It was 2 a.m., the vast Gothic spires of the cathedral climbing so far into the night they appeared to almost dissolve. Rain drummed against doorways and windowsills, water rushed and gurgled in gutters, and the skies were perfectly black, except for the occasional flash of lightning. In those moments, the narrow streets and bowed, crooked buildings would come alive – blinking like a strobe – before retreating into darkness again.

As I approached the Shambles, I double-checked my pockets for the key and the piece of paper with the alarm code on it, and then slowed my pace, looking behind me. Healy and I had spent the day since Mills left us at the cottage talking this through, arguing the risks, batting everything back and forth, and he’d never wavered once: he believed the whole thing to be an ambush, a juicy piece of bait that would either destroy me or kill me, and do the same to him. Why would Mills put on a performance like the one at the cottage? Why help me? Why would he go against the person or people he worked for? It was certainly simpler to dismiss it as an ambush – but Healy hadn’t seen Mills with the mother and her kids, and he hadn’t seen the expression on his face at the cottage.

I kept moving, the rain unable to breach this part of the city as effectively, the cramped Elizabethan buildings on either side barely feet from one another. The empty streets and silent rooms put me in mind of Black Gale, another ghost town, and then a little way along – as signs whipped and wheezed in the wind – I found a small entrance between a sweet shop and a café: a void filled only with darkness. There was no signage on the main thoroughfare, no indication that this led to a law firm, but as I took a few steps in, under an archway, I found myself in a courtyard, beneath an overhanging second floor, and spotted the sign out front.

Pale green with gold lettering.

Seiger and Sten.

Despite the archaic building, the door was modern: heavy oak, a silver lock and letterbox. Yet, new as the door was, straight away I realized something was off. I paused there for a long moment – the plastic of the key pinched between my thumb and forefinger – and tried to convince myself everything was fine.

But it wasn’t.

The key was wrong. It wasn’t even vaguely compatible with the lock. I tried to slide it in but got nowhere. It was too thin, the cuts on the blade weren’t right, and the lock was a traditional tumbler: there was no electronic reader on it, or inside it, so there was nothing to read the strip on the key.

Instantly, I thought of Healy, of how I’d overruled him and his concerns about coming here. So had he been right all along?

Was this a trap?