That was her best chance, thought Abbott, still on the move himself. Get her in the back of a patrol car being her best bet. Get her in the system. Once she was in the system he could contact Cuckoo and get him to pull strings before they could reach her.

‘Don’t worry, Tess. We’ll get you out of this,’ he reassured her, but on the other end of the phone he wasn’t so sure. What’s more, he had his own problems. He came to the lifts, thought to himself, What would he do if he were them? He’d be covering the lifts, and switched direction.

He pulled open a door and took the stairs, came round a dogleg, and there stood a guy on the steps.

It was one of them. Same look. Abbott had taken him by surprise, but he recovered quickly and his hand whipped inside a black denim jacket to what Abbott could see was a shoulder holster, snatching out the sidearm. Abbott leaped up the three steps that separated them and went for the gun arm, twisting his body across it, jamming down on it and snatching the weapon from fingers rendered suddenly useless by pain, turning the guy’s own gun on him.

Down went the gunman, folding awkwardly to the steps, gunless and pathetic all of a sudden, his hands going up in wanton surrender. ‘Don’t shoot,’ he pleaded, but Abbott was in no mood to take chances; he put one in the guy’s leg, and then, as he screamed and writhed, reaching his hands to the wound, blood bubbling up from his trouser leg, did a quick frisk and found a walkie-talkie.

‘Who are you working for?’ he demanded to know.

The guy didn’t answer, too absorbed in his own pain. Abbott helped him with that. He pressed the suppressor into the wound. ‘Who are you working for? Is it Juliet Norton?’

The guy shook his head furiously. ‘No, no, I don’t know that name.’

‘Kilgore? Is it Kilgore?’

‘Yes, yes, that’s him.’

‘Then you work for Juliet Norton,’ Abbott told him. He left the guy writhing on the stairs – hopefully he’d black out – and dashed up the rest of the steps towards his floor.

‘Any sightings?’ he heard over the walkie-talkie. ‘I’m closing in on his room.’

Shit.

‘Alex,’ he heard from Tess, ‘are you still there?’

He cradled the phone between his shoulder and his cheek, checking the weapon he’d taken from the guy on the stairs. He had a full clip. He put one up the spout, checked the suppressor was secure and then stepped smartly out into the hotel corridor, swinging left and right.

The passageway yawned at him, empty, with at least two fire doors between him and his room.

Over the walkie-talkie he heard activity. ‘Back entrance clear. Front entrance clear. Ground floor clear.’

‘Receptionist says he was going to his room.’