He felt a new operation coming on, in which he would be neck deep. “There was just this one contact?”

“And now this.” A jab of the lighter indicating dead bodies and a wrecked flat.

Julian sighed. “Go back to the beginning, tell me everything you can, every detail.”

II

The transcript of that meeting found its way to Alison, along with a grab bag of other evidence: police interviews, scene-of-crime reports, autopsy results, camera footage. She was currently in limbo between Op Glassknife and whatever new operation might sprout up from Khan’s revelations. It seemed likely that when it had gone through enough meetings to become something tangible she’d be brought in on it. In the meantime she pulled what strings she could to keep informed. She didn’t like living in a world she couldn’t get a handle on—it didn’t feel safe—so she would pry obsessively until those handles were discovered or installed. Back when the girls were tiny, before she’d joined the Service, she’d run her own trace agency from home, tracking down absconding debtors, long-lost beneficiaries and truant husbands who owed too many maintenance payments. Every success made her world more ordered and therefore more controllable. Controllable was secure. It slowed her heart rate and backed up all the anxiety medication.

The autopsies contained nothing surprising, save the coroner’s estimates of the force applied. White and his mates had been beaten with Khan’s furniture, and then with bare hands. These were large and heavy-knuckled, judging by the signature marks they had left. Of the two survivors, one had lasted two days before succumbing to haemorrhaging from a cracked skull; the other was stable but had yet to wake up.

The other man dead at the scene, besides White, had been Patrick Cleary, Alison’s source. He had, she thought, deserved better. He had been trying to turn himself around, and had been brave enough to work against a man like White to atone. And he’d died not to serve that cause but at the hands of some unidentified third party.

She considered what Khan had said to Julian. Had that third party turned up to recruit or even kidnap Khan themselves, only to get into a scrap with White? They’d then run off before the police arrived? The timing seemed suspiciously coincidental, but coincidences happened even in the most ordered of universes.

Then there was the camera evidence. There was no good street view of Khan’s building, but the woman had been sharp enough to keep a camera system overlooking her front door. The quality was decent. It showed White and his lads turning up, pausing to gather themselves and then shouldering the door open on the third try.

Then, nothing for about five minutes, because the camera didn’t have sound.

Then they came out.