The aluminium ramp was unfolding itself from the rear doors of the Kangoo. Lazar leaned in to press a button under the dashboard, and the lift lowered slowly towards the road. The roof of the vehicle was high enough to take both Anton and his wheelchair without any undignified heaving to transfer his body to a van seat. It wasn’t the most stylish mode of transport, but it was convenient for the Zhivkos, and so distinctive that it was a gift for surveillance.

From this distance, it wasn’t possible to hear the hum of the electric motor that drove the ramp. But because it was too loud, or for some other reason, the brothers didn’t try to speak to each other over the noise. Lazar was by the driver’s door, waiting for the platform to touch the road so he could connect the winch. Anton looked exhausted, his eyes cast down at his lap. He wasn’t watching the ramp. He must have seen its operation many times before, perhaps regarded it with resentment. It was one more mechanical aid that he shouldn’t have needed but for the damage done to his legs.

Anton could have a weapon concealed under the rug across his knees. The nervous plucking of his fingers at the edges could be his way of keeping a handgun within easy reach, yet out of sight.

But nothing in the intelligence reports had indicated the Zhivkos might be armed. In any case, there was no intention to arrest the brothers, not right there in the street with dozens of passersby getting in the way. If an arrest ever happened, it would be done in the privacy of the brothers’ home at dawn, with the advantage of surprise and force of numbers, a hydraulic ram through the front door and officers in body armour dragging them from their beds before they were even awake.

Before the surveillance officers had turned away from the monitor, something strange happened. Both the Zhivko brothers reacted to something simultaneously. Their heads came up sharply, as if they’d been startled by a sudden noise. Their eyes met across the roof of the Kangoo, and for the first time Anton opened his mouth to speak. No – not to speak, but to shout, to yell. To scream.

It was a scream that never came. If Anton made any sound at all, it was the last one of his life. The force of the explosion hurled him across the bonnet of a taxi and into the middle of the road. His chair was crushed by a bus, but Anton’s body broke away from the wreckage and bounced across the tarmac until he crumpled into a smouldering heap in the gutter. There was just one glimpse of his motionless figure before it disappeared in the cloud of black smoke that surged from the blazing Kangoo.