Thistle sags with relief. It’s only now that I realise how well she was hiding her anxiety. She’s not rich—losing this case might have ruined her. She gets up from the witness box, shaking. Her lawyer hugs her. A twinge of envy—no one in my life is close enough to hug me and, even if they were, I couldn’t do it without endangering them.

Then Thistle sees me.

Her eyes narrow. She notices who I’m sitting with, and her annoyance turns to fury.

I glance at the lumberjack. Does she know him?

The lumberjack turns to me. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘that’s that.’

‘Like I said,’ I tell him, ‘she’s a good cop.’

‘I’m sure she is.’

‘You’d like her if you got to know her.’

For some reason this seems to make him mad. Teeth clenched, he says, ‘I never got your name.’

My phone is buzzing angrily. It can only be Warner. The Asian guy and the tracksuit man watch as I stand up. Both are still hemmed in by other people, but they won’t be for long.

‘No,’ I say, ‘you didn’t.’

I walk calmly out of the courtroom and turn the corner, breaking the line of sight between me and the two men.

Then I start running.

The corridor is wide, with a gradual curve to the right and lots of light coming through the big windows on my left. Nowhere to hide. No sign of a fire exit. I dart around other people, sprinting towards the front entrance.

‘Hey, man, watch it,’ someone says.

I keep running.

I turn one more corner, and now the entrance is visible up ahead. I see my reflection in the glass. Already red-faced, my hair glued to my forehead by sweat. Behind me, I can see the two men. They’ve spotted me. They’re walking quickly, but not running. Not calling attention to themselves.

The tracksuit man is walking stiffly, spine rigid. He has something in the back of his pants, probably a knife. Carbon fibre, since he got it through the metal detector.

A bottleneck ahead. I won’t have to go through the metal detector to get out, but I will have to walk through a one-way security exit. There’s an automatic door, followed by a short airlock-like corridor, followed by a second automatic door. The crowd is slowing down as it approaches the exit. I push through, angering more people. ‘Sorry, sorry.’ My phone is still vibrating like a hornet trapped in my pocket.

A security guard is looking at me. Rotund, black, with a thick moustache and a wedding ring. Maybe I should tell him the guys behind me have a gun, or a bomb. He wouldn’t believe me, because of the metal detector. But enough people in the crowd would fall for it to create mass panic. Dozens of people running. The confusion might help me slip away.