‘He’ll survive. But he might not have, if he hadn’t been persuaded to turn himself in.’

‘Then I suppose I should thank you. What’s your name?’

‘You can call me Ben,’ Ben said. ‘No thanks are necessary.’

‘And who’s this guy?’

Ben jerked a thumb at Roth. ‘Him? He’s just a hitch-hiker I picked up.’ He nodded towards the smoking engine bay of the Citroën. The little red car wasn’t going anywhere. ‘Looks like you were right about the bullet in the radiator.’

‘Yeah. Fuck this piece of crap.’ Jean-Luc spat angrily at the car and lashed out a savage kick, smashing a headlamp.

‘Easy,’ Ben told him. ‘This car just saved your lives. Because if you caught up with Nazim, you wouldn’t last a minute.’

‘We can handle ourselves,’ said one of the brothers, pointing inside the car. A shotgun and a scoped hunting rifle were propped against the back seat, fairly incongruous in a jaunty little urban runaround. The breakdown recovery crew were going to love it when they got here.

‘Everybody thinks that until they find themselves eating a bullet,’ Ben replied. ‘Which way did they go?’

A lorry sped past with a slap of wind that made the little car rock on its springs. Jean-Luc pointed sullenly in the direction it was heading. The rumble of the motorway could be heard in the distance.

Ben asked, ‘Any idea where they’re going?’

One of the other brothers said, ‘How the hell should we know?’

‘Wherever it is, they’ve got a hell of a head start on you,’ Jean-Luc said.

Ben thought, He’s beating us. He’s going to get away. He raked his mind for ideas. Nothing much was coming to him. He asked, ‘What kind of trucks do you have?’

‘Did we have,’ said Cousin Noah.

Jean-Luc said sourly, ‘Mine’s the black Toyota Hilux. Jacked up and tuned to the max with a full performance upgrade kit. You’ll have a hard time catching it. Even in that thing.’ Pointing at the Alpina. One of his brothers said, ‘Mine’s the silver Nissan Navara.’

Ben was in the realm of guesswork now, and it wasn’t a place he liked being. He turned to Roth and asked in English, ‘Any more magic tricks up your sleeve?’ But Roth was acting evasive and Ben was in no mood to waste time.