A woman, my brain registered. She was lying on her front, in a dark blue dressing gown that had ridden up to reveal pale bare legs, feet splayed. One fluffy slipper on, one off. Seeing no one else, I ran to the bed and knelt by the body. She was face down in the thick carpet. Dark hair, tied back. Glasses next to her on the floor, one plastic arm snapped off.

‘Beth?’ I said, touching her shoulder.

No response. I looked for blood and shook her very gently, the smell of gun smoke hanging in the air.

‘Beth?’ I said again, keeping my voice low. As my fingers touched her throat, searching for a pulse, her eyes flickered open.

‘Joe.’

‘Are you OK?’ I whispered. ‘What happened?’

She turned onto her side, blinking slowly.

‘Ben?’

‘It’s me. Joe.’

She tried to focus on me, eyes wide.

‘He’s here,’ she whispered, gripping my arm.

‘Who? Alex Kolnik?’

‘What?’ She looked confused. ‘I don’t . . . I don’t understand.’

‘Never mind. Where’s Alice? Is she OK?’

‘Locked herself in her bathroom.’

‘Are you hurt, Beth?’

She shook her head once, quickly, her bottom lip wobbling.

I was dizzy, disoriented, like I’d stepped off a carousel and everything was still spinning around me. No time to think. I looked around the room, searching for something, anything, that I could use as a weapon. The room was a mess, with chairs turned over, clothes and framed pictures scattered across the floor. A large mirror next to the walk-in wardrobe was smashed in three places, spiderwebbed with cracks from top to bottom. Next to it was a pattern of black marks scored out of the wall which I assumed was from the shotgun blast I’d heard moments before I broke the door down.

‘Is there a gun up here?’ I said. ‘One of Ben’s shotguns?’

‘No. They’re all in the gun safe, in the dining room.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘Downstairs,’ she gestured towards an open door at the far end of the bedroom. ‘That door is the study, and the workroom, and then the back stairs all the way down to the pantry. He went for more cartridges.’

‘For the shotgun?’

‘Yes.’

Shit. I went to the dressing table, looking for scissors, a knife, anything that I could use as a weapon. Nothing doing. My eyes moved to the big department-store sized mirror again, cracked from top to bottom. Using my elbow I hit it hard, three times, until pieces started breaking off and falling to the floor. I grabbed a T-shirt from the floor, wrapped it around the biggest piece – a six-inch shard curving to a wicked point – and gripped the makeshift dagger tight.

Law of the jungle.

Beth grabbed my arm.

‘Listen,’ she whispered hoarsely in the silence.

I listened.

Someone was coming up the back stairs.