She coughed and spluttered, water streaming from her nose and swollen lips, eyes bloodshot and wide. ‘Aaaaaaaaaagh!’ Purple bruises covered one side of her face, tiny cuts on her shoulders and chest leaking scarlet trails into the dirty bath. Her head was completely shaved, covered in nicks and cuts and swollen scabs.

Something made a grating noise in the bathroom, behind him as Chalmers retched.

‘You’re OK! I’ve got you.’

And then Agnes’s breath was warm on his cheek, her lips brushing his ear, voice little more than a whisper. ‘What I do in its service lights a fire in God’s name.’

Pain exploded across Logan’s back, and he went lurching forward on top of Chalmers, sending her down beneath the surface again. Gurgling and twitching.

He rolled off and thumped to the floor.

Agnes stood over him, the lid from the cistern held in her hands like Moses with his tablet. She raised it above her head, clipping the bare light bulb and setting it swinging.

Then Rennie crashed into her, shoving her back into the cracked toilet. The cistern lid shattered on the edge of the cast-iron bath. ‘Get off me!’

‘Guv? You OK? Ow!’

‘GET OFF ME!’

Logan scrambled to his knees and grabbed Chalmers by the shoulders. Hauled her back into the air as water slopped all over the floor and the light swung wildly from one side to the other, swirling the shadows around them like smoke.

Chalmers opened her bloodied mouth and screamed.

Gold and copper streaked the fields of rapeseed to either side of the farmhouse as the sun glowered through the thin gap between the heavy grey clouds and the horizon. Two ambulances and a handful of patrol cars blocked the road, their blue-and-whites strobing the lengthening shadows. Four members of the firearms team – too late to do any bloody good – sat on a wall in the sunshine, smoking cigarettes and laughing.

In the middle distance, a grubby once-white Transit van bounced and rolled its way up the track. The SEB, come to confiscate the cannabis.

Logan shifted his grip on the mobile. ‘I’m kind of in the middle of something, Dave, so. . .? ’

On the other end of the phone, Goulding sniffed. ‘And I’m meant to be watching a production of Kiss Me Kate, but instead I’m stuck in the office going through the three hundred and sixty-two emails you dumped on me.’

The fan mail. ‘Ah. . .’

‘And as it’s. . .’ A pause. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake: it’s gone half nine!’

‘Dave, it—’

‘I’ve been through about half of them, and allowing for the appalling spelling and grammar I’ve got twenty possible matches for whoever’s torturing your victims and three potential necklacers. I’ll get to the others tomorrow, but I’ve asked the computer science department to get hold of the server logs and—’