‘Mum and Dad have been dead for years. The cancer took my mother when I was seventeen. Dad joined her a year later. Heart attack. I’ve got a sister, but we’re not really in touch these days,’ he added, remembering the promise he’d made to Mallet back at the interview in London.

Casey paused and bit her lower lip. ‘The others told me about your family,’ she said. ‘What happened to your wife and little girl.’

Bowman lowered his gaze to the floor. He thought again about the blood. The bodies. For a fleeting moment, he saw them lying on the kitchen floor. The way he’d discovered them when he came home from the job. Amy with the bullet hole in her head. The wide gash in his daughter’s throat. He saw, too, the face of the man responsible. The Albanian mobster. His monstrous scarred face, his cruel laugh. Bowman set his jaw as a hot current of anger stirred inside his guts.

‘I’m sorry,’ Casey said hastily. ‘It’s not my place.’

‘You’re right,’ Bowman growled. ‘It isn’t. And I don’t need your fucking sympathy.’

Casey mumbled a hasty apology, made an excuse and left him alone. Bowman sat in silence, checking his kit, tortured by the images seared into his memory. He suddenly craved another pill. Bowman waited a while, slipped into the toilet and snuffed two of Lang’s yellow pills. He felt better, but not by much. The tablets weren’t as potent as the synthetic opioids he usually took. The effects wore off much more quickly. Which was a problem, he knew. He’d have to sneak off more often. One of the others might notice sooner or later.

He dropped into his seat, and then the attendant brought over food for the team. They tucked into sandwiches, crisps, biscuits, chocolate bars. Loading up on calories, because they didn’t know when they’d next have a chance to eat. Bowman inhaled a BLT sandwich and a protein bar, washed it down with a cup of strong black coffee. He drank another. Soon, a leaden fog clouded his brain. His eyelids were heavy. Everything felt fuzzy and slow. The tiredness of the last forty-eight hours was catching up with him. Every muscle in his body demanded rest.

While the others chatted, Bowman closed his eyes. He tried not to think about his family, or the mission. Eventually the faces of his dead wife and daughter faded away. In the empty blackness of his opioid-numbed mind, Bowman found a brief respite from his torment, and he settled into a fitful sleep.

*