‘I’m after an update. Is clean-up required?’

‘You might say that. My recommendation is that you come and see for yourself.’

‘OK. Stay where you are. Be there soon.’

‘Wait,’ instructed Abbott. ‘The passphrase will be Sasquatch. To which you have to reply, “We always called him Bigfoot in my house.” No deviation will be tolerated.’

McGregor paused and Abbott wondered, was he pushing it?

‘Understood,’ said McGregor. ‘Just wait there.’

Abbott ended the call, taking a deep breath. The fact that the enemy knew he’d taken a taxi to Scutter’s house meant the pub had relayed that information. Which in turn meant that they would have been provided with a description by the barman or someone else in there.

He took a look at Owen Flyte. At best guess, Flyte was ex-forces like himself, and there were certainly superficial similarities in height, build and age. Flyte’s hair was darker but also short. Squint your eyes and you perhaps could mistake one for the other.

He looked down at himself. What might the barman remember?

The T-shirt. The Finchley Sportsman. His quiz champion prize. Never mind what he looked like. What was he wearing?

Which meant . . .

Abbott had never in his life tried or even attempted to try swapping clothes with a half-dead bloke but, if asked, he might have said that it wasn’t too difficult a process.

Wrong. Special forces training was less difficult than swapping clothes with the unconscious Owen Flyte. But he did it. Anything else? The picture. He’d just flushed it when the doorbell rang.

He took a hold of himself. Although he’d drawn the line at changing trousers, he now wore Owen Flyte’s navy polo shirt and denim jacket, but more to the point, Flyte wore the Finchley Sportsman T-shirt, and if Abbott was right – and him being right was these days a somewhat rare occurrence – then that’s the aspect of his appearance they would remember most.

Otherwise . . .

Otherwise he was dead.

As he made his way to the front door, he said to himself, You are Owen Flyte. Your name is Owen Flyte. He tried to think like that guy. Tried to put himself in that man’s shoes and what went through his mind as he reached for the Yale of the door was that it shouldn’t be too difficult because after all, they were both trained killers. They both took lives for money.

‘Sasquatch,’ he said, when he opened the door and saw the man on the other side.

‘We always called him Bigfoot in my house.’

Pleasantries were exchanged. Abbott held the gun on McGregor and then appeared to relax, allowing McGregor into the house and showing him the man on the sofa.

‘This guy?’

‘Out cold.’