Jane wiped her chin again and tried to collect her memories and focus. ‘Not sure. Very dark at that end of the garden. Heard the shot and then they fell through that old vine trellis thing on top of me. Didn’t know they had a gun until it fell on my head. And then,’ she said indignantly, because she felt she had a great deal to be indignant about, ‘someone sonicked me.’

‘That was me,’ said Markham. ‘And not sonicked. Just a good old-fashioned stun gun. You’ll probably stop dribbling in a few minutes and be absolutely fine.’

Peterson patted her shoulder. ‘You’re looking a little bit under the weather, Jane. Shall we have some tea?’

‘They don’t do tea,’ said Maxwell, not looking up. Van Owen passed her another bandage.

Peterson sighed and looked at Ellis. ‘If being shot is going to be a regular part of your life, then you might want to consider introducing it. Right – let’s make a bad day worse, shall we? Coffee for everyone?’

Luke kicked the zip-tied Grint a couple of times.

Markham said disapprovingly, ‘That’s rather disrespectful behaviour towards an officer.’

‘What are they going to do about it? Execute me twice?’

Jane was beginning to feel better. She sat straighter and looked around.

‘Well,’ said Luke, ‘I think we’ve established it wasn’t Jane who shot Ellis, so that leaves Grint . . .’

‘Lt Grint to you,’ said Ellis weakly.

‘Or Anders. And since Anders has disappeared, I think we can draw our own conclusions.’

‘Lemme go,’ said Grint, slowly regaining the power of speech.

Luke grinned. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Trying to stop him, you . . .’ He stopped, apparently unable to find words suitable for the occasion.

‘Who?’ said Luke. ‘Who were you trying to stop?’

‘Anders,’ he said, blearily. ‘We split up. He . . . went left. I went right. Searching the garden. Saw him by that big bush.’ He stopped, swallowed a couple of times and then said, ‘Thought he was watching Lockland.’

‘What?’ said Jane, outraged, and suddenly realised she wasn’t blushing. ‘I think I want a word with him.’

‘Saw him raise the gun,’ continued Grint, wearily. ‘I moved but too late. Got to him just after he fired. Tried to get his gun off him. Which I would have. ’Cept you stunned me. And he got away. Now let me go.’

‘I don’t want to tell anyone their business,’ said Markham, chattily, ‘but the same story could equally apply to the other one. What’s his name? Anders?’

Jane rested her forearms on her knees and tried to think. Her brain felt slow and stodgy but there were fragments . . . memories . . . She turned to Matthew. ‘Matthew, when you were in Egypt . . . ?’

He appeared to wake up. ‘What?’

‘When you were in Egypt . . . ?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Ellis was shot. With a pistol. We thought it was one of the illegals.’

He nodded.

‘And the gun was never found?’

He nodded.