As if realising the same thing, Torgau dashed past them along the hall. He opened fire again with the battle-rifle before he’d even entered the kitchen. The noise was cacophonous in the suburban house, the air already thick with cordite.

‘Down here, you bitch!’ Ivana hissed.

A triangular doorway had opened underneath the stairs, and Lucy was shoved towards it. Still dazed, she wondered why they were thrusting her into a closet, but then spotted the top of a staircase. A foot planted itself on her backside and propelled her forward. She tripped as she went, falling headfirst into darkness, turning over and over down the steep, stone flight. With hands cuffed behind her back, she was unable to protect herself, banging her head repeatedly, along with her spine, hips and knees. At the bottom she lay in total blackness, swooning with pain, only for a hand to slam a switch and a glaring white halogen light to come on overhead.

Despite what sounded like continuous shooting, she heard two pairs of feet thumping down the cellar stairs after her. As she came to, they lugged her upright again. A corridor of whitewashed brick, with a white-tiled floor, lay ahead. They hurried her along it, cursing and hissing at her, passing doors on the left, all partly open but all made from heavy sheet-steel. On the right, meanwhile, stood a recessed wardrobe. Its front had been disguised with fake white polystyrene brickwork, but now stood open, revealing two steel racks inside, each filled with firearms. The upper contained automatic rifles, submachine guns and pump-action shotguns, the lower pistols and revolvers. As they scrambled past, Alyssa grabbed a handgun and a couple of boxes of ammunition. Yet more gunfire thundered upstairs. It sounded like a shooting gallery rather than a family home.

‘We should be up there!’ Alyssa said, her voice cracking with emotion.

‘No,’ Ivana replied. ‘He’s not buying us time so that we can just waste it.’

Lucy, meanwhile, was now coming around properly and starting to figure things out. Torgau was right; it clearly wasn’t the police who’d arrived – they’d have given these lunatics a chance to surrender before attacking. There was likely no help to be had up there. But allowing herself to be dragged ever deeper into this stronghold of the insane made no sense at all. They were midway along the corridor, another half-open steel door awaiting them at the far end, but though the Torgau girls were fit, they were still teenagers, while Lucy worked out as well, and at thirty-two, was stronger than them anyway. She dug her feet in and brought them to an unexpected halt.

‘You bitch!’ Ivana hit her with the Browning again, smacking it across her left cheek.

Lucy responded with a head-butt, delivered right to the middle of Ivana’s nose.