Ten minutes later she pulled up outside Itchy’s terraced house. A knock brought him to the door and he hustled Silva inside.

‘You hear about the money?’ he said. His mouth widened into a smile. ‘Twenty-five K. Not bad, considering.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve been paid. Twenty-five thousand pounds. It appeared in my bank account overnight.’

‘Never mind the money,’ Silva said. She followed Itchy through into the living room and closed the door behind her. ‘Neil Milligan is dead.’

‘Who?’

‘The journalist my mum used to work for. He knew about the story, knew about the Hopes. He’s been murdered.’

‘Murdered?’

‘He was stabbed and it was made to look like a mugging, but that’s just a cover.’ Silva shrugged and let her arms hang loose. She was at a loss. She stared past Itchy. The wall behind him had been stripped of wallpaper but little pieces of the gold-flecked covering remained. Itchy’s house was a refurbishment job and for a moment Silva thought about the ridiculousness of the situation. Here she was worrying about his renovation project when just two days ago she’d been attempting to kill the next president of the United States. ‘My guess is we’re next.’

‘Caz.’ Itchy tilted his head and looked at the ceiling. ‘She’s upstairs.’

‘Did you tell her anything about the Italy trip?’

‘Only that I was going on a security job. Protection. That sort of thing. She doesn’t know where we went, who we met, or any of the details.’

‘Good. Is there anywhere she can go for a few days? Not family – they’re too easy to trace – a friend perhaps?’

‘She’s got a mate in Edinburgh.’

‘Perfect. Tell her something’s come up. She shouldn’t be worried but it might be safer if she went away on a little holiday. Say it’s a treat. Spend some of that money.’

‘Shit, Silvi. I hate lying to her.’

‘Don’t lie, then. Just don’t tell her the whole truth, right?’

‘OK.’ Itchy nodded. ‘And us? I guess we could just bugger off in your boat.’ Itchy made a wavy movement with his hand. ‘Head out to sea?’

‘She can do about five knots with a good wind. That’s a hundred and twenty miles a day. I don’t think we’d get far before they caught up with us, do you?’

‘We’re not going to just sit here and wait for them, are we?’

‘No. Remember Afghanistan? What we did there? If there was an enemy sniper pinning down our unit we didn’t wait to be picked off, did we?’

‘No.’ Itchy was moving to the doorway. He’d got the message. ‘We went out into the field and hunted them down.’

‘Exactly.’

Hunting the enemy down was all well and good, but Silva had something else to do first.