They were both spare bedrooms, stylish and clean but with the unlived-in feel of empty wardrobes and permanently made beds. I’d stopped short of the stairs but could see all the way up them now: at the top was a closed door, and visible through the balustrade was another. There had to be more rooms up there, but my attention had switched again.

Why was it so quiet in here?

I moved to his bedroom door, could see it had been left marginally ajar, and pushed at it. It swung back, revealing some of the furniture I’d glimpsed earlier: a huge bed, a pair of wardrobes, and a bay window looking out at nothing but darkness. There was a walk-in wardrobe on the other side, its door also ajar, and an en suite where I could see a shower and half a basin.

‘Robert?’

In the bathroom, I heard someone move.

I realized I was holding my breath, my head swimming, nerves firing in every part of me, and as I came around the bed I found a cordless phone discarded on the carpet, abandoned between the end of the frame and the start of the bathroom’s wooden floors. It was the one Zaid had been using earlier.

All I could hear now was the drone of a dial tone.

I took another step forward, and then another, and – in the bathroom – a man came into view: he was standing on the opposite side, leaning against one of the walls, waiting for me.

He had a gun aimed at my chest.

‘Mills?’

An expression filled Isaac Mills’s face. I wasn’t sure what it was to start with. Anger? Sorrow? Pain? And then I realized – too late – that it wasn’t any of them.

It was guilt.

It was a warning.

Someone’s behind me.

The second I started to turn, it felt like the side of my head imploded. The butt of a knife handle cracked me in the temple – I could see the flash of a blade, facing up, out of a palm; an arm; a shoulder – and then I lurched sideways, landing awkwardly. When I tried to look up, to get on to my back, I felt the same arm jam against my throat, the crook of an elbow clamping against my windpipe.

I was in a chokehold.

I tried to move, to thrash around – tried to punch and kick my way free – but there was nothing to grab on to – and, even if there had been, the chokehold was too tight, the arm like an iron bar I couldn’t shift.

My vision began to smear.

I glanced desperately left and right as everything turned grey, was conscious long enough to hear Mills say something to whoever had hold of me, and then finally everything shut down.

I slumped sideways and hit the floor.

Black.

Retirement: Part 2

2015

Los Angeles | Sunday 1 November