Frank made a lunge at Ben and tried to grab his gun arm. Ben smacked the butt of the pistol hard into Frank’s teeth and he went down. Through the stairwell window Ben caught a flash of Wolf sprinting fast around the side of the house towards the front door, the Glock in his hand. The man Ben had shot was bumping and rolling all the way down to the bottom of the stairs. The one with the shotgun recovered his balance and was bringing the short-barrelled weapon to bear at the same moment that Ben swivelled the sights of his Browning in his direction. In the race to fire first, Ben was a good half-second ahead – but then Frank, blood all over his mouth and still sprawled out on the floor at Ben’s feet, lashed out a desperate kick at Ben’s knee. Ben dodged the kick but the distraction and the movement cost him his time advantage and the guy with the shotgun squeezed his trigger.

A twelve-gauge is a very loud weapon. In the confined space of the stairwell it sounded like a fragmentation grenade. But a twelve-gauge with its barrel sawn off to little more than twelve inches in length is also a wildly inaccurate tool, good for little more than across-the-room close combat. Its two-ounce payload of buckshot spread out in a cone of lead that missed Ben entirely and took a large bite-shaped chunk out of the corner wall and turned several of the landing rails into matchwood.

Ben hit the floor rattling off a fast string of shots at the same instant that Wolf crashed in through the front door, leaped over Abbott’s body and blasted three, four, five gunshots up the stairwell. The big guy was caught in the middle of their combined field of fire. His body jerked and twitched as bullets struck him front and back. As his muscles went into spasm he jerked the trigger of the shotgun a second time and the deafening blast ripped away most of the top step. Splinters and bits of carpet and stair rod flew. Ben fired again and a nine-millimetre red spot appeared in the centre of the big guy’s forehead.

At that point, the firefight was over. The big guy dropped the shotgun, slumped sideways in the stairwell and rolled over twice before he came to a rest with his leg jammed in the banister railing.

Wolf checked the other body that had tumbled to the bottom of the stairs. ‘He’s dead.’