Lucy didn’t panic, as such – but she was too dumbfounded to make any kind of hair-trigger decision. She finally lurched to the right through pure instinct. The expected hail of bullets did not come, but when she heard a loud metallic clunk and a hissed curse, it was the kick-starter for headlong flight. The trouble was that the cobbled road surface was old and trodden and broken, and the toe of her left trainer immediately dug itself into a gap between two stones.

It pitched her down face-first.

Lucy was too adrenalised to feel the pain of the full body impact. She simply rolled with it, turning over and springing back to her feet when she heard her phone skittering away, knowing there was no time to retrieve it. She caught a fleeting glimpse of the gunman, arrested in his tracks as he wrestled with his weapon – at which point, another metallic sound, a healthy click this time, signalled that whatever component had jammed had now been released.

Lucy ran blindly down Jubilee Gardens. She put forty yards between herself and the gunman in what seemed like no time. But she knew that wouldn’t be enough.

As the first blazing volley split the night, she knew it wasn’t nearly enough.

Chapter 35

Lucy zigzagged as she fled, surviving the first fusillade.

He ought to have shot her down; she was moving hell for leather, but no one could outrun a bullet. But by sheer fortune, maybe because of the restricted vision through his mask, his raking salvo missed her by several inches, lead projectiles flashing along the cobblestones to her left.

Panic pulsed through her as she ran. She imagined him turning on his heel, weapon still levelled, needing only to hit the trigger to cross-stitch the entire street with slugs. So thinking, she veered fully right, making straight for the nearest doorway. It looked to be covered with chipboard. There could be anything behind it: a solid wooden door; a steel brace. But to stay out in the open was death. She struck the chipboard full on with her shoulder, a blow that stunned her entire body even though she smashed clean through into the recess on the other side.

Another volley of lead thundered into the doorway behind, tearing the jamb to shreds, rebounding from the brickwork with piercing shrieks.

Lucy barrelled forward through dank blackness, finding her way by extending her hands outward, feeling paper hanging on the walls in rags. As she ran, a desperate thought flickered through her head that the sound of the unsuppressed gunfire might alert someone. But just as quickly, she dismissed it: not in this terrible place, where no one even came in daylight unless they had to, let alone in darkness.