The thoughts were satisfying, if not actually cheerful. They soothed her. Though just before she slept, she found her mind drifting briefly to the image of Ben talking to Damian outside the station, with Ben as unflappable as ever and Damian suddenly on the back foot. No longer in control. It made her smile.

And then she was awake. Fully awake and half out of bed, because there had been a sound. A sharp, loud, heart-clammering sound from downstairs.

She staggered as she tried to stand, her body not yet catching up with her mind, which knew that the sound had been the kitchen window shattering.

Weapon, she thought, hearing sporadic crashes of glass as more fell out of the pane.

She’d got this one covered. She’d been sleeping with her truncheon next to her for months now. She’d rehearsed this situation for months, too. She picked up a pillow off her bed and clutched it in front of her, an instant guard against knives when she had no time to put on her stab vest.

She knew, without question, that the intruder was Damian, and part of her was glad. Whatever he was trying to do, she’d back herself in a struggle over him. He was taller, and perhaps a little stronger, but also out of condition. Too self-indulgent to keep himself toned or to go to any of the martial arts classes he’d always talked about.

She opened her door as silently as she could, determined not to flinch with every fresh sound. Was he in the kitchen? Or had he already moved into another part of the house?

She became aware, as she went slowly down the stairs, of a strange light and smell. It was a hot, Bonfire Night smell, and the colours on the walls were a faint, unsteady orange.

Shit.

She ran the last few steps and dropped the pillow in order to open the hall cupboard and haul out the foam fire extinguisher. She kicked the cupboard door back out of her way and walked into the kitchen, where little sprays of fire were burning away merrily on different objects. The fridge. The table. One of the chairs. The sink.

In the centre of the floor was the source of it all, a fiercely burning heap of glass and petrol that was melting the lino. And she dropped the baton without regret, pulled the pin out of the extinguisher and began to douse every one of those little fires.

She was lucky that there wasn’t more flammable material in the kitchen. Lucky, too, that the Molotov cocktail had landed centrally and not any closer to the hallway. The carpet had remained untouched, and once she’d drowned everything in foam and stopped spraying, there was silence.

She looked around at the burned and blackened room, and she smiled grimly to herself.

37

‘You look perfect,’ April told her. ‘Stop fiddling and drink.’