“I want you too.” Rickard closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath, shuddered it out again. His fingers were working with more urgency. As deep as she was in slumber, Imogen squirmed in an effort to get away from him.

“When will you be home?” Alisha’s voice came out barely above a whisper. Rickard withdrew his hand and made a fist on the steering wheel.

“I don’t know for sure. A day, maybe two. Why do you ask?”

“Because I . . . uh . . . I miss you.”

“If it were possible I’d be there now,” he said. “But it isn’t. But just think how great things will be when I get back.”

“That’s what keeps me going, babe.”

“Tell me, honey. Tell me what you’re going to do to me when I get home.”

Alisha told him, and his fist unfurled. After a few seconds it crept back under the blanket. But all he did this time was straighten Imogen’s clothing.

Rickard hung up.

He could feel the serpent coiling inside him and he glanced at the rearview mirror in hope of catching it out. All that looked back at him were his own deep-set eyes. They were creased with anger and it was an effort to make them smooth out.

Alisha, the little whore, was in need of reminding about the correct etiquette for answering his calls. She’d said the right words, but her tone had done nothing to reassure him. The fear was there, and that was good. But the desultory, almost robotic pitch of her voice was as faked as those phone-sex hookers he occasionally called. He was beginning to think that the ungrateful bitch didn’t fear him enough.

Beside him, Imogen was as still as a mannequin. Her face was pale and waxen. After the troubled moans she’d made minutes ago, she was silent, even her breath was barely audible. He wished now that he hadn’t doped her so deeply: he would do to her what he planned to do to Alisha on his return. Imogen, he knew, would show him the correct amount of terror.

Among his tools he had brought an antidote to the tranquilizer and he was seconds away from administering it. But he decided no. There would be time for Imogen later. He had other things to do first.

He punched numbers into his phone.

“I have the woman,” he said.

“Is she dead?”

“Not yet.”

“Is there a problem?”

“Slight hiccup, but nothing I can’t handle.”

“You were told to kill her, Rickard.”

“And that’s what I will do. But it’s better this way. You wanted Joe Hunter punished. This way I get to make things much, much worse for him.”

“Maybe our plan to make him run worked too well. Hunter has dropped off the map.”

“We expected him to. Not to worry, though, he’ll come to me when I’m ready.”