Faik stared. In front of the three of them, just a few paces away, was a wooden construction that had not been in place the last time that he had been given his hour of exercise in the yard. It was a raised wooden platform with a thick vertical pillar and a horizontal post forming a cross-braced T. A noose dangled from the post, turning gently in the breeze. There was a trapdoor beneath the noose.

As Faik watched, the trapdoor was tested: it suddenly gaped open, slamming up against the underside of the platform, revealing a long drop to the ground below.

The sky overhead was as black as pitch. There was a flicker of light in the distance and then, a second later, a monstrous blare of thunder.

Donkey took him under the arm.

“You first.”

“Please!”

The guard dragged Faik upright and heaved him over to the steps that led up to the gallows.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Eight

They slept in the canteen. Beatrix managed only a few hours, and those were fitful, assailed by her worries and fears: Isabella, the task she had set for herself and the need to complete it before her time ran out. When she eventually abandoned the pretence of rest, it was three in the morning. Her body spasmed with pain; it felt like she had an inch of water in her lungs, and she ached with the fatigue. She took a Zomorph, and then when that only dulled the edges of the pain, she took another. She dared not take more.

It all started now.

None of what she was planning was going to be easy, and she needed to be on her game.

Faulkner awoke a little after her. He found her outside, staring into the darkness.

“Still want to do this?” he said.

She nodded. “You know what you’re doing?”

“Yes.”

“As soon as I get him, you need to get down and get the car started. We’ll have a minute or two when they’re working out what’s hit them. It won’t last, though. As soon as someone gets them organised, we’ll be outgunned. We won’t want to be anywhere near there then.”

“I’ve got it.”

“Good.”

“Synchronise watches.” She pulled back her sleeve. “I’ve got four-fifteen.”

Faulkner adjusted his watch accordingly. “Four-fifteen, check.”

“I’ll see you in an hour and three-quarters.”

Beatrix sat in the driver’s seat of the Audi. She was parked five hundred feet away from the entrance to the prison. She dared not wait any closer than that. She watched through her binoculars as activity increased in the yard. Everything was as she remembered it from yesterday: the high fence, the gimcrack walls.