart gun. If she had to be taken out, she figured it was far better that it should be done by a dart than by a bullet.

As soon as she pulled herself to her feet, she set herself to run across the open space between the lanes, hoping she could see well enough to throw herself into the space between two cars and obtain a measure of cover. She could see a little better now, but the world was full of shadows.

She heard the dart gun go off as the other shooter fired at her, but she felt no impact. As soon as the body of another vehicle offered her protection against another shot from that direction, she concentrated on putting something solid between her body and the enemy who was firing real bullets.

This time, there was no pursuing shot. Was that because the advice to cool it had been heard and heeded? Or was it just that the shooter with the real gun knew exactly where she was and was moving in for the kill?

For the kill.The unspoken words echoed in Lisa’s skull, sending forth new ripples of panic—but no shot came.

Lisa dared to think that she might make it after all if she resumed her stealthy flight toward the exit door—and the distinction between deep and light shadow was becoming a little clearer now. She couldn’t see, exactly, but she wasn’t blind either. She began to move once more—but then the dart gun went off yet again, and this time she did feel an impact.

The strike was in the upper part of her left arm, and it didn’t feel like a prick or a stab. It was as if some mildly boisterous acquaintance had struck her lightly with his fist, in a perfectly friendly fashion—but that was an illusion. Lisa knew immediately that the glancing nature of the blow wasn’t good news. The muscle relaxant with which the dart was tipped had to be powerful if it had felled a man of Peter Grimmett Smith’s mass within seconds. Although it might take as much as a minute for her veins to carry the less than full dose far enough to immobilize her, and a further two minutes for enough of it to reach her brain to render her unconscious, she was finished—and with two searchers to evade, Chan Kwai Keung’s chances of getting away would be minimal.

Then she heard an almighty crash, far louder than the gunshots that had preceded it.

Startled, she turned and lifted her head. The movement made her dizzy, but she was still conscious, and true sight was abruptly returned to her.

The plastic doors closing off the entrance to the parking area had imploded. A black van, somewhat larger than the Daf that had rear-ended Chan’s Fiat, was hurtling through them, its headlights ablaze. A voice was already blaring from an invisible loudspeaker: “Put down your weapons now\”

It wasn’t a cityplex police van. Cityplex police vans were white. It could be Special Branch, Lisa thought, or even more spooks from the MOD. Whoever it was, though, they had to be on her side, not the side of the black-clad assassins.

As she began to feel faint, the first retaliatory shot rang out. She saw the black van’s windshield respond to the impact; it was crazed, but not shattered. The result of the shot became irrelevant in any case when the new arrival cannoned into the back of the Daf, whose forward lurch sent Chan’s yellow Fiat spinning. The noise was appalling.

The Fiat’s windows weren’t as resilient as the big van’s. Shards of plastic seemed to fly everywhere. The shooter with the dart gun was briefly silhouetted against the glare of the headlights, running but seemingly going nowhere.

Lisa just had time to think “Wow!” before the dizziness blurred her vision irrevocably. Even then, she didn’t lose consciousness. She tried with all her might to stand up, but her body wouldn’t obey, and the only result of her determination was that she stumbled sideways. The concrete rose up to smash itself into her shoulder, but she was hardly aware of the fact of the pain, let alone the intensity of the feeling.

Hey!she thought. This stuff has its advantages. I could get used to this state of mind, if only …

It seemed, somehow, to be terribly unfair that she never got the chance to finish the sentence. Her pain had disappeared. Her fear had disappeared. Even the burden of her years seemed to have disappeared, but she didn’t have time to savor her immunity from all harm. She finally fell, precipitously, into unconsciousness.

ELEVEN

The first thing Lisa remembered after waking up was that the last time she had awakened, she had had been unable to remember where she was, because she had been forced to check into the Renaissance Hotel instead of going home. For a moment or two, therefore, she assumed that because the bed on which she was lying was definitely not her own, she was back in the hotel. This conviction lent moral support to her reluctance to open her eyes, but her attention was soon claimed by the awkward awareness that her mouth was verydry. That seemed odd—she couldn’t remember drinking any alcohol. What on earth could have happened to render her so thirsty?

When she finally remembered the circumstances under which she had gone to sleep, and the fragment of a day that had preceded it, she had no alternative but to force her sticky eyes open. She tried to sit up, but she got only halfway and had to lean back on her elbow.

She found herself staring into the capacious features of a brown-eyed man she had never seen before.

He waited for her to realize, as she tried to raise herself, that she was wearing only her not-so-smart underwear—at which point she snatched up the sheet she had been trying to cast off.

She glanced around at the room, which was small and low-ceilinged, its walls papered with off-white anaglypta that probably dated back at least to the 1990s. The abundant but desiccated autumnal foliage visible through the wood-framed window, eerily lit from within, suggested that she was in an upstairs room overlooking a tree considerably older than the wallpaper. The bed had a tubular-steel frame whose brown paint was flaking off, and the chair in which the brown-eyed man sat was a pine kitchen chair whose cherry-red woodstain was equally eroded. She certainly wasn’t in a police station.

Night had obviously fallen again, but there was no way of knowing exactly how long she had been unconscious.

A large hand extended a cup toward her that was full of a warm brown liquid, at which she stared suspiciously.