Knox ushered Laing out into the corridor, expecting a slightly awkward ride together in the lift. But, their meeting over, the younger officer strode away from Knox while he was still shutting his office door, and opted to take the stairs down to the School Hall.

Knox wondered if Laing was going to seethe over their encounter until it completely slipped from his mind as he walked the short distance through Shepherd Market to Green Park tube station.

The morning clouds had evaporated, and a tentative spring heat was starting to creep into the day.

Knox took the tube to Piccadilly Circus, then changed onto the Bakerloo line, switching from one aluminium carriage to another, and rode two more stops to Regent’s Park. He should have been more discreet, cleaned himself of any potential tail by chopping and changing direction, but he didn’t have the time, and he was too excited to find out who was waiting for him. By the time he reached Ulster Terrace, which ran along the outer rim of the park, adrenaline was pumping through him again.

As he crossed over the road in front of the entrance to the Broad Walk he saw two people he recognised sitting on a bench looking back at him. A woman and a man from two different times in his life, who shouldn’t be there and who shouldn’t know each other.

The woman was Abey Bennett and the man, impossibly, was Jack Williams.

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Knox had been shot before, but this felt like he’d just been hit square in the chest by a cannonball. The wind was knocked out of him and every bone in his body seemed to shatter and fuse simultaneously. Time and the world stopped as confusion overwhelmed him.

What he was seeing couldn’t be real, yet it was there in front of him. Jack Williams couldn’t be alive, but he was, sitting next to Abey Bennett and looking at Knox as if it had been days instead of years since they’d last seen each other—and as if he hadn’t somehow come back from the dead.

Knox was stuck with shock until a high-pitched blast jolted him out of his paralysis.

He realised he was standing in the middle of the road, blocking the path of an angry-looking woman in a bright yellow Austin Mini. He stepped slowly up onto the pavement as the Mini screeched behind him.

Bennett got up, leaving Williams on the bench.

‘Long time, no see,’ she said to Knox as they both reached the wrought-iron gate at the entrance to the Broad Walk.