Lucy could sense the gun levelled on her back. But before they could fire, a figure came stumping down the stairs ahead of her. She slid to a halt, blinking through her sweat. It was the unmistakeable form of Martin Torgau. He stood as though barely seeing her, the battle-rifle hanging by his side. He was swaying, she realised, face milk-white, eyelids fluttering.

She looked down at his chest, where blood seeped from eight or nine minor puncture wounds. When he pitched heavily forward, smacking the tiled floor with his face, the jagged meat and bone of the exit wound in the middle of his back was the size of a dinner plate.

More heavy feet came clumping down the stair behind him.

Blocking her escape.

Bone-weary, still dazed from the blows she’d taken, Lucy sank to her knees and slumped against the whitewashed bricks at the side of the passage. As she did, she glanced behind her. Ivana and Alyssa were both at the far end, framed in the doorway to the manhole room. They’d levelled their pistols at her but hadn’t opened fire. Instead they stood stock-still, faces blanched, mouths agape.

Their father had just died in front of them.

Then another shot was fired, this time from the direction of the stairs. An almighty shotgun blast. Lucy felt the pellets whistle over her head and saw them rip their way along the wall, exposing streaks of red brick beneath the white.

The Torgau girls darted backward, slamming the steel door. A second load of shot hammered into it, denting it, punching multiple holes. A bulky figure, clad all over in black, wearing black gloves and a black balaclava, strode past Lucy, a pump-action levelled in his fists. He’d clearly seen her, but for the moment was more focused on his official targets, the Torgau twins. The third shot he fired slammed the steel door open, buckling it in its frame, but the room behind it was empty, the lid still upright on the manhole.

As though in a dream, Lucy looked the other way again, towards the foot of the stair, where a second figure, similarly clad to the first, had also come down. He’d seen her as well, but at present was ignoring her. However, he too carried a pump and, as he walked past Torgau’s body, he casually unloaded a round into the back of its head, which from that range blew it apart like a water melon, blood and brains splurging across the white-tiled floor. He halted just in front of her. She sensed the first one coming back, and all she could do now was lower her head and screw her eyes shut.

‘Fucking thing leads down to the sewers,’ the first one said. ‘Sodding maze down there. They’ll be well away.’

‘All right. We got the main target.’

‘Yeah, but here’s another for the fucking pot.’