The shadow vanished. But the hatch stayed open. Then she heard a click. And a second later a bottle with a flaming cloth stuffed in its neck was tossed up into the loft, followed by two more. They smashed against the rafters and fell to the floor. The gasoline inside them burst into flame and spread in a blue-yellow tide across the planks, which crackled and smoked and began to burn.

Wada retreated along the loft as smoke billowed towards her. The speed with which the fire had caught was frightening. She was in a tinderbox of old, dry wood. The roof was covered outside in turf, and though that might burn more slowly than wood, it would surely only produce more smoke for Wada to choke in as it did so. She had to get out. But there was no way out.

Then she saw a chimney breast ahead. The mad idea entered her mind that maybe this could be her escape route. Hurrying towards it, she failed to register that she’d reached the end of the planked section of flooring. Her foot suddenly plunged into the gap between two beams and her leg disappeared through the lath and plaster ceiling of the room below.

She grasped the beams on either side of the gap to haul herself back up, but to her horror she felt her foot seized and yanked downwards. She cried out and heard Zayala grunt with the effort of pulling her down. She fell sideways into the gap and lost her hold on the beams. In an avalanche of wood and plaster, she descended through the ceiling.

Zayala let go and allowed her to crash to the floor. Her shoulder took most of the impact. She felt the fluffy surface of a rug beneath her cheek. Then he pushed her on to her back with his foot and she saw the jagged hole in the ceiling above her.

In the next instant, Zayala appeared in her field of vision. His face was bony and sheened with sweat. His eyes were narrow, his mouth a hard gash beneath a flat nose. He stepped over her, so that his feet were planted either side of her chest. In his right hand he held a gun, which he trained on her head.

‘Was it you or Caldwell who killed Ohara?’ he demanded.

He must have forced Caldwell to tell him where Ohara’s body was, though telling him hadn’t helped Caldwell in the end. Wada realized full well what that meant for her. ‘It makes … no difference,’ she gasped.

‘It was you, I think.’

‘I will not tell you … how Ohara died.’ Her refusal to answer was the only way she could defy him. And she was grimly content for those to be the last words she spoke.

TWENTY