Bennett bent the wrist of her attacker so far back that he let out a growl of pain. But he still didn’t drop his gun. She tried to pull it back even further, but she was concentrating so hard on the man’s wrist that she’d stopped ducking and diving, or paying attention to his other hand. He finally caught her and held her against him as he drove her into the wall of the longhouse, winding her and pinning her against it.

The man fighting Knox did drop his gun, but not because Knox made him. He took a step back, let it fall to the ground, and goaded Knox to come at him with both hands. Knox couldn’t see the man’s face under the balaclava but he was sure he was sneering at him. Knox wanted to throw himself at him and wipe the invisible smile off his face, but he knew that was just what the other man wanted. So he tried his own trick on him, backing away and forcing the man in black to keep moving forward until his patience ran out and he sprang at Knox. Knox ducked down. He’d planned to drive his shoulder up into the man’s abdomen, but instead the man tripped over Knox’s curled-up body, lost his balance, and crashed full speed and head first into the edge of the bench Medev’s body was still slumped limply on.

The sound of the man’s skull cracking against the metal corner of the bench stopped everyone else. For a moment no one moved. Then the two other masked men gave each other a look. The one holding Bennett against the wall drove her into it one more time, winding her again, then let her drop to the ground. He ran over to the man who had managed to pin Valera down and sedate her somehow. Then he turned the gun on Knox, who was separated from them by the bench and the two dead bodies. The other man slung Valera’s body over his shoulder, and they both started to back away.

As soon as the men disappeared behind the longhouse, Knox ran over to Bennett, who was already pulling herself up off the ground.

‘What just happened?’ she asked, rhetorically.

The whole encounter, from Medev first sitting down on the bench to the masked men carrying Valera off, had lasted less than five minutes.

Bennett walked over to the dead attacker. She nudged him with her foot to make sure he wasn’t just dazed, then reached down and pulled the balaclava off his head. It was already sticky with blood from the deep gash across the top of his skull.

‘Anyone you know?’ she said to Knox.