Bernd pushed Cat by the neck, and she stumbled forward, trying to keep her balance. When she came up next to Anna, she screamed into her gag. A woman lay at their feet, chained to a metal table that was weighted down with bags of cement. She was on her back, spread-eagled, her skin gray. A two-inch gash was open on her neck, and blood pulsed from the wound, pooling under her head and staining her long hair.

‘You stupid bitch . . .’ Bernd muttered to Anna.

He let go of Cat and swung his arm in a haymaker to the side of Anna’s skull. The blow knocked her halfway across the hood of the Versa. Her wool hat flew off. Dizzied, she slid to the dirt. She tried to right herself, then crawled on hands and knees to the woman on the floor. She put her fingers on the woman’s neck, coming away with blood on her nails.

‘She’s still alive,’ Anna told him. ‘She’s still breathing.’

‘And we’re supposed to move her like that?’ Bernd demanded.

‘Well, I don’t know – we could—’

‘Shut up,’ Bernd said. ‘Stop talking.’

‘Bernd—’

‘Shut the fuck up.’

Anna staggered to her feet. She grabbed for balance on the hood of the car. Blood was everywhere now. On Anna’s skin, her knees, her arms, her clothes. She’d bitten down on her tongue when Bernd hit her, and blood dripped from the sides of her mouth.

‘I’m sorry,’ she pleaded with him.

Bernd’s face was knotted up into a mask of rage.

‘I didn’t know, how could I know?’ Anna went on. ‘We still have Cat. You said yourself, she’ll be worth a lot. Come on, let’s get out of here.’

‘Not you.’

‘You can’t leave me here!’ She took Bernd’s shirt in her bloody fists and shouted in his face. ‘You think I’m going to prison for the rest of my life for you? Fuck that! I’ll give you all up. Every one of your sorry asses. I’ll tell them everything!’

‘I know,’ Bernd said.

He brought the gun up and fired through Anna’s stomach. The noise reverberated in the shut-up space. Anna screamed in agony and laced her hands over her belly as she staggered backward. Streams of blood squeezed through her fingers. She stared down at herself in disbelief.

‘You son of a bitch—’

Bernd straightened his arm and fired again, directly into her head. The shot was like a bomb. Cat watched Anna’s face explode in a shower of bone and brain. Her friend’s knees crumpled, and Anna slumped to the floor in a dead pile. Cat squeezed her eyes shut and looked away. She felt deaf from the bang of the gun, and her skin was pricked with stinging, pinpoint burns.

The killer’s hand locked around her wrist. ‘Let’s go.’