He laughed again, and this time it had a harder edge to it. “Every man has his weakness. Mine is the classics. Besides, if we do not build flaws into our works, God may think we are trying to usurp his domain.”

“Are you for real?”

“A woman in your profession”—the professor gave her a wicked smile—”must surely realise that truth is far stranger than fiction. Now, please unlock the safe and give me the codes.”

“So you can shoot me?”

“Yes.”

“You get why that’s not an appealing offer, right?”

The professor crossed to the side of the bed where Hanna was lying, still pretending slightly desperately to be asleep. “My fault entirely, Ms Blaine. I should have made myself clearer. I certainly intend to shoot you once you have given me what I want. But if you do not,”—he lowered the pistol to point directly at Hanna—”I will shoot your wife. I will, to be more specific, shoot her through the gut and the spine. She will die slowly, and in terrible pain. Then I will shoot you, then I will leave. You are going to die, Ms Blaine, but the manner of your death remains very much of your own choosing.”

Raising her hands and moving very, very slowly, Liza got out of bed. “Okay, just don’t hurt her.”

“I assure you, if you are compliant, I shall make things quite painless.”

Liza had run out of ideas. Keeping him talking had worked for a while, but playing the if-you-kill-us-you-won’t-get-what-you-want card had probably been a mistake. The professor may have claimed to be more motivated by pragmatism than spite, but the difference between the two seemed fairly minimal from where Liza was standing.

Going as slowly as she felt able, walking the line between antagonising the narcissistic crime lord with the firearm, and buying time to think of something, anything, to stop him, she made her way over to the safe. It was a simple three-digit code that they’d set when they’d taken the room, and the professor was probably right that it wouldn’t have posed him any serious difficulties if he’d had the time to crack it. She opened the safe and took out the USB key.

“Excellent.” The professor turned and pointed his pistol directly at Liza’s head. “Now hand it over and don’t get any foolish ideas about heroism.”

A gunshot rang out. And the fraction of a second it took Liza to realise that it hadn’t come from inside the room was also the fraction of a second in which the professor turned towards the door in case he’d been ambushed, and the fraction of a second in which Hanna sprang off the bed and threw a blanket over his head.