‘It slipped my mind,’ I said. Instinctively, I backed up against the wall. My brain was working furiously, trying to find a solution to the conundrum I was confronted with: how to extricate a hundred hostages from a potentially deadly impasse. With no weapon and no leverage. On the face of it, my best shot was to hope they’d lump me in with Leotta and the hostages and let the police negotiators get on with their job.

I looked at the gun Frank was waving around and I didn’t like that option much. Especially if he hadn’t been lying about a bomb on board the Boeing.

‘Don’t get smart with me,’ said Frank. ‘Now, I’m asking you again. What other tricks can we expect?’

‘The usual, I suppose. Tear gas, perhaps. Those riot trucks have water cannon.’

Frank thought about it and shook his head. ‘They won’t risk it,’ he decided.

I put my hand in my pocket, trying to look more nonchalant than I felt, and my fingers closed round the pack of fat American cigarettes I’d been smoking while I was on the island. ‘Mind if I smoke?’ I asked casually.

‘Don’t be stupid, Kemp. You heard what Haslam said. Now, think very carefully. Is there anything else that might have slipped your mind?’

I sighed. ‘He has the army out there. They have at least one machine-gun and one mortar – you know that already. They have automatic rifles and submachine-guns. And they’ll probably have other things that go with an army.’

‘None of which they dare use,’ said Frank with satisfaction. ‘But I’m telling you, if they come up with some gimmick you haven’t told me about, then you’re dead.’

Frank took half a step towards me, brandishing his pistol, and for one mad moment I considered trying to jump him. Then something moved in my peripheral vision and I unclenched the fist I’d made in my pocket.

I’d assumed the movement I’d noticed was Slim coming in from outside. I was wrong. When I glanced over Frank’s shoulder towards the hangar door, my insides lurched into my throat. The tractor was trundling, driverless, across the hangar towards us, a piece of ice-blue fabric dangling from its open petrol cap. Even at that distance, I could see that the fabric was alight.

In the open hangar doorway, I saw Leotta, stony-faced, with David Salton’s inscribed cigarette lighter in her hand.

Frank must have spotted the horror in my eyes because he span round to see what I was looking at. In the instant he took his attention off me I dived. I heard his gun go off and something plucked at my shoulder. I was behind the Lear when the tractor’s petrol tank exploded but Frank got the full force of it.