‘Should we go back, do you think?’

‘Ellis is there. And North.’

‘But why?’ she said, puzzled. ‘Why do this to Ellis? Our team?’

‘Well, not to toot our own trumpet – we weren’t as bad as people thought.’

‘That’s it? All this because we weren’t as bad as people thought we’d be?’

‘Jane, people thought we’d be useless and we weren’t. We got Henry Plimpton and destroyed his machine. You stuck it out in Tutankhamun’s tomb. Matthew stringed those illegals and dealt with Ellis’s wound. Might even have saved his life. We got the rabbit, Jane, and saved Australia – which has been very slow to show its gratitude – but we can rise above that. The point is – we weren’t doing too badly. And what’s really pissing everyone off is that we’re doing things our way. People don’t like it.’

She shook her head in the dark. ‘It’s still hardly grounds for murder.’

‘No, you’re right about that. I suspect there’s more going on than we know. You know – wheels within wheels.’

‘Luke, we should go back. We should tell people.’

‘You mean inadvertently tell the person who set all this up that we’re on to them?’

Jane lay back down again, thinking hard. ‘How about this? And believe me, I’ll be delighted to hear I’m over-imagining things. Ellis was shot in the Valley of the Kings. Could that have been deliberate?’

‘All right – I’ll challenge that. Being shot is a bit of an occupational hazard. People shoot at us all the time. It’s a badge of honour.’

‘No one else was hurt.’

‘Yes, they were.’

She shook her head. ‘Rossi fell over his own feet and everything else was just minor scrapes and bruises. Only Ellis was shot.’

‘You mean the illegals deliberately targeted him? Do you remember how dark it was that night? Visors were down, hiding people’s faces. They couldn’t possibly have picked him out among everyone else.’

She said slowly, ‘I’m not thinking of illegals.’

‘You mean . . . one of us could have shot him?’

She made no response. The pair of them lay in the dark, thinking.

Eventually, Luke said, ‘Ellis is one of Hay’s key people. He’s popular. He’s good at his job. He’s moving up the career ladder. He could easily be her successor one day. It would look too suspicious if something happened to Hay, he took her place and then something happened to him. But if you did it the other way round . . . got rid of Ellis first . . . then you could pick off Hay at your leisure. Regardless, though – even if it’s not true, officers shooting each other, stealing pods and setting off radiation alerts is not going to do Hay’s reputation any good at all.’ He sighed. ‘We may have done their work for them.’