He was coming up on his room now. The expected convergence hadn’t quite happened yet. But it would. He found his key card and very, very gently inserted it into the slot, trying to remember the sequence. At some point there was a bleep, but was it when the key card was first inserted or afterwards? Very, very gently in with the key card.

Bleep.

***

She didn’t like it. The fact that Alex was no longer there and talking to her. Even though he was miles away and physically unable to help, just having him on the line and being able to act as her eyes and ears had reassured her. And for a moment or so back there she’d almost found her predicament thrilling. Stupid woman.

She looked to her right and saw a side street, which she knew led up to Hatton Garden. It would be busier than her current location. Busier being better in this case.

The only problem being that she had to take the side street.

Ahead of her the two men, both of whom had their backs to her. One was on his phone, or pretending to be; the other was simply walking with his hands in his pockets. He glanced quickly behind himself, most likely to check she was still there behind them. She pretended not to notice. Pretended to be absorbed in talking on her phone.

Now she did the same. She glanced behind to check if she was still being followed, thinking, Lone Suitman, are you there? and finding that . . .

No. He wasn’t. He was gone.

Gone.

He had been there. Now he wasn’t. OK. Try not to think about it. Try not to wonder too hard where Lone Suitman had gone and instead take advantage of his sudden absence. As quickly as the thought occurred to her, she turned hard right and began half-walking, half-running up the street that led up to Hatton Garden. A narrow one-way street on an incline, there were no other people beside her. Just Hatton Garden at the top, where pedestrians moved to and fro across the entrance to the street, people going about their late-afternoon business, the sight of it reassuring, like a prize, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. All she had to do was reach it.

And then, at the top of the street, moving in from the junction with Hatton Garden was one of the guys. No, not just ‘one of’ the guys. It was ‘the’ guy – Lone Suitman. The guy who’d been following her. Well, at least she knew where he’d got to, she thought. He was on his phone, and she heard the words ‘here, she’s here, moving in’ and she knew that she’d made a terrible mistake.

In a panic, she swivelled around, about to reverse direction and return to the safety of the main road below, but there had appeared the other two men.