When they went down, Sophie threw herself across the desk, screeching like an express train, then crouched, panting, trying to stay away from the lines of fire as Danny’s gun arm thrashed pointlessly around. Her eyes raked the room for any kind of weapon. But nothing suggested itself as a potential cosh.

Necessity mothered invention. Like a crab, she scuttled round the desk and ripped cables out of the back of the computer monitor, not caring that her fingers throbbed from the violence of her actions. All she could think about was Lindsay and the grunts and sobs coming from behind her.

The monitor came free in seconds that felt like weeks. Sophie slipped both forearms under it and lifted it clear of the desk. She turned to see Danny thrashing under Lindsay, his breath recovered. He was trying to free his gun arm enough to bring the barrel round to where he could blow a bloody tunnel through Lindsay’s brain. She was incapable of stopping him, her body a dead weight leaking blood all over Danny’s silk shirt and antique silk rug.

“Fuck you,” Sophie roared, standing over him. His panicked eyes rolled up in his head and he saw her standing there like a time-slipped Greek goddess of vengeance.

“No!” he yelled, his voice outraged, his face a mask of astonishment that anyone could have the upper hand over him.

Sophie dropped the monitor.

Sophie crouched over Lindsay, a 9mm Glock sticking out of the waistband of her jeans. She was packing the hole in Lindsay’s shoulder with the rags of the silk shirt she’d ripped from Danny King’s unconscious body. She’d checked him for vital signs once she’d made sure Lindsay wasn’t bleeding from an artery. He was unconscious, though not deeply so. She’d ripped his office phone from the wall and used the cable to tie his hands and feet behind his back in a vicious ligature that would guarantee he came round with excruciating cramps. It was, she had decided, the very least he deserved.

It was a long time since she’d worked in a casualty department, and even then she’d only ever seen one gunshot wound. It was a failure of experience that worried her, leaving her uncertain as to how life-threatening Lindsay’s injury might be. She could gauge something from the blood loss, but when it came to assessing the actual extent of the injury or the degree of shock involved in such a wound, Sophie reckoned she might as well be a riveter as a doctor. She avoided mentioning that to Lindsay, settling instead for telling her that she was going to be okay, that Sophie would get her out of here and to a hospital just as soon as she had stopped her bleeding to death. She knew that even in extremis, Lindsay would appreciate the drama of that expression.