The impact came as Hale reached the halfway point on the staircase and sent him careening the rest of the way down. The pain as the hard front door abruptly ended his fall should have been debilitating. But the human brain can shut pain off when it needs to. When its continued existence is on the line.

Hale turned himself onto his back, no need to glance at his devastated right leg. Its useless weight told him enough. Instead he looked ahead. At the sight of the other officers, both lying motionless, their lives both ended by a bullet to the forehead.

Despairing, he looked through the hallway that led to the garden. It was open, its frame occupied by the lifeless body of the fifth and final member of Jessica’s protective detail.

He could not see how the man had died. Not that it mattered.

Karl Hirst was barely six feet from where Hale had landed. Jessica was slumped at his feet.

Dead? Hale could not tell, but she did not seem to be moving.

His attention was drawn to the suppressed pistol that remained fixed in Hirst’s hand.

‘No knives this time, then?’ Hale asked painfully. He struggled to get the words out as the loss of blood started to hit.

‘Do you think I’ll fall for that, Steve? Get me talking until the back-up gets here?’

Hale’s weakened mind focused on a single word.

‘How do you know my name?’

‘I know it’s what Levy calls you,’ Hirst replied. He smiled as he spoke. A soulless, reptilian grin. ‘Just like I know she sent you up here to bring Tina Barker into secure custody. To protect her.’

Hirst placed a foot under Jessica/Tina’s body and pushed her onto her back. The sound of pain told Hale she was still alive.

‘How’s that job worked out?’ Hirst asked, still grinning.

‘How can you know that?’ Hale asked again. It was no bluff. No attempt to gain time. There was no back up on the way. Hale just could not understand how this man knew so much.

‘How do you think?’ Hirst replied. ‘Modern technology, Steve. The sort of thing I wish I’d had last time. Surveillance equipment. Bugs so small and so discrete your people would never think to look for them.’

‘Bugs?’ Hale could feel himself growing weaker. Every beat of his heart was firing more blood from his body, out of his devastated knee. But the pain of Hirst’s words was greater. That they had missed something so simple. ‘You . . . you bugged us?’

‘It’s amazing what you can get on the internet, isn’t it?’ Hirst was enjoying himself. ‘Just a few lightbulb bugs at each scene. Perfect place, lightbulbs. The sort of thing your forensic guys would have no reason to check, but good enough to listen in and keep a few steps ahead of you all. That was the plan, anyway. What I didn’t expect was this.’

Hale could feel himself slipping. He pulled in two lungfuls of oxygen, fighting to clear his head. A glance at Jessica had the desired effect. He was the only thing keeping her alive, and as long as Hirst was talking she would stay that way.