Before he left, Mary hugged him. ‘We’ll sort this out for you, Jamie. Don’t you worry.’

Later that evening, the phone rang. It was Brian.

‘It’s all set,’ he said. ‘They were delighted to accept. I told them we’d planned a dinner party, even bought all the ingredients, and then our friends had dropped out. They didn’t seem to mind that they were last minute replacements.’

‘So when is it?’

‘Tomorrow night. Seven-thirty.’

Chapter Twenty-eight

Twenty-eight

They had worked out a series of signs. When Lucy and Chris arrived at the top flat, Linda would stamp twice on the kitchen floor. Hearing this, Mary would then ring Jamie, letting the phone ring twice before hanging up. That was his cue.

He sat beside the phone, every muscle in his body tense.

The phone rang. Once, twice. Went dead.

He picked up the key that Brian had given him. His arms felt weak. But there was no way he was going to back out. This had to be done. Chris was a murderer; Lucy his accomplice. Jamie was the only person who could do something about it. He wasn’t really thinking about justice, or the greater good. He wasn’t even thinking about revenge. He merely wanted his life back.

He had decided to wait five minutes before going downstairs. He could imagine Lucy and Chris getting up there then realising they had forgotten something: a bottle of red wine perhaps.. He’d be in the flat and they would come down and find him. He shuddered at the thought.

He watched the clock for five minutes, counting every second, part of him hoping Lucy or Chris would come down the stairs so he wouldn’t have to go through with this. He forced himself to get a grip.

The five minutes were up. He walked out into the hallway, closing the flat door quietly behind him. He opened the front door, gripping the basement flat key firmly in his sweaty palm. It was dark. He had thought about this: it would be OK to turn the lights on in the flat. Lucy and Chris were well out of the way. Unless they leaned out of Brian and Linda’s front window and peered down, they would never see that their lights were on.

He went down the steps to the basement. Now was the first moment of truth. Had they changed the locks since they had moved in? At first he thought the key wasn’t going to fit, but it was because his hand was trembling. It slid into the lock, he turned it and the door opened.

He stepped inside.