Clutesi saw Kelly Armstrong leave the main entrance and walk purposefully down the road, her blonde hair swinging gently in the breeze. She was a real stunner, thought Clutesi, and from the way she swung her hips she knew it. There was something familiar about her, something that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He’d seen her before at the same angle, looking down at her from a window. Clutesi clasped a hand to the back of his neck. A bar. She’d been going into a bar and he’d been on surveillance. It came to him in a rush and he slapped his hand against his leg. “Now I remember!” he shouted.

The Colonel came wide awake, all his senses alert. He turned his head to look at the bedside clock. It was three o’clock in the morning. He lay back and listened, allowing his mind to roam among the rooms of his cottage, trying to find the source of the noise which had woken him. The Colonel was a light sleeper, but he was never disturbed by the sounds of the countryside: barking foxes, hunting owls or sheep kicking over rocks. It must have been something else.

His nearest neighbours were a mile away, a working farm owned by a former Merchant Navy captain, and it wasn’t unusual to hear tractors starting up at first light. But it was still dark outside, and if it had been a tractor or any other sort of vehicle, he’d have heard the sound for some time.

The Colonel sat up slowly. He slept naked and the sheets whispered as they slid down his chest. The road which led to his cottage was dotted with potholes and it was impossible for anyone to drive down without the vehicle rattling and banging. And for twenty feet around his cottage there was a layer of gravel chippings, several inches deep. It was impossible to approach the dwelling silently.

The house seemed silent. On the Colonel’s right was an electronic panel linked to a security system which covered every door and window in the house, and which was connected to pressure sensors embedded in the road and at various key points in the garden. All the lights on the display glowed red, none was flashing. If any of the alarms were triggered, the system would automatically call his local police station and the police would arrive within eight minutes. Under normal circumstances the Colonel would have put it down to an unremembered nightmare, but something felt wrong. His insides were tight as if his body knew something that his mind didn’t, and over the years he’d learned to trust his instincts. He twisted to the left and opened a drawer in his bedside table, where he kept a loaded Browning Hi-Power 9 mm automatic.