If it was, then someone may still have been alive before the Orlova hit the rocks.

35

The shunting of the train woke him. It shuddered then began to move again, clicking and clacking, gaining speed, eventually streamlining its sounds. A chink of light crept round the blind.

McNab, coming to properly, realized he was alone again. A waft of memories from the previous night’s encounter swept over him, all of them pleasant. He tested himself for guilt, and found none.

Ellie had wanted to be free to choose her sexual partners. He hadn’t wanted her to. Yet here he was among the bedclothes that smelt of another woman. A woman he would never see again. A woman he had no desire to see again.

But he did want to be with Ellie. That much he did know.

Up and dressed, he was ready when breakfast was delivered to his door. He’d roughly formulated a plan the previous evening before Ava’s phone call, then shelved it for an hour or two as he focused on other more pleasurable activities.

He revisited it now, deciding he would check out Olivia’s flat first, then see if he could locate Mark Sylvester. According to Ava, the Met were currently displeased with Mark and his investigation into Go Wild, which made him a man McNab wanted to meet.

Crossing the railway concourse, McNab recalled that the last time he’d been in this particular railway station, he’d still had a dressing over the bullet hole in his back.

Having escaped the safe house, he’d gone looking for lodgings, thinking he might stay in London for a while, and had eventually found a place run by a Mrs Morrison. She’d been the one to help him re-dress the open wound and she’d never asked how he had come by the injury in the first place. Older than him, with a son in the army whom she doted on and whose father was never mentioned, McNab remembered her now with affection. In fact, staying there had reminded him of his own home life, where his mum had also never spoken of his father.

He briefly thought that if he needed to stay in London longer, he could always check up on Jean Morrison, then dismissed the idea. He would definitely get the job done here as quickly as possible and be on the night train back to Glasgow.

Seated upstairs at a terrace cafe, he had another coffee and reworked his plan. After thinking over Ava’s phone call, he decided it might be better to check out Mark’s flat first, to put her mind at ease. Mark being out of touch didn’t strike McNab as that unusual. He often went off the radar himself when on a job.