Jasmine let her jacket hang back down, hiding both the gun and her bare flesh from sight. ‘So do I,’ she muttered, her eyes wide and maybe just a little scared, holding Tom’s.

g

The ice arena looked no more appealing by starlight than in the cold, grey light of yesterday’s dawn. To Kate, its squat, rounded shape gave it the silhouette of some giant black beetle hunched over the land.

Swagger was half-dragging, half-carrying her through the rubble-strewn parking lot, away from the main entrance. ‘We’re taking the back way,’ he informed Polar, who followed on mutely behind. ‘Hell, will you dump that camera, man? You look like a friggin’ retard.’

Polar reluctantly lowered the camera.

‘You could pick up some tips from Polar, Swag. You’d look a whole lot cuter if we couldn’t see your face,’ Kate goaded him. ‘And just why are we skulking into your sleaze palace the back way?’

‘I don’t want no one seeing you come in,’ he told her. ‘’Cause ain’t no one seeing you come out again.’ He passed Polar a key to open the heavy padlock on a set of mouldering fire doors. Then Swagger yanked them open and forced Kate inside.

They were in the arena’s cavernous locker rooms. The stench was worse than the last time she was here; sweat and urine and stuff she’d rather not dwell on. She soon learned the reason why.

The place had been converted into a kind of holding area. All around, people were gathered in groups, slumped on the floor or against cracked tile walls. Their eyes were glazed, their bodies stiff and lifeless. They were being held in crude pens fashioned from welded fenders, girders, bits of scrap iron –presumably anything Swagger’s thugs could lay their hands on. A bucket made do for a toilet. The damp concrete floor was their table, littered with assorted fast food debris:empty buckets of chicken, burger wrappers, soda cans.

It was like a detention camp for all the poor souls Swagger and his kind had snatched from the streets.

Polar stood beside Kate, looking down at his scruffy sneakers as if trying to blank out the rest of his surroundings.

‘Why are you keeping these people here like this, Swagger?’ she demanded.

‘They won’t be here long. Arrived last night. Winners of the national heats, shipped in from all over the country.’ He tightened his vice-like grip on the back of her neck. ‘My gladiators. Ready for the big rumble. Midnight tonight.’

Kate shivered. ‘That’s when you wanted Ramone’s gang to come here.’

‘That was the plan.’ He sniggered, and clapped Polar on the back. ‘I like my troops to be well-fed before battle.’