She got up, poured herself a finger of Macallan and downed it in one gulp. Wincing at the burn as it went down her throat and hit her stomach, she stood tight. Then it began working its magic and she started to feel better. Not much, but a little. Dutch courage.

What the hell.

She raised her glass and toasted her weak reflection in a windowpane. ‘Cheers, Eden!’

Although she wasn’t actually Eden any more. According to the driving licence and passport that Rebecca had somehow obtained for her – no questions asked – well, only a few – she was now Ginevra Mary Stoneley, tenant of Woodbury Cottage, Chiddingly, East Sussex, and the not very proud owner of an inconspicuous, dark-blue, ageing Nissan Micra.

She even had a new appearance, a brand-new hairstyle and bright blonde colour, courtesy of a hairdresser friend of Rebecca who’d spent two hours at the cottage this morning.

Raising her glass again, this time she said, ‘Cheers, Ginevra, you hot, sexy creature!’

Ginevra winked back at her.

Was Ginevra about to become a murderer?

She put the glass down and checked her watch. Needed to pace herself. Only 10.10 p.m. Another twenty minutes before she had to set off for her rendezvous.

She opened the cupboard door, removed the bottle and took it outside, ducking through the rain and putting it on the passenger seat of the Micra. One final nip of it when she was at her destination. Didn’t warriors always get something to stir them into battle? She’d read that the Zulus fought their wars so ferociously because they were tripping on magic mushrooms. The GIs fought in Vietnam high on cannabis. How else could anyone kill a fellow human being face to face?

Then she sat back down and stared at the steadily congealing pasta. Rebecca had told her to think through to beyond tonight. To the far side. To the fortnight they had booked in a villa with its own pool in a resort in Cancun, Mexico. And to their life beyond.

For years, she could never have imagined being with anyone other than a man. Now she could never imagine being with anyone other than Rebecca.

She would do anything for this woman.

And was about to.

103

Thursday 12 September

Roy Grace and Glenn Branson sat in the unmarked Ford, parked on Eastbourne’s almost deserted seafront. A short distance away the streetlights ended, and a steep dark hill rose ahead, the start of the Seven Sisters chain of chalk cliffs, the most notorious of which was Beachy Head. It was just gone 10.57 p.m. and they’d been here for the past hour. Grace was both anxious and bored. Branson just seemed plain bored. The other members of the team were at HQ awaiting deployment.

Peering through the windscreen, made opaque by the pelting rain, Branson said, by way of conversation, ‘You don’t like heights much, do you?’

Grace shook his head. ‘I get acrophobia. If I look down an unguarded drop – or even a guarded one – I feel a strange pull to jump, almost as if I’m being tempted or my brain is taunting me. You ever get that?’