She wasn’t there. He let the cloth drop. Looked over at the window, and the heavy floor-length curtains either side. Of course. He walked over to the right-hand curtain and jerked it abruptly aside. Nothing behind it but sumptuous wood panelling. Then he tried the other. Same result.

Fuck this rotten bitch. She had to be in here somewhere.

—And she was.

Grace had heard the approaching footsteps on the marble floor just in time to scrabble out from under the dining table and scurry desperately across the room to the only other place she could think of to hide. The huge marble fireplace stood over eight feet tall with a polished, ornate bronze chimney hood the size of a steam-train cow-catcher. The grate was stacked up with a mountain of logs and kindling ready to light. Grace clambered up on top of the woodpile, ducked her head and shoulders up inside the hood, stretched both arms above her and found a brick ledge to get a purchase on. At the same instant that she managed to hoist herself up inside the chimney breast and tuck her legs out of sight, she heard the dining room door swing open.

‘Come out, come out, wherever you are!’ said the sneering, mocking voice from inside the room. Grace had encountered a lot of meth and crack addicts when she’d worked the beat in the big city. This guy sounded off his face on the hard stuff, and that only frightened her more. She held her breath and clung on tight. Hanging there precariously in that dark, dirty, carbon-stinking space, terrified that the slightest movement would dislodge a cascade of soot that would alert him to her presence – or worse, that she’d lose her grip and come tumbling down out of the fireplace right at his feet. She could hear him moving around the room, searching here and there.

After a few moments that seemed like for ever he snarled, ‘All right, bitch. But I’m going to find you. And when I do, I’m going to slice your fucking face off and have my guys wear it like a fucking mask while they’re taking turns banging you to death.’

Then Grace heard the door open and close, and the sound of his footsteps disappearing up the passage. She waited another thirty seconds. When she was as certain as she could be that he was gone, she let out the biggest sigh of her life and lowered herself out of the chimney. Again, she caught a glimpse of herself in the huge gilt-framed mirror. Small, vulnerable, and a mess of black filth. But alive. She dusted the worst of it off her clothes and kicked away her shoes, scared of leaving a sooty trail out of here. She darted over to the doorway, peered cautiously out of the gap and saw that the coast was clear.