I glanced down at my watch. I managed to register that it was twenty-five past before I picked up the movement in my peripheral vision and looked back up to see Pritchard leaping towards me, his hands outstretched like claws. I pulled the trigger without even willing it to happen, and watched as the bullet ripped through his jacket and forced him back onto the floor.

‘Where is she?’ I screamed. ‘Which corner?’

He whispered a word, and then was silent. His voice had been hoarse, and the word hadn’t come out clearly, but I knew what it was instantly: ‘Pockets,’ he had said.

I searched them, and then headed downstairs and into the courtyard. A long black car was slowly approaching the gates, and somewhere above me was Anna with one eye glued to her sniper sight, waiting for it.

XXIV

XXIV

The courtyard was packed and noisy, with the crowd jostling against the ropes to catch a glimpse of the car that was now edging through the gates one yard at a time, presumably so the PM could wave at everyone. One of the Snowdrops saw me and started racing over, so I dropped back to a brisk walk and made as though I were calling out to someone on the other side of the ropes. Manning had also spotted me and was heading in my direction, but I was just a few yards away from the next corner, and yes, there was the staircase. I took the steps three at a time, my ears hot and pulsing and my chest constricting. Then I was on the landing.

I took out the Tokarev and uncocked the safety. As there had been with the other staircases, two large open wards faced each other. All the patients who could move had thronged into the one facing the courtyard and were gathered around the windows peering down. All but one, a young boy with an artificial leg, who was leaning against the wall, watching me with large eyes. I had a sudden memory of a German boy of about the same age who had once looked at me like that, a lifetime ago.

At the far end of the landing was a door. If this staircase followed the pattern of the others, which it seemed to, it should lead me to a storage-room-cum-office. This was the door I’d travelled thousands of miles to open: behind it, almost certainly, lay the answers I was looking for. I grabbed the handle.

Locked.

I smashed my foot into the lower half of the door. A couple of splinters flew up, and after a couple more kicks the whole thing fell in.

The gun was the first thing I saw, a dark snake pointing out at me, the barrel gleaming. Then the figure in white behind it.