They stitched up the wound, replenished the blood, and told me what I already knew: that it came close to being very much worse. But there were complications – the bullet had splintered a bone and caused significant muscle damage. It could be months before he was able to use his arm properly. And there was even a chance that it would remain permanently damaged.

He looked awful. His skin was grey and there were dark pouches beneath his eyes. He was lying on his back and an intravenous drip was pumping a saline solution into his arm from a bag.

I kept staring at him, while thinking how lucky I was not to have lost him. Dave Prentiss’s wife hadn’t been so lucky, and neither had Graham Nash.

Naturally guilt reared its ugly head and I told myself I should have done more to protect him. Should have reacted more forcefully to the fears that he and my mother had expressed.

But I also knew it’d be wrong to direct my anger inwards when those who were really responsible were still out there. And in all probability stalking another victim.

There was the assassin in the motorcycle leathers, who nobody believed was acting alone. And there was the evil shit who was surely paying her to do what he didn’t have the guts or the skills to do himself.

Roy Slack.

Of course I still couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure that it was him. But all my instincts were telling me it was. And since becoming a police officer all those years ago I’d learned to trust them because they were usually right.

I wondered if he’d drawn up a list of those to be murdered. Or had he left it to his bitch assassin? Were we being targeted in any particular order? If so why was I chosen as the third victim?

Another yet-to-be-answered question was who had given them all the information on us? Our personal details. Addresses. Phone numbers. The names of our loved ones.

Was it one of my colleagues on the task force? A bent copper? A piece of scum of the highest order? And if so did that person have a hand in the decision-making process?

Images from the last few days were flying around inside my head. Dave Prentiss’s blood-spattered body. His distraught wife. Graham Nash’s shocked expression as he was led out of the office. The smirk on Roy Slack’s face when I questioned him. Our kitchen door being shattered by the impact of that first bullet. The dark, disturbing figure aiming a gun at me from the garden. Aidan lying on the floor with a bullet wound. And that doctor’s face as he told me that I’d suffered a miscarriage.

Jesus.