‘Heaving with work Christmas dos, and crawling with armed coppers. As we speak, Gina Riley’s four metres away from me. No one’s looking at me, no one can hear me. I’m blending in perfectly.’

‘How are you feeling, Eve?’

‘A little nervous. I’d have to be a fool not to be. But I’m surrounded by bodies. Nothing can harm me here. You? Are you OK?’

‘No.’ His voice dipped in volume. ‘It’s like I’ve got pins sticking into the soles of my feet.’

‘I’m really sorry, Thomas. How’s Philip?’

Her hair blew up at the sides of her face and, for a moment, she didn’t recognise it as her own hair, felt in that one disconcerting moment that she was residing in another woman’s body.

‘He’s fine. He’s in his bedroom writing a wish list for Christmas. He asked me to send you his love if you called. He wanted to call you but I said we couldn’t. You were in a very important meeting. He accepted it.’

She noticed a black firearms unit van parked up and saw there was no one in the cab, just like there would be no one in the back. Covert rifles were already in place from the Albert Dock to Mariner’s Wharf, to the Coburg Marina Club and beyond.

‘What are you going to do tonight?’

‘There’s a Championship League game on TV. It starts at eight. I’ve promised Philip he can stay up and watch it.’

She imagined herself on the sofa in their front room, herself on one side of Philip and Thomas on the other side of their son, watching second tier footballers slogging it out against each other in the wind and the rain.

Another missed evening with her husband and son twisted the conflicted knife in her core. She heard the sound of a whistle carried on the wind and imagined picking up her sleepy son as the match ended, carrying him upstairs and laying him down to sleep in his bed. The soft blue light from the bedside lamp picked out his features as he drifted into sleep. She brushed his hair to one side and whispered in his ear, ‘Sweet dreams, sweetheart…’

‘Eve, are you still there?’

‘I am. God, I wish I was at home with you.’

‘So do we, we wish it very, very much. But I understand. There’s a monster out there. It’s got to stop, love.’

In the background she heard Philip shout, ‘Dad!’

‘I love you both.’

‘And we love you back just as much. Call me as soon as you can, Eve.’

‘Dad, how do you spell reindeer? Is it with an a or an e?’

‘Of course I will.’

She disconnected the call and, placing her iPhone back in her bag, checked again that she had a loaded gun at her disposal.