‘Oh, I tripped on the stairs at work and turned out there was a jagged bit on the railing. Badly made piece-of-shit railing.’

‘Well, the good news is that it’s not too deep.’

‘Won’t need stitches?’ he asked and Paula could detect the nervous little boy inside the weathered middle-aged bully.

‘No. A clean-up and some steri-strips will do.’

Paula turned away to fetch the items she needed to dress the wound.

Ferguson cleared his throat awkwardly and offered, ‘I’m sure you know your stuff. Medical stuff. But I’m more comfortable with a man. Someone who’s going to do what needs to be done without a lot of chat. That’s why I steer clear of female doctors, wittering on with a load of babble.’

Paula was astonished at how blatant he was. Most men would hedge and dissemble to cover their misogyny, but not this guy. She consciously fought the disgust off her face and focused on his hand as she sluiced the wound with saline.

These were the powerful hands that had left a string of purple bruises around his wife’s throat, her voice cracked and hoarse, her eyes flecked with red.

Ferguson made teeth-sucking noises at the sting of the antiseptic Paula was applying. She relished the little stabs of discomfort she was causing him and she felt the sinews in her arm tighten, repressing the urge to jab her fingers into the raw flesh to make this bastard wail with agony.

She took a breath, gathered herself, then concentrated on the task of peeling the backing off steri-strips to hold the edges of the wound together. She didn’t speak because she didn’t trust herself not to spew out invective at this man. Her silence made Ferguson uncomfortable. Her lack of female doctor ‘wittering’ threw him off balance, and in fact he was the one who started wittering.

‘Don’t think I’m a wimp,’ he said. ‘The reason I’m checking if I need stitches is because I have to take care of my hands. For my business. Can’t afford to have my hands out of action.’

‘Oh yes,’ murmured Paula, then let him fill the silence with more babble. Clearly Ferguson found the sound of his own voice soothing when he was stressed.

‘I’ve got a security and investigations business. Bit of keyboard work with that, but the major issue is I also do some shooting instruction. I like my security guys to be up to speed with handling nine-millimetre pistols and I don’t trust the clowns you usually get teaching that stuff. So I got myself qualified as an instructor. Need my hands in top working order.’

Paula saw the gun in Matt’s hand. The ragged wound in Stacey’s neck.