The little girl was perfect in every way.

She had a daughter.

Dora clasped the little thing to her breast and let scalding tears of mingled fear and exhaustion and indescribable delight fall down her face. She was filthy, her nightdress wet and bloodstained, her hair clamped in smoke-stinking sweaty clumps to her scalp, but she held the most precious, the most unexpected of gifts; her very own child.

But – she felt a shudder of re-emerging fear – what was going to happen to them now?

Two fire engines zoomed past, going the other way, toward the pub, their bells shrieking into the night. Dora watched them speed past and felt sick to her stomach. Poor Mrs Wilkes, back there in the pub, burned to death. And that was Dora’s fault. Everything was her fault. Bruno’s setting that fire had come straight from Frank Pargeter, and that was because of her.

It’s my fault she died.

The woman had been so kind to her, treating her almost as a daughter. And this was how she was repaid. With agony. With death.

Dora looked forward, at the man behind the wheel of the car. She felt no safer with Donny Maguire than she had with Bruno Graves chasing her. Donny hated her for all the hurt she’d caused his family. And he wasn’t the forgiving type. Already he’d been violent toward her, threatening to throw her bodily from the

train.

‘I can’t believe you killed him,’ she said, swiping shakily, irritably, at her tears as the baby slept peacefully in her arms. ‘You’re an officer of the law, for God’s sake.’

Donny’s eyes flickered to hers in the driver’s mirror.

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.

‘You . . .’ Dora hauled herself up a little straighter, frowning in confusion. ‘You what? You slit his throat.’

‘Bruno Graves tragically died in the fire he set to kill you. He did it on the orders of his gang boss, Frank Pargeter. He must have gone in to be sure the job was done, and got overwhelmed by smoke. That does happen.’

Dora’s eyes were like saucers in her smoke-stained face as she listened to the lies pouring so easily out of his mouth. ‘Not this time it didn’t. You killed him.’

Donny gave her a smirking glance.

‘Right. And who are you going to tell that tall tale to? Because it’ll be my word against yours, Dora. The word of a notorious party girl – that’s a gang whore by any other name, in case you were wondering – against, as you so rightly put it, the word of a much-respected officer of the law? Do you seriously think anyone would believe you?’

‘I seriously think you’re a bastard,’ said Dora. He was right. She knew it. Another fire engine came speeding up the road and shrieked past them, lights and bells going full-pelt.

‘If I’m such a bastard, you’d better watch out,’ said Donny calmly. ‘If I could slit Bruno Graves’s throat – which of course I didn’t and I’ll deny that to my dying day – then what makes you think I couldn’t do the same to you? You deserve it, after all.’